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Why Can't We Get Dawood?

2011-11-27T13:30:00.001+05:30

(India Today, September 25, 2006)

After 13 long years of waiting, punishment for those guilty of the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai that killed 257 and injured 750 people may finally be underway. But any talk of the triumph of the great Indian justice system, howsoever slow, is premature as the absence of the mastermind Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and his co-conspirators, including brother Anis and associate Tiger Memon, weighs heavily on the prosecutors.

In a clear affront to the Indian state, Dawood lives in relative freedom somewhere inside Pakistan where he had moved from Dubai soon after the blasts. From there he runs his flourishing D-company that has illegal business connections ranging from drugs to terror spanning the globe. Flaunting his ever-growing wealth, now estimated at Rs 7,000 crore, he is also gaining social acceptability (witness the crowds that came for his daughter's marriage to cricketer Javed Miandad's son last year). All through these years, India impotently raged at its neighbour and had to put up with frustrating international apathy. Only recently has the world become convinced that Dawood is a global terrorist who needs to be brought to book.

Everyone agrees that getting India's most wanted should be the country's law enforcing agencies' top priority. He remains one of the aces in Pakistan's hand of terror and gives them capability to carry out telling strikes in India. Vijay Shanker, the director of CBI which investigated the 1993 Mumbai blasts and filed the chargesheet, told India Today: "We need to do everything possible to bring Dawood to justice. Our pursuit of him must be relentless and we must show zero tolerance. It is not just the severity of punishment but its certainty that is important."

Yet when it comes to getting Dawood, the uncertainty is obvious. No Indian agency is willing to put its reputation on the line by giving a date by which it could nail Dawood dead or alive. Efforts to attach Dawood's properties and auction them have seen no takers, indicating his continuing influence across the country.

Pakistan continues to adopt the familiar ploy of brazenly denying that Dawood is in its territory. Internationally too, while the US has in recent years stepped up the pressure on Pakistan by declaring Dawood as a specially-designated Global Terrorist, it hasn't really got tough. America still needs Pakistan to deliver key Al Qaeda terrorists like Osama bin Laden and also put a lid on extremist activity that may endanger its own citizens which remain its first priority.

So can India ever get Dawood? Instead of the episodic response to get the master criminal, experts now call for a cohesive approach using several key strategies that would corner Dawood, reduce his influence considerably and finally make it absolutely unaffordable for Pakistan to maintain him. As A.K. Doval, former Intelligence Bureau chief and an authority on terror and the underworld, says: "We should work towards considerably impairing his capability to damage India. We need to make him feel his life is never safe. We have to keep the pressure up from all sources diplomatically, politically and financially. We have to break his halo of invincibility and the myths that surround him." But how?

Union Home Secretary V.K. Duggal is clearly miffed with the way Pakistan handles the Dawood issue. He says: "We have on several occasions asked for the extradition of Dawood Ibrahim and some of his gang members. We have given enough evidence of him being in Pakistan. In the two rounds of talks with my Pakistani counterpart, I raised the issue and on both these occasions they have denied his presence in Pakistan." The most recent denial was in May when Duggal and his team of officials carried with them a detailed dossier on the activities of Dawood and his whereabouts in Pakistan including the Pakistani passports issued to him.

Dawood's importance to Pakistan has only grown in recent years. With Pakistan under increasing international pressure to curb terrorists operating from its soil, it has adopted a strategy of enhancing its deniability. Instead of sending recruits to carry out terror strikes in India, as they did in the Parliament and Ayodhya attacks, the ISI now relies on Dawood's vast infrastructure in India to develop what are known as sleeper cells. These are essentially manned by Indians inclined towards jehad and the D-company helps provide finance and arms. Even if these cells are uncovered, Pakistan can maintain that these stem from indigenous dissent. As a senior intelligence official points out: "Dawood now provides Pakistan an over-ground capability to strike with impunity anywhere in India and then deny its role."

Apart from logistical support involving manpower, training and providing arms, any terror operation requires vast financial resources. With the international community increasingly co-operating on tracing large-scale transactions, Dawood's expertise in counterfeiting money and also sending it through the hawala route is a major asset. With drugs from Afghanistan becoming a major source of income, Dawood's network of speedboats that criss-cross the Arabian Sea makes him the subcontinental kingpin in this trade. He is also reported to have extensive links with Al Qaeda that used his network for many years to funnel drug money.

It is not as if it has been a smooth sail for Dawood. Rival gangs in the Karachi underworld are most upset by the inroads Dawood has made into their business. Some experts talk of India employing a covert offensive by stoking his rivals to act against Dawood. But with the ISI giving him such extensive cover, it is not easy to strike Dawood. Even if there have been such attempts in the past, the don's luck has held. Nor can the Indian Government sanction an Israeli type of operation of bumping off those committing heinous terror crimes wherever they may be hiding. Such acts could also trigger a mini-covert war with Pakistan raising the ante and ordering tit-for-tat assassinations.

While dealing with Pakistan on the Dawood issue, at a bilateral level India's choice is limited to keeping the pressure on and putting Islamabad on the defensive. While Pakistan may be thick-skinned, it is also concerned by the international embarrassment it may suffer if Dawood is seen to be openly operating. In fact, in the past two years, Dawood has kept a relatively low profile and has not been sighted in public. Even during his daughter's marriage to Miandad's son, he was present only at an extremely private reception to bless the couple.

Dawood now rarely uses the phone to communicate and prefers to send out orders through his henchmen. Indian intelligence officials discount rumours that he has undergone drastic plastic surgery to change his looks. He is constantly shifting houses and there is talk of him even having to hide in Wazirstan where other Al Qaeda leaders are holed up. He is reportedly guarded by two majors in the ISI.

India should continue to confront Pakistan with evidence of Dawood's whereabouts and surprise them with the extent of their knowledge of his movements. During the talks between the home secretaries in May, India was able to extract a small concession with the two sides agreeing that the CBI and its Pakistani counterpart, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), form an expert group to co-operate on issues. Since Interpol Red Corner notices are out for Dawood and his gang, it could be brought up in such meetings. As a senior Home Ministry official said, "It's a small step and we still have a long way to go before we can get him."

This April, Indian security agencies notched a significant victory in their bid to corner Dawood and impair his vast empire. His status as a dangerous international criminal was upgraded by putting him on the Interpol-United Nations Security Council Special Notice. That put Dawood in the same category as key Al Qaeda operatives including Bin Laden and imposes an obligation on all 184 member countries of Interpol to work towards freezing all his assets, imposing a total travel ban and an arms embargo.

This was largely a follow-up of action taken by the United States Treasury Department in October 2003 to identify Dawood as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist-resulting in the freezing of any assets belonging to him within the US and also prohibiting transactions with American citizens. It was then an explicit acknowledgement by the US of the newly-acquired synergy between underworld criminals and Islamic terror networks. And was a tacit acceptance by it of India's long-standing claims that Dawood was a narco-terrorist and was able to escape indictment due to the patronage accorded by Pakistan.

It was the drug and financial nexus forged by the Al Qaeda with Dawood that put him at odds with the US administration-it pitch-forked the don from India's most wanted to the American blacklist. The fact sheet put out by the Treasury Department details that the Dawood syndicate's smuggling routes from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa were shared with Bin Laden's terror network. "Successful routes established over recent years by Ibrahim's syndicate have been subsequently utilised by Bin Laden. A financial arrangement was reportedly brokered to facilitate the latter's usage of these routes," it added.

By targeting Dawood's global network, the US counter terrorism team is looking to cripple or on the outset at least limit the Al Qaeda's access to finance. David Kaplan, chief investigative correspondent, US News & World Report, who has tracked the Dawood terror network, argues, "Because there's no evidence that Dawood has engaged in criminal activity in America, I doubt the US Government cares much about his work except when it relates to terrorism. Having said this, Washington has invested formidable resources to track him down-both through criminal investigation and intelligence means."

Why is the US not then seeking to smoke out Dawood from his lair in Karachi? It is eventually a question of priority. By keeping up the heat on Dawood's fiscal resources, the Americans have conveyed their intent to the Pakistan Government. Whether it would want to push matters to their logical conclusion will depend on how well Washington will shore its tenuous relationship with Islamabad. As Kaplan puts it, "There is a delicate balancing that goes on between Washington and Islamabad. If the US could figure that out it would have had Bin Laden by this time."

With Europe and other countries joining in too, Dawood's vast international network has been put under scrutiny and it has already blunted his capability. What has helped in recent years has been the increasing co-operation by the UAE in apprehending and deporting known Indian criminals operating there. Over half-a-dozen key operatives of Dawood, including his brother, have been deported to India and they have yielded valuable information about the don's movements and capabilities. An added boost was Portugal agreeing to extradite Abu Salem, a one-time Dawood henchman and an accused in the 1993 blasts. For Dawood, the noose has begun to slowly tighten.

While getting Interpol notices posted has helped, the international agency as U.S. Misra, former CBIi director, points out, "is not an enforcement body but just a facilitator". Interpol does not have the powers to enter into any country and make arrests. This means that if Pakistan plays its deniability card there is nothing really that other countries including India can do.

Apart from international pressure, India has to actively work towards hacking away at Dawood's vast network and asset base within the country. As a senior intelligence official said: "The fundamental strategy is to disrupt his organised links in the country and deny him profit, thereby diminishing his utility for Pakistan."

It is, however, easier said than done. Enforcement agencies have been trying to freeze his assets in India mainly in real estate holdings. They have identified more than 76 such benami properties. One of them, the Sara Shopping Complex in Crawford Market, was recently demolished. Such is Dawood's clout that when three of his properties were put up for sale there were no buyers.

Meanwhile, in the past five years Mumbai Police have worked towards severely denting organised crime syndicates by employing flamboyant officers to engage in encounters with them. Over 200 gangsters were gunned down, many of them Dawood associates. By making a number of arrests of his gang members, the police have also begun to penetrate his vast network that comprises even the political class. They have begun cracking down on sleeper cells, though it seems not effectively enough given the recent spate of terror attacks in Maharashtra.

At the same time, Doval and other experts point out that it is important to punish the perpetrators of terror in the country. That is why the 1993 blast verdict, even though coming 13 years later, is an important development. It sends a clear message to criminals that the Indian state never forgets and would pursue them relentlessly till they are brought to book. And that there is a fair system of law where all are equal and there is no discrimination between communities.

More importantly for Dawood, it is a warning that he can never live in peace for he can still be caught anytime, anywhere. He now lives in perpetual fear. For a man who caused that emotion in others, this may be his comeuppance.

The Seven Billionth Baby Circus

2011-11-09T20:13:00.000+05:30

The Seven Billionth Baby Circus

(from Open magazine)

a) It is not true b) If it is to highlight overpopulation, why is everyone cheering?
Madhavankutty Pillai

The city of boise in the United States of America was witness to an astonishing coincidence at 1.18 am last Monday when the seven billionth baby was born there to a mother of Chinese descent and an American father. Twelve years ago, in that same city, the sixth billion baby was also born. What are the odds of two such rare births happening at one city? One hundred per cent.

The first thing to know about the seven billionth baby is that it is not the seven billionth baby. Not in Boise, not in Dauraha village in Uttar Pradesh, where Nargis arrived with fanfare, not in a hospital in Manila in the Philippines, where the media waited for Danica May Camacho to cry out into the world. The seven billionth baby is anyone’s for the making, so long as there is good public relations groundwork done before the birth.

The present flurry is the result of the United Nations announcing that the seven billionth baby would be born on 31 October. Even they don’t believe in it. This is from the United Nations website relating to the seven billion number: ‘…it is very likely that we have uncertainty in total population estimates of at least 1 per cent at the global level. If we assume an error margin of only 1 per cent at the global level the 7 billion world population could be reached 6 months earlier or later.’ In other words, the baby could have been born anytime anywhere between May 2011 and April 2012.

There is also another curious element in the circus—the reason for the United Nations to announce this as a symbolic date was to create awareness about the issue of overpopulation. Being the symbol of a depressing reality, the seven billionth baby should, therefore, have been greeted with self-reproach, contrition and guilt. Instead, the general mood has been one of achievement at having managed to produce so many and having got the right one to drop off at your local address.

India’s own Nargis is the creation of an NGO astute enough to know how a symbol like the seven billionth can be used. It might be a noble cause (in this case, to highlight female foeticide), but it doesn’t change the fact that it is based on misrepresentation. The truth is deliberately fine-printed in the cheer, and that’s not a good way to go about doing anything.

Thanda Gosht by Saadat Hasan Manto

2011-11-09T20:07:00.000+05:30

Translated from Urdu, Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story Thanda Gosht
http://www.chowk.com/Arts/Poetry/Cold-Flesh

The Wealth Of Sharad Pawar

2011-09-04T22:29:00.000+05:30

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6237552/The-Wealth-of-Sharad-Pawar

The Prince Who Blew Through Billions

2011-08-07T21:10:00.002+05:30

http://byliner.com/mark-seal/articles/the-prince-who-blew-through-billions

Protima's 6 lovers

2011-08-07T20:11:00.003+05:30

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/proj_tabloid/ladylovers1.shtml

The fear that silences India's writers

2011-08-07T20:11:00.001+05:30

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/15/beautiful-damned-siddhartha-deb-india?CMP=twt_gu

All you religious fanatics out there

2011-08-07T20:10:00.000+05:30

http://chennaikaran.blogspot.com/2008/12/all-you-religious-fanatics-out-there.html

Why does Mumbai bleed again and again?

2011-07-14T13:24:00.002+05:30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14140991

Indian Spiritualism Made for the Modern Age

2011-07-10T00:34:00.000+05:30

Indian Spiritualism Made for the Modern Age by Manu Joseph
(A brilliant expose of Indian godmen particularly of Sri 'Plasterred Smile' Sri...

How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One

2011-07-09T17:37:00.000+05:30

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Heavy-sentences-7053

Rahul Gandhi Exposed by an IIT'ian,

2011-06-26T19:52:00.002+05:30

Friday, 10 June 2011 at 14:20

THE CURIOUS CASE OF RAHUL GANDHI
Rahul Gandhi: "I feel ashamed to call myself an INDIAN after seeing what has happened here in UP".

PLEASE DON'T BE ASHAMED OF U.P. YET

Please don't be ashamed of Uttar Pradesh yet. Congress ruled the State for the Majority of the duration Pre Independence to Post Independence.. from 1939 to 1989 ( barring the Periods of Emergency.. Thanks to your Grand Mom Indira G. and a couple of transitional Governments)

8 out of the total 14 Prime Ministers of India have been from UP, 6 out of those 8 have been from Congress...

I think your party had more than half a century and half a Dozen PM's to build a State...

The Reason Mulayam Singh, subsequently came to Power is because your party wasn't exactly Gandhian in their dealings in the State.. So May be If you look at in totality the present chaos in UP is the outcome of the glorious leadership displayed by Congress in UP for about 50 years!

So Please don't feel ashamed as yet Dear Rahul.. For Mayawati is only using the Land Acquisition Bill which your party had itself used to LOOT the Farmers many times in the Past!

WHY DIDN'T YOUR PARTY CHANGE THE BILL WHEN IT WAS IN POWER FOR SO LONG?

Not that I Endorse what Mayawati is doing.. What Mayawati is doing is Unacceptable..

But the past actions of your party and your recent comments, puts a question mark on your INTENT and CONSISTENCY.

YOU REALLY WANT TO FEEL ASHAMED

But don't be disappointed, I would give you ample reasons to feel ashamed...

You really want to feel Ashamed..?

First Ask Pranav Mukherjee, Why isn't he giving the details of the account holders in the Swiss Banks.

Ask your Mother, Who is impeding the Investigation against Hasan Ali?

Ask her, Who got 60% Kickbacks in the 2G Scam ?

Kalamdi is accused of a Few hundred Crores, Who Pocketed the Rest in the Common Wealth Games?

Ask Praful Patel what he did to the Indian Airlines? Why did Air India let go of the Profitable Routes ?

Why should the Tax Payer pay for the Air India losses, when you intend to eventually DIVEST IT ANYWAY!!!

Also, You People can't run an Airline Properly. How can we expect you to run the Nation?

Ask Manmohan Singh. Why/What kept him quiet for so long?

Are Kalmadi and A Raja are Scapegoats to save Big Names like Harshad Mehta was in the 1992 Stock Market Scandal ?

Who let the BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY Accused go Scot Free? ( 20,000 People died in that Tragedy)

Who ordered the State Sponsored Massacre of SIKHS in 84?

Please read more about, How Indira Gandhi pushed the Nation Under Emergency in 76-77, after the HC declared her election to Lok Sabha Void!

(I bet She had utmost respect for DEMOCRACY and JUDICIARY and FREE PRESS)

I guess you know the answers already. So My question is, Why the Double Standards in Judging Mayawati and members of your Family and Party?

I condemn Mayawati. But Is She the only one you feel Ashamed for?

What about the ones close to you? For their contribution to the Nation's Misery is beyond comparison.

You talk about the Land being taken away from the Farmers. How many Suicides have happened under your Parties Rule in Vidarbha ? Does that Not Ashame You ?

THE 72,000 CRORE LOAN WAIVER

Your Party gave those Farmers a 72,000 Crore Loan Waiver. Which didn't even reach the Farmers by the way.

So, Why don't you focus on implementing the policies which your govt. has undertaken, instead of earning brownie points by trying to manufacture consent by bombarding us with pictures of having food with Poor Villagers....

You want to feel ashamed. You can feel ashamed for your Party taking CREDIT for DEBITING the Public Money (72,000 crores) from the Government Coffers and literally Wasting it...

You want to feel ashamed.. Feel ashamed for that...

WHY ONLY HIGHLIGHT THIS ARREST?

Dear Rahul, to refresh your memory, you were arrested/detained by the FBI the BOSTON Airport in September 2001.

You were carrying with you $ 1,60,000 in Cash. You couldn't explain why you were carrying so much Cash.

Incidentally He was with his Columbian girlfriend Veronique Cartelli, ALLEGEDLY, the Daughter of Drug Mafia.

9 HOURS he was kept at the Airport.

Later then freed on the intervention of the then Prime Minister Mr.Vajpayee.. FBI filed an equivalent of an FIR in US and released him.

When FBI was asked to divulge the information, by Right/Freedom to Information Activists about the reasons Rahul was arrested ... FBI asked for a NO OBJECTION CERTIFICATE from Rahul Gandhi.

So Subramaniyam Swami wrote a Letter to Rahul Gandhi, " If you have NOTHING to HIDE, Give us the Permission"
HE NEVER REPLIED!

Why did that arrest not make Headlines Rahul? You could have gone to the Media and told, "I am ashamed to call myself an INDIAN?".

Or is it that, you only do like to highlight Symbolic Arrests (like in UP) and not Actual Arrests ( In BOSTON)

Kindly Clarify.....

In any case, you want to feel ashamed, Read Along...

YOUR MOTHER'S SO CALLED SACRIFICE OF GIVING UP PRIME MINISTER SHIP in 2004.

According to a Provision in the Citizenship Act.

A Foreign National who becomes a Citizen of India, is bounded by the same restrictions, which an Indian would face, If he/she were to become a Citizen of Italy.

(Condition based on principle of reciprocity)

[READ ANNEXURE- 1&2]

Now Since you can't become a PM in Italy, Unless you are born there.

Likewise an Italian Citizen can't become Indian PM, unless He/She is not born here!

Dr. SUBRAMANIYAM SWAMI (The Man who Exposed the 2G Scam) sent a letter to the PRESIDENT OF INDIA bringing the same to his Notice. [READ LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT IN ANNEXURE -3]

PRESIDENT OF INDIA sent a letter to Sonia Gandhi to this effect, 3:30 PM, May 17th, 2004.

Swearing Ceremony was scheduled for 5 PM the same Day.

Manmohan Singh was brought in the Picture at the last moment to Save Face!!

Rest of the SACRIFICE DRAMA which she choreographed was an EYE WASH!!!

Infact Sonia Gandhi had sent, 340 letters, each signed by different MP to the PRESIDENT KALAM, supporting her candidacy for PM.

One of those letters read, I Sonia Gandhi, elected Member from Rai Bareli, hereby propose Sonia Gandhi as Prime Minister.

So SHE was Pretty INTERESTED! Until She came to know the Facts!

So She didn't make any Sacrifice, It so happens that SONIA GANDHI couldn't have become the PM of INDIA that time.

You could be Ashamed about that Dear Rahul!! One Credential Sonia G had, Even that was a HOAX!

THINK ABOUT YOURSELF.

You go to Harvard on Donation Quota. ( Hindujas Gave HARVARD 11 million dollars the same year, when Rajiv Gandhi was in Power)

Then you are expelled in 3 Months/ You Dropped out in 3 Months.... ( Sadly Manmohan Singh wasn't the Dean of Harvard that time, else you might have had a chance... Too Bad, there is only one Manmohan Singh!)

Some Accounts say, You had to Drop out because of Rajiv Gandhi's Assassination.

May be, But Then Why did you go about lying about being Masters in Economics from Harvard .. before finally taking it off your Resume upon questioning by Dr. SUBRAMANIYAM SWAMI (The Gentlemen who exposed the 2G Scam)

At St. Stephens.. You Fail the Hindi Exam.

Hindi Exam!!!

And you are representing the Biggest Hindi Speaking State of the Country?

SONIA GANDHI's EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

Sonia G gave a sworn affidavit as a Candidate that She Studied English at University of Cambridge

[SEE ANNEXURE-6, 7_37a]

According to Cambridge University, there is no such Student EVER! [ SEE ANNEXURE -7_39]

Upon a Case by Dr. Subramaniyam Swami filed against her,

She subsequently dropped the CAMBRIDGE CREDENTIAL from her Affidavit.

Sonia Gandhi didn't even pass High School. She is just 5th class Pass!

In this sense, She shares a common Educational Background with her 2G Partner in Crime, Karunanidhi.

You Fake your Educational Degree, Your Mother Fakes her Educational Degree.

And then you go out saying, " We want Educated Youth into Politics!"

Letters sent by Dr. Swami to EC and then Speaker of Lok Sabha are in ANNEXURE 7_36 &7_35 RESPECTIVELY

Contrast that with Gandhi Ji , who went to South Africa, Became a Barrister, on Merit, Left all that to work for South Africa, then for the Country....

WHY LIE ABOUT EDUCATIONAL CREDENTIALS?

Not that Education is a Prerequisite for being a great Leader, but then you shouldn't have lied about your qualifications!

You could feel a little ashamed about Lying about your Educational Qualifications. You had your reasons I know, Because in India, WE RESPECT EDUCATION!

But who cares about Education, When you are a Youth Icon!!

YOUTH ICON

You traveled in the Local Train for the first time at the Age of 38.

You went to some Villages as a part of Election Campaign.

And You won a Youth Icon!! ... That's why You are my Youth Icon.

For 25 Million People travel by Train Everyday. You are the First Person to win a Youth Icon for boarding a Train.

Thousands of Postmen go to remotest of Villages. None of them have yet gotten a Youth Icon.

You were neither YOUNG Nor ICONIC!

Still You became a Youth Icon beating Iconic and Younger Contenders like RAHUL DRAVID.

Shakespeare said, What's in a Name?

Little did he knew, It's all in the Name, Especially the Surname!

Speaking of Surname, Sir

DO YOU REALLY RESPECT GANDHI, OR IS IT JUST TO CASH IN ON THE GOODWILL OF MAHATMA?

Because the Name on your Passport is RAUL VINCI.

Not RAHUL GANDHI..

May be if you wrote your Surname as Gandhi, you would have experienced, what Gandhi feels like, LITERALLY ( Pun Intended)

You People don't seem to use Gandhi much, except when you are fighting Elections. ( There it makes complete sense).

Imagine fighting elections by the Name Raul Vinci...

It feels sadly Ironic, Gandhi Ji, who inspired Icons like Nelson Mandela ,Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon, across the world, Couldn't inspire members of his party/ Nehru's Family, who only seem to use his Surname for the purposes of FIGHTING ELECTIONS and conveniently use a different name on their PASSPORT.

You use the name GANDHI at will and then say, " Mujhe yeh YUVRAJ shabd Insulting lagta hai! Kyonki aaj Hindustan mein Democracy hai, aur is shabd ka koi matlab nahin hai!

YUVRAJ, Itna hi Insulting lagta hai, to lad lo RAUL VINCI ke Naam se!!! Jin Kisano ke saath photo khinchate ho woh bhi isliye entertain karte hain ki GANDHI ho.. RAUL VINCI bol ke Jao... Ghar mein nahin ghusaenge!!!

You could feel ashamed for your Double Standards.

YOUTH INTO POLITICS.

Now You want Youth to Join Politics.

I say First you Join Politics.

Because you haven't Joined Politics. You have Joined a Family Business.

First you Join Politics. Win an Election fighting as RAUL VINCI and Not Rahul Gandhi, then come and ask the youth and the Educated Brass for more involvement in Politics.

Also till then, Please don't give me examples of Sachin Pilot and Milind Deora and Naveen Jindal as youth who have joined Politics..

They are not Politicians. They Just happen to be Politicians.

Much Like Abhishek Bachchan and other Star Sons are not Actors. They just happen to be Actors (For Obvious Reasons)

So, We would appreciate if you stop requesting the Youth to Join Politics till you establish your credentials...

WHY WE CAN'T JOIN POLITICS!

Rahul Baba, Please understand, Your Father had a lot of money in your Family account ( in Swiss Bank) when he died.

Ordinary Youth has to WORK FOR A LIVING.

YOUR FAMILY just needs to NETWORK FOR A LIVING

If our Father had left thousands of Crores with us, We might consider doing the same..

But we have to Work. Not just for ourselves. But also for you. So that we can pay 30% of our Income to the Govt. which can then be channelized to the Swiss Banks and your Personal Accounts under some Pseudo Names.

So Rahul, Please don't mind If the Youth doesn't Join Politics. We are doing our best to fund your Election Campaigns and your Chopper Trips to the Villages.

Somebody has to Earn the Money that Politicians Feed On.

NO WONDER YOU ARE NOT GANDHI'S. YOU ARE SO CALLED GANDHI'S!!

Air India, KG Gas Division, 2G, CWG, SWISS BANK Account Details... Hasan Ali, KGB., FBI Arrest..

You want to feel ashamed..

Feel Ashamed for what the First Family of Politics has been reduced to...

A Money Laundering Enterprise.

NO WONDER YOU ARE NOT GANDHI'S BY BLOOD. GANDHI is an adopted Name. For Indira didn't marry Mahatma Gandhi's Son.

For even if you had one GENE OF GANDHI JI in your DNA. YOU WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN PLAGUED BY SUCH 'POVERTY OF AMBITION' ( Ambition of only EARNING MONEY)

You really want to feel Ashamed.

Feel Ashamed for what you ' SO CALLED GANDHI'S' have done to MAHATMA'S Legacy..

I so wish GANDHI JI had Copyrighted his Name!

Meanwhile, I would request Sonia Gandhi to change her name to $ONIA GANDHI, and you could replace the 'R' in RAHUL/RAUL by the New Rupee Symbol!!!

RAUL VINCI : I am ashamed to call myself an Indian.

Even we are ashamed to call you so!

P.S: Popular Media is either bought or blackmailed, controlled to Manufacture Consent!

My Guess is Social Media is still a Democratic Platform. (Now they are trying to put legislations to censor that too!!)

Meanwhile, Let's ask these questions, for we deserve some Answers.

For we are all Gandhi's. For Bapu is the Father of the Nation!

To know more, Try looking for Dr. SUBRAMANIYAM SWAMI. He is the reason today 2G SCAM is being Investigated!!!

YOURS SINCERELY

NITIN GUPTA ( RIVALDO)

B.Tech, IIT Bombay

The Land of Illusion: A journey into Sai Baba’s smalltown fiefdom, where decades-old allegations of sex abuse, murder and deception continue to linger

2011-06-26T19:44:00.002+05:30

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/Story.aspx?Storyid=314&StoryStyle=FullStory

Caravan Story - Arindam Chaudhri - Sweet smell of success

2011-06-25T21:56:00.002+05:30

By Siddhartha Deb

A PHENOMENALLY WEALTHY INDIAN who excites hostility and suspicion is an unusual creature, a fish that has managed to muddy the waters it swims in. The glow of admiration lighting up the rich and the successful disperses before it reaches him, hinting that things have gone wrong somewhere. It suggests that beneath the sleek coating of luxury, deep under the sheen of power, there is a failure barely sensed by the man who owns that failure along with his expensive accoutrements. This was Arindam Chaudhuri’s situation when I first met him in 2007. He had achieved great wealth and prominence, partly by projecting an image of himself as wealthy and prominent. Yet somewhere along the way he had also created the opposite effect, which — in spite of his best efforts — had given him a reputation as a fraud, scamster and Johnny-come-lately.

Once I became aware of Arindam Chaudhuri’s existence, I began to find him everywhere: in the magazines his media division published, flashing their bright colours and inane headlines from little newsstands made of bricks and plastic sheets; in buildings fronted by dark glass, behind which earnest young men imbibed Arindam’s ideas of leadership; and on the tiny screen during a flight from Delhi to Chicago, when the film I chose for viewing turned out to have been produced by him. It was a lowbudget Bombay gangster film with a cast of unknown, modestly paid actors and actresses: was it an accident that the film was called Mithya? The word means falsehood, appearances, a lie—things I would have much opportunity to contemplate in my
study of Arindam.

Every newspaper I came across carried a full-page advertisement for Arindam’s private business school, the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), with Arindam’s photograph displayed prominently. It was the face of the new India, in closeup. His hair was swept back in a ponytail, dark and gleaming against a pale, smooth face, his designer glasses accentuating his youthfulness. He wore a blue suit, and his teeth were exposed in the kind of bright white smile I associate with American businessmen and evangelists. But instead of looking directly at the reader, as businessmen and evangelists do to assure people of their trustworthiness, Arindam gazed off at a distant horizon, as if pondering some elusive goal.

There were few details about the academic programme or admission requirements in these advertisements, but many small, inviting photographs of the Delhi campus: a swimming pool, a computer lab, a library, a snooker table, Indian men in suits, a blonde woman. A fireworks display of italics, exclamation marks and capital letters described the perks given to students: “free study tour to Europe etc. for twenty-one days,” “world placements,” “Free Laptops for all.” Stitching these disparate elements together was a slogan: “Dare to Think Beyond the IIMs”—referring to the elite, state-subsidised business schools, and managing to sound promising, admonishing and mysterious at the same time. The new India needed a new kind of university, and a new kind of attitude, andArindam, said the ads, was the man who could teach you how to find it.

“I’VE SPOKEN TO THE BOSS about you,” Sutanu said. “He said, ‘Why does he want to meet me?’”

Sutanu ran the media division of Arindam’s company from a basement office where there was no cellphone reception, and it took many calls and text messages to get in touch with him. When I finally reached him, he sounded affable enough, suggesting that we have lunch in south Delhi. We met at Flames, an “Asian Resto-Bar” in Greater Kailash-II with a forlorn statue of the Buddha tucked away in the corner.

Sutanu was in his 40s, a dark man with a bushy moustache and glasses, his raffish 1960s air complemented by a bright blue shirt and a red tie patterned with elephants. He was accompanied by Rahul, a journalist who worked at one of the magazines published by Arindam. Although they couldn’t have been there long, their table held two packs of Navy Cut cigarettes, a partly empty bottle of Kingfisher, and a battered smartphone that thrummed insistently throughout our conversation.

“The boss is a great man, and sure, his story is interesting,” Sutanu said. “The question is whether he’ll talk to you.”

Arindam Chaudhuri had started out in 1996 as the proprietor of a lone business school. Founded by Arindam’s father, it had been—Sutanu said dismissively—a small, run-of-the-mill place located on the outskirts of Delhi. But Arindam expanded it to nine branches in major Indian metros, and now he was going international. He had an institute in Dubai and had allied with a Belgian management school with campuses in Brussels and Antwerp. He was about to open an institute in London, and was planning another in an old factory building in Pennsylvania. And that was just the management institute. Arindam’s company, Planman, had a media division that included a newsweekly, The Sunday Indian—“perhaps the only magazine in the world with 13 editions”—and three business magazines. He also owned a software company, a consulting division that managed the “HR component of multinationals,” and a new outsourcing company, which claimed to produce the entire content of The Guardian online, as well as proofreading and copyediting the Daily Mail.

“There’s also a film division, and he’s produced a major Bollywood blockbuster,” Sutanu said.

“It was meant to be a blockbuster,” Rahul said quietly. “But it flopped.”

“Yeah, yeah, no big deal,” Sutanu said. “He’s on other blockbuster projects. He’s a man of ideas. So sometimes they flop.” He lit a cigarette and waved it around, the rings on his hand flashing. “What he’s doing, he’s using intellectual capital to make his money. But people don’t get that and because he’s been badmouthed so much, he’s become suspicious. He’s been burned by the media. You know, cynical hacks they are. They make up stories that he’s a fraud. A Johnny-come-lately. Everyone asks, ‘Yaar, but where does all that money come from?’”

There was a moment of silence as we contemplated this question.

“They don’t ask these things of other businessmen,” Sutanu said. “That’s because when the mainstream media does these negative stories on him, just hatchet jobs, you know, they’re serving the interests of the big industrialists. The industrialists don’t like him because our magazines have done critical stories on them. The government doesn’t like him and harasses him all the time. They say, ‘You can’t use the word “Indian” in the name of your management school because we don’t recognise your school.’ They send us a letter every six months about this. Then, the elite types are after him. The Doon School, St Stephen’s, Indian Institute of Management people. There were these bloggers writing silly stuff about him, saying that the institute doesn’t
give every student a laptop as promised in the advertisements. You want to know how he makes money? It’s simple. There are 2,000 students who pay seven lakhs each. The operating costs are low. You know how much teachers get paid in India. So the money gets spun off into other businesses.”

We ate hot-and-sour soup and drank more beer, our conversation widening out to include our careers and lives, and the unforgiving city of Delhi. Rahul told us a story about covering the war in Iraq and being arrested by Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard while crossing over the border from Jordan. When it was time to depart, I felt reluctant to break up the drunken afternoon bonhomie but nevertheless asked, “When do I get to meetArindam Chaudhuri?”

“The good thing about the boss is that he’s a yes or no sort of person,” Sutanu said. “You’ll find out in a couple of days whether he wants to meet you.”

A COUPLE OF DAYS stretched to a week. I kept pestering Sutanu with calls and text messages. Then it was done, an appointment made, and I entered the wonderland to meet Arindam Chaudhuri, the management guru, the media magnate, the business school entrepreneur, the film producer, the owner of IT and outsourcing companies, to which we should add his claims of being a noted economist and the author of two “all-time best sellers,” The Great Indian Dream and Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch. The drive from Delhi to IIPM’s main campus, which is located on the city’s outskirts in an area called Satbari, is a fairly quick one. First come the temples of Chattarpur, modern structures with crenellated, fluted walls, where memories of old Hindu architecture have been transformed into a simple idea of excess. A gargantuan statue of Hanuman stands with a mace on his shoulder, looking down dismissively at the traffic.

The road is dusty, and the clusters of shops and houses soon give way to large stretches of land partitioned off for the very rich. A few boutique hotels crop up, looking empty, but the land is mostly colonised by the farmhouses of Delhi’s newly affluent. All I saw on my first drive were walls edged with broken glass, the occasional flash of green from a well-tended lawn, and a young peasant woman with a suitcase sitting in front of a farmhouse. The high-walled Delhi campus of IIPM squatted amid these hotels and farmhouses. Compared to the sprawling campuses of the IIMs, it is tiny—five acres instead of a hundred— and thus seems more like a miniature, model school than a real one. The gates were kept shut, and the campus appeared sleepy until just before Arindam’s arrival. Then the security guards hovered around the guardhouse, looking at their watches and fingering their walkie-talkies. The scruffy management students, who, in their odd
assortment of blazers and flashy shirts, had the air of men just coming off an all-night wedding party, tried not to look as if they were loitering.

The gates were hurriedly opened for Arindam’s metallic blue luxury car, a million-pound Bentley Continental, as it coasted down the driveway and parked in front of the building lobby. Arindam, dressed in blue, passed through a knot of sycophants and disappeared inside the building, leaving behind nothing but the frisson of his arrival and the Bentley gleaming in the fierce Delhi sun. The power and the glory! A million pounds! Custom-made in the mother country of England! A Bentley was the ultimate status symbol of the Indian rich, expensive and relatively uncommon. A business journalist had told me the probably apocryphal story that Arindam had ordered the special paint scraped off when his car arrived from England and then had it repainted to match the blue of one of his favourite shirts.

The campus building was split along two levels. Most of the classrooms were on the basement floor, and were filled with the chatter of students, some of them dressed in suits to attend a class in “Executive Communications.” The ground floor contained a computer lab, a tiny library and some classrooms, but it was dominated by a boardroom in the center. On the other side of this was an open-plan office. The employees sitting in front of computers and phones were mostly in their 20s and 30s, and although they looked busy, they didn’t give the impression that they were running a global megabusiness. Arindam referred to them as “managerial staff,” but when I introduced myself to one of the managers, a balding, middle-aged man, he seemed to be making cold calls, dialing numbers from a database and asking people if they were interested in taking management seminars.

Up close, Arindam was a few shades darker than his picture, though with the same glossy hair tied back in a ponytail. Beneath his blue pinstriped suit he wore a white shirt open to show his smooth, hairless chest. There were rings on his fingers and bright sparkling stones on the frame of his designer glasses, silver cufflinks on his sleeves and argyle socks and shiny pump shoes on his feet. All these harsh, glittering surfaces were accompanied by a youthfulness that softened the effect. He was in his late 30s, a year younger than me, with a boyish air that took over when he became sarcastic about his critics and rivals and said, “Wow!”

Our first meeting took place in the boardroom. There were about 50 chairs in the room, most of them pushed to one side, and Arindam and I sat at one end of a long table. The air-conditioning was fierce, and after a couple of hours, I began to feel cold in my summer garb of short-sleeved shirt and cotton trousers, but Arindam went on speaking, slowing slightly only when a worker brought us chicken sandwiches and cups of Coca-Cola.

Like most of the new rich in India, Arindam hadn’t started from scratch. He inherited the management institute from his father, Malay Chaudhuri, who began it in 1973. But the original institute had hardly been cutting-edge. The admissions and administrative office in a house in south Delhi doubled as a family bedroom at night. As for Gurgaon, where the institute’s students convened, “it was the least developed place on earth.” I understood why Arindam wanted to emphasise this: before the office parks, condominiums and shopping malls sprouted, Gurgaon was little more than an assortment of unpaved roads meandering through fields of wheat, with electricity and phone lines in short supply, a no-man’s-land between Delhi and the vast rural hinterland of India, where a management school must have seemed like just one more of those strange, minor cults that crop up in this country from time to time.

Arindam wanted to go to college in the United States, but his father convinced him to enroll in the family institute. Before he had even graduated, he was teaching a course. “I took advantage of being the director’s son,” Arindam said, laughing but making it clear that he had been perfectly qualified to teach his fellow students. Three years after finishing his degree, he started a recruitment consulting firm. By getting into a position where he was hiring people for other companies, he intended to find jobs for IIPM graduates. The placement of IIPM graduates was a pressing problem at the time, and although Arindam would disagree, it remains a problem now, even after all his success.

During those early years, Arindam’s ambitions were disproportionate to his abilities and experience. He started a magazine and a research division, but the magazine closed quickly and his recruitment firm failed to take off. He had nothing to sell except himself. “In 1997, I announced my first leadership workshop for senior executives under the banner, ‘Become a great leader.’ My thinking was that if they can take leadership lessons from me, they will give me business. So they came, not realising from the photos how young this guy was. And then it didn’t matter, because that first workshop was a rocking interactive supersuccess.”
His voice rose, his chin lifted with pride, and he looked me in the eyes. “That is how we built a brand.”

AT THE IIPM CAMPUS, I had picked up a brochure that featured a two-page spread of the articles that appeared when Arindam first made his mark as “The Guru with a Ponytail.” Indistinguishable from press releases, these articles reproduced Arindam’s thoughts on everything from “how not to create more Osamas” (the key, apparently, was “wholesome education”) to the negative influence of “the MBA mafia,” as he called the IIMs. But if Arindam was “Guru Cool” in these articles, he was also combative, attacking the IIMs and pushing his “Theory i Management” (the lower case “i” stood for “India”) as part of a compassionate form of capitalism that took into account the country’s overwhelming poverty. He talked about “trickle-down
economics” and “survival of the weakest,” and although it was never clear from these extracts how such concepts could be put into practice, they showed Arindam’s desire to project himself as a thinker as well as an entrepreneur.

In June 2005, nearly a decade after his first failed attempt to start a magazine, Arindam began publishing a magazine called Business & Economy. This led to a newsweekly, The Sunday Indian, and a marketing magazine called 4Ps. Each was printed on glossy paper, heavy on graphics and syndicated material, thin on original content and, to judge by the misspelled names on Sunday Indian covers (“Pamela Andreson”), short of copy editors. In 2007, Arindam began bringing out an Indian edition of PC Magazine under licence from Ziff Davis Media. At the same time, he began discussions with Foreign Affairs in New York to bring out an Indian edition, and when that fell through, he began negotiations with Foreign Policy in Washington DC. “In the school, I have an audience of only 6,000 students,” he had said to me (the actual enrolment, according to Sutanu, was closer to 2,000). “Now, every week, I reach one lakh people.” The business schools also produced “academic” journals with names like Indian Economy Review, Human Factor, Strategical Innovators, and Need the Dough? But the most significant arena of influence seemed to be his film business, which had turned Arindam into something approaching a household name.

In 2002, Arindam decided to enter the movie business. A few days before his first Bollywood film was to be shot, he told me, the director walked out on him. Arindam, naturally, decided to direct the film himself. He admitted to me that he had not been entirely qualified. “But I hope, some day, when I have more experience, to make a truly revolutionary film.” With a plot lifted from the American comic strip Archie, that first film flopped commercially and was panned by critics. Even the DVD stores in the Palika Bazaar underground market were unable to procure a copy for me. But Arindam learnt quickly. Before long, he had developed a careful corporate approach to filmmaking that differed from the older Bollywood model of massive budgets,
dubious financing (often from underworld sources) and a hit-or-miss approach to success. Arindam’s films, by contrast, focused on the bottom line, keeping the budget small and aiming not for huge audiences but for as much presence as possible in the multiplexes proliferating in the new India, places where a number of films ran simultaneously in theatres far smaller than their predecessors. He also sought out prestige; some more recent ventures of ArindamChaudhuri Productions have been directed by the Kolkata-based Rituparno Ghosh, who has something of a reputation as an auteur.

Within IIPM, meanwhile, Arindam was surrounded by fierce loyalists. Former students and classmates became employees and continued to refer to him in the nice, middle-class Indian way as “Arindam sir.” They were so enamored of Arindam that when I visited him at the IIPM campus or stood too near him, some of them displayed a barely disguised hostility. Upset at the proximity I had stolen, sensing perhaps that I did not entirely share their faith in their guru, they seethed with the desire to protect Arindamfrom me.

Almost all of Planman’s employees—90 percent, according to Arindam—were former IIPM students. The same was true of the faculty members, who tended to morph from students to teachers as soon as they had finished their courses. Rohit Manchanda, a short, dapper man who would have been shorter without the unusually high heels of his shoes, taught advertising and headed Planman’s small advertising agency. The dean of IIPM, Prasoon Majumdar, was also economics editor for the magazines published by Planman. Other employees were family members as well as former students. Arindam’s wife, Rajita, a petite woman who drove a Porsche, had been a student of Arindam’s before they got married and now taught Executive Communications. Arindam’s sister’s husband, a young man with shoulder-length hair and a shirt left unbuttoned to reveal a generous expanse of chest, was a former student, a faculty member and the features and lifestyle editor of the magazines.

When Arindam met with his division heads, all of whom had been his classmates at IIPM, they joked and chatted for an hour before turning to their work. They seemed to derive immense pleasure from showing me just how closeknit they were. “We’re like the mafia,” Arindam said. It was a comparison that had occurred to me, although other metaphors also came to mind. They were like the mafia in their suspicion of outsiders, like a dot-com in their emphasis on collegiality, and like a cult in their belief in a mythology made up of Arindam’s personal history, management theories and the strange ways in which the company functioned. But perhaps this is simply another way of saying that they were a business, operating through an unquestioning adherence to what their owner said and believed.

During our first meeting, Arindam explained to me in a five-hour monologue that his business was built around the “brand” of Planman Consulting, the group that includes the business school and numerous other ventures from media and motion pictures to a charitable foundation. To an outsider, however, the brand is Arindam. Even if his role is disguised under the description of “honorary dean” of IIPM, the image of the business school and Planman is in most ways the image of Arindam Chaudhuri. With his quirky combination of energy, flamboyance, ambition, canniness and even vulnerability, he is the promise of the age, his traits gathering force from their expression at a time in India when all that is solid melts into air.

ONE EVENING IN SEPTEMBER, I went to the Grand Ballroom auditorium of the Park Royal Hotel to hear Arindam speak. I had heard him address a crowd before, but that had been a familiar audience, made up of graduating IIPM students herded into a hotel auditorium near the Satbari campus. The students seemed awestruck but restless, their attention wandering whenever the talk veered away from the question of their future to trickle-down theory; no doubt they were more concerned with trickleup. Arindam hectored them a little, and he had been worried enough about this to send me a text message a few hours later, asking me to “discount some of the harsh words i said to students.”

The event at the Grand Ballroom was different. It was the final performance of a daylong “leadership” seminar for which people had paid 4,000 rupees, the previous speakers having included Arindam’s wife and several IIPM professors. Over 100 people, quite a few women among them, sat under the chandeliers as a laptop was set up on stage. They looked like aspirational rather than polished corporate types, the men with red sacred threads around their wrists, the women in saris and salwar kameezes, a gathering of middle-class, middle-rung, white-collar individuals whose interest in leadership skills had a dutiful air. After a number of children—it was unclear to whom they belonged— clustered aroundArindam to get copies of the all-time best-seller Count Your Chickens Before They Hatchsigned, Arindam took the stage. He wore a shiny black corduroy suit, the jacket displaying embroidery on the shoulders, and loafers that appeared to be made of snake skin.

Arindam wasn’t a natural speaker. In prolonged one-to-one conversations, he had the tendency to look away, not meeting the listener’s gaze. This was less of a problem in a public gathering, but he also had a high-pitched voice and a tendency to fumble his lines. He started by asking people what leadership meant to them. As his listeners spewed out answers, using phrases (“dream believer,” “reach the objective,” “making decisions,” “simplifying things”) that seemed to have been lifted from someur-text of self-help and management, they seemed both eager and slightly combative, as if not entirely convinced of his ability to teach them about leadership. “Here’s the great Arindam Chaudhuri,” a man next to me muttered, using great in the Indian way to mean someone fraudulent. Arindam seemed aware of the hostility: his responses were hesitant, and his English was uncertain and pronouncedly Delhi middle-class in its inflection.

As the session went on, however, it became evident that these qualities weren’t drawbacks, not among the people he was addressing. The mannerisms gave Arindam an everyday appeal, and it was the juxtaposition of this homeliness with his wealth, success and glamour that created a hold over the leadership aspirants in the audience. By themselves, the Bentley Continental, the ponytail and the designer glasses, or the familiar way Arindam had of dropping names like Harvard, McKinsey and Lee Iacocca would have made him too remote. But the glamour was irresistible when combined with his middlebrow manner. He was one of the audience, even if he represented the final stage in the evolution of the petit bourgeoisie.

Arindam was well aware of this. If he wasn’t a natural speaker, he nevertheless had a performer’s ability to gather strength the longer he stayed on stage. Thirty minutes into the leadership session, as I began to be drawn into his patter, I realised that Arindamwas telling the Indian middle class a story about itself, offering his audience an answer to the question of who they were. “I am trying to be a mirror,” he said, a comment remarkably attuned to the way he represented a larger-than-life version of the people he addressed.

His listeners had come to the session with a rough sense of who they were supposed to be. They received instruction about this from the culture at large, especially the proliferating media outlets that obsessed about them as members of “India Shining.” The Western media characterised them in a similar manner. Arindam’s audience knew that as middleclass, well-to-do Indians, they were supposed to be modern and managerial. They were a people devoted to efficiency, given to the making of money and the enjoyment of consumer goods while retaining a touch of traditional spice, which meant, for instance, that they used the internet to arrange marriages along caste and class lines.

Still, they needed further affirmation of their role, and this is what Arindam provided, mixing that cocktail of spurious tradition and manufactured modernity, while adding his signature flavor to the combination. He told his listeners stories about traveling to America, Europe and Japan—the ultramodern places that middle-class India had been emulating and suddenly found within its reach. Yet few people in the audience had been to these countries, and if they did go, they would not encounter them with any degree of intimacy. The very places they were most drawn to—the business centres, the shopping plazas, the franchise restaurants — would remain slightly unreal in spite of the photographs taken, the souvenirs bought, the money spent.

In the Grand Ballroom, though, these places were conjured anecdoteally and made to resemble the India the audience knew, or thought they knew. So there were jokes about national stereotypes, comments about the different strengths and weaknesses of the Americans, the Japanese, the French and the Indians. There were no individuals in these stories, only nameless businessmen met by Arindam in anonymous boardrooms, and the world itself seemed no more than a string of Grand Ballrooms, each dominated by a different ethnic group of capitalists.

After Arindam had given the audience this touch of the foreign, he returned to more familiar territory. He made fun of regional Indian identities, something done rather easily among a largely Hindi-speaking Delhi crowd that tends to see itself as national. He pandered to their middleclass prejudices, attacking the government as inefficient and corrupt, and then satisfied their nationalism by speaking of the Indian Army as the most efficient and disciplined wing of the state.

As Arindam became more comfortable, he slipped into Hindi, segueing into the story of the Mahabharata. This was his way of approaching the “Theory i Management” concept of leadership. Like many contemporary Hindus who have tried to cut from their sprawling beliefs the hard lines of a modern faith, Arindam wasn’t interested in the complex ethical questions or sophisticated narrative strategies of the Mahabharata. Instead, his focus was on the Bhagavad Gita.

The Gita emerged as a foundational religious text only in modern times, when Hindu revivalists reeling from colonialism sought something more definitive than the amorphous set of practices and ideas that had characterised Vedic religion until then. Then in the early 1990s, the Gita again received new life, when the Indian elites simultaneously embraced free-market economics and a hardened Hindu chauvinism. They discovered in the Gita an old, civilisational argument for maintaining the contemporary hierarchies of caste, wealth and power, while in the story of Arjuna throwing aside his moral dilemmas and entering wholeheartedly into the slaughter of the battlefield, they read an endorsement of a militant, aggressive Hinduism that did not
shrink from violence, especially against minorities and the poor. Given this appeal of the Gita among the Indian middle and upper classes, Arindam’s use of it was a canny choice. He was extending into the realm of management theory a story that his audience would be both familiar with and respectful toward, so that to challenge Arindam’s ideas would be tantamount to questioning a sacred text.

Arindam began the elaboration of his Indian theories, naturally enough, by pulling a red Gita out of a pocket. A Planman photographer ran forward to capture the moment and, for the first time in the session, the audience began scribbling notes. Arindam turned to the laptop as if he were going to boot Krishna into existence, but the laptop refused to comply. As one, two, three, and then four people hurried to help, Arindam gave up, turned away from the computer, and faced the audience.

He began a performance that was part television soap and part stand-up comedy, hamming the roles of housewives, husbands returned from work, fathers and babies, management trainees and their bosses. The audience burst into laughter as each little cameo played out. The laptop was finally made to work, and on the screen appeared a matrix of character types Arindam had extracted from the Hindu scriptures. There was the tamas or pleasure-loving type, who could be led only by domination; the rajas, ambitious but greedy, who needed a combination of encouragement and control; and the sattva, who was brilliant and talented and needed to be left alone. “Leadership is about changing your colors like a chameleon to suit the situation,” Arindam said, citing Krishna, the androgynous, slippery god, as the role model for the ideal CEO. Laborers and blue-collar workers were tamasic, young management trainees rajasic, and highly skilled professionals like research scientists were sattvic. He had reinvented the caste system in two hours.

Arindam finished to all-round applause, and as he came down the stage, he was mobbed by his listeners. I went outside to the passageway, where tamasic workers in overalls were installing gates decorated with marigold garlands for a wedding reception that would take place later in the evening. I sat down beside a disheveled-looking man in a suit who was holding a plastic shopping bag that said “More Word Power.”

He had attended the entire day’s session, and when I asked him what he thought, he replied that it had been interesting. He had enjoyed some of the earlier speakers, especially A Sandip, the editor-in-chief of all of Planman’s magazines.

“And what did you think of Arindam Chaudhuri’s talk?” I asked. “Rubbish. It made no sense at all,” he said. He fell silent, avoiding my gaze, and when he looked at me again, it was with embarrassment. “You are a friend? You work for the company?” He cheered up as soon as he found out that I was writing about Arindam. “The man is a fraud,” he said, “but a very successful one.” He was a small publisher who churned out language education books. He would be publishing a management book during the World Book Fair in Delhi in February, a work written by a Canadian living in Beijing.

+++++++++++++

“It is mostly China-focused. You are aware that there is great interest in China these days? So I wanted to have an event like this
for the Canadian during the book fair, and I decided to come and see this. You are writing about Arindam Chaudhuri?” He
handed me his business card, leaned toward me, chuckled and said, “You must find out how he makes his money.”

I knew by now how Arindam made his money, or much of it—through IIPM’s tuition and (as in his movie business) by keeping
costs low. But what was mysterious was the air of disrepute that clung to him; his wealth, oddly, had not bought him a free
pass. People like this publisher seemed to see in Arindam a more successful version of themselves: far enough away to be
envied, yet close enough to be resented.

ARINDAM HAD TOLD ME A STORY about his childhood that involved a strike at his father’s management school in Gurgaon. He
described the strikers as “rowdy elements,” students who had failed their courses and objected to the academic demands
made of them. The strike climaxed in a telephone call late one night to his father. An anonymous man, speaking hurriedly, said
that a student had been stabbed on campus. Arindam’s father took a taxi, accompanied by one of his employees, a canteen
manager. Two hundred metres from the campus, he saw a group of students armed with iron rods waiting for him. He told the
driver to turn around, went home and took his family to a hotel. The stabbing had been a ruse to bring him to the campus, and
even the canteen manager had been part of the conspiracy.

The strike continued for four months. When the Chaudhuri family moved back home from the hotel, they were greeted by
protesting students. “They were carrying horrible placards calling us thieves and murderers,” Arindam said. “The neighbours,
who talked to the students, began calling my father ‘Bada Chor’ [Big Thief] and me ‘Chota Chor’ [Little Thief].” But what was
most distressing, Arindam said, was that they eventually discovered that members of the faculty were behind the strike. “All
the people we trusted were involved, and I decided that I would not let this happen ever again.”

It was a touching story, a young boy seeing his father threatened by enemies and deciding to take them on. “My father named
me Arindam,” the grown-up man in front of me said. “That means ‘destroyer of enemies.’” Since Arindam had been named a
decade and a half before the incident, his father must have possessed either a remarkable ability to foresee the future or a
pronounced sense of enemies lurking everywhere. But the rowdy students, the traitorous canteen manager, and the
conspiratorial faculty members had no discernible motives in the story Arindamtold me. They were there to provide Arindam a
motive for his success, and to demonstrate that people couldn’t be trusted. It was as if Arindam were explaining to me why his
business was so close-knit; why outsiders were viewed with suspicion; why his public relations person had demanded,
unsuccessfully, that I show him everything I wrote; and why this same person refused to respond to the most elementary
queries about the company’s business practices and revenues. There was more than the usual organisational secrecy at work
here. Instead, a fundamental vision of life was involved, and underneath all the expansive theories of management, below all
the chatter of a world brought closer by corporate globalisation, there was, ultimately, only this Manichean idea of people
divided into the loyal and the disloyal, of Arindam at odds with the world.

Arindam started, he said, by competing for students with the “mafia” of management education in the country, but it was when
he started a media division that his troubles began. “The elite now saw that I was challenging them directly, in the realm of
ideas.” He was no longer operating merely within the confines of business schools; he was breaking down “the establishment
hold on thought.” Arindam’s voice dropped low. “That is the reason why I am hated by a lot of people.”

He was referring in part to a harsh piece about IIPM by an alumna of the elite IIM Ahmedabad business school. “It was the
world’s most stupid article,” Arindam said, adding that he couldn’t remember the name of the journalist. But the ensuing public
imbroglio (“we had no clue what is the blogger world,” he told me ruefully) put a dent in Arindam’s reputation, even as it
solidified, at least for a while, his tenuous alliance with his own student body.

The woman whose name Arindam couldn’t remember was Rashmi Bansal. Responding in part to an especially frenzied media
blitz from IIPM (it was reported that they’d spent more than 1 million dollars to advertise in a number of prominent Indian
newspapers and magazines), she wrote an article, ‘The Truth Behind IIPM’s Tall Claims,’ for JAM (Just Another Magazine—
“India’s Most Loved Youth Magazine Since 1995”), a small periodical that she published herself for a young, English-speaking
audience. Bansal’s article claimed that IIPM’s advertising was misleading: only the Delhi campus had the facilities prominently
displayed in the pictures, from swimming pool to library, while campuses in other cities were housed in crowded office
buildings; the scholars from institutions like Wharton, New York University, Columbia and Harvard claimed as “visiting faculty”
were people who had merely passed through, delivering one-time lectures; the degrees IIPM awarded were not recognised by
the Indian government; the company fudged data from media surveys to claim top rankings; and, contrary to its claims, it did
not place its graduates in multinational corporations like McKinsey.

The story was linked to by a young blogger and IBM salesman in Mumbai named Gaurav Sabnis. His post, ‘The fraud that is
IIPM,’ was vicious. IIPM responded immediately, and clumsily: it wrote to Sabnis, threatening to sue him, and obtained a court
injunction against the original article in JAM, which was temporarily taken offline. It also contacted IBM, from whom it
purchases the free laptops that it gives to students, asking them to pressure Sabnis to take down his post, and threatening that
the students would march to the IBM headquarters in Delhi and burn their laptops in protest.

IBM claimed that it did not pressure Sabnis, but Sabnis resigned anyway to spare his employer’s embarrassment. This—in
addition to abusive comments left by IIPM students on various blogs where criticisms of IIPM appeared— inflamed an already
excited blogosphere, which decided that Sabnis was a martyr to truth and freedom of expression. They set about challenging
IIPM’s claims with ever greater energy, discovering, among other things, that its “campuses” in Antwerp and Brussels consisted
of a loose affiliation with a rather questionable institute not recognised by the Belgian government.

Soon the mainstream press took notice. The large weekly Businessworld—for which Bansal was a columnist—reported that it
had accepted Arindam’s request to look into the case for and against his institute, but was fobbed off with generalities about
IIPM and its “enemies” when it asked for specific information. The resulting article, ‘When the Chickens Come Home…,’ while
more moderate in tone than Bansal’s, was skeptical of IIPM’s claims, especially regarding the placement of graduates and the
consultancy work done by Planman. Most of the multinational corporations named in IIPM advertisements, when contacted by
Businessworld, said that they had few if any dealings with Arindam’s organisation. It was unquestionably a public relations
disaster for Arindam, though his students stood by him. If anything, their commitment to the school was redoubled.

In sifting through the long, labyrinthine posts on the anti-Arindam blogs, it is hard to avoid the impression of a virtual world
being torn apart by virtual tools. Most often, the claims made by IIPM and Planman depended on a careful selection of pictures,
comments and data, and the creation of numerous websites. This approach had worked well because it was part of a larger
narrative of corporate success in India. Most mainstream journalists were too lazy and untrained, and too enamored of wealth,
to subject these claims to the most basic scrutiny. But this was not true of the bloggers, who relentlessly probed the web,
emailed people listed by IIPM as contacts, checked IP addresses, and conducted background research. The most interesting
investigation the bloggers carried out involved IIPM’s history, focusing not merely on Arindam and his faculty but also on
Arindam’s father, the man who had started it all by beginning a management school in Gurgaon.

In F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel of Jazz Age America, The Great Gatsby, there are two questions asked of the mysteriously
wealthy title character: Where did he get his money? And, where did he go to college? These are necessary questions in a time
when money is being made too quickly and in too many ways for established social networks to keep track. In the gap between
old networks and rapidly changing times lies opportunity. Gatsby hopes to make good the promise of capitalism that ambitious
people can have second acts to their lives. So when he tells people in a voice laced with British affectations (“old sport”) that he
went to Oxford, he is trying to transform his new money, procured by questionable means, into old money. And because
assuming the persona of a blue-blooded heir leads naturally to questions about why he hasn’t attended one of the Ivy League
colleges where wealthy young men like Tom Buchanan are sent for a final polish, he adopts Oxford as his alma mater, a place so
far away that it is difficult for people to check up on him.

Arindam, unlike Gatsby, wasn’t a working-class upstart from the interior of the country. He was a middle-class man who grew
up in Delhi, alert from the very beginning to the opportunities provided by the capital city, and who thus demonstrates that the
mobility provided by the new India is significantly more limited than that of America at the turn of the 20th century. As for the
degrees claimed by Arindam, they came not from some exotic overseas institution but from the business school set up by his
father. The question of pedigree, the bloggers realised, could be transferred back one generation to Arindam’s father, “Doctor”
Malay Chaudhuri, and his claim to have a doctorate from the Berlin School of Economics.

The bloggers discovered that it was hard to pinpoint any such school with certainty. Dr.Chaudhuri had once contested elections
to the Indian Parliament—he received so few votes that he lost his deposit—and in his application to the Election Commission,
he credited his doctorate to an institute in the other Berlin, in the former East Germany. What records could one possibly locate
when the country itself no longer existed? The bloggers concluded that there had never, in all likelihood, been a Berlin School
of Economics, and that Malay Chaudhuri’s doctorate was simply the first of many fictitious degrees handed out by the
Chaudhuri clan.

I COULD SEE THE RATIONALE of the bloggers, just as I saw how the Delhi publisher’s question about how Arindam made his
money was important. In spite of the friendliness with which Arindam treated me, he was always on his guard. My questions
about revenues and the size of the company continued to go unanswered, which seemed even more interesting when I
discovered that the Indian tax authorities were investigating the company. Although it spent roughly 8 million dollars on
advertising in 2006, it paid no income tax that year or the previous. There was also the company’s social responsibility
campaign, directed through its charitable Great Indian Dream Foundation. Arindamclaimed that the foundation was building
schools in slums and villages, setting up a hospital in a rural area of West Bengal, and giving “experimental” seeds to farmers.
“We will have 52 schools in seven metros by the end of the year. Sixty thousand villages will be covered in the future.
Eventually, I hope to fulfill my father’s dream of doing something for the downtrodden in Africa.” Within the glittering capitalist
lived a closet radical, someone who admired Ché Guevara so much that he had named his only son Ché. But I found it
impossible to verify any of these claims, and Arindam’s promise to take me to a school for the poor in a Delhi slum never
materialised.

Other things remained beyond my scrutiny. I realised I had met Arindam only in hotels and at the main IIPM campus in Satbari,
where he spoke, in expansive terms, of expanding to America. “Let Harvard fume, ‘We are 200 years old,’” Arindam had said,
lopping two centuries off Harvard’s past. “Eventually they will recognise how good we are.” It was astonishing, this equation of
America, through Harvard, with the old, while the India he represented was new, young and modern. And perhaps he was right.
His institute was a fluid, virtual business school of the future, one that had done away with the arduous task of institution
building.

Arindam had first moved the school from Gurgaon to the Qutab Institutional Area, on the southern fringe of Delhi, where it
occupied a leased building that finally ran afoul of the city’s zoning laws. Now they were operating from Satbari, somewhere
between Gurgaon and Qutab, but even this building, its bright colors and abstract designs done to Arindam’s specifications, its
small gym and swimming pool throwing out a challenge to the well-funded IIMs, might not be the final stop. It was a leased
space, and Arindam told me that negotiations were already in progress to set the campus up somewhere else.

If the school was mobile, Arindam was even more so. After our meeting at the campus, I had wanted to meet him in his office.
“I don’t really operate from a fixed space,” he said. “I am so much on the move.” One day in September, after he’d missed an
appointment with me, he sent me a text message at 7 am. “Good morning!” it said. “Totally totally forgot that day. However in
the airport right now. And free. Can call. Do let me know if you ve woken up! Sorry about this early morning missive!” He was
going on a long business trip to Toronto and London, and I called him back hurriedly, trying not to sound sleepy. He would be
attending the Toronto Film Festival, where one of his films, the Rituparno Ghosh directed The Last Lear, was being screened. At
London, he would be joined on the plane by the stars of his film, Preity Zinta and Amitabh Bachchan. After the festival,
Arindamwould stop by his London office for a couple of days.

I remembered an article in the Financial Times that said he would be opening his London institute at Chancery Lane, and so I
asked him, “Where exactly is your London office?”

There was a pause. “That’s a good question,” he said. “Where is it?” He sounded boyish and vulnerable, and I found myself
wanting to respond kindly, as if speaking to a child I didn’t want to embarrass about an insignificant lie.

“It’s hard for you to keep track of all the offices you have,” I suggested.

“That’s right,” he replied, seemingly relieved that I had offered him a way out.

One day at the Satbari campus I asked Arindam about the criticism that his institute didn’t really offer careers. It was
undoubtedly successful in attracting students, but the students, on graduating, seemed to end up in the very organisation that
had given them their expensive degrees, teaching at the institute and working for Planman. Arindam told me that his
organisation was a “family,” one that offered a continuation of the camaraderie experienced by the students. He also pointed
out that, unlike the IIMs, he was not using public money to produce a small number of MBAs who then received extravagant
salaries from multinational corporations. “They’ve cornered 100-acre campuses in India. The six IIMs, taken together, teach
1,000 students. And because they have so few students, the average pay package [for graduates] is eight to nine lakhs. That is
aura! Wow!”

He was right in pointing out how higher education for the Indian elite, from the engineering colleges to the IIM business
schools, was funded by the state, producing technocrats and corporate executives who then went on to attack the state for
being inefficient and wasteful. “Every American president should start by thanking the Indian taxpayer,” he said, noting that US
multinationals benefited most from the training given to Indian Institute of Technology and IIM graduates. By contrast, he had
privatised management education, applying to it the genuine rules of the marketplace. His graduates might get smaller starting
salaries. They might be working, he said sarcastically, for distinctly unglamorous companies like ‘Raju Underwear’ and ‘Relaxo
Hawaii Chappals.’ But they were not coasting on the taxpayer’s money. He was training people who would work in Indian
organisations that needed their skills. “Our placements are improving. Foreign companies are also coming,” he added
defensively.

The bulk of IIPM students still ended up working for Arindam. It was hard to find out how much they were paid, but I had a
rough idea because Arindam had, in a different context, divided his organisation’s salary structure into three groups: those
making up to 25,000 rupees a month; up to 75,000 rupees a month; and more than 75,000 rupees a month. It seemed
reasonable to assume that a starting IIPM graduate fell into the first category; at 6,000 dollars a year, he or she earned a third
of what an IIM graduate did, which doesn’t seem bad. On the other hand, this is only twice what a call centre worker with a
basic—and cheap— college degree can earn, even if managerial work offers better hours and prospects for advancement.

The problem with Arindam’s approach lay deeper than the salaries his graduates made. Even in the world of closed Indian
companies, Arindam’s organisation is unusual. It is not publicly traded, and was incorporated only very recently. The success
and failure of IIPM students depends largely upon what happens to Planman, and what happens to Planman depends on what
happens to Arindam. As for what happens to Arindam, that depends on whether the students keep coming. If the business
school produces the greater part of the company’s revenues and employs most of the graduating students, this model can keep
functioning only as long as a growing body of students remains willing to put up substantial sums of money for their degrees.

Although the bloggers were right about many things, they seemed unable to comprehend that Arindam wasn’t so much a rogue
management guru as a particularly blatant, though uncredentialed, manifestation of standard management principles. Arindam
tended to invoke the elite IIM mafia as a way to evade questions, but it was true that the initial criticism had been levelled by
Bansal, an IIM Ahmedabad graduate, and then picked up by Sabnis, who studied at IIM Lucknow. It was equally true that the
bloggers were remarkable snobs. Alongside more substantive criticism of IIPM and Planman, they posted many comments
about the way Arindam and his acolytes dressed and spoke, with an element of distaste and surprise that such pretenders
could claim to belong to the corporate world from which most of the bloggers came.

None of the bloggers seemed willing to consider that their cherished corporate practices would necessarily spawn imitators.
IIPM has the same relationship to IIM as knockoff goods do to branded products; there is always a market for the knockoff
version among the aspirational crowd. In other ways too, the cult of Arindam—the bloggers were puzzled by the vehemence
with which IIPM students, the people apparently being defrauded, defended him—is only part of the larger cult that is
contemporary India.

Arindam’s management factory produces something less tangible, but more resonant than durables or consumer products. It
takes people who have a fair bit of money but little cultural or intellectual capital and promises to turn them into fully fledged
partners in the corporate globalised world. The students at IIPM are not from impoverished backgrounds. They can’t be
because the courses are expensive. Many come from provincial towns, from small-business families that have accumulated
wealth and now feel the need to upgrade themselves so they can compete in the realm of globalisation. Arindam gives youth
from these backgrounds a chance to tap at IBM laptops, wear shiny suits and polished shoes, and go on foreign trips to Geneva
or New York. All this involves a considerable degree of play-acting, and the students spend the most impressionable years of
their lives in what is in essence a toy management school—mini golf course, mini gym, mini library. But play-acting is what the
Indian middle and upper classes are doing anyway, wandering about the malls checking out the products purveyed by more
established, easeful play-actors like Tommy Hilfiger and Louis Vuitton.

ARINDAM’S FORTUNE, ultimately, was built on the aspiration and ressentiment of the Indian petite bourgeoisie. Without the
aspirers emulating, admiring, and parting with their cash, moguls like Arindam would not exist. He had made a business out of
their aspirations, calibrating the brashness and insecurity that had come to them on the wings of the market economy and its
political partner, right-wing Hinduism. Arindam understood well how these aspirers had been given a language of assertion by
the times in which they lived, and how they had also been handed a vocabulary of rage that is quite disproportionate to their
perceived provocations. It is one of the triumphs of our age that aspirers can be made to feel both empowered and excluded;
all over the world, one sees a new lumpenbourgeoisie quick to express a sense of victimisation, voicing their anger about being
excluded from the elite while remaining callously indifferent to the truly impoverished.

I had begun feeling some of this aspiration myself. One afternoon, I ate lunch with a former IIPM student who was one of
Arindam’s prized employees. His name was Siddharth Nambiar. Wearing a suit and designer sunglasses, his head shaven, he
appeared in front of me with long strides, car keys dangling from his right hand. He was late because he had rammed his car
into the back of a bus, but he was unfazed by this “fender bender,” as he put it.

We met at a shopping plaza just across the street from where I lived at the time, an odd mix of multinational franchises,
rundown shops and a multiplex that often seemed to be showing one or the other of Arindam’s films. Nambiar led me up the
stairs to an Italian restaurant called Azzurro. It was quite empty: the call centre workers preferred the kathi roll stand around
the corner or the TGIF outlet across the square and it was too early for Western expats and upper-class Indians. The waitstaff
knew Nambiar, as did the woman who ran the restaurant. He took off his sunglasses, ordered with a flourish, and began telling
me about his career with Planman. He had been a student at IIPM Delhi, joined the company upon graduating, and had soon
taken charge of the media division. He was 23 years old.

Arindam had put considerable thought into sending Nambiar to meet me. If his primary business was churning out
management graduates, he had sent me his finest product, glistening and confident, someone who could compete effortlessly
with the MBAs from IIM. Nambiar’s shaven head shone in the bright afternoon light as he spoke about how he had negotiated
with Foreign Affairs about publishing an Indian edition (although the effort was unsuccessful, he impressed Foreign Affairs with
his presentation, according to a friend of mine who worked there). He had travelled around the world with Arindam, and in a
few weeks he would be leaving for Oxford, where he would earn an MBA. When he returned, he expected to work at Planman
again.

I asked about Arindam’s conspicuous consumption, and he was delighted to give me the details. “The car?” he said. “It’s a
Bentley Continental four-door. Actually, he got it because of me. We were in London, near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and I saw a
Bentley parked outside this restaurant where I was having lunch with friends. I had one of them take a picture of me leaning on
the hood of the Bentley with a glass of champagne in my hand.” He laughed, waiting for the image to be fully processed in my
brain. “It looked so cool, you know? Then, I went to see Arindam at the Ritz, where he was staying. I was showing someone else
the picture on my laptop, and he grabbed the laptop from me, looked at the picture, and said, ‘What kind of car is that? I’m
going to get one.’”

I asked him if he could describe Arindam’s Delhi office for me.

“Let me think,” he said. “I’d say it has a nightclub in the daytime look.”

We laughed at this. Nambiar’s laughter had a doubleness to it—it conveyed the knowledge that he himself was too
sophisticated to make such a mistake but also revealed his admiration for a man who had the money to flaunt his taste,
however questionable. He described the long, curved, red leather couch, the shelves filled with management books and
magazines. An anteroom contained a treadmill, a television, and a pullout sofa where Arindam’s son Ché sometimes slept in the
afternoon. The office floor had blue granite tiling, and the building’s exterior was of tinted blue glass. From the windows of
Arindam’s office, Nambiar said, it was possible to see the Ernst & Young building.

What gave Nambiar’s description a touch of virtual reality was the fact that Arindam’s Delhi office no longer existed. It had
been closed down for violating zoning laws and survived only in the images that Nambiar so expertly created.

When I asked for the bill, the waiter said that it had been taken care of by the manager. “She’s my girlfriend’s mother,”
Nambiar said. “That’s really too bad, because I was hoping to treat you.” I insisted that the waiter bring me the bill. The waiter
smiled and disappeared, while Nambiar looked surprised. I said something about journalistic ethics, but I could see that this
made no sense to him. I was beginning to lose my temper, and I wondered why. Who would really care if I let Nambiar’s
girlfriend’s mother pay for lunch? Who would think that my honesty as a writer had been compromised?

As I cornered the waiter again and forced him to bring the bill, I found myself wondering why I didn’t have a suit, designer
sunglasses, and car keys. I wondered why I wasn’t making money at a time in India when moneymaking opportunities seemed
everywhere for the asking. Like Arindam’s students, I was an aspirer, finally, oblivious to anything but my own inchoate desires,
filled with a sense of anger that I had no wealth to flaunt, as well as a trembling awareness of opportunities that it was perhaps
not too late to capitalise. “I don’t like an image of me that isn’t me,” Arindam had told me, anxious to clarify his essential self.
And here was I, not liking the image of me that was me. I felt that I was beginning to lose myself in this world of appearances
and aspirations, and that paying the bill was the only way to return to steady ground.

Adapted from The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India, forthcoming from Viking Penguin in June.

This story was originally published in Caravan.

Target IIPM: Link Of The Year

2011-03-19T09:01:00.000+05:30

Ayodhya Verdict Leaked: Land To Go To IIPM

Six reasons why India will not win the 2011 Cricket World Cup

2011-03-13T21:19:00.000+05:30

I am not a great cricket follower but I do agree with what Anil Thakraney says here

The Secret Diary Of A Raja

2011-03-06T12:41:00.000+05:30

The Secret Diary Of A Raja From Tihar Jail (As imagined by Ajith Pillai)

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?270744

Why I Quit The Media by SUMIR LAL

2011-03-06T12:40:00.002+05:30

By SUMIR LAL

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267554

Testimonials for Raju Bist Photography

2011-01-04T22:46:00.002+05:30

TESTIMONIALS
Feedback to Raju Bist Photography

You are able to capture not just the facial expressions but the body language too and make everyday events seem interesting. We all see these expressions all round us but rarely do we find them interesting enough to take note of them. You are good at capturing the essence of everyday things.
Neelkanth Heights: Very clear, very sharply detailed pic.
Baby steps: Even though the kid's expression is not visible, you seem to have captured the expression in his body language - the eagerness, enthusiasm and excitement that he can walk!
When the wheel of life comes to a standstill: Has the old, tired, out-of-shape look that most of us will acquire at a certain age.
Monsoon's signature: The bright green of the algae and the ferns growing out of the stones is SO vibrant and full of life - just goes to show that when Mother nature decides to assert herself, even concrete doesn't stand a chance.
Jahan chaar yaar: Has beautifully captured the bond between friends.
The Hero, Dehradun: Fabulous! The dog seems to have a baffled expression on his face - how on earth did I get here??!!
When nature paints: I wish we could see more of such trees... they always look as though nature is playing Holi.
The contemplator, Upvan lake: Very poignant, more so because it’s in black and white.
Proud salesman - I love it! Has captured the newness of the fabric!
Vashi, torquoise tower: Shows how odd it looks in its surroundings.
Night shift, Sion Circle: Beautiful pic - has captured movement in an interesting way.
Loner on the bench: A sad pic... as though life has weighed him down too much.
Gawand Baug: Stark... right out of a horror movie!
Evening prayers, Marine drive: Beautiful... the angle and the contrast between stone and water... and the woman standing there makes it all look very contemplative.
Old Customs House, South Bombay: Looks like a classic pic... of something long forgotten.
Bujho to zara?: A very good pic of a circular staircase... looks like a geometrical maze.
Post-monsoon 2010: Life asserts itself.
Morning walkers: "Yes...? Who are you...?"
Merrymakers at a wedding: Just look at those gleeful expressions!
- ARATI DATTA
New Delhi

It must have been really a great moment when you shot the Rajiv Gandhi photograph.
- GAUTAMI NEWALKAR
Thane

I liked the way you composed the Green Ganpati photo... beautiful!
- LALIT RANE
Mumbai

The Hero... who says a hero can't be cute and fuzzy? Totally desirable.
Jahan chaar yaar... evokes precious moments of friendship... of just being yourself... of knowing that you're not alone against the world.
Naresh Babachi samadhi... testimony to a canny entrepreneur!
Night shift, Sion Circle is quite remarkable for freezing motion in an image.
Vashi Tower - lovely shape in a soothing colour.
Post-monsoon 2010 - Literally bursting with life.
Morning is here - Quite a self-explanatory photo. The title is what comes to mind on seeing it.
The potter's pattern - Picturesque colours and shapes.
The honourable judge - His face displays very proper concentration.
- GAYATRI GADGIL
Mumbai

I like the contrasts in this one... I think the pic wouldn't have spoken so much in color...
- LAKSHMI MAREDDY
Hyderabad

When the wheel comes to a standstill: Evokes deep thought - signifies evolving technologies, making old things redundant. Lovely colors of peeling paint, enhanced by the fresh green and new shoots that show growth, change and new life.
Evening prayers, Marine Drive: Oh my God! Who can believe that this peaceful spot exists on one of Mumbai's busiest roads! The quietly lapping waters against the stone walls brings out the serenity experienced by the Parsi lady in this composition.
Tutari: The man with his traditional headgear and ancient instrument could well be superimposed on a pic of Shivneri or similar fort - he seems out of place in this modern market setting. Nice to see tutaris and pipanis still being used in processions today.
- RUPA GANDHI
New Delhi

It is often said that a picture is worth a 1,000 words, and I believe that Raju definitely has a very good understanding of the needs, and has the ability, to capture significant moments, without fumbling to select the right lens, aperture or shutter speed.
I really like the way Raju pictures the streets. No-nonsense photography, just the way I like it most - has a great eye for street life and portraits.
Raju, I like your photoblog. Keep up the good work.
- SAIF DIWAN
Navi Mumbai

Your photos have a kind of innocence to them. The one with the title The Hero, Dehradun is awesome. Super composition! Keep up the good work.
- AJIT SATAM
Mumbai

Sooni Taraporewalla squinting to the sun... I love the stripes... good one!
- KISHORE MURTHY
Bangalore

I love your photographs. They are amazing.
- SAMPURNA SATTAR PhD
Oklahoma

This photo is just awesome! You managed to catch the puppy at the right moment. :)
- ALKA TRIPATHI
Indore

One word for all your photos, Raju - Evocative. I especially liked the 'people photos'.
- MALA MAGOTRA
Mumbai

Wheel of Life and Monsoon's Signature are my particular favourites because of the soft mutedness to the green and blue and the play of light and colour in these two photographs. Continue clicking, every split second counts...
- ABHA IYENGAR
New Delhi

Your pictures illustrate your ability to employ your camera to paint a simple, unbiased tableau of urban Indian life.
Many of the subjects comprising your "contemporary photo-anthropology" have been drawn from everyday urban situations, with which you are very obviously familiar. Your photographs draw from the daily spectrum of the poor and the middle-class.
What is remarkable is that you have managed to engage many of them consciously, in the photographic dialogue between artist and subject, thus heightening the sense of drama in your compositions.
The images loosely and comfortably flow one into another, through various sub-themes, picturing social rituals and people (across class, colour and caste), in different locations, moving easily from the personal to the public, and back.
You have a good eye for singling out the ordinary, the everyday, and imbuing it with an aura of that which is new, untried and the experimental.
I enjoyed looking at your work.
- DON ALNEY
Kolkata

Like the Kishore Kumar shot. Very very candid.
The shot of the building put me in a tizzy. I do not know much about photography, but I thought that particular picture could have a story behind it and that, I guess, makes it a good shot.
The Kohoj fort pic - the people look like they have lost their way and the water is their map.
The shot of the monsoon signature - I like the tag more than the picture.
Green Ganpati 2010 - love the idea, love the shot.
The Hero. How can anyone not love this? The pup looks like a king.
Keep shooting.
- UMA IYER
New Delhi

You've got a keen eye, Raju. And you know what will make a good composition.
Morning is here: The sun rays that brings rays of hope to so many of us. After all, it is a new day. Well captured!
Chhat Puja 2010: Lovely picture, Raju! I could almost smell the air thick of incense and diyas.
- SHUBHA MADHUKAR
Navi Mumbai

I really liked When The Wheel Of Life Comes To A Standstill.
The framing is great and the photograph tells a story, or many stories. The fascinating thing about the photograph is that you can weave a past, present and future and make that wheel spin for yourself or for humanity.
Liked the rest of the photographs too.
- GODFREY PEREIRA
New Jersey

All that you wanted to know about Manhattan's Astor Place Cube

2011-01-01T17:58:00.001+05:30

The Astor Place Cube, Manhattan (Photo)

The Astor Place Cube, Manhattan (Description)

Rahul is Indira’s real political heir

2010-09-19T19:10:00.002+05:30

SWAMINOMICS
SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR

After his passionate defence of displaced tribals in Orissa, analysts have started talking about Rahul Gandhi’s left turn. Whoa! Rahul is more pragmatic opportunist than leftwing ideologue.
Remember Indira Gandhi’s left turn in 1969? Supposedly for Garibi Hatao, she nationalized banks, abolished privy purses and raised income tax to 97.75%. Leftist ideologues cheered deliriously.
But a few years later, she declared an Emergency and jailed all opponents, leftist or rightist. Her great left turn was not ideological, but a ploy to maximize personal power.
Her left turn was an economic failure: poverty did not fall at all. But it was a massive political success. She crushed the old Congress leadership (called the Syndicate).The main opposition party in 1967 was the Swatantra Party, a coalition of princes and big business. Abolition of privy purses bankrupted the princes, and high income tax rates bankrupted the business class. The Syndicate and Swatantra Party crumbled before her. Only when she put Swatantra, Syndicate and CPM leaders in jail together did it become clear that ‘garibi hatao’ was a cloak for ‘opposition hatao’.
Warning: don’t be misled by Rahul’s supposed left turn. He too is engaged in very practical politics to oust opponents. He has targeted non-Congress states in his campaign against displacement.
Recently, he went to Orissa as champion of the tribals whose land was being usurped by industrialist Anil Aggarwal for his aluminium factory. Yet, his real target was not Aggarwal but BJD chief minister Naveen Patnaik. After being thrashed by Patnaik three elections in a row, Rahul badly needs a new issue to regain lost ground.
He now plans a visit to Kerala, to support tribals protesting against their land being given to a windmill farm of Suzlon. Guess what: Kerala too is an opposition state, ruled by the CPM-led Left Front.
Corruption and callous treatment of tribals has been widely alleged in the coal and iron ore blocks in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Rahul can afford to bash all three chief ministers, because they belong to the BJP. Winning tribal support here is simply another way of winning back lost ground, including ground lost unwittingly by killing innocents in the campaign against Maoists. You did not hear of Rahul campaigning for tribals when his own party was a coalition partner in Jharkhand.
Illegal iron ore mining is the bane of Karnataka. The Reddy brothers, accused of being the main illegal miners, are now ministers in the BJP cabinet. Naturally, Congress has blasted them. Yet the Reddy brothers respond that the state Lokayukta says companies owned by Congress leaders - M Y Ghorpade, V S Lad and sons, Allum Veerabhadrappa, H G Ramulu, S M Jain and Abdul Wahab — have encroached on hundreds of acres. Congress has not castigated these gentlemen.
Indeed, quite recently, the Reddy brothers were into illegal mining by encroaching on forests in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. They were backed by former Congress chief minister Rajasekhara Reddy, and so bureaucrats dared not act against their encroachment. Only when Rajasekhara Reddy died, and his son Jagan failed in the struggle to succeed him, was it possible to take any action.
Goa is a major producer and exporter of iron ore. The Centre for Science and Environment has written passionately about the anger of local people against environmental damage by the mining companies. But this is a Congressruled state, so the mining giants are not in bad odour. Indeed, the biggest mine-owner in Goa is none other than Anil Aggarwal, the very gentlemen castigated by Rahul in Orissa.
By coincidence, almost all the states with embittered tribal populations are ruled by opposition parties. Even other states with agitations against land acquisition — West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh — are opposition-ruled. The fact is that Congress rules very few states on its own, and is often a junior partner where it is part of a ruling coalition. So, Rahul can afford to go on the offensive on land acquisition and tribal displacement.
This is not entirely cynical politics. Land displacement has become a mass issue. Politicians have responded, and i am delighted that the once-powerless tribals are getting some justice. More power to Congress on this. Still, remember that these tribals received far less justice in the old days of Congress hegemony.
We should welcome the change. But let us not attribute this to a sudden ideological left turn on Rahul’s part. Like his grandmother, but without her high-handedness, he is resorting to the old strategy of using ideology when it suits his family’s quest for power.

(ToI, 19 September 2010)

Love In The Fast Lane

2010-08-23T21:34:00.000+05:30

Love In The Fast Lane
by AD

On what basis is one supposed to choose a life partner ? When even the thought of someone makes you smile ? When you are comfortable talking to someone and talk about anything under the sun ? When you wait to hear from someone ? When a hug from someone means more to you than all the diamonds in the world ? When hearing someone's voice makes you grin like an idiot ? When you fight with someone and its ok for you to say sorry even though it wasnt your fault ? When someone says something nice to you and it makes you want to jump on the bed ? When you hurt someone and nothing feels right till that someone smiles at you ? When you let someone eat the last fry even though you love fries ? When something good or bad happens with you and you feel restless till you have shared it with someone ? When a smile from someone takes away your tiredness at the end of the day ? When you worry about someone when they are on the road on a rainy day ? When someone's wish or dream becomes yours too ? When you can find something to laugh about even when you are fighting ? When being with someone is all it takes to make your worst day alright again ? When your idea of romance is talking with someone late into the night ? When waking up with someone makes you want to snuggle up against them ? When you have very little in common with each other and yet you are happy together ? When it feels just right to hold someone's hand ? When you dont care that someone is fat or short or has a paunch or is bald or ordinary ? When someone makes you feel complete by being a part of your life ? When someone finds the time for you even though they are busy ? When someone isnt perfect but is still perfect for you ? When you value someone for the kind of person they are ? When someone's simplicity is the best part of them ? When someone stands beside you through thick and thin ? When someone cherishes the good things about you and accepts the bad things about you ? When you would do anything to see a smile on someone's face ? When you can put aside your ego and reach out to someone for comfort ? When you can find laughter with someone even in everyday living ? When even silence seems comfortable ? When you can be silly with someone ? When someone is messy and you dont mind cleaning after them ? When someone sets you free with their love ?

Do we choose this someone even though theres nothing spectacular about them but the lil things about them make you feel spectacular ? Or do we choose someone who is perfect - good looking, has money, has a great job but doesnt know when you need a hug ? Do we choose someone who cares about us or someone who dazzles us with their perfection ? We waste our time looking for the perfect person. But we never notice the one who wasnt so perfect but filled us with warmth. Simplicity seems too plain against the glitter of beauty, glamor, sophistication. Warmth and affection are not noticed in the chase for the 'cool'. Genuineness seems dull compared to polished fakeness. We expect perfection even though we cannot offer perfection. Instead of looking for friendship and companionship, we look for trophies. Why does the superficial impress us more than the real ?

All of us think that bells will clamor when we meet the right person for us. Yet, bells stay silent when you meet the right person because they are quiet about making their place in your heart. People who enter your life with a lot of fanfare rarely stay in your life long enough. But people who enter your life quietly through the back door stay there when everyone leaves. Love isnt about knowing each other inside out. Its about knowing that no matter what, someone will always be there.

Love is about accepting that someone might behave stupidly, eat noisily, might be short tempered, might not be the most good looking person on earth, might not always know what you are thinking, might not always makes you feel proud, might embarrass you at times, might forget your birthday, might annoy you, might fall short on a million things....but they are the only person who can make you smile when you feel its the end of the world. They are the only one who would make you feel special when everyone else is trying to make you feel small.

So how come we dont appreciate this someone in our life ?

How did we let simple love get lost in today's world ?

Why a sequel to Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro can never be made

2010-07-11T13:10:00.002+05:30

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, arguably the funniest Indian film ever made, was made on a meagre budget, featured mostly unknowns, and hardly anyone involved believed in it. It became a classic, and almost all its alumni went on to highly successful careers.

BY Manjula Negi

Naseeruddin Shah, in a not-so-recent article in a newsmagazine wondered why Kundan Shah wouldn’t get on with the making of a sequel to his cult film Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (JBDY). And he isn’t the only one who’s asking. The film which had started out being comic outpourings of a man angry with the system turned out to be “a good satire,” in the words of Kundan Shah, “I don’t know what you mean by cult but comedy, I believe, outlasts everything else. There are classic tragedies of Sophocles and others but even a not-very-great comedy survives. Comedy overall doesn’t age so fast. Think Chaplin, for example. I was making a comedy – an issue-based one. I set out to make something which was relevant to me. Because I’ve a comic perspective, it comes easy to transform the anger and frustration to whatever one may have read in the morning papers into putting it down in a funny way. That’s how it happened.
Still, JBDY turned out to be India’s most biting comic satire ever and remains relevant even 27 years after its release. And the majority of JBDY alumni, if we may call them that, have all gone on to see greatsuccess. from its actors—Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, the late Bhakti Barve, Satish Shah, Ravi Baswani, Pankaj Kapoor, Neena Gupta, Satish Kaushik, to its crew members Sudhir Mishra, Bidhu Vinod Chopra, cinematographer Binod Pradhan, the late editor Renu Saluja and music composer Vanraj Bhatia have al known fame and fortune. Almost everyone each has won a minimum of at least one award at national or international level.
Yet, of this motley group, few at the time believed in JBDY. Comments Sudhir Mishra – credited as assistant on direction and story and now a prominent filmmaker: “All these serious actors came from serious theatre and believed that this is some kind of nonsense, but let’s do it because what is there to do otherwise? At least we can all go to the shooting, have a cup of tea and get some food. I don’t think anybody had an idea of how the film would turn out. It was only when Naseer and all saw the first cut and saw what Kundan was trying that they suddenly realised and Kundan became this filmmaker to watch out for. I remember Om telling me at the end of the shoot, ‘Yaar, script bahut achchi hai.’ He’d just walked through it and only at the end realised that the script was great!”
“Frankly,” said theatre veteran Ranjit Kapoor, credited with JBDY’s dialogues along with actor-turned-filmmaker Satish Kaushik, “at the time of writing, I did not think of this film as a comedy. JBDYis a very serious statement. There were elements of black humour in the script already but they needed to be underlined, which was done through dialogue.”
Satish Shah’s role of the most ‘alive’ dead body catapulted him to immediate stardom. “That was my contribution,” Shah recollects with relish. “I said, ‘Kundan listen, I am a dead body. I can’t perform so at least let me put on the expression as per the scene. I can react to whatever is going on around me. When I am Draupadi, I’m coy. If everybody is scared of me, even I am scared. If you’re playing a rigor mortis to this extent - which is impossible in any case, I may as well do this. I guess he was too preoccupied with other things to argue with me. So he said, ‘Jo karna hai kar!’ (Do whatever you want)”.
But while Shah was still ‘alive’ there were moments which made him and others feel that certain sequences promised ‘real’ death. The crane sequence in the beginning of the film was one. “I don’t know what we were thinking going up in that crane,” says Shah. “It was a bloody risky shot and how we did it we don’t know because there is no way we would have lived, if we’d fallen from there. We were on this palna (swing) like thing which was meant to take up cement bags and we said, ‘We dare not give you a retake - for our own sakes’! I could see people this big (indicating 2cm height between forefinger and thumb) from the top and on top of that, someone said, ‘you know, it should go around in circles so as to give a panoramic view’ which screwed us even more! I wouldn’t do it today even if I were given a crore.” Satish Kaushik remembers it too: “I told Kundan, ‘Shoot ka pehla din hai. Kya kar raha hai, yaar? Mar var jayenge!’ (It’s the first day of the shoot. What are you doing? Suppose we die?) And he said, ‘Cast toh badal sakta hoon!’ (I can always change the cast).”
Talking of changing the cast, Kaushik was one who wheedled his way on the bandwagon for he just wasn’t content assisting on dialogues, despite Kundan often declining his offers to act! “I was involved only in my casting! I kept thinking of how to impress Kundan. I remember telling him, ‘Sir mein yeh wala role bhi kar sakta hoon, Sir, yeh bhi kar sakta hoon’ (I can do this role or I can do that role) and he’d keep saying ‘Shut up, Yaar! Abhi koi role nahin hai.’ (Shut up! There is no role yet for you) and I went, ‘Sir, par sun toh lo!’ (Sir, but at least hear me out!) ‘Mein har role ke liye apne ko suggest karta rehta tha’ (I used to suggest myself for every role) because I was there all the time. The rest were struggling and had to go to other shoots. I was there everyday since I was helping with the dialogues.” It was finally the enactment of the phone sequence (in which he shares screen space with Naseer) which landed Kaushik his role.
There were others who were brought in. Om Puri’s ‘Aouja’ (Ahuja) was originally meant for stage and television veteran Vinod Nagpal but when he declined, Puri, then a struggling actor, was called: For someone who was simultaneously working on Ardh Satya – for which he won the National Award for Bst Actor, the role of a Punjabi drunk builder was very much a considered departure, just as it was for Shah - the star of every film of parallel cinema those days. In an interview with Tehelka magazine in 2008 Naseer says: “The script of JBDY seemed to have been revealed to Kundan Shah in an inspired moment of transcendental, if not downright hallucinogenic, lunacy. I had never read or seen anything like it at the time and while I was not absolutely sure that it was even coherent, I itched to have a crack at it. The cloak of ‘serious’ actor weighed too heavy on my shoulders and I just had to fling the accursed thing off. Little did I realise how utterly serious and strenuous this job would turn out to be and how many flaming, friendship-endangering rows would erupt while making this ‘little funny film’.”
Friendship-endangering is right. Everyone fought everyone on the sets. Says Satish Shah: “I remember the kind of fights we used to have with the Vinod Chopra who now calls himself Vidhu Vinod Chopra. He was handling our production those days. I don’t know what they fought about but they fought a lot and I always enjoyed it when they were fighting! They were fighting to the extent that Naseer would threaten to leave the sets and Vinod would come and convince Naseer, then Kundan would go berserk and ballistic and we would all come in, without knowing what has happened, why it has happened and try to pacify both the parties and go on shooting and in public places like Hanging Gardens and Marine Drive where I am supposed to be a dead body on skates – My God!
“Naseer does throw tantrums but those who know him, don’t take him seriously because they know that he is doing so for not a selfish reason. He had a terrible fight with Kundan over that telephone scene with Satish Kaushik – where they come back to back and Naseer said, ‘Logically, it wouldn’t work’ and Kundan said, ‘If you’re convinced about it, it will….’ Likewise, I remember there was this scene where he along with Bhakti (Shobhaji, the editor) comes to my bungalow and cons me into posing for photographs. Again, he wasn’t convinced. But I had a flight to Goa and those days I couldn’t afford to miss a flight or a movie. Neither the direction department nor the actors had any clue how they’ll do it and I was in so much of a hurry, I knew I had to have it done because if we didn’t do it, I’d miss the flight. So I said, ‘Naseer, it depends on us. You adjust to whatever I do and I adjust to whatever you do’ and Kundan said, ‘but nahin ho sakta, kaise ho sakta? (It can’t be done. How can it be done?) and I was like ‘Yaar (Buddy), it’s a performance scene – don’t go into those bizarre things of cuts and stuff, just let us perform. Naseer started taking pictures and asked me to turn around into the picture and I turned around, and then I turned back and he said, ‘Idhar dekho, udhar dekho’ (Look here, look there) and then ‘Idhar-udhar kya dekhta hai / naak-moonh dekho’ (Why are you looking here and there? Look at your nose) and I did just that. All of it was totally improvised and we pulled it off.”
But the absurdity of it hit one and all. Om Puri recalls the sequence with the dead Commissioner D’Mello when he finds him in the coffin under the flyover: “The scene of the car is such an absurd one. Anyone can see that it is a coffin but no, one told oneself that ‘listen, you’re so sozzled, so drunk that you can’t see it. You have to imagine that it is a car and he’s sitting there holding the steering.’ Then there was this absolutely ridiculous scene on the telephone; later the sequence of Hum laash leke bazaaron mein daud rahe hain (We’re running around with a dead body on the streets). It was totally bizarre. But then, think Chaplin. He used to do ridiculous stuff with such a serious face and not that we consciously thought of him when doing our scenes, but since we were exposed to his kind of cinema, somewhere at the back of our minds… it must have been there.”
Ravi Baswani playing Sudhir Mishra, was a perfect foil for Naseer’s Vinod Chopra, and won the Best Comedian Award at Filmfare in 1984 for his efforts and has since gone on to head the Acting Department at the Film and Television Institute of India. Since neither of the two protagonists were supposed to be detectives and yet had to be instrumental in unraveling all the tangles they got into, Baswani’s emotions had to carry the voice of the determined, honest but scared bloke. But there were times when plain greed ruled the roost. In the cake sequence for instance, when they are on this secret and serious mission to photograph the tenders, all he can think of is the cake that is being served and there’s no way he’s going to be left out of eating it too! Hence, “Thoda khao, thoda phenko.” “Maza aaya?” “Nahin.” “Ab aaya?” “Haan!” (with Satish Shah wondering if he’s the making the noises!) is today one of the film’s best remembered and oft repeated dialogues.
It would be hard to imagine what JBDY would have been like without the presence of its ‘official’ villain Tarneja aka Pankaj Kapoor, today acknowledged as one of the finest actors ever to have graced the Indian screen. Kapoor was then still a name to be recognised. But he played the suave, cunning, quick-on-his-feet and corrupt builder to perfection, whose smiles never made it to the eyes.
Brilliant performances had to be offset by equally brilliant technique. After all, four-and-a-half hours of footage had to be turned into a coherent three-and-a-half hour compact film. The late Renu Saluja, editor on every single important film in the parallel cinema movement, including Bandit Queen was the only one in consonance with Kundan’s vision for JBDY. “Renu is intrinsic to the film.” Says Mishra “you can’t imagine it without her cutting style. She enjoyed working with Kundan the most because she also liked comedies. Kundan is a very brutal director, in that he doesn’t fall in love with his material. He is always willing to see another side - other than how he has shot it and sometimes you take a scene and construct it totally differently. The Mahabharat scene is once such. It is made entirely on the cutting, which is completely mad. There’s a total lack of continuity. If you look at it carefully, the editing in that sequence is revolutionary. Renu broke all the rules but in such a way that one doesn’t notice it. It is very, very brilliantly cut.
“That flyover scene of Om Puri which is now a classic - they made it on the editing table. They’ve taken the best parts of Om’s performance and constantly cut to the dead body which is actually not necessary. I mean, why cut to the dead body?” he asks incredulously. Cut to perfection - Invisible: The Art of Renu Saluja, published by GraFTII on Renu Saluja enumerates in her words, her editing style: “When I put the scenes together, the final product changes a lot. A film editor structures the film. Film is not just shot in a sequence, it is shot without continuity. As editor, you have to keep the best of everybody’s work and that’s a great responsibility. So film editing is structuring the film and giving it pace. It’s like the final script of a film.”
But shooting that script must have given JBDY cinematographer Binod Pradhan nightmares. Kundan himself admits that he owed a lot to his cameraman for the visual capturing of his vision. Explains Mishra, “This film, the pace at which it was shot because of the lack of time and budget, was shot with total disrespect to the cameraman - in the sense that we were not considering his problem at all. For instance, when they go for the dead body in the forest kind of loghouse and all of them are running from one staircase to another; someone is hanging from the balcony; someone else is jumping from it; two people are running with the coffin, till the time they all start going downhill - that whole sequence must have been shot in one hour - must be some twenty, twenty-one shots or so. It was shot that fast and in comedy you’re covering action from all angles. You have to get this person’s point of view and then another’s reaction. You have to take everyone’s reaction shots, so it’s tough for the cameraman to give or even maintain any kind of a look. You must ask him how it will work best but we were too busy with our problems because we had too many of them. It must have been tough. But Binod is one cameraman who understands the mood or the spirit of the film. He is also half a filmmaker, quite in tune with the film he’s on, his camera work is not outside the film.” Today, Binod has won awards for his work in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Munna Bhai MBBS; Rang De Basanti and 1942: A Love Story.
And then there was the production department which had to battle everything and bring everything to order within the tight budget of some seven to nine lakhs! Vinod Chopra, now one of India’s most successful producer-directors, was Kundan’s production controller. Chopra was reciprocating the gesture since Kundan had assisted him on his first feature Saaza-e-Maut. Not that he’d bargained for the chaotic job that he was entrusted with! It is well documented that the meals came from Kundan’s house and how each one has fallen asleep on their positions at least once during the crazy, nightmarish schedules – including Binod who fell asleep on the eyepiece of the camera. It was only when nothing happened after Kundan called out “Action” that everyone realised he was asleep! But Puri recalls just how bad the situation was: “One day, during the middle of the shoot, someone said, “Yaar, ek chai toh pila do… (Get me a cup of tea) and Deepak (Qazir) who was also part of the production unit apart from doubling up as Assistant Commissioner Srivastav yelled back, ‘Abhi toh pi thi chai ek ghanta pehle.’ (You just had tea an hour back!) and I remember thinking, ‘Yaar, itna bura haal budget ka… ki chai ke liye bhi…! (Gosh, is the scene this bad with the budget? That you’re being told that you’ve just had a cup an hour back!)’
In hindsight, most people associated with the film states that Kundan Shah ‘allowed’ them to do their own thing. Kundan says so himself! “I didn’t direct the film. They directed themselves. I don’t know what I did. I didn’t know what I’d set out to do. I just knew when something wasn’t working. Today, I can say it worked. But there were days when something wasn’t working and I kept saying it wasn’t working but I couldn’t place my finger on it at that time.”
Satish Shah concurs: “I still insist that JBDY happened. It wasn’t made. It made itself. Of course, it was a brainchild of an individual, someone’s baby and Kundan Shah was there but we all contributed wherever, whenever we were required to. Kundan always knew what he wanted. Kundan’s problem is he knows what he wants but he can’t tell you what he wants. So its ‘nahin aa raha woh, aisa kucch karo, nahin woh theek nahin hai, waisa kucch try karo.’ (It’s not working. Try something like this. No, that’s not right or try something like that!) If you ask him questions, he gets confused. Visually, he knows what he wants but sometimes he could not explain.”
Mishra believes that JBDY is a great film but it could have been even better if all the actors had understood the kind of comedy Kundan wanted it to be. “Ultimately Kundan compromised in the sense of what the actors understood. I have a feeling that he imagined a slightly softer film. The comedy as Kundan saw it in his mind was more delicate, less obvious but I don’t think anybody could grasp that so the acting and everything else became broader which works in terms of its popularity because the essential idea was so good.”
Does this give you a sense of why a sequel to Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro can never be made? It’s because this kind of madness can only happen once.

(Open Magazine, 10 July 2010)

Grit and glory

2010-05-23T17:22:00.001+05:30

Sudhir Suryawanshi lauds the relentless optimism of Rashmi Zagde and her husband as she aces the IAS exams, despite all odds

It doesn't take time for Rashmi Zagde to give into her emotions after hearing the news of having cleared the IAS exam this year. Not only did she crack it, she managed to secure the 169th rank in the Union Public Service Commission examination. "It feels like a dream. Such nice things don't happen to small people like us," she says, overwhelmed.
The daughter of a Class IV employee in the Pune Municipal Corporation and a housewife, Rashmi's success is nothing short of extraordinary given her humble background and tedious circumstances.
Having married young and stalling her education after the birth of her child, constant financial crisis had riddled the family for years.
"I was in the second year of graduation at Fergusson College in Pune and was very keen studying further. I wanted to do something significant with my life. My family's financial condition however couldn't support my education any longer and at the age of 20, I was married off to Siddharth Zagde, a neighbour of ours. Even though Siddharth had only studied until class IX and worked as a salesman for an ayurvedic firm in Pune, I accepted him and trusted my parents to have made the right decision on my behalf," she recounts.
Siddharth's father had passed away when he was only about seven years old, and his family had lived a life of penury ever since. They had moved from Jejuri to Pune in search of livelihood. His strained life however, only gave him the impetus he needed to support his wife's dream and help her realize it.
Through difficult days, Siddharth did odd-jobs like work in hotels and sell clothes and footwear across the city as a door-to-door salesman. It was these experiences of working as a salesman, visiting government offices in Mumbai and Pune and interacting with administrative officials that made him realise the apathy they had towards illiterate people from rural backgrounds. "I wanted my wife to become a high-ranking administrative officer who will be able to help the poor and give voice to their issues," he says, resolutely.
With very sketchy information on the UPSC exam, Rashmi started studying in 2003 and failed thrice in a row. Soon after, she was blessed with a baby girl that halted her education once again. In 2008, she managed to clear the primary examination and even reached the interview level, but couldn't make it to the final list. "It was very frustrating after trying for so many years. Our dream was a mirage. My husband had lost his flat and his five-acre farm in his village, which he sold to pay for my course. We literally lost everything as we pursued my dream. Siddharth started to spend all this time taking care of our twoyear-old daughter and me. This gravely affected his work and to make matters worse, recession hit hard and money thinned out even further," says Rashmi.
In spite of the odds, Siddharth remained hopeful. He encouraged Rashmi to start afresh and seek proper guidance. "To be honest, we could not afford to join any UPSC classes in Delhi. I told her not to lose her focus. I accompanied her to classes, interviews and programmes. During this difficult time, I hesitantly also approached our local leaders, who always claim their help and support for their constituency. In response to my plea for help, they mocked me and replied, 'Why are you wasting money on your wife's education?' They turned me into a joke. However, I was determined that my wife crack the UPSC examination somehow," Siddharth adds.
No support came in the form of family either, as most of their relatives advised Rashmi to leave her UPSC studies and do a B.Ed instead, to get a teacher's job. Siddharth however, was dedicated to his wife's education, "I did not want any compromise at this crucial juncture. I had full faith in her. Even though I was a IX standard dropout, I started discussing current affairs and quizzed her on general knowledge based on the information I gathered from newspapers and my field experience over the years. We also met a few successful candidates who guided us," says Siddharth.
Rashmi finally cleared the UPSC examination in her fifth attempt in 2009 and made it to the final list. "Since then we've been receiving phone calls from distant relatives, friends and political leaders. Our life seems to have drastically changed. I see posters and banners at various places in the city and back home at our village, congratulating me. I hope to make a change in the attitude of our society," says Rashmi brimming with optimism.
Siddharth is overjoyed with Rashmi's success. "I couldn't sleep for two days. It was a distant dream, but Rashmi has finally made it though with a lot of dedication and hard work. The trend these days is for people to opt for private sector jobs and make a lot of money, but we've lived in poverty all our lives. We know what we need and are requirements are very limited. I just hope that my wife is able to serve neglected sections of society and those who need her help. She is the first person from our village to have achieved such a feat," says Siddharth as he steps out to distribute sweets to the very people who mocked him as he stood.

(Mumbai Mirror, 23 May 2010)

Convocation address delivered by Balraj Sahni at JNU in 1972

2010-05-22T18:03:00.000+05:30

Balraj Sahni's Convocation Address at Jawaharlal Nehru University

About twenty years ago, the Calcutta Film Journalists' Association decided to honour the late Bimal Roy, the maker of DO Bigha Zameen and us, his colleagues. It was a simple but tasteful ceremony. Many good speeches were made, but the listeners were waiting anxiously to hear Bimal Roy. We were all sitting on the floor, and I was next to Bimal Da. I could see that as his turn approached he became increasingly nervous and restless. And when his turn came he got up, folded his hands and said, “Whatever I have to my I say if in my films. I have nothing more to say,” and sat down.

There is a lot in what Bimal Da did, and at this moment my greatest temptation is to follow his example. The fact that I am not doing so is due solely to the profound regard I have for the name which this august institution bears; and the regard I have for yet another person, Shri P.C. Joshi, who is associated with your university. I owe to him some of the greatest moments of my life, a debt which I can never repay. That is why when I received an invitation to speak on this occasion, I found it impossible to refuse. If you had invited me to sweep your doorstep I would have felt equally happy and honoured. Perhaps that service would have been more equal to my merit.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not trying to be modest. Whatever I said was from my heart and whatever I shall say further on will also be from my heart, whether you find it agreeable and in accordance with the tradition and spirit of such occasions or otherwise. As you may know, I have been out of touch with the academic world for more than a quarter of a century. I have never addressed a University Convocation before.

It would not be out of place to mention that the severance of my contact with your world has not been voluntary. It has been due to the special conditions of film making in our country. Our little film world either offers the actor too little work, forcing him to eat his heart out in idleness; or gives him too much --so much that he gets cut off from all other currents of life. Not only does he sacrifice the pleasures of normal family life, but he also has to ignore his intellectual and spiritual needs. In the last twenty-five years have worked in more than one hundred and twenty five films. In the same period a contemporary European or American actor would have done thirty or thirty-five. From this you can imagine what a large part of my life lies buried in strips of celluloid. A vast number of books which I should have read I have not been able to read. So many events I should have taken part in have passed me by. Sometimes I feel terribly left behind. And the frustration increases when I ask myself how many of these one hundred and twenty-five films had anything significant in them? How many have any claim to be remembered? Perhaps a few. They could be counted on the fingers of one hand. And even they have either been forgotten already or will be, quite soon.

That is why I said I was not being modest. I was only giving a warning, so that in the event of my disappointing you, you should be able to forgive me. Bimal Roy was right. The artist's domain is his work. So, since I must speak, I must confine myself to my own experience to what I have observed and felt, and wish to communicate. To go outside that would be pompous and foolish.

I'd like to tell you about an incident which took place in my college days and which I have never been able to forget. It has left a permanent impression on my mind.

I was going by bus from Rawalpindi to Kashmir with my family to enjoy the summer vacation. Half-way through we were halted because a big chunk of the road had been swept away by a landslide caused by rain the previous night. We joined the long queues of buses and cars on either side of the landside. Impatiently we waited for the road to clear. It was a difficulty job for the P.W.D. and it took some days before they could cut a passage through. During all this time the passengers and the drivers of vehicles made a difficult situation even more difficult by their impatience and constant demonstration. Even the villagers nearby got fed up with the high-handed behaviour of the city-walas.

One morning the overseer declared the road open. The green- flag was waved to the drivers. But we saw a strange sight. No driver was willing to be the first to cross. They just. stood and stared at each other from either side. No doubt the road was a make-shift one and even dangerous. A mountain on one side, and a deep gorge and the river below. Both were forbidding. The overseer had made a careful inspection and had opened the road with a full sense of responsibility. But nobody was prepared to trust his judgment, although these very people had, till yesterday, I accused him and his department of laziness and incompetence. Half an hour passed by in dumb silence. Nobody moved. Suddenly we saw a small green sports car approaching. An Englishman was driving it; sitting all by himself. He was a bit surprised to see so many parked vehicles and the crowd there. I was rather conspicuous, wearing my smart jacket and trousers. "What's happened?" he asked me.

I told him the whole story. He laughed loudly, blew the horn and went straight ahead, crossing the dangerous portion without the least hesitation.

And now the pendulum swung the other way. Every body was so eager to cross that they got into each other's way and created a new-confusion for some time. The noise of hundreds of engines and hundreds of horns was unbearable.

That day I saw with my own eyes the difference in attitudes between a man brought up in a free country and a man brought up in an enslaved one. A free man has the power to think, decide, and act for himself. But the slave loses that power. He always borrows his thinking from others, wavers in his decisions, and more often than not only takes the trodden path.

I learnt a lesson from this incident, which has been valuable to me. I made it a test for my own life. In the course of my life, whenever I have been able to make my own crucial decisions, I have been happy. I have felt the breath 'of freedom on my face. I have called myself a free man. My spirit has soared high and I have enjoyed life because I have felt there is meaning to life.

But, to be frank, such occasions have been too few. More often, than not I had lost courage at the crucial moment, and taken shelter under the wisdom of other people. I had taken the safer path. I made decisions which were expected of me by my family, by the bourgeois class to which I belonged, and the set of values upheld by them. I thought one way but acted in another. For this reason, afterwards I have felt rotten. Some decisions have proved ruinous in terms of human happiness. Whenever I lost courage, my life became a meaningless burden.

I told you about an Englishman. 1 think that in itself is symptomatic of the sense of inferiority that I felt at that time. I could have given you the example of Sardar Bhagat Singh who went to the gallows the same year. I could have given you the example of Mahatma Gandhi who always had the courage to decide for himself. I remember how my college professors and the wise respectable people of my home town shook their heads over the folly of Mahatma Gandhi, who thought he could defeat the most powerful empire on earth with his utopian principles of truth and non-violence. I think less than one per cent of the people of my city dreamt that they would see India free in their lifetime. But Mahatma Gandhi had faith in himself, in his country, and his people. Some of you may have seen a painting of Gandhiji done by Nandlal Bose. It is the picture of a man who has the courage to think and act for himself.

During my college days I was not influenced by Bhagat Singh or Mahatma Gandhi. I was doing my M.A. in English literature from the most magnificent educational institution in the Punjab-the Government College in Lahore. Only the very best students were admitted to that college. After independence my fellow students have achieved the highest positions in India and Pakistan, both in the government and society. But, to gain admission to this college we had to give a written undertaking that we would take no interest in any political movement-which at that time meant the freedom movement.

This year we are celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of our independence. But can we honestly say that we have got rid of our slavish mentality--our inferiority complex?

Can we claim that at the personal, social, or institutional level, our thinking, our decisions, or even our actions are our own and not borrowed? Are we really free in the spiritual sense? Can we dare to think and act for ourselves, or do we merely pretend to do so-merely make a superficial show of independence.

I should like to draw your attention to the film industry to which I belong. I know a great many of our films are such that the very mention of them would raise a laugh among you. In the eyes of educated intelligent people, Hindi films are nothing but a tamasha. Their stories are childish, unreal, and illogical. But their worst fault, you will agree with me, is that their plots, their technique, their songs and dances, betray blind, unimaginative, and unabashed copying of films from the west. There have been Hindi films which have been copied in every detail from some foreign film. No wonder that you young people laugh at us, even though some of you may dream of becoming stars yourselves.

It is not easy for me to laugh at Hindi films. I earn my bread from them. They have brought me plenty of fame and wealth. To some extent at least, I owe to Hindi films the high honour which you have given me today.

When I was a student like you, our teachers, both English and Non-English, tried to convince us in diverse ways that the fine arts were a prerogative of white people. Great films, great drama, great acting, great painting, etc., were only possible in Europe and America. The Indian people, their language and culture, were as yet too crude and backward for real artistic expression. We used to feel bitter about this and we resented it outwardly: but inwardly we could not help accepting this judgment.

The picture has changed vastly since then. After independence India has made a tremendous recovery in every branch of the arts. In the field of film making, names like Satyajit Ray and Bimal Roy stand out as international personalities. Many of our artistes, cameramen and technicians compare with the best anywhere in the world. Before independence we hardly made ten or fifteen films worth the name. Today we are the biggest film producing country in the world. Not only are our films immensely popular with the masses in our own country, but also in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, the Eastern Republics of the Soviet Union; Egypt, and other Arab countries in the Far East and many African countries. We have broken the monopoly of Hollywood in this field.

Even from the aspect of social responsibility, our Indian films have not yet degenerated to the low level to which some of the western countries have descended. The film producer in India has not yet exploited sex and crime for the sake of profit to the extent that his American counterpart has been doing for years and years-thus creating a serious social problem for that country.

But all these assets are negated by our one overwhelming fault-that we are imitators and copyists. This one fault makes us the laughing stock of intelligent people everywhere. We make films according to borrowed, outdated formulas. We do not have the courage to strike out on our own, to get to grips with the reality of our own country, to present it convincingly and according to our own genius.

I say this not only in relation to the usual Hindi or Tamil box office films. I make this complaint against our so-called progressive and experimental films also, whether they be in Bengali, Hindi, or Malayalam. I do not lag behind anyone else in admiring the work of Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Sukhdev, Basu Bhattacharjee, or Rajinder Singh Bedi. I know they are highly and deservingly respected;

but even then I cannot help saying that the winds of fashion in Italy, France, Sweden, Poland, or Czechoslovakia have an immediate effect on their work. They do break new ground, but only after someone else has broken it.

In the literary world, in which I have considerable interest, I see the same picture. Our novelists, story writers, and poets are carried away with the greatest of ease by the currents of fashion in Europe, although Europe, with the exception of the Soviet Union perhaps, is not yet even aware of Indian writing. For example, in my own province of the Punjab there is a wave of protest among young poets against the existing social order. Their poetry exhorts the people to rebel against it, to shatter it and build a better world free from corruption, injustice, and exploitation. One cannot but endorse that spirit wholeheartedly, because, without question, the present social order needs changing.

The content of this poetry is most admirable, but the form is not indigenous. It is borrowed from the west. The west has discarded meter and rhyme, so our Punjabi poet must also discard it. He must also use involved and ultra-radical imagery. The result is that the sound and fury remains only on paper, confined to small, mutually admiring literary circles. The people, the workers and the peasants who are being exhorted to revolution, cannot make head or tail of this kind of poetry. It just leaves them cold and per The content of this poetry is most admirable, but the form is not indigenous. It is borrowed from the west. The west has discarded meter and rhyme, so our Punjabi poet must also discard it. He must also use involved and ultra-radical imagery. The result is that the sound and fury remains only on paper, confined to small, mutually admiring literary circles. The people, the workers and the peasants who are being exhorted to revolution, cannot make head or tail of this kind of poetry. It just leaves them cold and perplexed. I don't think I am wrong if I say that other Indian languages too are in the grip of "new wave" poetry.

I know next to nothing about painting. I can't judge a good one from a bad one. But I have noticed that in this sphere also our painters conform to current fashions abroad. Very few have the courage to swim against the tide.

And what about the academic world? I invite you to I look into the mirror. If you laugh at Hindi films, maybe you are tempted to laugh at yourselves.

This year my own province honoured me by nominating me to the senate of Guru Nanak university. When the invitation to attend the first meeting came, I happened to be in the Punjab, wandering around in some villages near Preet Nagar-the cultural centre founded by our great writer S. Gurbakhsh Singh. During the evening's gossip I told my villager friends that I was to go to Amritsar to attend this meeting and if anyone wanted a lift in my car he was welcome. At this one of the company said, "Here among us you go about dressed in tehmat-kurta, peasant fashion; but tomorrow you will put on your suit and become Sahib Bahadur again." "Why," I said laughingly, "if you want I will go dressed just like this." "You will never dare," another one said. "Our sarpanch Sahib here removes his tehmat and puts on a pyjama whenever he has to go to the city on official work. He has to do it, otherwise, he says, he is not respected. How can yon go peasant-fashion to such a big university?" A jawan who had come home on leave for the rice sowing added, "Our sarpanch is a coward. In cities even girls go about wearing lungis these days. Why should he not be respected?"

The gossip went on, and, as if to accept their challenge, I did make my appearance in the Senate meeting in tehmat-kurta. The sensation I created was beyond my expectation. The officer-perhaps, professor-who was handing out the gowns in the vestibule could not recognize me at first. When he did he could not hide his amusement, "Mr Sahni, with the tehmat you should have worn khosas-not shoes," he said, while putting the gown over my shoulders. "I shall be careful next time," I said apologetically and moved on. But a moment later I asked myself, was it not bad manners for the professor to notice or comment on my dress? Why did I not point this out to him? T felt peeved' over my slow-wittedness.

After the meeting we went over to meet the students. Their amusement was even greater and more eloquent. Many of them could not help laughing at the fact that I was wearing shoes with a tehmat. That they were wearing chappals with trousers seemed nothing extraordinary to them.

You must wonder why I am wasting your time narrating such trivial incidents. But look at it from the point of view of the Punjabi peasant. We are all full of admiration for his contribution to the green revolution. He is the backbone of our armed forces. How must he feel when his dress or his way of life is treated as a matter of amusement?

It is well-known in the Punjab that as soon as a village lad receives college education J1e becomes indifferent to the village. He begins to consider himself superior and different, as if belonging to a separate world altogether. His one ambition is to somehow leave the village and run to a city. Is this not a slur on the academic world?

I agree that all places are not alike. I know perfectly well that no complex against the native dress exists in Tamil Nadu or Bengal. Anyone from a peasant to a professor can go about in a dhoti on any occasion. But I submit that the habit of borrowed and idealized thinking is present over there too. It is present everywhere, in some form or degree. Even twenty-five years after independence we are blissfully carrying on with the same system of education which was designed by Macaulay and Co. to breed clerks and mental slaves. Slaves who would be incapable of thinking independently of their British masters; slaves who would admire everything about the masters, even while hating them; slaves who would consider it an honour to be standing by the side, of the masters, to speak the language of the masters, to dress like the masters, to sing and dance like the masters; slaves, who would hate their own people and would be available .to preach the gospel of hatred among their own people. Can we then be surprised if the large majority of students in ,universities are losing faith in this system of education?

Let me go back to trivialities again. Ten years ago, if you asked a fashionable student in Delhi to wear a kurta with trousers he would have laughed at you. Today, by the grace of the hippies and the Hare Rama Hare Krishna cult, not only has the kurta-trousers combination become legitimate, but even the word kurta has changed to guru-shirt. The sitar became a star instrument with us only after the Americans gave a big welcome to Ravi Shankar, just as fifty years ago Tagore became Gurudev all over India only after he received the Nobel Prize from Sweden.

Can you dare to ask a college student to shave his head, moustache, and beard when the fashion is to put the barbers out of business? But if tomorrow under the influence of Yoga the students of Europe begin to shave their heads arid faces, I can assure you that you will begin to see a crop of shaven skulls all over Connaught Circus the next day. Yoga has to get a certificate from Europe before it can influence the home of its birth.

Let me give another example-a less trivial one.'

I work in Hindi films, but it is an open secret that the songs and dialogues of these Hindi films are mostly written in Urdu. Eminent Urdu writers and poets-Krishan Chandar, Rajinder Singh Bedi, K. A. Abbas, Gulshan Nanda Sahir Ludhianwi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, and Kaifi Azmi are associated with this work.

Now, if a film written in Urdu can be called a Hindi film, it is logical to conclude that Hindi and Urdu are one and, the same language. But no, our British masters declared them two separate languages in their time. Therefore, even twenty-five years after independence, our government,: our universities, and our intellectuals insist on treating them as two separate and independent languages. Pakistan radio goes on ruining the beauty of this language by thrusting into it as many Persian and Arabic words as possible; and All India Radio knocks it out of all shape by pouring the entire Sanskrit dictionary into it. In this way they carry out the wish of the Master, to separate the inseparable. Can anything be more absurd than that? If the British told us that white was black, would we go on calling white black for ever and ever? My film colleague Johnny Walker remarked the other day, "They should not announce 'Ab Hindi mein samachar suniye' they should say, 'Ab Samachar mein Hindi suniye.'

I have discussed this funny situation with many Hindi and Urdu writers-the so-called progressive as well as non progressive; I have tried to convince them of the urgency to do some fresh thinking on the subject. But so far it has been like striking one's head against a stone wall. We film people call it the "ignorance of the learned." Are we wrong?

Lastly, I would like to tell you about a hunch I have, even at the risk of boring you. A hunch is something you can't help having. It just comes. Ultimately it may prove right or wrong. May be mine is wrong. But there it is. It may even prove right-who knows?

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru has admitted in his autobiography that our freedom movement, led by the Indian National Congress, was always dominated by the propertied classes-the capitalists and landlords. It was logical, therefore, that these very classes should hold the reigns of power even after independence. Today it is obvious to everyone that in the last twenty-five years the rich have been growing 'richer' and the poor have been growing poorer. Pandit Nehru wanted to change this state of affairs, but he couldn't. I don't blame him, because he had to face very heavy odds all along. Today our Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, pledges herself to take the country towards the goal of socialism. How far she will be successful, I can't say. Politics is not my line. For our present purposes it is enough if you agree with me that in today's India the propertied classes dominate the government as well as society.

I think you will also agree that the British used the English language with remarkable success for strengthening their imperial hold on our country.

Now, which language in your opinion would their successors, the present rulers of India, choose to strengthen their own domination? Rashtrabhasha Hindi? By heavens, no. My hunch is that their interests too are served by English and English alone. But since they have to keep up a show of patriotism they make a lot of noise about Rashtrabhasha Hindi so that the mind of the public remains diverted.

Men of property may believe in a thousand different gods, but they worship only one-the God of profit. From the point of view of profit the advantages of retaining English to the capitalist class in this period of rapid industrialization and technological revolution are obvious. But the social advantages are even greater. From that point of view English is a God sent gift to our ruling classes.

Why? For the simple reason that the English language is beyond the reach of the toiling millions of our country. In olden times Sanskrit and Persian were beyond the reach of the toiling masses. That is why the rulers of those times had given them the status of state language. Through Sanskrit and Persian the masses were made to feel ignorant, inferior, uncivilized, and unfit to rule themselves. Sanskrit and Persian helped to enslave their minds, and when the mind is enslaved bondage is eternal.

It suits our present ruling classes to preserve and maintain the social order that they have inherited from the British. They have a privileged position; but they cannot admit it openly. That is why a lot of hoo-haw is made about Hindi as the Rashtrabhasha. They know very well that this Sanskrit-laden, artificial language, deprived of all modern scientific and technical terms, is too weak and insipid to challenge the supremacy of English. It will always remain a show piece, and what is more, a convenient tool to keep the masses fighting among themselves. We film people get a regular flow of fan mail from young people studying in schools and colleges. I get my share of it and these letters reveal quite clearly what a storehouse of torture the English language is to the vast majority of Indian students. How abysmally low the levels of teaching and learning have reached! That is why, I am told preferential treatment is being given to boys and girls who come from public schools i.e. schools to which only the children of privileged classes can go.

It is not necessary for me to comment on the efforts being made to strengthen English in every sphere of life, despite assurances to the contrary. They are all too obvious. It is admitted that English is too alien and hence too difficult to learn for the average Indian. And yet, it helps the capitalists and industrialists to consolidate their position on an all-India scale. That one consideration is more important than any other. According to them whatever serves their interest automatically serves national interest too. They are hopeful that in the not too distant future the people themselves will endorse their stand-that English should retain its present status for ever.

This was my hunch and I confided it one day to a friend of mine who is a labour leader. I told him that if we are serious about doing away with capitalism and bringing in socialism, we have to help the working class to consolidate itself on an all-India scale with the same energy as the capitalist class is doing. We have to help the working class achieve a leading role in society. And that can only be done by breaking the domination of English and replacing it with a people's language.

My friend listened to me carefully and largely agreed with me.

"You have analyzed the situation very well," he said, "but what is the remedy?"

"The remedy is to retain the English script and kick out the English language," I replied.

"But how?"

"A rough and ready type of Hindustani is used by the working masses all over India. They make practical use of it by discarding all academic and grammatical flourishes. In this type of Hindustani, "Larka bhi jata hei" and "Larki bhi jata hei." There is an atmosphere of rare freedom in this patois and even the intellectuals indulge in it when they want to relax. And actually this is in the best tradition of Hindustani. This is how it was born, made progress, and acquired currency all over India. In the old days it was contemptuously called Urdu-or the language of the camps or bazaars.

Today in this bazaari Hindustani the word university becomes univrasti-a much better word than vishwa vidyalaya, lantern becomes laltain, the chasis of a car becomes chesi, spanner becomes pana, i.e. anything and everything is possible. The string with which the soldier cleans his rifle is called "pullthrough" in English. In Roman Hindustani it becomes fultroo–a beautiful word. "Barn-door" is the term the Hollywood lights man uses for a particular type of two blade' cover. The Bombay film worker has changed it to bandar, an excellent transformation. This Hindustani has untold and unlimited possibilities. It can absorb the international scientific and technological vocabulary with the greatest of ease. It can take words from every source and enrich itself. One has no need to run only to the Sanskrit dictionary."

"But why the Roman script?" my friend asked.

"Because no one has any prejudice against it," I said. "It is the only script which has already gained all-India currency. In north, south, east and west, you can see shop signs and film poster in this script. We use this script for writing addresses on envelopes and post cards. The army has been using it for the last thirty years at least."

My friend, the labour leader, kept silent for some time. Then he smiled indulgently and said, "Comrade, Europe also experimented with Esperanto. A great intellectual like Bernard Shaw tried his best to popularize the Basic English. But all these schemes failed miserably, for the simple reason that languages cannot be evolved mechanically; they grow spontaneously."

I was deeply shocked. I said, "Comrade, Esperanto is just that Rashtrabhasha which the Hindi Pandits are manufacturing in their studies, from the pages of some Sanskrit dictionary. I am talking of the language which is growing all round you, through the action of the people."

But I couldn't convince him. I gave more arguments, including the one that Netaji Subhash Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru were both strong advocates of Roman Hindustani, but that too failed to convince him. The question is not whether the comrade or I was right. Perhaps, I was wrong. Perhaps, my thinking was utopian, or "mechanical"-as he called it. As I said before, you can never say whether a hunch is going to be right or wrong. But the fun lies in having it, because to have a hunch is a sign of independent thinking. The comrade should have been able to appreciate that, but he couldn't, because it was difficult for him to get out of the grooves of orthodox thinking.

No country can progress unless it becomes conscious of its being-its mind and body. It has to learn to exercise its own muscles. It has to learn to find out and solve its own problems in its own way. But whichever way I turn I find that even after twenty-five years of independence, we are like a bird which has been let out of its cage after a prolonged imprisonment-unable to know what to do with its freedom. It has wings, but is afraid to fly into the open air. It longs to remain within defined limits, as in the cage.

Individually and collectively, we resemble Walter Mitty. Our inner lives are different from our outer lives. Our thoughts and actions are poles apart. We want to change this state of affairs, but we lack the courage to do anything different from what we have been doing all along-or different from what others expect us to do.

I am sure there must be some police officers in this country who in their hearts want to be regarded as friends rather than enemies of the public. They must be aware that in England the behaviour of the police towards the public is polite and helpful. But the tradition in which they have been trained is not the one which the British set for their own country but the one which they set for their colonies. So, the policeman is helpless. According to this colonial tradition, it is his duty to strike terror into anyone who enters his office, to be as obstructive and unhelpful as possible. This is the tradition which pervades every government office, from the chaparasi to the minister.

One of our young and enterprising producers made an experimental film and approached the Government for tax exemption. The minister concerned was being sworn into office the next day. He invited the producer to attend the ceremony, after which he would meet him and discuss the matter. The producer went, impressed by the informality with which the minister had treated him. As the minister was being sworn in, promising to serve the people truly, faithfully, and honestly, his secretary started explaining to the young producer how much he would have to pay in black money to the minister and how much to the others if he wanted the tax exemption.

The producer got so shocked and angry that he wanted to put this scene in his next film. But his financiers had already suffered a loss with the first one. They told him categorically not to make an ass of himself. In any case, if he had insisted in making an ass of himself the censors would never have passed the film, because it is an unwritten law that no policeman or minister is corrupt in our country.

But there is something which strikes me as being even funnier. Those same people who scream against ministers every day cannot themselves hold a single function without some minister inaugurating it, or presiding over it, or being the chief guest. Sometimes the minister is the chief guest and a film star is the president, or else the film star is the chief guest and the minister is the president. Some big personality has to be there, because it is the age old colonial tradition.

During the last war, I spent four years in England as a Hindustani announcer at the B.B.C. During those four years of extreme crisis I never even once set my eyes on a member of the British cabinet, including Prime Minister Churchill. But since independence I have seen nothing else but ministers in India, all over the place.

When Gandhiji went to the Round Table Conference in 1930, he remarked to British journalists that the Indian people regarded the guns and bullets of their empire in the same way as their children regarded the crackers and phatakas on Diwali day. He could make that claim because he had driven the fear of the British out of Indian minds. He had taught them to ignore and boycott the British officers instead of kowtowing to them. Similarly, if we want socialism in our country we have firstly to drive out the fear of money, position, and power from the minds of our people. Are we doing anything in that direction? In our society today who is respected most -the man with talent or the man with money? Who is admired most-the man with talent or the man with power? Can we ever hope to usher in socialism under such conditions? Before socialism can come we have to create an atmosphere in which possession of wealth and riches should invite disrespect rather than respect. We have to create an atmosphere in which the highest respect is given to labour whether it be physical or mental; to talent, to skill, to art, and to inventiveness. This requires, new thinking; and the courage to discard old ways of thinking. Are we anywhere near this revolution of the mind?

Perhaps, today we need a messiah to give us the courage to abandon our slavishness and to create values befitting the human beings of a free and independent country so that we may have the courage to link our destinies to the ones being ruled, and not the rulers-to the exploited and not to the exploiters.

A great saint of the Punjab, Guru Arjun Dev, said,

Jan ki tehl sanbhaionhah jan

Uthan bithan jan kaisanga

Jan char raj mukh mathai laagi

Aasa pooran anant taranga

It is my earnest hope and prayer that you, graduates of Jawaharlal Nehru University may succeed where I and so many others of my generation have failed.

CID meets 3 Idiots

2010-05-15T07:11:00.002+05:30

After Rancho suddenly disappears from ICE, Raju and Farhan Decide to call the world famous CID.

ACP: Ohh MY GODD !!! Rancho Gayab hai !! Abhijeet, Daya...campus ko acchi tarah se CHECK KARO !! Woh zaroor koi na koi suraag chhod gaya hoga !! (Shaking his finger)

(After searchin the campus like a pair of buffoons...Abhijeet and Daya find out that Joy had committed suicide 4 years back in the campus...)

Abhijeet: Sir, Mamla Gadbad hai...Yaha kisi joy naam ke student NE aatma-hatya ki thi 4 saal pehle. Lagta hai woh aatma hatya nahi...khoon tha...aur shayad khooni yeh rancho hi hoga !!!

ACP: OHH MY GODD !!!

ACP: Yeh joy ki kabar khod ke uski laash bahar nikalo...aur use forensic lab me leke aao...Dr. Salunkhe zarur koi na koi baat ughalva denge iss murde aadmi se !!

(after fredricks does all the digging and brings out the dead body of joy...and the next scene is of the forensic lab)

Dr. Salunkhe: ACP, bahot jaldi laash laaye tum...isse kuch bulvana mushkil hoga...lekin tum tension mat lo...tum Dr. Salunkhe ke lab se khali haat nahi jaoge..koi na koi raaz toh pata chal hi jayega

(after playin with some colour changing liquids)

Dr. Salunkhe : BOSS...tumne kaha isski maut suicide se hui hai...main kehta hu..iska khoon hua hai !!

ACP: Salunkhe !!! Mazaak ka waqt nahi hai !!...yeh kaise ho sakta hai??

Salunkhe: BOSS...sab kuch mumkin hai !! Yeh dekho...(shows him his star-trek type computer and does some really fast typing)

ACP: OHH MY GODD !! (still shaking his finger)....toh phir yeh baat hamein kisi NE batayi kyu nahi ??...ek kaam karo...uss principal ko yahaan leke aao bureau me...AB kya sach hai..wahi hamein batayega !!

(virus is brought to the bureau)

Virus: Sssir, mujhe yahaan kyun bulaya hai...Maine kuch nahi kiya

Abhijeet: sach sach batao...uss raat campus me kya hua tha???

Virus: sssir, main sssach bol raha hu...mujhe kuch nahi pata hai??

(daya gives him his special CHAMAAAT !!!)

Daya: Ab yaad aaya kuch???

Virus: Haan Sir, sab yaad AA gaya...Bata ta hu...sab Bata ta hu !

Fredricks: (constipated look)..sir..daya sir ke chamaat me toh jaadu hai...iska 'sssss' kehna band ho gaya

ACP: Fredricks..chup raho !!

Virus: uss raat sab logo NE gay party ki thi....sab log apni underwear me campus me ghoom rahe the....main bhi tha...lekin mere saath koi flirt hi nahi kar raha tha...isliye main bahot gusse me tha...phir Joy aaya aur usne mujhe uska helicopter dikhaya...Maine uska helicopter gutter me fek diya..toh woh rote rote apne room me chale gaya. Aur next din humne dekha toh uska murder ho gaya tha...lekin aap please yeh baat kisi se boliye mat...college ki badnaami ho jayegi...

ACP: hum kisi ko nahi batayenge...tum hamare saath co-operate karo

(virus leaves)

ACP: yahaan kuch toh gadbad hai daya....aisa kaise ho sakta hai ki campus me khoon ho gaya aur kisi NE CID ko bulaya hi nahin??

Abhijeet: sir shayad logo ko pata hai...ki pehle police ko bulana chaiye...CID ko nahi !!

ACP: Aur yeh kaise hua ki khooni campus me AA gaya..aur campus se khoon kar ke nikal gaya??

Vivek : Sir, shayad yeh bhi ho sakta hai ki khooni koi student hi ho?

ACP: haan vivek...kuch bhi ho sakta hai...kuch bhi (shaking finger)..ek kaam karo abhijeet...phir se campus me chalte hain...aur acchi tarah se check karte hain...yahaan daal me kuch kaala hai !!

Abhijeet: sir daal me kala nahi...puri daal mere jaisi kaali hi hai !!

(they reach the campus in their ol' faithful qualis which changes colour every episode...but the number plate is still the same...and daya slams the breaks....SCCHRREEEECH !!)

ACP: Abhijeet, Vivek tum pura campus CHECK KARO....Daya tum iss campus ke saare DARWAAZE TOD DO !!....Fredricks...tum sab logo ko tumhare jokes se entertain karo...aur main yahaan baith ke apni ungli hilata hu....chalo sab apne apne kaam pe lag jaao !!

(after checking the campus)

Vivek: Sir, yahaan aiye....yeh dekho...yeh ek chatur naam ke ladke ki diary mili hai sir...isme likha hai ki woh rancho aur rancho ek dusre ke dushman the...aur woh rancho se badla Lena chahta tha !!

ACP : (shaking finger...as usual)...OHH MY GODD !!! AB yeh Chatur kaun hai...aur iske room se itni baas kyun AA rahi hai !!...Good work vivek !!...iss evidence ko forensic lab Le jao !

Abhijeet: Haain !!! Sir, dheere dheere sab pata chal raha hai...shayad se iss chatur NE hi joy ka khoon kiya hoga !! Aur rancho kahaan gaya...usse hi pata hoga !!

ACP: Toh bulao iss Chatur ko Bureau mein...isse hi pooch ke dekhte hain !!

(chatur in interrogation)

ACP: Rancho kahaan hai ??

Chatur : I Don't Know Sir !! Mujhe nahi pata !!

Abhijeet: Dekho Sach Sach Batao !! Hamein yeh diary mili hai tumhare room se...isme saaf saaf likha hai ki tumhein rancho se jalan thi

Chatur : (over-acting)...mujhe nahi pata hai sir !! maine kuch nai kiya hai

(Daya gives ONE TIGHT SLAP and the chair spins)

Chatur: Haan haan...maine hi khoon kiya tha joy ka...kyonki usne mechanical helicopter banaya tha project me...aur maine sirf paper ka rocket banaya tha....boo hoo hoo !! Lekin phir woh kambakht Rancho aa gaya...usne mujhe dekh liya tha...isliye maine usko bhi gayab kar diya

ACP: waah...kya plan banaya tha...lekin afsos tum CID ke saamne kamiyaab nahi ho paaye...ab banate rehna plan...JAIL me...Tumhe toh FAASI hogi FAASI !!

Let's stop jabbering about 26/11 BY Pritish Nandy

2009-12-09T11:04:00.000+05:30

The sole purpose of terrorism is to terrorise us. It is to create fear, gut wrenching fear, and spread panic everywhere. If terrorists can’t get that right, if they can’t whip up enough fear and hysteria, their entire purpose is defeated. All the bloodshed, all the deaths add up to nothing and people forget the tragedy as quickly as they forget a bus falling into a ravine or a train toppling over at high speed. The statistics of death don’t scare us any more. What scares us is the way it happened.
That’s the difference between an accident, an Act of God, and a terrorist strike, though some fanatics would like us to believe that a terrorist strike is an Act of God. It is not. It is just another criminal act, plotted and planned by criminals, and often executed by some foolish, misled young men who are angry with life and society. There was a time, when I would have added the word poor to describe them. No longer. The kind of people who plot, plan and execute terror acts are no more poor, illiterate, foolish people who have been misguided by criminals masquerading as religious or political leaders. As Kasab told the courts, he was sold off to the Lashkar by his father when he was a kid. He grew up indoctrinated.
Today’s terrorists are a different lot altogether. They are smart, educated, well brought up young men and women who have wilfully taken to terrorism to fight for what they see as their cause. To defeat them is not easy and, as time goes on, it will become even more difficult because they are no longer people you can easily recognise or would even suspect as potential terrorists. Many of them are white. Some come from affluent Western families. No, they are no longer recruited from poor, third world nations. Terrorists come today dressed in Armani suits, flaunting Ivy League badges. Surprise is their secret weapon. That’s how their first axiom is best served, to spread gut wrenching fear. That’s what gets them the headlines.
Headlines are what terrorists die for. Headlines and non-stop television coverage. That’s why 9/11 was such a great success for them. That’s why 12/10 in Bali, 7/7 in London, 26/11 in Mumbai were such famous strikes. The recent bomb blasts in Peshawar and Rawalpindi are no match. They were just messages to the ISI from their former protégés, to warn the Pakistan establishment that they won’t let them rest in peace as long as they play surrogate to the US army in return for billions of dollars in aid. It’s never easy to pull back the demons you unleash. Yes, people are dying in these terror attacks. There’s lots of bloodshed. Women, children, ordinary people are getting drawn into this tragic vortex of violence. But none of this is as important as headlines. Headlines create fear, panic, terror. For terrorists, headlines are everything.
So every time we revive memories of 26/11, show hours and hours of TV coverage, write long scary articles on how terrorism has destroyed our lives and liberties, we are actually encouraging the terrorists, helping them build their superstructure of fear. Terrorists do not need to celebrate the success of 9/11 or 26/11. We are doing it for them, even as we weep for the victims and tell the world that we are better prepared to face future strikes. Let’s not kid ourselves. Terrorism is the scourge of our times and no Government, no police force is ever adequately equipped to anticipate it. The more we talk about the pain, the horror, the memories of these terrible events, the more the perpetrators celebrate, the more they go down in history as villains or heroes, depending on who is providing the perspective, and to whom. In the wilds of tribal Pakistan where the Taliban is schooling its recruits, Kasab is a hero and his dead colleagues, martyrs to the Cause.
It’s important, therefore, to treat such anniversaries with caution and circumspection. We don’t really need to overload the nation with cardiac stress. 26/11 was a terrible tragedy and also a moment of amazing heroism. We lost some of our finest policemen and many innocent people who had no reason to die. But our future lies not in recalling its memories and reassuring the rascals who perpetrated it that they had struck home and caused us unforgettable pain. It’s no use crying over our failures, our mistakes. It’s important to be prepared for the future, as prepared as we can possibly be, but it’s even more critical to move on with our lives, show the world we are not afraid. Terrorism may hurt us but it cannot break our spirit, our resolve. Therein lies our courage, our wisdom as a nation.
And therein lies defeat for those who use terrorism as their weapon.

Mukesh Ambani's ever growing media empire

2009-10-31T14:45:00.000+05:30

Unobtrusively, the Indian media sweepstakes are changing hue. There is a new media magnate in town and his name is Mukesh Ambani. One of the learnings transposed from the battle with his younger brother Anil was that media had to be controlled. Younger brother Anil used the media to his advantage in the battle for the Ambani inheritance. Slowly and steadily Mukesh Ambani’s gigantic footprint is now visible in the electronic news media. And the planning has been systematic and calibrated. A classical waterfall structure has been used to hide the identity of the real owner through a maze of companies, cross holdings and complex transactions. But a paper trail following the annual returns filed by various involved companies reveals the true identity of Mukesh Ambani. He has managed to systematically carve a wide swathe over the electronic news world. All the operations have been conducted in Ambani’s trademark shadowy manner. With a silent signature using a maze of privately owned companies with bizarre names.

IN THE BAG

Let us look at one of the largest benami owned media empires in India and its architecture. By investing Rs 76 crore in Rajeev Shukla/ Anuradha Prasad owned BAG group companies, Mukesh Ambani has a major presence in TV news channels – News 24, E 24, Dhamal 24 etc. As always a web of disparate and obscure companies which own High Growth Distributors have invested Rs 76 crore to acquire 12 per cent in BAG Films & Media Ltd, 15 per cent in BAG Newsline Network Ltd and 15 per cent in BAG Glamour Ltd.. The clutch of private companies which owns High Growth Distributors are Reliance Commercial Holdings Pvt Ltd, Reliance Investment Enterprises Pvt Ltd, Reliance Explorations Pvt Ltd, Kudrat Investment & Leasing Pvt Ltd, Saumya Finance & leasing Co Pvt Ltd, Ornate Traders Pvt Ltd, Xanti Commercial Pvt Ltd, Tiara Comtrade Pvt Ltd, Hitech Dealers Pvt Ltd and Legal Outsourcing Pvt Ltd.

The Fourth Annual Report (2007-08) of High Growth Distributors Pvt Ltd shows that it has made Long Term Investments in unquoted equity shares fully paid of Hitech Dealers Pvt Ltd, Legal Outsourcing Pvt Ltd, Sarvasiddhi Commercials Pvt Ltd, Xanti Commercial Pvt Ltd and Tiara Comtrade Pvt Ltd. That is not as important as its other investments in equity shares quoted fully paid up in BAG Film Ltd amounting to Rs 26.15 crore, BAG Glamour Pvt Ltd Rs 24.99 crore and BAG Newsline amounting to Rs 24.99 crore. All told High Growth’s investments in BAG Group companies thus comes to Rs 76.15 crore.

The NSE shareholding filing of BAG Films and Media Ltd as of December 31, 2008 clearly states that High Growth Distributors Pvt Ltd owns 13078000 shares amounting to 11.59 per cent of the company. Similarly the Annual Return (Registration No 162904) filed by BAG Newsline Network Pvt Ltd clearly shows that High Growth Distributors Pvt Ltd owns 2571428 shares in the company. The Annual return of BAG Glamour Pvt Ltd (Registration No 160548) similarly shows that High Growth Distributors Pvt Ltd owns 2571428 shares in the company.

HIGH GROWTH
So, who owns High Growth Distributors Pvt Ltd with its Registered Office at 26, Chittranjan Avenue, Kolkata 700012? Legal Outsourcing Pvt Ltd Fourth Annual Report 2007-08 also states that its Registered Office is 26 Chittranjan Avenue, Kolkata 700012. This in turn has investments in Hitech Dealers Pvt Ltd, High Growth Distributors Pvt Ltd, Sarvasiddhi Commercials Pvt Ltd, Xanti Commercial Pvt Ltd and Tiara Comtrade Pvt Ltd. Hitech Dealers is also showing the same address for its Registered Office. And this company too has investments in several of the above mentioned companies. All these companies incidentally have a common auditor - chartered accountant firm in D Dokania and Co.

Xanti Commercial Pvt Ltd has its Registered Office in 84 A Mittal Court, 8th Floor, 224 , Nariman Point, Mumbai 400021 and their auditors are Joy Dalia & Co Xanti’s long term investments are in a wide variety of companies including Reliance Consolidated Pvt Ltd, Reliance Enterprises Holding Pvt Ltd, Reliance Extrusions Pvt Ltd, Reliance Gas Pvt Ltd, Reliance Group Holding, Reliance Group Enterprises, Reliance Group Investments and Holding, Reliance Industries Holding, Reliance Industries Investments and Holding, Reliance Investment and Trading, Reliance Investment Holding, Relogistics Infrastructure, Relogistics based in Pune, Delhi, Rajasthan, Jamshedpur and many more. A usual suspect Tiara Comtrade also pops up in this list. Then the tell tale signs surface.

In the list of related parties with whom transactions have taken place in the past and relationships exist are familiar names – High Growth Distributors and Hitech Dealers. Tiara Comtrade has a similar history. Among its long term investments are listed Reliance Integrated Agrisolutions previously known as Urja Trading, all the Relogistics companies and myriad other names which leave little to imagination. The list of related parties with whom transactions have taken place and relationship exists include High Growth Distributors and Hitech Dealers. Tiara Comtrade’s registered office is the same as Xanti Commercial’s. One of the directors is common – Shailesh Solanki and the majority of the investments are common too. The annual returns of Xanti and Tiara show the funding received from the private companies of Mukesh Ambani through debentures.

INDIA TV

BAG Group of Companies is only one of several outfits controlled by Mukesh Ambani through a web of transactions. Take India TV of Independent News Services. Mukesh Ambani Group through Reliance Chemicals Pvt Ltd, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Reliance Industries (Rs 100 cr); Reliance Ventures Pvt Ltd, another RIL 100 per cent subsidiary (Rs 20.20 cr) and Limca Commercials Rs 24 cr(private company owned by Mukesh Ambani) has invested Rs 145 crore in Shyam Equities Pvt Ltd, All told he has acquired 70,25,765 shares of Rs 10 each for an astounding premium of 1323 per cent.

Tally Solutions jointly controlled by Mukesh Ambani group and Bharat Goenka has Anand Jain and Manoj Modi on its board. Both are well known confidants of Mukesh Ambani. Shyam Equities Pvt Ltd is a 100 per cent subsidiary of Tally. It is a shell company, Tally has actually invested Rs 1.80 lakh only in Shyam. Shyam Equities owns 23 per cent in Independent News Services Pvt Ltd which owns India TV. The Annual Return of Tally Solutions Pvt Ltd 2007-08 registration number 08-12483 clearly shows that Bharat Goenka, his wife Sheela Goenka, Anand Jaikumar Jain and Manoj Harjivandas Modi are directors. The Director’s Report of Tally reveals that it had three subsidiaries including Shyam Equities Pvt Ltd in which it has invested a paltry Rs 179,990. However, the balance sheet audited by Deloitte Haskins & Sells for Shyam Equities Pvt Ltd shows that under the unsecured loans head – Digivision DTH Services, Limca Commercials, Reliance Chemical and Reliance Ventures have forwarded as much as Rs 1,642,028,000 establishing Mukesh Ambani group’s clear cut complicity.

Reliance Industries Ltd’s Annual report page 149 for FY 2007-08 lists Reliance Ventures Ltd as a subsidiary of RIL. Moreover, Reliance Chemicals is shown as a subsidiary under RIL’s disclosure dated October 3, 2008 to the Bombay Stock Exchange. The annual return filed by Limca Commercials Pvt Ltd clearly shows that all the shareholders of Limca have their address at 84A Mittal Court, Nariman Point, Mumbai, the home for all the promoter and privately owned companies of RIL. Yes, this is the same address of Xanti Commercial and Tiara Comtrade which have invested in BAG Films through the waterfall structure route. Finally the Shyam Equities balance sheet seals the deal where under the investments head, it shows that it has made an investment in Independent News Services Pvt Ltd buying 70,25,765 shares of Rs 100 each at premium of Rs 42.33 per share fully paid up valued at cost.

NEWS X

The most recent foray into news media is actually a consolidation of his earlier investments. For long there has been talk that Mukesh Ambani was an investor in the beleaguered INX Media, but there was nothing to substantiate it. Earlier this year, Vinay Chajlani and Jehangir Pocha formed Indi Media to acquire INX News from INX Media. Media industry pegged the size of the deal to roughly Rs 50 crore. That was the official version. The real version is that Vinay Chajlani Group also owns Suvi Info Management and its 100 per cent subsidiary Nai Duniya News and Network Pvt Ltd. By virtue of this, Chajlani also owns Nai Duniya newspapers.

The Annual Returns of Suvi Info Management (Indore) Pvt Ltd (registration number 018339) shows Vinay Chajlani and Sunita Chajlani as shareholders and directors of the company. Importantly, the balance sheet of Suvi Info under schedule C investments shows 6734700 equity shares were owned in Nai Dunia News and Network Pvt Ltd at Rs 57.50 per share amounting to Rs 387245300 or Rs 38 crore.

Mukesh Ambani Group has funded Vinay Chajlani Group investing Rs 38 crore in Suvi Info through Aarthik Commercials Pvt Ltd. Aarthik Commercials is a private company owned by Mukesh Ambani, as always through a web of front companies namely Reliance Petromarketing Infrastructure, Jamnagar Kandla Pipeline Co, Agni Fuels, Avalanche Fuels, Jubilant Autofuels Trading, Steadfast Fuel Trading. All these private companies once again throw up the same name – Reliance Industries. Schedule B of Suvi Info’s balance sheet 2006-07 shows an unsecured loan given by Aarthik Commercials amounting to Rs 38 crore. The Annual Returns filed by Aarthik Commercials, 307 Parekh Market, 3rd Floor, 39, Jagannath Shankar Seth Road, Opra House, Mumbai list all the names given above. Each of these entities Jubilant, Avalanche, Agni, Reliance Petromarketing, Steadfast Fuel and Jamnagar Kandla own 10,000 shares between them in the company. And the address for all these entities a dead giveaway – Ground Floor, Chitrakoot, Shreeram Mills Compound, Gantpatrao Kadam Marg, Worli, Mumbai 400013, a known RIL establisment.

In many ways, Mukesh Ambani has tried very hard to conceal his identity. While the RIL promoter has stuck to his theme of compartmentalizing one investment from the other, the paper trail leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind. When one connects the dots, it is evident that Mukesh Ambani wants to control media by making strategic investments in the electronic media. The investments are extremely strategic – an English news channel News X, a Hindi news channel – India TV which caters to the lowest common sensibilities and another Hindi news and Bollywood channel – BAG Group. Finally there is the big investment in a slew of regional channels (see Box).

THE BIG ONE

The mother of all his investments in the media sector is the one in Eenadu newspaper and ETV Network which controls and owns ETV Telugu, Bangla, Bihar, Gujarati, Kannada, Madhya Pradesh, Marathi, Oriya, Rajasthan, Urdu, Uttar Pradesh, ETV 2 (Telugu news channel). This gives Mukesh Ambani complete control of the regional mind space. This investment unlike the others is extremely controversial. Overall, Mukesh Ambani using his oft repeated stratagem has invested Rs 1500 crore in Ushoday Enterprises by acquiring 26930 shares of Rs 100 each at a premium of 528,630 per cent.

When Blackstone Group invested $275 million in Ushoday Enterprises, a virtual tug of war broke out between Ramoji Rao owner of Eenadu and Ushoday on the one hand and late state chief minister Y Rajshekhara Reddy. The late Reddy winged in a spanner saying that Rao could not use the proceeds to pay embattled sister company Margadarsi Financiers. This ultimately resulted in Blackstone having to pull out, such was the ferocity of the opposition. This is when JM Financial promoter Nimesh Kampani arrived as a white knight and made the acquisition on behalf of Mukesh Ambani. Then Kampani himself got entrapped in a case and was reportedly hiding in Dubai.

So how did Kampani front for Reliance Industries? Well he constructed Equator and Altitude to hoodwink the law. But the long arm of the law caught up with him. Reliance Industrial Investment & Holdings (RIIHL) is a 100 percent subsidiary of Reliance Industries. RIIHL is the vehicle through which 10.47 crore (6.66 percent) treasury shares of RIL were held. The RIL Annual Report 2007-08 shows RIIHL as a 100 percent subsidiary. The shareholding pattern of RIL for December 2008 shows the shareholding of the Petroleum Trust. The Petroleum Trust through the Trustees for the sole beneficiary – Ms RIIHL owning 6.66 percent. Since then Mukesh Ambani has extinguished the treasury stock through a buy back which left analysts in a tizzy.

Now RIIHL held the treasury stock through the Petroleum Trust and Nimesh Kampani was the Trustee of the Petroleum Trust. The scheme of Merger of reliance Petroleum Ltd and reliance Industries Ltd of 2002 – page no 166 – shows the provisions of the Trust created for five years. On December 9, 2004, Business Standard reported that Petroleum Trust was not part of the promoter holding in RIL. BS wrote, “Following the amalgamation of Reliance Petroleum with RIL, the shares of RIL were allotted to the trust. RIIHL, being a 100 percent subsidiary of RIL could not hold the shares of the parent company under law. So, the Petroleum Trust was created to house the newly created shares of RIL after the merger. But since the property belonged to RIIHL, it was named the ‘sole beneficiary’implying that all the financial benefits arising out of the ownership of RIL shares would flow to RIIHL.”

When the merger was announced in April 2002, it was stated by then RIL MD Anil Ambani that 12.2 percent (7.5 percent then held by the Trust and 4.7 percent held by RIL associate companies) would be sold to strategic investors, financial institutions or overseas via ADRs or GDRs in five years. The two trustees of the Trust were Nimesh Kampani and Vishnubhai B Haribhakti. But the BSE continues to show the Trust holding as part of promoter holding.

RIIHL formerly known as Trishna Investments and Leasings in turn controls 100 percent equity of Shinano Retail Pvt Ltd. Shinano is held by way of two inter woven and inter linked companies both held under inter se and RIIHL. Once again the leads are provided by the Annual Returns of Shinano Retail (registration no 176418) which held its first AGM as recently as September 22, 2008. The Annexure to clause V of the Companies Act 1956 details that RIIHL (Maker Chambers IV, 222 Nariman Point) and Teesta Retail (Chitrakoot, Shreeram Mills Compound, Worli) held 5000 shares each in the entity as of 22.9.08. Further, these shares were transferred in the names of RIIHL and Teesta by Reliance Elastomers and Reliance Industrial Enterprises respectively on 28.1.08. The same held good for Teesta Retail as well where RIIHL and Shinano Retail held 5000 shares each and the modus operandi was the same as these shares were transferred by Reliance Elastomers and Reliance Industrial Enterprises.

Now comes the classic RIL twist in the tale. Obfuscation being the core value, Shinano has funded Kavindra Commercials with Rs 1054 crore and an additional Rs 952 crore was given to Devki Commercials through convertible loans. Once again, operating through a maze of transactions, both Kavindra and Devki are held inter se and also through inter woven companies namely Teesta and Shinano, accordingly fully held by RIL through its subsidiary. Form 18 of Kavindra and Annual Return dated 26.9.08 of Devki clearly show their addresses as 84A Mittal Court, Nariman Point which are addresses of other Reliance owned entities used to make investments in media companies. Interestingly, schedule I, point number 8 in Annual report of RIIHL (wholly owned subsidiary of RIL) shows Shinano and Teesta as Associate companies from January 28, 2008.

The trail gets stronger when one gets to the balance sheet of Shinano for 2007-08 where schedule D, point number 5 in the notes to accounts shows loan of Rs 1054 crore from Shinano. Similarly the balance sheet of Devki for 2007-08 schedule B, point number 5 in notes to accounts shows loan of Rs 952 crore. Shinano lent an aggregate amount of Rs 2006 crore. Of this Rs 1054 crore is given to Kavindra and Rs 952 crore to Devki. The Annual Returns of Kavindra and Devki show the inter woven shareholding along with Shinano and Teesta.

It is here that Nimesh Kampani is rewarded for his loyalty by Mukesh Ambani. Remember that Kampani was the valuer during the family settlement between the two brothers presided over by the mother. Kavindra then diverted Rs 1054 crore received from Shinano to Altitude Mercantile and Equator Trading through debentures. Now the case gets curiouser. Altitude and Equator are owned privately by Nimesh Kampani. The balance sheet of Kavindra for the year 2007-08, schedule C shows investment of Rs 99.99 crore in debentures of Altitude and investment of Rs 954 crore in debentures of Equator. Devki did likewise, a mirror image of the transaction where it diverted rs 952 crore received from Shinano to Altitude and Equator through debentures. The balance sheet of Devki 2007-08 schedule C shows investment of Rs 100.49 crore in debentures of Altitude and investment of Rs 850 crore in debentures of Equator.

Form 2 filed by Equator Trading Enterprises shows allotment of 1,999,900,000 shares to Altitude Mercantile with 141, Maker Chambers 111, Nariman Point on January 30, 2008, making it a subsidiary. Similarly Form 18 and 32 of Altitude and Equator shows a common address as are the directors on the boards of the company. The crucial link then is Form 2 dated 29.1.2008 filed with the Registrar of Companies by Altitude which shows Kampani Properties and Holdings Ltd (holding 40 percent of the equity) and JM Assets Management holding 15 percent of the equity.

Altitude has used Rs 200 crores received from Kavindra and Devki to acquire equity shares of Equator. Altitude is having a paid up share capital of only Rs 1 crore. Form 2 filed with RoC shows shares allotted to Altitude. If your head is spinning with these names, then the objective has been achieved, for this veritable maze has been deliberately created to confuse the trackers. Equator then used Rs 1424 crores received from Devki and Kavindra to acquire 26,930 equity shares of Rs 100 each at a premium of Rs 528,630 per share of Ushodaya. Once again the paper trail gives the evidence. Since government of India makes it mandatory to make these filings, all this is recorded for posterity.

Form 2 dated 30.1.2008 filed by Ushodaya with RoC shows shares allotted to Equator and premium of Rs 528,630 per share paid. Media reports surface dated 2.2.2008 and 13.2. 2008 on investment in Eenadu Group by private companies of Nimesh Kampani. Ushodaya is the holding company of media baron Ramoji Rao who is the owner of Eenadu Group. Prior to the deal with Kampani, he owned 99.86 percent of Ushodaya.

Now with chief minister YS Reddy having died in an untimely helicopter crash, the decks have been cleared for Kampani’s return to India.

The moot point is that Mukesh Ambani’s octopus like tentacles across the media vector have not been understood by the common man. By enveloping Eenadu, he got a major foothold in the powerful regional media which was important for his retail plans at that point in time. He has also been fighting a legal battle with his brother on KG Basin gas and print and television mouthpieces would only add to his clout to spread disinformation. The idea at all times being to control without coming to the fore. By using his enormous financial clout he has managed to grab several entities. The question is whether they are the right vehicles in this age of fragmented and diffused media.

Find your genius

2009-09-05T11:44:00.002+05:30

By Robin Sharma

Genius is not the sole domain of a rare breed of person. Both you and I are entitled to that label and to play in that space -- if we so choose. Here's the big idea: Focus on any area or skill with a relentless devotion to daily improvement and a passion for excellence and within three to five years, you will be operating at a level of competence (and insight) such that people call you a genius. Focus plus daily improvement plus time equals genius.
Michael Jordan was a basketball genius. Was his spectacular success on the court purely the result of natural gifts? Absolutely not. He took what nature gave him and ran the formula: focus plus daily improvement plus time equals genius. He didn't try to be good at five different sports. He didn't scatter his focus. He just got devoted to being brilliant at basketball. And he was.
Thomas Edison registered a stunning 1093 patents over his lifetime and invented the lightbulb as well as the phonograph. He didn't try to be a great merchant and a great poet and a great musician. He focused on his inventions. He improved daily, and he let time work its magic. Genius came knocking.
Makes me think of a story about Pablo Picasso. One day, a woman spotted him in the market and pulled out a piece of paper. "Mr Picasso," she said excitedly, "I'm a big fan. Please, could you do a little drawing for me?" Picasso complied and quickly etched out a piece of art for her on the paper provided. He smiled as he handed it back to her, and said, "That will be a million dollars." "But Mr Picasso," the flustered woman replied, "it took you only 30 seconds to do this little masterpiece." "My good woman," Picasso laughed, "it took me 30 years to do that masterpiece in 30 seconds."
Know what you can excel at -- your genius. Discover your talents and then work like crazy to polish them. Know what you are really great at. Reflect on those abilities that others admire in you. Think about those capabilities that come easily to you. You might be a fantastic communicator or have a way with people. You might possess an extraordinary ability to execute and get things done. Perhaps your special talent lies in innovation and creativity and seeing what everyone else sees but thinking a different thought. Find your genius points and then develop them. Start today and in three to five years people will be writing about you. Calling you a genius. Celebrating your magnificence.
(DNA)

Great investing tips from Rakesh Jhunjhunwala

2009-08-30T10:09:00.001+05:30

August 14, 2007

"Markets are like women -- always commanding, mysterious, unpredictable and volatile," quipped 'Big Bull' Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (inset) while addressing a meet organised by Shailesh J Mehta School of Management, IIT, Bombay on August 10.

A champion broker, often termed as Warren Buffett of the Indian stock market, Jhunjhunwala had a full-to-the-brim auditorium spellbound as he traced how he made his fortune from a starting capital of Rs 5,000. His career path is stuff dreams are made of.

What earned him fame is his skill to pick under-valued stocks. Some of his renowned calls are Karur Vysya Bank, CRISIL and Bharat Electronics. There are, however, quite a few more. Talking about his company RARE (derived from the first two letters of his name and that of his wife Rekha) Enterprises, Jhunjhunwala says, "My company has only one client -- my wife -- so that I don't need to handle others' money."

One of the biggest bulls of the Indian market, Jhunjhunwala believes in trading by the hunches. "If in doubt, listen to your heart," is what he tells young investors. Extremely optimistic about India's growth story, Jhunjhunwala shared with his audience some valuable insights about the Indian economy, future of Sensex. Read on.

What paved the way to Jhunjhunwala's success?

A democratic growth process rather than an imposed one and a biological evolution, pat comes the reply.

He owes a lot to resurrection of a dormant and vigorous entrepreneurial gene of India. "The country has rediscovered its confidence."

There has been a strong improvement in

India

's macroeconomic indicators, combined with a robust banking system.

Improvement has also been observed in India's corporate performance, powered through productivity gains. Jhunjhunwala is convinced that on-going reforms would have a multiplier effect on India's economy.

Jhunjhunwala's investment strategies

Jhunjhunwala learnt investment strategies the hard way. And he was more than willing to share it with his audience. Here are a few gems from his book of learning

Necessary for any investor is optimism.
Be opportunistic but wait for the right moment
Study the market thoroughly. Refer to history
Maximise profits and minimise losses
Invest in a business not a company
Always have an independent opinion. Observe and read relevant information with an open mind
Be happy with your gains but learn to accept losses with a smile
Be prepared for challenges and risks

Predicting a brighter and better future for the Indian markets, Jhunjhunwala signed off by saying that the Indian markets will reach the peak by 2010.

Gems from Jhunjhunwala

For beginners in the market, here are a few invaluable gems from Jhunjhunwala's book:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Do something you love
The means are as important as the end
Aspire, but never envy
Be paranoid of success -- never take it for granted. Realise success can be temporary and transient
Build a fighting spirit -- take the bad with the good
When you see a horizon, it seems so distant. When you reach that horizon, you will realize how many more horizons are within reach

5 things you need to be successful

Asked how much patience should an investor have, Jhunjhunwala said, "Get married and you will understand how patient you need to be."

"Patience may be tested, but conviction will be rewarded," he asserted. He appealed to the budding investors to go by what George Soros said: 'It's not important whether you are right or wrong, it more important how much you lose when you are wrong and how much money you make when you are right.'

To be successful in investing, five things are critical. There has to be:

an attractive, addressable, external opportunity;
a sustainable competitive advantage
scalability and operating leverage; and
a qualified and integral management
Last but not least, it is of vital importance what one buys and at what price.

'India has everything'

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala believes that India has all ingredients that the stock markets value and hold in high regard. Some of them are:

Efficient capital allocation
Sustained earnings expansion driven by growth and productivity
8 per cent+ real GDP growth + 4%+ Inflation = 12%+ Nominal GDP growth
Corporates to grow faster than unorganised sector
Operating and financial Leverage to kick-in
Corporate earnings to grow at 18%+
Favourable framework for equity investing
Rising savings, yet low equity ownership -- significant potential
Corporate governance
Transparency
Effective regulation
Electronic trading
Dematerialisation
Tax paradise for equity investing under the STT regime

'Be realistic'

Jhunjhunwala also spoke about his beliefs that made a case for sustaining the India growth story.

He said enormous wealth was created over the last five years because opportunities in India have grown manifold.

Admitting that gains were going to be moderate in future unlike the manifold rise over the last few years, he advised investors to be realistic in their expectations.

'The market is always right'

Jhunjhunwala takes the cue from Warren Buffett's words: "Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well."

"Blindly following stock picks by big investors is not a wise thing to do," he warns investors. "I don't think the government is necessarily interested in hurting growth. The government is interested in growth with controlled inflation."

"The market," he says, "is always right. Markets cannot be taught, they have to be learnt."

"We must have an attitude where we must balance fear and greed," was the hot tip by one of India's most high-profile investor.

Why growth will continue

Speaking on the strength in India's fundamentals, Jhunjhunwala elaborated on forces that would sustain the growth momentum.

According to him, growth enablers (such as favourable demographics, higher base of skilled people and education base), liberalisation catalysts (such as competition), fall in interest rates, multiplier effect (on account of reforms), structural changes in quality of corporate earnings and micro trends (such as change in mindset of companies who are aspiring to become global) are likely to drive India's growth story to a higher level.

Billion dollar investing tips from Warren Buffett

2009-08-30T10:02:00.000+05:30

By N J Yasaswy
20 September 2007

Widely considered the most successful investor of all time, Warren Buffett is a luminous example of the school of value investing. Starting with an initial fund of $105,000 in 1956, Buffet grew it to $45 billion over the next 50 years, making him the second richest man in the world. Though he is widely recognized as being an investor, the bulk of Buffet's wealth was built through intelligent use of leverage offered by his insurance companies. Since most individual investors do not have access to the type of capital that Buffet does, it is not easy to replicate his astounding wealth-building feat. However, by understanding and applying the basic guidelines of Buffett's investment approach to their own investing decisions, most long term investors can comfortably beat the returns of all but the best mutual fund managers.
So, how did Buffet accumulate the huge fortune that he eventually gave away to the charitable foundation run by his best friend, Bill Gates? One of the greatest attractions of Buffett for investors is that his investment methodology is easy to understand. However, it is far more difficult to apply because it calls for large amounts of patience and calm when your stocks move against you. It is also difficult to apply because it requires an orientation towards research and the ability to understand the complexities of accounting and finance. But for those willing to invest time and effort into mastering this approach, superlative investment performance over the long term is guaranteed.

Invest in Businesses, Not in Stocks
This is the cornerstone of Buffett's investment style. Whenever he evaluates an investment opportunity he analyses it as a business and not as a stock. This makes him look closely at the company's fundamentals, earnings prospects, financial health and management. Conversely, this style of evaluating a business prevents him from buying a stock just because it is going up even though it has dubious prospects. A lot of investors tend to buy stocks based on tips from friends, acquaintances or brokers. By adopting Buffett's approach, you can save yourself a lot of grief later on.

Only Buy Businesses that You Understand
Buffett has a track record of generating 21 per cent annually compounded returns over a 50-year time frame, a feat matched by very few investment managers. Though technology companies delivered some of the best returns during this period, Buffet has never owned one for the simple reason that he could not understand the long term prospects of these companies and evaluate them thoroughly. So the next time you get a tip to buy a "hot" company that you do not understand, you should ask yourself: "If the greatest investor in the world will not invest in something he doesn't understand, should I?"

Buy Companies with Defensible 'Franchise'
Most of Buffett's portfolio companies, such as Coca Cola, Gillette (now Procter and Gamble), American Express and Washington Post, are businesses which have a significant hold over their market. This is because they have inherent competitive advantages, whether it be a highly recognizable brand, or near-monopoly status in a geographic area. Such companies can typically raise their prices without fear that customers will walk away. This in turn produces fantastic earnings growth and, consequently, great investment performance. So, before you make an investment in future, try to understand whether the company you are investing in has a strong and defensible market position and whether it can raise prices if it needs to.

Hold for the Long Term
Buffett's companies have generated enormous returns for him. For example, his investment of $10 million in 1973 in the Washington Post Company had grown to more than $1 billion by 2003. While a lot of us may be able to do this occasionally, Buffett has generated such returns with startling regularity. One of the reasons he is able to do so is because he holds for the long term and is not quick to enter or exit businesses. In fact, he stuck with WPC for two years even though its price fell below his purchase price because he understood the fundamentals of the business and believed that it was undervalued. Even once it became profitable, he was not quick to exit because he believed that it had greater potential. He held it through several bull and bear markets and no greater proof is needed than the return he achieved to show that he was right in holding it for so long.

Ignore Short-Term Fluctuations in Price
The stock market has a tendency to overreact on both the upside and downside. Often the market ignores the fundamentals of a business and reacts sharply to news flow. Sometimes entire sectors become either unduly depressed or overpriced. One of the key pillars of Buffett's approach is to ignore short-term fluctuations in price. He does not sell a stock because the market suddenly decides to drop. Neither does he buy one because it is going up. Once Buffett has calmly evaluated the fundamentals, he will buy the stock if its price is right. If the stock dips after he has purchased it, he does not worry so long as its fundamentals are good. Had he gotten jittery due to short-term price fluctuations, he would have been a lot less richer than he his currently.

Buy Good Businesses When Prices are Down
On 19 October 1987, all global stock markets crashed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average actually suffered a decline of 22 per cent, the greatest single-day drop in its history. Every stock on the market fell. Most people sold their holdings in panic that day. Buffett, however, was buying! He made the single largest stock purchase of his life that day. While all others around him hit the panic button, Buffet bought 10 per cent of Coca Cola for $1 billion. Not only was it his largest single stock purchase, he also became the single largest shareholder in the company. In his analysis, Coca Cola had a great business, great long-term prospects and the ability to expand because of globalisation. If the market was willing to sell it at an unreasonably cheap price, he wanted to scoop it up with both hands. And scoop it up he did! Coca Cola became one of the most successful investments in Berkshire's portfolio. By 2006, Buffett had made over $11 billion on Coke since he bought it.

Don't Be an Active Trader
Buffett is an atypical investor not only because he is highly successful, but also because he does not even look at stock tickers. He believes that trading too much is a tax-inefficient and costly approach to investing. Consequently, he has a very low turnover portfolio, very low brokerage charges and has not paid very much in the nature of capital gains taxes.

Do Not Over-Diversify
A striking aspect of Buffett's portfolio at Berkshire is the small number of stocks in it. This number has rarely exceeded 10 stocks. Buffett believes that there are very few outstanding investment opportunities at any given point of time and that one should invest enough in each of those to make a substantial difference. In contrast, most people fill up their portfolios with more than fifty stocks. As a result, even if a stock appreciates 100 per cent, the impact on their net worth will only be 2 per cent. Investors who want to generate truly outstanding returns should identify a small number of great businesses at the right prices and invest a significant amount of their money in each of them.

Invest Only When There is a Margin of Safety
"Margin of safety" is a slightly difficult concept to understand. It can be loosely defined as the difference between value and price. If the value of what you buy is higher than the price you pay for it, you have a high margin of safety. If the price you pay is greater than value, you have a low margin of safety. When the margin of safety is high, the investor need not worry about short-term fluctuations in price and can buy more if he or she has the resources to do so. Also, if you are investing in a situation with a significant margin of safety, you are likely to make a higher return because you are buying at a relatively low price.
However, how does one quantify this margin of safety? It is admittedly a grey area. There are seemingly scientific approaches, such as the discounted cash flow, which are taught in most corporate finance textbooks. In practice, though, it is both very subjective and very difficult for an individual investor to apply. However, there are other short cuts which are more approachable. Since the discounted cash flow ultimately crystallizes into the price / earnings (P/E) ratio, one way of estimating the margin of safety is to look at the P/E ratio. A low P/E means there is a margin of safety. But even this approach has its pitfalls. Slow growing, lousy companies often tend to have low P/E ratios. And, sometimes, very promising companies have high P/E multiples.
One way around this problem is to divide the P/E ratio by the growth rate of the company's profits to arrive at its price-earnings to growth ratio. Thus, if a company's P/E is 20 and the growth rate of its profits is 20 per cent, its PEG is 1. Oftentimes, a PEG of less than 1 implies that there is a significant margin of safety. A PEG of greater than one means that the margin of safety is not very high.
That said, PEG is not the holy grail of valuation and there are several ways to value a company -- and all these approaches have their flaws. You can consider your time well invested if you spend some time researching valuation by reading a corporate finance textbook.
Thus, Warren Buffet's investment approach is easy to understand, but calls for significant effort on your part to understand businesses, evaluate them and invest successfully but then, nobody said that becoming a billionaire was easy!

P/E – What is it all about?

2009-08-30T09:51:00.002+05:30

The most commonly used valuation metric by investors is the price to earnings ratio or commonly referred to as the P/E ratio. Though commonly used, it is also misunderstood for various reasons. Here is an attempt to simplify this valuation metric.

How is P/E calculated?

It is calculated by dividing market price of a stock by EPS (earnings per share). EPS in turn is calculated by dividing the net profit of the company by the number of shares outstanding.

Having calculated the P/E, what does it stand for?

Let’s assume a stock is trading at Rs 100 and its EPS is Rs 20. The P/E multiple is 5 (100 upon 20). Assuming that the company’s EPS is likely to be Rs 20 each year, it will take 5 years for the investor to realize Rs 100. Of course, the assumption here is that the company’s EPS is not growing at all.

Now taking the example of commonly traded stocks like Infosys and Tisco. While the former trades at a P/E multiple of 25 times, the latter trades at 7 times. Why is it so? It is believed that the stock price of a company tracks its long-term earnings growth potential. In an economy, some companies (or sectors) are likely to grow at a faster (like say software or pharma) rate. So, the P/E multiple of companies from these sectors are likely to be higher and vice versa. Depending upon growth expectations, the P/E multiple could vary.

There is one crucial factor here i.e. expectations. Though Infosys may be trading at 25 times earnings, if EPS is expected to grow by 25% per annum, the investor could realize the money in four years.

P/E – Is it a discount or a multiple?

There are two ways of quoting P/E valuations:

Tisco is currently trading at Rs 350 discounting its earnings by 5.5 times

Tisco is currently trading at Rs 350 at a P/E multiple of 5.5 times

Which is right? The answer to this lies in the formula for calculating P/E itself.

P/E is Market price divided by EPS. If we were to reverse the formula,

Market price = P/E multiplied by EPS. Stock prices reflect future earnings potential and not past performance. Discounting the current price with historical EPS is not a right way to analyse companies.

Take a hypothetical case. If Tisco’s EPS for the next year is expected at Rs 50 and the growth in EPS is around 15%, the market price is calculated by multiplying Rs 50 with 15 times i.e. Rs 750. When determining the stock price, one does not discount earnings but multiply earnings.

What is the ‘right’ P/E multiple for a stock?

The answer to this question is not easy. In the previous example, we have assigned a P/E multiple of 15 times because EPS is expected to grow by 15% in the immediate year. Is this the right way? Not necessarily. Here, it is important to understand industry characteristics of the company.

For a commodity stock like Tisco, EPS tends to grow at a faster rate when steel prices are recovering or are at the peak and the EPS is likely to decline at a faster rate during downturns. To qualify this statement, if we look at EPS growth of Tisco from 1994 to 2004, the compounded growth in earnings is 17%. However, the CAGR growth in the last three years was 193% (the recovery phase). So, if one believes that steel demand is likely to trace long-term economic growth and that 15% growth is unsustainable, the P/E multiple should be ideally much lower than 15 times. Similarly, the long-term growth prospects for software companies could be much higher than commodities. So, the P/E multiple for software stocks could be at a premium.

Determining the P/E multiple for a stock/sector also depends on:

Historical performance – Why does Infosys trade at a higher P/E multiple compared to Satyam? By historical performance, we mean, focus of the management (without unrelated diversifications), ability to outperform competitors in downturn/upturns and promise vs performance. This can be gauged if one looks at the last three to five year annual reports of a company.

The sector characteristics – Margin profile, whether it is asset intensive and intensity of competition. Less asset intensive sectors (say, FMCG) are considered defensive and therefore, could trade a premium to the overall market.

And more importantly, expectations. Take the case of textile stocks. Expectations of significant growth opportunities post the 2005 quote regime phase out has resulted in upgradation of P/E multiple of the textile sector.

When is P/E not useful?

Economic cycles - In FY02, Tisco was trading at a P/E multiple of 20.5 times its FY02 earnings. Was it expensive? Based on FY05 expected earnings, Tisco is trading at a P/E multiple of 5 times its earnings (at Rs 250). Is it cheap? If one ignored Tisco in FY02 on the basis that it was ‘expensive’ on the P/E multiple in FY02, the opportunity loss is as much as 350%. Businesses operate in cycles. During downturn, EPS will be low but P/E will be inflated and vice versa. At the same time, during expansionary phase, corporates invest in capacities. In this case, high depreciation costs suppress earnings. P/E, in this context, may mislead investors.

Not actively tracked – There are number of companies in the Indian stock market that are not actively tracked by investors, analyst and institutions. For example, Infosys’ average price was Rs 2 in FY94 and the P/E multiple was 17 times. At times, P/E multiple may be lower because some sectors/stocks are not in the limelight.

Expectations – On the downside, some stocks may be trading at a significant premium because earnings expectations are higher. High P/E also does not mean a good stock to buy. What if the expectations are unrealistic? One needs to exercise caution to this extent.

Means little as a standalone number – P/E, as a standalone number, means little. Besides P/E, it is also important to look at margins, return on net worth, cash generating ability and consistency in performance over the years to assign a value to a stock.

Market sentiment – During bear phases or when interest in stocks is low, valuations could be depressed. Since equities are considered less attractive during these periods, valuations are likely to be below historical average or below earnings growth prospects.

When is P/E useful?

A powerful metric – Unlike metrics like discounted cash flow method and so on, P/E is relatively a simple and at the same time, a powerful metric from a retail investor perspective. Though the factors behind determining the ‘right’ P/E multiple are important, a historical perspective of a stock’s P/E could make this exercise less complex.

To conclude, valuation of stocks involves subjectivity. A person X may assign a higher P/E multiple to the stock as compared to a person Y depending on the risk profile and growth expectations. In the end, it all boils down to how the company is likely to perform.

It is not that stock market is always right when it comes to valuing a stock! As Mr. Benjamin Graham puts it “in the short term, the market is a 'voting' machine whereon countless individuals register choices that are product partly of reason and partly of emotion. However, in the long-term, the market is a 'weighing' machine on which the value of each issue (business) is recorded by an exact and impersonal mechanism”. Watch the earnings!

To conclude, the P/E ratio is perhaps the single most important ratio in fundamental analysis. However it can't be used blindly. As always in stock investing you have to combine ratio analysis with careful judgement about the firm's management and future prospects.

A dog named Sex

2009-08-21T11:16:00.001+05:30

(Click on image for larger view)

Happy 62nd birthday

2009-08-15T10:32:00.001+05:30

Sixty-two candles
There are many bright spots to celebrate our post-independence achievements
Today is our sixty third birthday. We can brag about Taj Mahal or Mount Everest. But they existed since ancient times. There’s much that happened since 1947. So here are sixty two candles to light and celebrate our achievements.
(1) We are the only nation in the world which gave every adult the right to vote from its first day. In the US, the world’s second largest democracy, this right was given more than 150 years of independence.
(2) Just after birth we executed the world’s largest merger and acquisition activity, when 560 small princely states joined (merged) into the Union of India. Hardly any blood was spilt, nor any bullet fired.
(3) We have the most number of languages spoken in any one nation. 29 languages are spoken in India, by more than one million people each. (Canada almost broke up into two in 1960’s because of tension between English and French)
(4) More than 1650 dialects spoken.
(5) Fifteen major bloodless changes of power (Lok Sabha) at the centre
(6) Constitution drafted by a Dalit.
(7) Presence of largest number of ethnic groups.
(8) Largest diversity of races.
(9) Largest number of elected persons in the world (1 million).
(10) Largest number of elected women (panchayats etc)
(11) Among the very first countries to have a woman head of state.
(12) Has elected woman as Speaker, and Presi d e n t .
(13) One of only three countries that refused to sign Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on matter of principle.
(14) Developed nuclear technology indigenously under world boycott.
(15) Lowest cost producer of nuclear energy (1700 $ per kilowatt).
(16) Only country to develop thorium-based nuclear power
(17) Among first country to develop satellite for domestic communication.
(18) Lowest cost launcher of commercial satellites into space.
(19) One of only 5 nations to launch nuclear submarine.
(20) One of only five nations to send unmanned mission to moon.
(21) Lowest cost producer of steel.
(22) of aluminum.
(23) of cement.
(24) of fertiliser.
(25) Largest single location copper smelter
(26) Lowest cost delivery of wireless telephony.
(27) Fastest growing telecom market.
(28) Biggest user of the “missed call”.
(29) World’s lowest-cost supercomputer
(30) Lowest cost car (Nano)
(31) World’s largest producer of two-wheelers
(32) Largest single location oil refinery
(33) World’s largest milk producer (90m tonnes).
(34) Largest butter producer.
(35) World’s largest milk producing cooperative (2.6 million members)
(36) Among the largest producer and consumer of pulses.
(37) Second largest producer of sugar.
(38) Third largest producer of cotton.
(39) Largest importer of gold (700 tonnes).
(40) Largest consumer of gold.
(41) Ninety per cent of all diamonds polished and processed here.
(42) Third largest stock exchange (by number of transactions).
(43) Largest number of post offices (1.5 lakhs).
(44) Largest number of bank account holders.
(45) Largest number of agricultural plot holders (100 million).
(46) Largest inward remittance receiver from non-residents ($50 billion).
(47) Largest intra-country remittances
(48) World’s third largest railway network.
(49) Largest single employer – Indian Railways 1.5 million.
(50) Highest number of daily train passengers.
(51) World’s second largest airport (Delhi)
(52) Among world’s highest bridge (near Leh).
(53) World’s highest motorable pass (Khardung La 5600m)
(54) World’s largest number of movies produced annually.
(55) India’s mid-day meal scheme is world’s biggest school lunch programme (120 million meals served daily).
(56) National rural employment programme largest in the world.
(57) Third highest run getter in test cricket.
(58) Highest number of test and ODI centuries
(59) Kumbh mela is world’s largest religious congregation – 30 million pilgrims. Mostly incident free.
(60) Largest number of independently-owned newspapers
(61) Home of the sachet revolution and micro finance.
And finally (62) The world’s fastest-growing free-market economy.
Happy Birthday!
(MM)

Women hardwired to hate moms-in-law

2009-08-10T22:14:00.001+05:30

Melbourne: It’s the age-old power struggle that blights millions of marriages. And now, the reason behind feuding between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law has been answered — wives are programmed to dislike their partner’s mom.
In a new book, just released in Australia, Terri Apter, a psychologist and senior tutor at Newnham College, Cambridge in the UK, has suggested that even if a wife or girlfriend wanted to like her in-law, she already had an expectation they wouldn’t get along, reports the Daily Telegraph. However, Aussie experts reckon men are to be blamed.
Relationships Australia NSW CEO Anne Hollonds said: “It can be a great source of conflict and part of the problem sometimes stems from issues between the mother and son. The (issues) have not been resolved when he starts a new relationship.”
Apter’s analysis revealed that almost two-thirds of women complained they had suffered long-term stress because of friction with their husband’s mother. She says both women assumed that each was undermining the other.
“This mutual unease may have less to do with actual attitudes and far more to do with persistent female stereotypes that few of us manage to shake off completely,’’ she said. “Both mother and wife are struggling to achieve the same position in the family - primary woman,” she added. ANI

Why Murdoch is right on charging for online news

2009-08-09T10:20:00.001+05:30

By Madhavan Narayanan
The Web is abuzz after media baron Rupert Murdoch of New Corp said that his group's newspapers planned to charge for online news/content.
I have no problem with that. Though obituaries and criticism of such a move are afloat on the selfsame Net.
As an experienced journalist, I make a few simple observations.
It costs money to make people do reportage
Credibility comes from known sources that employ processes
Bloggers and others who simply extract published news from the Web and repeate it have no viable business model and breaking news cannot be ad-hoc.
If it is offered free, it has to be accounted in financial terms somewhere--at least by cross-subsidisation.
For more than a decade now, newspaper publishers have been shooting themselves in the foot in order to understand the new medium better.
They have tried to behave like news agencies, reporting 24/7
They have offered content free, only to find their own revenues and circulation falling.
They have invested in technology and branding, but online ads have not got the traction to take it beyond a point.
Above all, they have to suffer sites like Google News that looks like a newspaper and rides on free content from the papers and other online news sites.
Something's gotta give.
If Murdoch charges, will other newspapers see it as an opportunity or a threat? I don't know, but I do know that sooner or later, viable models for both credibility and profitability in online news has to come in.

Kishore Kumar, the only Genius I ever knew

2009-08-06T19:07:00.002+05:30

When Pritish Nandy interviewed Kishore Kumar for The Illustrated Weekly of India, Asia's oldest and most venerable magazine, it was a stunner. Posing with a skull on the Weekly's cover, the great singer gave Nandy, the magazine's editor, an interview that remains a hallmark of great interviews 24 years later.
In this special feature, exclusive to rediff.com, on the occasion of Kishore Kumar's 80th birth anniversary, Nandy, now a movie-maker himself, salutes the genius's memory.

I first met Kishore Kumar when I went to ask him to perform for the Filmfare Awards night.
I had just come to Bombay in the winter of 1982 and taken over, among many other things at The Times of India [ Images ], Filmfare magazine. I found the Awards ceremony in Shanmukhananda Hall awfully boring and couldn't keep my eyes open the first time we went to see it. Rina, my wife, kept pinching me to keep me awake.
Ashok Jain, who was then the chairman of The Times of India and had hired me, much against the wishes of many others, called me in the next morning and told me I must take charge of the Awards from the next year onwards and make them more exciting, get more stars to attend and participate in the event, and find a better sponsor who can give us the money for all this.
Among the first things I tried to do to make event more fun was to call on Kishore Kumar and persuade him to perform at the next Awards. He and I got on famously from our first meeting. Not because we were both Bengalis whose families could be traced back to Bhagalpur in Bihar, where our homes were almost contiguous, but because we bonded over horror movies, a rare passion in those days, which we both shared.
He promptly agreed to discuss the idea on three conditions: 1. I would not insist on staying back for dinner at his house, post our discussions, since dinner was an expensive proposition and much as he liked me he had no intention of feeding my face. 2. I would gift him a signed copy of my book of poems, Lonesong Street, which he claimed he had heard so much about, but had not read and had no intention of ever reading and 3. I would never ask him to lend me any of the horror movies in his collection nor try to borrow any money from him in the future which he claimed every journalist and everyone in the film industry had done at some time or the other.
I was barely 28. It was easy to agree. I said 1. Perfect, I had no intention of eating his stupid food and he could take it and stuff it wherever he wanted. 2. I would try and get him a copy of the book from Shanbhag at the Strand Book Stall who I knew had a few. 3. No sweat; his horror movies and his money were safe with him. I had no intention of getting within miles of either.
He smiled his strange smile and thus began our friendship on such firm ground. I must confess I stuck to all his three conditions and he was delighted to find someone from whom his money, his horror movie collection and his food was safe. I was also happy because I coveted none of them.
I enjoyed his company and found him absolutely delightful. I guess I was the only one because everyone else I knew thought he was a complete crackpot.
He was not. He was a genius and that is what I called him in the cover story I wrote on him in The Illustrated Weekly much later. In an industry of cracked people, he was possibly one of the sanest. He knew fully well what he wanted and there were only ten things in his cravings list. 1 to 8 was clearly money. 9 was fame and recognition. 10 was the love of beautiful women. But his problem was that he hated having to buy them expensive gifts. In fact, he hated having to spend money on them in any manner whatsoever. He would never buy them dinner, or so he claimed. He would never buy them any gifts. And, most important, he would never tell them where he stacked away his cash.
He advised me very seriously, I remember clearly: Never tell a woman, any woman, where your money is. Both will disappear at the same time, poof! I never asked him if that wisdom came from his personal experience. In fact, I never probed into his life at all. That strengthened the bond between us. We simply enjoyed each other's company. There were no strings attached.
Even to participate in the Filmfare Awards, he laid down three conditions: 1. His would be the Big, Big opening act of the show and the only one, after which the awards must be given out. 2. The show must be held outdoors on Chowpatty so that everyone could watch it on big screens put up on Marine Drive [ Images ], not just the invited guests. 3. The Mangeshkar sisters should not be invited for the event because they were too famous and would distract attention away from him.
I agreed to the first condition and told him that the second one was subject to police and BMC (then the Bombay Municipal Corporation) permissions, which were turned down and the event never eventually happened as a consequence. The third condition I thought was silly and told him so.
He said he would think over it and promptly named three producers I must in that case not invite to the event.
It was always a question of give and take with him. Not as transaction, but as a game. If you wanted anything from him, you had to give him certain things in return. The stranger you made your conditions, the more he loved you.
Once he offered to come to my flat in Walkeshwar from his Juhu [ Images ] bungalow in a convertible wearing only a towel and yodelling all the way if I would cut an album of Angrezi songs with him. He demanded I should write the lyrics and he would get RD (R D Burman) to score the music. He would record the songs himself. I had already walked away from my poetry a couple of years earlier, in pursuit of serious journalism, and refused to indulge him. He sulked and sulked, but there were never any hard feelings.
In fact, our friendship was largely based on the fact that we really had nothing much to ask of each other. I was not making movies at that time. I was an editor and a journalist. He was a singer and an actor, director, story writer who loved his profession but did not enjoy the people he had to work with all the time. In fact, that was his perennial complaint.
He hated the movie industry. He thought they were all peculiar, matlabi people who he had to constantly war with to get his rightful dues. He kept complaining to me how his producers never paid him, how his music company never paid him, how his wives never paid him for the pleasure of his company.
Was he serious? I doubt it. He loved money, yes. And he loved talking about it. For his act in the Filmfare event, where he was supposed to land on Chowpatty airdropped by parachute from the sky, with his orchestra guys, he kept telling me how he wanted a Huge sum of money for the act. When it actually came down to numbers, what he asked for only Rs 50,000. Money was a tamasha for him and I think he really made fun of it by talking so much about it. He was spoofing the obsession that others in the movie and music industry had for money by talking about it non-stop.
He told me once how he had hidden all his cash away so cleverly that leave alone the income tax guys, even his family would never find it after his death. I told him that was a silly idea. But he was adamant that his money was his money and no one had a right to it, he would do exactly what he wanted with it. And every conversation between us, when it ended in an argument or a deadlock, he would start singing some cracked coded song which was my job to decipher.
Long before I met Dr Robert Langdon in the Da Vinci Code, I had met a man who enjoyed puzzling others with his strange symbology and cryptograms, all of which sounded totally weird and puzzling, but had actually perfectly intelligent solutions. He thought them up (or at least appeared to) on the spur of the moment and loved playing the Mad Hatter at Alice's tea party.
For me, Kishore never really passed away. It's impossible for a man like him to die because he personified life itself. I remember him often. I occasionally discover stuff I had written on him in the past, notes and scribbles he had sent me, his notations for his songs. Since he couldn't read music, he created his own set of notations and brilliantly explained to me one day how he used them. He dreamt of singing along with one of the great philharmonic orchestras one day. He wanted so desperately to cut an album of English songs so that the world outside would notice and remember his work. He wanted to be rich and famous, much more than he was. And he was eager to hide his wounds from everyone. He had many I suspect.
No, Kishore was not a lonely man at all as many said he was. He enjoyed solitude (that was another bond we shared) and had the supreme pleasure of having himself for company. He loved himself to death and enjoyed his own company so much that I would often marvel at his ability to find every joy within his own heart. He hated sharing anything with anyone. He felt he owed nothing to no one. He certainly owed me nothing but I saw tears of joy in his eyes when I told him that I had fought with Naushad on the jury for the Madhya Pradesh [ Images ] Government Culture Awards. (I think they call it by some other name these days) to make sure that he was the first popular singer that ever got the music award. Naushad angrily walked out of the jury meeting but, to my delight, my friend Kumar Gandharva fully backed me totally and so did Mani Kaul. The rest all fell into line.
The funny thing was that by the time Kishore actually got the award from the MP Government, on someone's bright idea, the award had been renamed the Lata Mangeshkar Award!
He almost cried on the phone when he told me that.

Also read:
The Kishore Kumar interview by Pritish Nandy

The woman who would be queen

2009-08-02T21:38:00.002+05:30

It is commonplace to say that we get the leaders we deserve, but what have Dalits done to deserve Mayawati?
After centuries of oppression brought about by a caste system which forced them to live as outcasts, after hundreds of years of deprivation which gave them the most degrading of jobs with no possibility of any improvement, after decades of malnutrition and deadening illiteracy, the least they deserved was someone who fought real battles on their behalf. Instead, they got Mayawati, who fights battles only for herself using them as a shield to protect herself and who has shed neither blood, sweat nor tears for them (all she has shed is her second name).
A recent survey by a television channel brought out some astonishing results.Well over 80 per cent of those asked the question in UP were opposed to Mayawati putting up her own statues. That's as you would expect. But when Dalits were asked the same question, over 60 per cent found nothing wrong. Astonishing?Only at first glance.
It's easy for us who are educated and informed and have access to erudite opinions and analysis to forget that there is a huge mass of people at the bottom of the pyramid who react by emotion rather than reason. If this weren't so, we wouldn't have history-sheeters, dons and other assorted criminals as well as those who are openly corrupt and incompetent, winning election after election all over the country.
In that sense, the Dalit mindset is no different from that of the average Bihari who elected Lalu Yadav and his kin in spite of their known connection with one scam or another.This mind-set welcomes any sign that "one of their kind" has done well in life.
The means are not as important as the end, which is to enrich yourself materially, because that is proof that you have come out best in the struggle against an unjust society.
This mindset will also welcome all manifestations of defiance against the elite which has traditionally been the oppressor. Erecting statues to oneself (and, therefore, one of their own kind) is a thumb stuck in open defiance in society's face. The burning down of the house of Rita Bahuguna Joshi is a similar sign; in any case, how often have upper castes burned down the huts of Dalits for far smaller provocations?
But understanding a phenomenon is not to condone it. Let there be no two views on this: Mayawati is the most dangerous politician this country has had since Sanjay Gandhi. In her open defiance of any ethical standards; in her complete confidence that she sets her own norms and everyone better accept them or else; in her ruthless use of the instruments of state for patently illegal ends; in her no-holds barred self-enrichment in the name of the poor ; and in her totally unselfconscious drive to immortalise herself, she shows all the signs of megalomania exhibited by leaders of newly independent African countries, many of whom have taken their nations over the brink.
In this context, has anyone noticed how appropriate is the one accessory that always accompanies Mayawati's statues?Other leaders hold books, some are depicted giving speeches, some are shown gesturing like a teacher. Mayawati's statues stand rock still, a handbag in her hand.
That Mayawati has prospered so much isn't as shocking as is the active encouragement she has received. The most to blame is our media which began talk of her as a future prime minister when she won the last elections in UP. The media was so taken up with her so-called "rainbow coalition" of upper and lower castes than it failed to see that the first sign that Mayawati stood for was nothing but herself.
But all is not lost. Lalu's's example in Bihar is an interesting parallel. As soon as his erstwhile supporters found an alternative, they humiliated Lalu in the elections. The Dalits will one day do the same to Mayawati. Amen.

Goldman Sachs Internal Memo

2009-07-25T11:42:00.000+05:30

After all that federal aid, a resurgent Goldman Sachs is on course to dole out bonuses that could rival the record paydays of the heady bull-market years. Goldman… announced that it had earmarked $11.4 billion so far this year to compensate its workers. At that rate, Goldman employees could, on average, earn roughly $770,000 each this year.

—The Times.

Internal Memorandum No. 8121b

ATTN: Employees of Goldman Sachs

We did it. Bottom of the ninth, down by three, bases loaded, and we cranked another grand slam to the moon. They may have shot Lennon, but nothing can kill the Beatles.

I admit things looked bleak for a minute there. We had to convert to a bank holding company and were forced to accept a taxpayer bailout. It felt un-American. Terribly unbanksmanly. But we accepted the money, knowing that we could magically weave it into a much larger mountain of money.

We had a few hard months there, didn’t we? They regulated our corporate jet so that we could no longer use it to fly from hole to hole on the green. Dave had to drain his money pool to half capacity. I stopped injecting gold into my blood. They don’t call it a recession for nothing. One day, we’ll look back on the year we received only five-figure bonuses and laugh.

Wanting to celebrate our renewed success is natural, but it’s important that we don’t go crazy here. Remember, ten per cent of the non-bank country is unemployed, and even those who are working have “real” jobs, where payment is proportional to the creation of a “product” or a “service.” Those poor bastards. So I ask that, in celebrating our raping of the stock market, we show restraint in the following ways:

Please limit high-fives and chest bumps to a dozen a day.
Don’t wear your crowns, except around the office.
Stop paying for things in Monopoly money—I understand it is the same as real money to us, but there have been some complaints.
For now, let’s take down the giant scoreboard that reads “Main Street: zero. Wall Street: a billion gazillion bajillion.”

Furthermore, to avoid drawing criticism from the press, this year the bonuses, expected to be comically large, will be distributed in blood diamonds, which can be easily concealed in a briefcase so it looks like we’re working.

I’d like to thank everyone who made this possible—for a second time. Respect to President Obama for keeping us in the green. Thanks to the big guy upstairs (me). And let’s not forget all the ordinary Americans, who, for some unfathomable reason, have refused to put us behind bars. We are literally taking money out of their wallets. Seriously, with these returns we are making Madoff look like a little kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. Amateur!

Yours in money,

Lloyd Blankfein, C.E.O., Goldman Sachs

(The New Yorker)

The 'tapli' that changed Sachin Tendulkar's life

2009-07-19T18:39:00.000+05:30

Nagpur: A function dedicated to the most revered coach of Indian cricket can’t be complete without anecdotes of days when present day stars were just starry eyed teenagers. The felicitation function of Ramakant Achrekar titled Gaurav Guru Shishyancha, (in honour of the coach and his pupil) held here on Saturday was no different. Sachin Tendulkar and Praveen Amre walked down the memory lane to pay rich tributes to their respected ‘Sir’.
Setting aside the recent controversy, Tendulkar gracefully shared the stage with Vinod Kambli, along with BCCI president Shashank Manohar, who presided over the function organised by the local Thakre Mahavidyalaya & Thakre Arts and Cultural Academy. On the occasion, Achrekar was presented with a purse of Rs 5 lakh.
Speaking at the function, Tendulkar recalled the tapli (slap on the head) from Achrekar that played a major part in moulding his career. “I remember when I was a 12-year-old and used to play for Shardashram junior team. Our senior team reached the final of Harris Shield and I wanted to cheer them. But Sir told me to play a practice match on the same day. “I skipped the match to watch the final which we won. After the match I saw Sir and went to greet him. He asked me how much I scored in the practice match, though he knew I had bunked it. He then gave me a sound tapli on my head. Such was the impact that the tiffin box I was holding fell ten feet away.
“He told me I shouldn’t skip matches to sit beyond the boundary and clap for others. He told me that I should work hard to improve my game so that others come to watch me play and clap for me. I felt bad then. “But now, when I look back, I think, but for that tapli, I wouldn’t have achieved what I have till now.’’
Amre traced Achrekar’s greatness to his sheer commitment. “Sir has dedicated so much for us. Even on the day his only son died he was at the ground for us. And that’s the reason why he has been able to produce cricketers like Sachin,’’ he said.
Manohar compared Achrekar and Tendulkar to Mahabharata’s Dronacharya and Arjun. The board president also mentioned how Achrekar would chide his wards for throwing away their wickets. “I remember the 1992-93 Durban Test where Alan Donald and Brett Schultz reduced India to 38-4 on a bouncy pitch. Amre scored a brilliant century on debut before getting out to a bad shot. That evening, when Amre called up Achrekar, he said, ‘you scored a century, that’s good. But how did you get out?’
“The general opinion remained that Achrekar’s hallmark was not curbing the natural instinct of his wards. When Kambli hit a six off the first ball he faced on his Ranji debut, Dilip Vengsarkar who was at the non-striker end asked him what he was up to? Kambli replied, “I am doing what my coach has taught me to do. If you get a loose ball, hit it, that’s what I have done,” Manohar recalled.
(ToI)

Let Air India fade away like HMT and IDPL

2009-07-19T18:23:00.002+05:30

SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR (ToI)

Air India lost Rs 5,000 crore last year, and is surviving on huge government handouts. Opposition politicians are critical, but reject any cut in its bloated staff. Across the world, airlines are reducing staff in the recession. But Air India staff — labour aristocrats paid several times the average Indian wage — are unsackable. Instead, civil aviation minister Praful Patel proposes to hive off surplus staff to some new corporations. Problem: the new corporations, with the same faulty staff and culture, may suffer the same fate as Air India.
Patel says, rightly, that airlines across the world have been hammered by the recession. Jet and Kingfisher have big reputations, but are also in the red.
When the recession struck last year, Jet proposed cutting its staff by 1,900, and Kingfisher too. But politicians, trade unions and the media created a ruckus. Jet and Kingfisher were not allowed to slim down like airlines across the world: instead they were allowed to pile up unpaid fuel bills.
The recession is estimated to have cost 1.5 million jobs — the Left says 15 million — in labour-intensive industries like textiles. Our labour laws protect unionised workers from retrenchment, but low-paid casual workers have been laid off. Politicians murmur sympathy for the millions of casual workers laid off, but their outrage is reserved for any sacking of the labour aristocracy, such as the staff of Air India or Jet.
Patel is being criticized for various reasons, some legitimate and others not. Air India has never been viewed by politicians as a commercial venture. Rather, it has been a vehicle for serving VIPs and satisfying political pressures to fly to certain destinations, whether commercial or not. Plane purchases have been dogged by allegations of kickbacks. Naturally, Air India managers are not focused on efficiency or profitability. This is one reason why the merger of Indian Airlines and Air India has failed.
In 2004, Air India increased orders for new planes from 24 to 68. It had sales of Rs 7,000 crore but placed orders for aircraft worth Rs 35,000 crore at a time of increasing competition. Instead of selling surplus planes and canceling orders, Patel insists that new planes are needed to replace old ones. Phooey, say critics, who smell something rotten in the purchase deals.
Patel has been lambasted for signing bilateral deals with several countries to expand international flights. This, say critics, has enabled foreign airlines to greatly improve their market share at the expense of Air India.
On this count, we should actually congratulate Patel for bringing real competition after decades into air traffic. International competition has been buttressed by competition from private sector airlines like Jet and Kingfisher. This new competition has greatly increased passenger choice and convenience, reduced fares, and improved quality. Passengers have never had it so good. If millions of passengers have benefited while Air India has wilted, we should cheer, not complain.
A good civil aviation minister must maximize the interest of air passengers, not public sector behemoths. Praful Patel has done so, and needs full support in this respect. He must hold steadfast to his excellent policy of liberalizing the skies. If this means a sliding market share for Air India, so be it.
Some people will berate me for trying to bury what is widely called the national carrier. But the very concept of a national carrier dates from the bad old days of government monopoly when only a handful of airlines were allowed to fly internationally. Now that we have competition, we have no reason to call a public sector carrier the national carrier. Competition may indeed throw up one or more national champions, but this will arise from top performance in serving passengers, not in catering to VIPs or political pressures. Passengers might one day prove with their wallets that Jet is the national airline — it has an international reputation for quality, and could build on this. But passengers view Air India as a national disgrace, not a national champion. The proof lies in Air India’s empty seats.
One way forward is to privatise Air India, as was done earlier to British Airways, Lufthansa and other “national carriers.” If this proves politically impossible, then Air India should be allowed to lose market share and slide gently into insignificance. That after all has been the fate of inefficient public sector corporation like Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT), Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd (IDPL), and Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC). Once called national champions, they have faded away, and India is the better for it. Let Air India go the same way.

Cheers, Narendra Bhai!

2009-07-19T18:12:00.002+05:30

A bottoms up ode to the long tradition of prohibition in Gujarat
Sylvester da Cunha(ToI)

Following the liquor tragedy in Ahmedabad, Mr Narendra Modi has sprung into action. He has formed the Gujarat Beverages Corporation (GBC) to urgently streamline the state’s prohibition policy. Top priority will be given to identifying the poisonous adulterants used in the distillation of hooch. So far the list includes boot polish, wood varnish, paint thinners, battery acid and other industrial products.
The GBC will call upon the manufacturers to make these chemicals fit for human consumption. Their supply will then be channelised through ration shops and made available at subsidised prices to those below the poverty line. Purchasers will be required to prove that they are deserving addicts by producing a certificate from a doctor, priest or bar tender.
Makers of the concerned products will henceforth have to register under the new Adulterants Quality Act. They will be subject to a new Nutrition Tax levied at 76.5% ad valorem. Quotas will be reserved for shoe polish addicts, wood varnish abusers, paint-thinner junkies and other scheduled categories.
The imposition of Prohibition is said to deprive the state of around Rs 3,000 crore annually. But this is not totally lost to the economy. Haftas and bribes extorted by the police and excise authorities have merely diverted most of the funds from government coffers to private pockets. Classical economists describe this as a ‘Transfer of Wealth’—a desirable process in a democratic society. To enhance state revenue therefore GBC will propose a steep increase in police raids, excise harassment, stop-andsearch arrests.
To study the social effects of Prohibition in other countries, a plan to visit Saudi Arabia was contemplated but later shelved. “Cutting off offenders’ ears and hands may be too advanced a deterrent for Gujarat, just as yet.’’ The United States has been selected as a country worthy of study. An earlier government visit had praised Prohibition for having promoted many cultural forms there. Dance had
thrived, particularly the Quickstep and Charleston. So had music with jazz, swing and Italian opera (the latter popular with the Mafia.) Literature too had flourished during this time (My 10 Years in the Pen, author unknown).
Vijay Mallya has been openly criticising Gujarat’s Prohibition policy, describing it as totally out of date. In a bid to quieten him, government will allow the launching of his drinks in the state. His well-known brands of whiskies and brandies will be freely available, albeit in a non-alcoholic form. Their sale is expected to be phenomenal, but not due to Gujaratis en masse taking the pledge. Rather it would be the result of smugglers using the ‘virgin’ liquor to dilute the potent versions, secreted into the state.
As a further sop, Kingfisher Airlines will be allowed to operate from all Gujarat’s major cities to London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Blackpool, Wolverhampton, and 123 other destinations around the world. The flights will be called the Patel Special flying on Mondays, the Shah Stream on Tuesday, the Desai Dart on Wednesday, and the Modi Meteors on every other day of the week.
All this is expected to trigger a huge shift of passengers from Air India. The national airlines is already in the red, and Kingfisher’s move will further colour its balance sheet. Mr Praful Patel may now be invited to accept the post of Chairman, Kingfisher Red.

Michael Jackson: better off dead?

2009-07-12T20:57:00.002+05:30

Elvis Presley and John Lennon have long since established the rule that some stars are worth more dead than alive. Michael Jackson, a sales record breaker in his lifetime, looks set to become even more of a phenomenon in the afterlife. According to sales statistics compilers Nielsen Soundscan, Jackson sold 2.6 million digital songs in the US last week, easily a one-week record. More than 110,000 physical Jackson albums were purchased in the US during the first two days of this week alone, with music trade magazine Billboard estimating Jackson accounted for about 60% of all U.S. album sales, and suggestions that he could secure the top 9 album chart places. If you extrapolate those sales across the world then it looks like Jackson’s death may turn out to be the most lucrative in pop history. Amazon.com sold as many Jackson albums in the 24 hours after his death as it had managed to flog in the previous 11 years, while HMV saw an 80-fold jump in sales of his recordings, and reported that Jackson was outstripping sales of Presley and Lennon after their deaths. His 198tk single ‘Man In The Mirror’ is currently fighting it out for the number one spot in the UK with Cascada’s ‘Evacuate The Dance Floor’ (I wonder why that one in particular? Perhaps because it hints at psychological trouble and self doubt, while remaining uplifting, while covering all musical bases by shifting from a quasi ballad to a dance floor workout).
But in terms of monetizing Michael Jackson’s death, this is just the beginning. And it could get ugly.
There have been reports that concert promoters AEG live have already invested $30-$50 million in what would have been, if all had gone according to plan, the highest-grossing arena engagement ever. “People have speculated that this is going to bankrupt our company,” AEG’s CEO Randy Phillips told Billboard magazine, before adding, confidently: “It isn’t.”

Phillips is the man who earlier dismissed reports of Jackson’s frailty, commenting on May 21st, “I would trade my body for his tomorrow. He’s in fantastic shape.” I thought Phillips might keep a low profile, but then perhaps he was right. Dead is fantastic shape for commercial opportunities. Apparently AEG own video and audio footage of Jackson’s dress rehearsals, which it is planning to release. “It is our responsibility and fiduciary duty to the estate to monetize as much of these assets as we can under the original contract, because the majority of the profit would go to the estate.” So that’s alright then.

Discussions are also in place to fill in at least some of the 50 dates at the O2 with a Michael Jackson tribute show, using Jackson’s own stage production. Phillips says AEG is already receiving calls from interested artists, and names mentioned in internet rumours include Justin Timberlake and the Jackson brothers themselves. “We have the most breathtaking production ever created for an arena, and it’s all Michael Jackson’s vision as directed and executed by Kenny Ortega,” according to Phillips. “It would be some closure for fans who have nowhere to really express their emotion and are looking for a place.”

All of this interest in the well-being of the fans might sit more easily if AEG hadn’t made such a blatant attempt to fleece people who bought tickets for Jackson’s comeback. More than $85 million worth of tickets had been sold for the O2, and, as expected, AEG quickly offered full refunds, including all ticket charges. Unless, of course, you should want to take them up on their fantastic offer to be sent the actual tickets they would have received to attend the shows (in lieu of the full refunds). I have to say I saw this one coming a mile off, but there is still something breathtaking about such blatant exploitation.

So let’s get this straight. Somebody who has spent around £75 to go to a gig, is being offered a souvenir ticket in its place, a printed piece of paper that they should have received anyway, with something like a 7500 per cent mark up in price. AEG claim the tickets were “inspired and designed” by Michael Jackson. Who knew that alongside all his other talents he was a graphic designer? But, of course, being fans, many people will take up AEG’s kind offer, so that they can frame it and remind themselves that they should have been there.

Given that these tickets are presumably already printed, it might have been a suitable gesture if AEG had sent them out anyway, since they have effectively been profiting (in bank interest) from the fans investment for several months already. And if the tickets haven’t been printed yet, then they can’t really claim to be authentic at all.

It all reminds me of the perhaps apocryphal story that, on a previous occasion when Jackson cancelled a show, he refunded disappointed fans with personal signed cheques made out for the ticket price amount, knowing full well that few fans would actually cash such an item. “The world lost a kind soul who just happened to be the greatest entertainer the world has ever known,” said Phillips in his official statement. “Since he loved his fans in life, it is incumbent upon us to treat them with the same reverence and respect after his death.” In other words, take them for everything they can.

(The Telegraph)

Have authorities in Bengal taken leave of their senses?

2009-07-11T18:19:00.002+05:30

The name Anuj Pandey has not received the acclaim that is due from economists. Should you be unfamiliar with his accomplishments, Anuj Pandey is the secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist's zonal committee in Lalgarh.
As a full-time worker, the CPI-M [Images] pays him the none-too-handsome salary of Rs 1,500 every month. And yet Anuj Pandey and his brothers somehow managed to put up a handsome two-storey house (as well as reportedly end up owning 40 bighas of land).
It is said to be the only two-storey house in the area -- one of the poorest in West Bengal [Images] -- and seemed to have been a handsome structure judging by its photographs.
A salary of Rs 1,500 a month is not exactly a generous amount, it works out to just 50 rupees a day. (Even less in months with 31 days!) Currencies fluctuate a lot but Anuj Pandey's salary puts him dangerously close to the often-quoted international definition of poverty as a 'dollar a day'. So how exactly did the Pandey family manage to put up a house, the finest one for miles around?
The Pandeys' not-so-humble abode does not exist any longer; its high roof, its railed balcony, and its marble floor now exist in memory alone. When the Maoists conquered Lalgarh one of the first places that was attacked was Anuj Pandey's house.
Intriguingly, the ones who pulled it down do not seem to have been the armed guerrillas themselves but the local tribals. Judging by the photographs taken on the occasion, the men were drumming and the women were ululating.
Those are the same rhythmic beats and the same high-pitched trills made in rituals like, say, weddings or birth ceremonies.
In fact, there seemed to have been much the same air of mingled solemnity and celebration when the Pandey dwelling came down as during any other mass religious rite. Some observers even say that there were the same calls to gather and bear witness.
The cynic in me says that at least some of this was stage-managed by the Maoists, people who know a thing or two about propaganda. But you cannot get away from the stark reality of the photographs, which showed a two-storey house towering up in an area where most other human dwellings were, to put it politely, rudimentary.
Those photographs give the lie to all the Marxist claims of development in West Bengal. Judging by Lalgarh, 32 years of unbroken Marxist governance has delivered little or nothing to the ordinary person with all the goodies being hogged by the Communist cadre.
That is no excuse for the violence unleashed by the Maoists in West Bengal or elsewhere but it helps to explain the environment in which they flourish.
I am sure the West Bengal authorities can put down the insurrection. But what comes after that, how does the ruling CPI-M propose to win the hearts and minds of the alienated tribal population? Does it really think that its zonal committee secretary, Anuj Pandey, is the right man for the job?
It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee [Images] government and its minions are now alienated from the people. What was the first -- thus far the only -- case filed after the Lalgarh police station was 'liberated' from Maoist control?
It was, believe it or not, against the likes of director Aparna Sen [Images], poet Joy Goswami, actor Kaushik Sen, and five others for violating Section 144 (which prohibits unlawful assembly of five or more people).
The eight of them had apparently gone in a group to meet Chhatradhar Mahato [Images] and urge him to stop the violence. (Mahato is the leader of the Police Santrash Birodhi Janasadharaner, the 'People's Committee Against Police Atrocities').
You cannot be blamed for wondering if the authorities in West Bengal have taken leave of their senses. One may have little sympathy for the drawing-room socialists of Kolkata [Images], one should have absolutely no sympathy for Maoists who worship violence, but is it truly the West Bengal authorities' highest priority just now to take actors and poets into custody?
Would the CPI-M ever demonstrate the same zeal in unearthing the mystery of how a man who earns 1500 rupees a month manages to put up a two-storey house?
Who are the beneficiaries of decades of Left Front rule? Not Muslims, according to the Sachar Committee. Not rural Bengal, judging by what happened in Singur and Nandigram [Images]. Not tribals, if we believe even a small fraction of the reports emerging from Lalgarh. Not even the intellectuals of Kolkata, whose disillusionment is now all too clear.
The stark picture coming out of West Bengal is of a vast wasteland of poverty and brutality broken only by the occasional symbol of prosperity -- such as Anuj Pandey's late, unlamented house.
(T V R Shenoy - Rediff)

Netas and babus can outsmart smart cards

2009-07-05T18:58:00.001+05:30

By SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR
Dear Nandan Nilekani
Nobody is better qualified than you to head the governments project to create an identification number for every citizen, buttressed with a smart card that allows governments, banks and other institutions to interact with every citizen. In theory this could transform the quality of governance, weed out corruption and waste, and end poverty by helping target the poor. I wish you luck.
Smart ministers (like you) are better than dumb ministers. Yet low-level netas and babus have long outwitted smart ministers. Your book Imagining India cites Rajiv and Rahul Gandhi as saying that only 5-15 % of programme funds reach beneficiaries. Sadly, implementing officials are unaccountable and unsackable . So, your challenge is not to create smart cards so much as to outsmart the saboteurs along the line.
The government already issues ration cards, PAN cards, voter cards, and job cards. All are riddled with leakages and gaps. All suffer from ghosting (cards issued to non-eligible or non-existent persons) and missing out (deserving people do not get cards, especially the poor and illiterate).
The government has issued 223 million ration cards, but India has only 200 million households . It has issued 80 million BPL (below poverty line) ration cards although the number of poor households is under 65 million.
PAN cards for income tax payers, issued by renowned IT companies, are a fiasco. Several people have multiple PAN cards, while others have none.
Voter ID cards have been issued for a decade. Yet, millions of voters find their names missing from the rolls, many have not got cards, and many dead voters remain on the rolls.
Job cards are being issued for employment schemes. Yet, we have reports of substantial ghost cards and missing beneficiaries.
Your book says that the government has data on people in various silos, but these are not interconnected . A national ID card with electronic capability can connect the silos, improve government-citizen interaction, and so transform governance. And yet, as your book itself says, e-governance will remain a showcase unless governments are serious. Alas, many are not.
Gyandoot in Madhya Pradesh, Indias first e-governance scheme, won an international prize. Today, it is dysfunctional because data are not constantly updated and made accessible to citizens. Gyandoot started off smart but ended up dumb.
Economist Lant Prtichett says India is not a failed state, but is a flailing state. Its very capable head is not reliably connected to the arms and legs of implementation... the agents of the state routinely do not implement the tasks they are assigned.
Driving licences are imposed to improve driving standards. But the licensing process is so painful that most applicants simply pay a tout to get a licence, without undergoing a real driving test. Attempts to reduce absenteeism of nurses in Rajasthan failed because staff ensured that devices to monitor attendance did not work. Pritchett gives many examples of non-implementation .
Government servants are responding to perverse incentives. They dont get rewarded for satisfying citizens. But officials who extort suffer no penalty, and get promoted in cahoots with corrupt netas. Such a system is quite smart, but has no interest in service delivery.
If the implementers have no interest in service delivery, can a smart card outsmart them ID cards can check illegal immigration. But if the ruling parties of West Bengal and Assam view illegal immigrants as vote banks, will they really use smart cards to crack down When chief ministers demand huge sums to post officials to lucrative posts, will they use smart cards to undercut this patronage network Contractors in every state are party cadres. Will chief ministers bankrupt their own cadres by using smart cards to check waste and corruption Such examples can be multiplied a hundredfold.
Smart cards can transfer funds directly to the needy. In theory, governments can replace a hundred anti-poverty schemes and subsidies with cash transfers, eliminating leakages. But this wont happen because politicians view the poor as too small a votebank, and prefer distributing largesse to others they dont see this as leakage. Hence, they favour free water and power for all farmers, not just poor ones.
I fear that that even if you create a smart card to deliver cash to the poor, politicians will not wind up a single subsidy or anti-poverty scheme. Smart cards may become just one more scheme, with its own leakages and omissions.
My aim is not to deride your task, but to highlight its problems. I have great respect for your acumen. I hope you will outsmart all the saboteurs on Indias electronic path. But i wouldnt bet on it.

The Nano and its Discontents

2009-07-04T20:33:00.002+05:30

As the Nano is launched to the accompaniment of thunderous acclaim in the national and trade press, Venu Madhav Govindu and Deepak Malghan - academics from the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore - raise several searching questions on the appropriateness of the Nano model of industrialisation
The launch of the Nano car marks the culmination of a long and controversial journey for its manufacturer, Tata Motors. For India’s corporates and its middle-class, the arrival of the ‘world’s cheapest car’ is a proud moment when their country finally enters the world-stage. Such an air-brushed story, however, elides the serious questions that lurk within the cross-country transposition of the Nano factory.
Despite being touted as a success story of corporate India’s capabilities, the Nano’s cheapness is only possible due to the largesse bestowed upon the Tata’s by that bete noire of the free-market, the lumbering Indian state. It is an open secret that the Nano is deeply discounted because of very large Government subsidies that have neither been scrutinised nor justified. While the Chief Minister of West Bengal had claimed the TINA factor in rolling out the red carpet for this car project at Singur, his Gujarat counterpart feels even less compelled to explain his executive decisions that made the move to Sanand attractive.
How is it, one might ask, that inveterate, ideological foes are united in their embrace of the Nano? The obvious answer lies in their political calculus, based on middle-class support for the Nano model of industrialisation. However, the explanation for this groundswell of support has to go beyond the usual political and economic analysis. To fully understand the sociological and psychological underpinnings of the Nano saga, we have to step back a full century in time.
A hundred years ago, in September 1908, the first Ford Model-T was rolled out in Detroit. Inspired by the ‘dis-assembly lines’ of a Chicago slaughterhouse, the assembly-line technique was introduced to keep up with the growing demand for the car. With this move, the modern age of mass production, mass consumption, and if one might add, mass destruction was inaugurated.
Since the late eighteenth century, thanks to Adam Smith, the relationship between division of labour and economic productivity was well understood. In his Wealth of Nations, Smith had introduced the pin factory metaphor where each worker perfected just one specialised task rather than crafting an entire pin. However, the jump from a simple pin factory to the vastly more complex Model-T assembly line was a leap of faith. By ushering in the biggest increases in economic productivity since the Industrial Revolution, the Model-T assembly line would go on to transform the social, cultural, and economic landscape of America and beyond.
Thanks to the productivity of the new assembly line, Henry Ford was able to pay higher wages that converted his workers into his customers. The subsequent reshaping of the way of living and thinking by the assembly line has been crucial to American economic and military domination in the twentieth century. Beyond cars and wars, every aspect of modern consumerism is fuelled by assembly line production. Not only do assembly lines determine how we work, but also what we eat, and where we live.
The domination of the assembly line in our contemporary lives is so complete that it has transformed citizens vested with rights and duties into individual consumers fully preoccupied with exercising their choice to buy from an array of goods. Thus, the assembly line is not merely a technical innovation. Rather it is a ‘technics’ - a set of ideas, values and methods embedded within mass production - that has permeated the very fabric of our society as well as our minds. It is in this sense that we must view the Indian middle-class conception of car-ownership as a ‘right’ and their enthusiastic support for the Nano as a triumph of Henry Ford.
Admittedly, a century of assembly line production has resulted in economic prosperity for hundreds of millions around the world. However, this rapid global rise in living standards has imposed large social and ecological costs, mostly borne by people at the bottom of the heap. Further, the modern assembly line has reduced individuals to mere cogs in the wheel of global economic production.
Recognising such problems, influential thinkers have countered the preeminent role occupied by the assembly line model in economic production throughout its hundred-year history. Frederick Taylor, one of the founders of modern scientific management recognised the monotony for the worker even as he advocated the assembly line method in the interest of increasing productivity. In the early 1930’s, the Italian Marxist intellectual, Antonio Gramsci observed that the combination of Ford’s assembly line and Taylor’s scientific management were primarily responsible for the prevailing ‘hegemony’ in America. For Gramsci, Fordism was central to the idea of ‘Americanism’.
Contemporaneous with Gramsci’s critique, Aldous Huxley’s 1932 classic, Brave New World is perhaps the most enduring portrait of the impact of the Model-T assembly line on our lives. Huxley’s satirical technopia is set in seventh century A.F. (After Ford). The year 1908 when the first Model-T rolled out heralds the beginning of the ‘era of Ford’ in Huxley’s calendar. The assembly line is so overwhelming of society that Huxley’s characters worship “Our Ford” and wear T’s instead of the Cross. Recognising the bleakness of the world he had created, some fifteen years later, Huxley admitted that if he were to rewrite the book, he would present a third alternative that is neither utter destitution nor a disastrous technopia.
The intimate relationship between economic production on the one hand, and justice, freedom, and dignity on the other finds its most clear and profound expression in the life-work of Mahatma Gandhi. As the world enters the second century A.F., we will do well to look back at Gandhi’s fundamental critique of mass production. Gandhi’s pioneering critique contains a grammar for both resistance and renewal that is at once social, moral and aesthetic.
While he was the pre-eminent leader of India’s struggle for political independence, Gandhi’s fundamental concern was with individual freedom and dignity. Indeed, by 1935, Gandhi formally retired from Congress politics to devote all his energies to the social and economic rejuvenation of India. During the inter-war period, many Indian leaders and intellectuals saw the Bolshevik experiment as an antidote to the depredations of global capitalism. However, for Gandhi the choice between socialism and capitalism was a false one since it hardly mattered for the common man whether the state or the market controlled the levers of the political economy. Indeed, Gandhi recognised early on that the combination of state socialism and assembly line industrialisation leads to less, and not more freedom for the workers.
For Gandhi, freedom and dignity for all required representative democracy to be firmly tied to political decentralisation. The crucial insight he provided was that such a deepened conception of democracy was possible only with economic decentralisation. Thus, in Gandhi’s political economy, the primary focus is neither the state nor the market but freedom and justice for every individual in society. Consequently, Gandhi demanded that the interests of the state and the market be made secondary to that of society. However efficient, assembly-line industrialisation was no answer to these considerations as it inevitably robbed the individual worker of his or her basic freedom and dignity.
It is an unrelenting pursuit of the ideals of freedom and dignity that lead Gandhi to advocate reorganising India around its villages. His insistence on the village as the locus for politics and economics did not stem from a Luddite view of the world. Rather, unlike his Marxist detractors, Gandhi recognised that an agrarian transformation that delivers justice and equity was far more complex than the mere possibility of escaping from the ‘idiocy of rural life’. India’s inescapable reality was that people needed to be provided healthy and useful work in their place of living. If freedom, justice and equity were to be available to all, in Gandhi’s pithy summarisation, mass production had to be replaced by ‘production by the masses’.
In the peculiar and self-serving vocabulary of our times, to the new middle class, the Nano represents ‘freedom’ and a ‘me-too’ model of consumer justice. At the same time, the Nano model of industrialisation is being presented as the only way to resuscitate our ailing agrarian economy that has been driven to desperation out of sheer neglect. However, we must see the Nano for what it truly represents. On the one hand it represents the Indian maturation of the seductive allure of the assembly line. On the other hand, it represents a particularly insidious coming together of state and market forces that greatly imperils the best of our values.
More than making the case against the Nano in economic and ecological terms, we must not accept the dangerous claim being put forth that automobile ownership must not remain an entitlement of the rich alone. We must not accept this specious notion of equity. Confronting the power of the global assembly line will require us to draw upon our deepest resources. Here, Gandhi offers us salutary lessons and some answers that will require us to look within and make some hard, serious choices.
(Tehelka, 10 April 2009)

How to flirt

2009-07-04T20:11:00.001+05:30

Can lessons in flirting boost your chances of meeting 'the one'? The latest Flirting for Dummies book says it can
I didn’t know that I was a “minesweeper”. I had no idea my flirting tactics identified me as part of a social group. According to the newly published Flirting for Dummies, I am one. A clear one. And I need help. The latest in the For Dummies series to hit the shelves, this book does what it says on the tin. It is written by Elizabeth Clark, a flirting and charisma expert. (Can you teach people either skill? “Oh, yes, you can,” she says. “Absolutely!”) According to her, “Everything is a flirting opportunity. When I go to Costa Coffee, I flirt with the waiters to get an extra biscuit.” All you need do to reach a similiar state of 24/7 love-snug-like nirvana is follow her advice.
Nirvana being some way off for me, aged 29 and, yes, single, I am willing to try out her tactics. First up, identifying your default flirting mode. Are you a “wallflower” or a “quietly confident person”? Or the “life and soul” type, too busy cracking the gags to notice the hottie in the corner? Or are you, like me, an aforementioned “minesweeper”? (Key characteristics: a scatter-gun approach, directed not at one vulnerable target but at a group, in an effort to make them all laugh. At once. And at you.)
In any case, Clark says we could probably all use some advice. Because, these days, the British are phenomenally bad at flirting. You only have to look at the proliferation of books, courses, websites and experts to see that we need help. “We’re getting terrible at it,” she laughs. “It’s the government’s fault. Children learn communication skills around the dinner table, but kids are spending more time at nursery, so it doesn’t happen. Then teenagers go out and get wasted to get it on.
And people are conditioned by this awful red-tape working environment. Which means they’re frightened to flirt, because it’s naughty.” Nonetheless, flirting should be “a basic skill”. All right, then. Show me.
Step one on the road to getting the old skill set stoked can be found in the face. “Facial language is the biggest part of flirting,” Clark says. “Having slightly longer than usual eye contact will create a different physiological effect.” Apparently, it’s best to start with the least risky tactic: eyebrow flashes. “Both eyebrows. A quick up, down — not a one-sided Roger Moore leer,” she instructs. Feeling a bit squeamish about all this coquettish behaviour (I may be a “minesweeper”, but I never normally flash), I commence with the non-risky brows.
Within days, they cause havoc. My newfound activities aren’t good for morale, a low point being when the man opposite me on the bus shoves his nose back into his Driving Theory Test book (no joke) in answer to my frenzied facial movements. Neither are they good for my punctuality — too much time seeking longer-than-comfortable eye contact with strangers will lead to lateness. As will dealing with the consequences of accidentally coming on to someone with a wife/girlfriend/Tourette’s.
Scarred but determined, I move further down the flirting line. Next up, dealing with my image. You’re encouraged to identify a dating icon (Gisele?), then emulate them (oh). It also helps to work on your voice: “If you look great, but talk in a nasal whine, people will form a poor impression of you and your confidence will be dented,” warns the book. I try dropping a “haitch” in the petrol station. I won’t be doing it again.
When in action, it all comes down to body language. The most basic move is called “showing a limb” (offering something like a seductive ankle to pique interest). I try this on several occasions. The only time someone responds is in Starbucks, at 7am. I let my hand hover over a male wrist as I reach for my skinny latte. He stops reaching and starts staring. I look down in embarrassment to find he is wearing shiny tan shoes. At which point, I rather wish I hadn’t bothered.
It does not go unnoticed that these tactics can have unintended consequences. There is a helpful little section in the book on sexual harassment, as well as some handy hints on how to look out for someone else on the pull — all the better for limiting the possibility of rejection. “They’ll be constantly scanning the room,” Clark explains. “Ladies will be standing in a more curvaceous shape [achieved by placing your weight on one leg], and men will stand square and tall. Leading from the groin.”
It all sounds rather combative, and more than a little offputting to me. Still, there are tenets in this book that probably would brighten one’s day — encouraging us as it does to breeze through life chatting, smiling and making eyes at everyone, from your boss to the barman to the man from IT. And some tips do work. The last time I genuinely did stare a stranger out across a crowded room, he mirrored my movements, then I didn’t leave his side for nine months. As Clark says, “Flirting gives you a positive lift.” Which, as the hours of hilarity my friends have enjoyed — at my expense — over the past few weeks have proved, is true. Flirting is fun. It makes you feel good. But just mind where you direct those eyebrows, lest you find yourself shacked up with the man from IT.
(The Sunday Times)

End of the reel for iconic Kodachrome

2009-06-28T18:53:00.000+05:30

New York: It is 36 years since Paul Simon sang "Mama don't take my Kodachrome away". Now Kodak has finally done it. The Eastman Kodak Company announced on Monday that the camera film, immortalised by Simon's 1973 hit Kodachrome, was being taken off the market after a run of 74 years. The once ubiquitous film, loved by generations of both professional and amateur photographers is the latest victim of the digital revolution, and now accounts for just 1% of Kodak's film sales.
"It was a difficult decision to retire it, given its history. However, the majority of today's photographers have voiced their preference to capture images with newer technology, both film and digital," said Mary Jane Hellyar, Kodak's president of film, photofinishing and entertainment department.
Kodachrome was born in 1935 after a process invented by two musicians, Leopold Godowsky Jr and Leopold Mannes, a violinist and a pianist known as "God and Man" who were passionately interested in photography as a hobby.
The film was first sold as 16mm movie film but was soon made available in other formats including 35mm. Kodachrome has the rare distinction of being the only commercial film to have a state park named after it. The National Geographic Society exploring a spectacular section of Utah dubbed it "Kodachrome Flat" after the brand of film that they used to photograph it. The area was renamed when it was designated a state park in 1962 for fear of a trademark infringement but Kodak gave its permission and the park is now called Kodachrome Basin.
The vivid colours of Kodachrome have captured some of the most famous wildlife imagery as well as many of the world's best-known news photographs.
Abraham Zapruder's 8mm reel of president John Kennedy's 1963 assassination was shot on Kodachrome. Steve McCurry used the film for his portrait of a young Afghan girl with haunting eyes, which won worldwide acclaim when it was published on the cover of National Geographic in 1985.
Kodak will donate the last rolls of Kodachrome to the George Eastman House photography museum in New York. McCurry will shoot one of those rolls and donate the images to the museum.

Link: Making POSITIVES out of NEGATIVES: Tribute to the Icon of Color Film Photography, Kodachrome.

An Easily Understandable Explanation of The Derivative Markets (and why the American financial system collapsed recently)

2009-06-28T18:40:00.002+05:30

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.
She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). These debts become assets (not liabilities, according to accountants & financial whizkids) of Heidi’s Bar.
Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.
By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively. Heidi’s is the most profitable in town. Her “book” profits climb.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans (again assets) into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS.
There are other bonds similarly created, HOUSEBONDS, RETAILBONDS & FIREBONDS. These are now inseparably bundled together with DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS & PUKEONDS to a new asset class called JAMESBOND which is traded on the international security markets.
Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics and similarly non-creditworthy others. None tries to find out exactly what assets have been bundled into JAMESBOND!
Nevertheless, JAMESBOND prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses. JAMESBOND is a star.
One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment of interest from Heidi. (All along he has been increasing Heidi's credit to cover the interest also payable by Heidi) He so informs Heidi.
Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.
JAMESBOND drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. None even knows how REALLY bad JAMESBOND is due to due to Heid's bankruptcy!
The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers. Government further prints currency to bridge the deficit.
The investment banks and others use the cash infusion continue the BONDSGAME inviting further disaster.
(Via GiGi)

Everybody Loves Bad Boys And A Bit Of Scandal

2009-06-28T09:40:00.002+05:30

By Shobhaa De (ToI)
‘‘Bollywood is full of rapists... some get caught. Others screw themselves.’’ Who said that? Never mind. Crudely put... but broadly speaking, i agree. I was the editor of India’s raciest film magazines for 11 long years. You can say, i’ve had a ringside view of the goings on.
Showbiz is a strange destination. It’s a planet in itself. Those who occupy it, create their own rules. Hollywood is full of rapists, too. Again, some are stupid enough to be caught with their pants down. But out there, those chaps go to jail and stay there, serving out their sentence. The Shiney Ahuja case would have been just another sorry episode had it not been for the victim’s age and social position. Plus, the fact that she chose to go to the cops. Most actors believe it is their birthright to get sexual favours from whosoever catches their fancy. They aren’t terribly discriminating either. If they can’t bed their co-star, they happily settle for her sister, friend, cousin, aunt... even mother. If even those options are shut, they look a little further — at the ‘extras’. Most of the junior artistes don’t object — in fact they consider it an ‘honour’ to be picked by the big guy. Those who do, are chased out of tinsel town for being ‘unco-operative.’ If only spotboys (lackeys of stars) could open their mouths, what stories they’d have to tell.
Shiney allegedly attacking his young maid, is not news. Shiney’s wife deciding to stand by her man and declare her undying love for the guy, is. As of now, she is doing a pretty convincing job of defending her husband, claiming he has been framed, and more amusingly, that it is he who may have been raped. The person one feels sorriest for is Shiney’s father, an ex-services man. Wicked smses are doing the rounds. Once a case is deemed sms-worthy, you know the case has hit bull’s eye — till something juicier happens. My sympathies are with Anupam, the fiery wife who has had to round up neighbours and ‘friends’ for character certificates while facing a hostile media mocking her every utterance. That she hasn’t cracked under pressure so far, is no small miracle. It can’t be easy for a woman to deal with such a disgraceful chapter in her marriage. Assuming she genuinely believes Shiney is innocent, and it turns out that way, Anupam will be the biggest hero. But what if she discovers the horrible truth that her husband was a beast who ravaged an innocent domestic? How will Anupam live with that?
Discussing the Shiney case with a powerful film producer, i nearly fell off my chair when he said he was ready to sign Shiney for his next film on the spot! Reason? Shiney Ahuja has become a household name in India, and everybody will now be keener than ever to see him on screen. He pointed out how Hugh Grant became a super hero after he was caught with a prostitute in Los Angeles. ‘‘Audiences love Bad Boys. The worse a man behaves, the more his box office value goes up,’’ he said smiling devilishly. To further his argument, he added, ‘‘Don’t believe me? Here, talk to my driver. Even he thinks i should sign Shiney for my next film.’’ Sounds rotten, right? Cold blooded, devious and manipulative? But that’s how the cookie crumbles in Bollywood. Look no further than Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan.
If the producer’s gut feeling is right, one can cynically look at Shiney’s crime as a shrewd career move. He was never an A-lister, but after this, he may get a promotion! Audiences can be so perverse sometimes. Notoriety has its spin offs in this vast palace of illusions. Here we are wasting time and energy taking sides, feeling sorry for Shiney, sorry for the maid, sorry for the wife, sorry for the daughter, sorry for the father. When we should actually be feeling pretty sorry for our own foolish selves. Shiney may get shinier. Anupam, richer, and the maid will definitely receive lucrative offers to sell her story (if Rubina, the Slumdog Princess is penning her autobiography, why not a star’s rape victim?). What’s the bet Madhur Bhandarkar/Mahesh Bhatt are feverishly working on the script of their next film titled — what else — ‘Maid in India’ starring all the characters playing themselves?

The Secret Life Of Foreign Secretaries

2009-06-28T09:37:00.003+05:30

By M J Akbar (ToI)
Secret extra-terrestrial sources, with reliable knowledge of the future, have revealed the full text of the dialogue between the Indian Foreign Secretary (IFS) and the Pakistan Foreign Secretary (PFS) on the sidelines of the next nonaligned summit. We offer this exclusive to our readers:
IFS: Hi! All well, my friend?
PFS: (Shrugs) Is sarcasm your normal opening gambit, or do you reserve it for the Indo-Pak dialogue?
IFS: We don’t do sarcasm in Delhi, not with a monsoon lost in transit.
PFS: You could have fooled me. As for all being well vis-a-vis the Taliban, read the papers. Your chaps getting on well with that little war against the Naxalites? IFS: Well, at least our intelligence agencies didn’t fund the Naxalites to kill innocents and blow up hotels in Pakistan.
PFS: Actually, we are quite good at that ourselves; don’t need foreign expertise. Frankly, the Taliban were a terrible investment. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you...
IFS: The bite hasn’t got septic, has it?
PFS: Well... shall I be honest?
IFS: That would be such a pleasant change.
PFS: Very droll... You do seem to have acquired a splendid sense of humour since we last met. Very nice. Not in the manual for foreign secretaries, is it?
IFS: Ha ha. I take your point, however. Every country in our heavenly subcontinent is trapped in a desperate civil war — apart maybe from dear little Bhutan. Time for a little cooperation, then? PFS: Precisely what I was thinking! We always have been the biggest poverty pit in the world — that’s where the Naxalites come from, isn’t it? Now we are also the bloodiest.
IFS: Not to mention the blood of innocents. Your only consistent export to India is terrorists. You ramp up the supply or scale it down depending on your political GDP requirements. You got a bit defensive after Mumbai, but you’ve put them back in business, haven’t you?
PFS: You give us too much credit. These militias have their own agenda. And unless you settle the root cause, Kashmir...
IFS: It seems to have escaped your notice that for the world — including your ally America — that this ‘‘root cause’’ argument has long crossed its sell-by date. You want to get stuck on this, we might as well use the rest of our time discussing which movie you last saw.
PFS: Saw a sexy picture of Angelina Jolie the other day in one of your newspapers! Wow! Our newspapers are so vegetarian compared to yours. It’s those mullahs, I’m afraid. Will neither have fun themselves nor let us have a bit on the side.
IFS: Oh, we’re getting some moral police as well, but our elections sort them out, so that’s a relief. You are good at changing the subject, my friend, but won’t work. Why do you get collective amnesia when it comes to Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Prof Hafeez Mohammad Saeed and his associate Colonel Nazir Ahmed? They were released because you ‘‘forgot’’ to include al-Qaida in your list of terrorist organizations! The lawyer you deputed for Sarbjit Singh ‘‘forgot’’ to appear in court. Forgot! Do lawyers get paid extra for forgetting?
PFS: Ah, the familiar blame game. Why don’t we move on? We are ready for demilitarized zones on both sides of the border — say five miles on either side. That would send such a massive signal of peace, and take your Army off the backs of the Kashmiri people as well. You don’t want me to dwell on that bit, do you, after Shopian? DMZs could enable Kashmiris to share electricity, get on with trade and increase travel on basis of special travel permits.
IFS: All so convenient: our Army moves away so that your surrogate militias and self-styled jihadis can breathe more easily. Simultaneously, you want us to dilute symbols of Indian sovereignty wherever possible. But you will not compromise on your absolutist stand. Why don’t we declare the Line of Control the border and really get on with life? That would close the chapter, and bring peace.
PFS: Peace! What a brilliant thought! But we can’t accept the LoC as the border. It would only mean that for 60 years we have fought for nothing.
IFS: I know it, and you know it, that the LoC is the only answer. The rest is keeping the ball in play to fool the world if not to fool ourselves.
PFS: (Gently) That’s not our decision, is it?
IFS: True.
PFS: (Smiles) Tell me, how long will it take if our political masters really want peace?
IFS: About six minutes.
PFS: And how long if we keep talking the way we did?
IFS: Another 60 years.
PFS: Touche! See you at the next meeting!

No plastic talk

2009-06-27T22:00:00.002+05:30

Success is scientific, believes Rick Goings, CEO of Tupperware. He shares his incredible rags-to-riches journey with Abhilasha Ojha of BS

All of us have a story to tell, but most of us hide our stories,” says Rick Goings, chairman and CEO of Tupperware, sitting in a plush conference room at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi. For Goings, however, this is not a time to “hide” anything: His company, after all, has just posted a turnover of $5 billion this year, apart from winning the prestigious Red Dot award for the best design team of 2009. But it is not just his professional success that Goings will talk about. Instead, he is ready to share, without a hint of embarrassment, his own incredible journey, from rags to riches.
“Most people who look at me think, ‘Oh, here’s a guy who was perhaps raised in a well-off family, studied at Yale and therefore did well in life,’” he says. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In his younger days, says Goings, he had to join the US Navy only because he couldn’t afford to complete full-time school anywhere else. He went on to become a navigator on a ship, but then decided to do “something different” after a while. “When I joined the Navy, I was glad that I’d never go hungry like I had in my childhood. But after a while, I definitely wanted to do something different, something else. That’s when I realised it was time to navigate the course of my own life, too,” he says.
Opting out of the Navy, Goings went on to complete his education with the help of the government funding offered to underprivileged students in the USA. To supplement his income, he worked in a men’s clothing store, after study hours. And he turned entrepreneur. While still in college, Goings became drawn to Buddhism, meditation and the teachings of Gandhi, and, though it had nothing to do with philosophy, also started a small company that leveraged the direct sales marketing methods. Today, he says, he combines number crunching with philosophy and often uses his marketing skills to understand “why some people succeed and most don’t”. In his view, success is not an art, it’s a science.
Is Tupperware’s success scientific? Goings, who is at no loss for words otherwise, searches for an answer: “We have a 50,000-strong sales force in India and it is one of the top five markets for our company.” Tupperware, when it was launched 12 years ago, he says after some thought, was “too shallow and too wide. After lots of tweaking and changes, it is today recognised as a superbrand.”
Interestingly, many other stories from the Tupperware family in India bear striking resemblance to Goings’s own tale of rising from the very bottom of the social ladder. In fact, in the middle of our conversation, Asha Gupta, managing director, Tupperware (India), shares some of these stories where women have been able to create (at least a modest amount of) wealth for themselves, and have thus become much more confident. She talks about a woman in Kolhapur who now attends meetings in high-heeled shoes — a consequence, no doubt, of enhanced self-image after she started making a living through Tupperware — as well as of a widow from Bangalore who, after losing her husband and her only son in an accident, found support from her “Tupperware family”.
Goings is listening intently to all this. He instantly invites Gupta to share these stories with his team in the US. “We have always wanted to tap the strength of women in India. We are here to leverage the natural power of Indian women and we are proud to offer them a chance to sustain themselves through our brand,” he says.
The brand has taken Goings a long way, too. He now owns a 15,000-sq ft mansion in Florida and has golfer Tiger Woods for a neighbour. He poses with Brooke Shields (the face of the company’s new campaign, called “chain of confidence”) and rubs shoulders with the high and mighty. (Goings narrates an interesting episode, where, he claims, he refused to let former President Bill Clinton give a speech to his Tupperware team: “Not Clinton, no way,” he winks.) The rich life apart, Goings finds time to meditate, read and travel, and says that he is always aware of the fact that “from where I started, it’s been a long journey.” In fact, that’s one reason why he, along with the likes of actor Denzel Washington, supports dedicated clubs (Boys & Girls Clubs of America, for instance) which help in securing the lives of street children.
“Denzel, after his father abandoned him, was rescued by a similar club. To say that his life changed for the better is an understatement. We just need to keep on changing the lives of many other kids for the better, too.” Along with his wife, Goings recently opened a similar club in Mexico. “Hopefully, less-privileged children will find a way to sustain and secure themselves. We just anchor them,” he says.
So, what anchors Tupperware’s success? Goings pauses to think before he says, “We don’t have a nationality. We are from all over the world. We are truly a global brand. That’s why we are a success.” It’s a philosophical answer.

Mumbai is racist, so stop slamming Oz

2009-06-27T10:35:00.001+05:30

Mumbai is one of the most racist places on the world map.
When American author and humorist Mark Twain said, "Clothes make the man and naked people have little or no influence on society," he wasn't merely being humorous. The stark realism underlying the statement is as unmistakable as its universality.
Twain's nakedness is a metaphor for a race bereft of monetary supremacy, as opposed to one in clothes which commands societal acceptance. To that end, Mumbai, I say, is one of the most racist places on the world map.
White supremacists absurdly believe that only they live within the pale of superiority, if you can see what I mean. For others, colour of the skin does not matter; for example, in India, you can be fair-complexioned, but still remain forever doomed by the caste identity.In Mumbai, neither complexion nor caste matters: lakhs of people are reviled, humiliated, and -- even worse -- pushed into the category of the 'uninvited' if they do not have enough money.
Mumbai's racism can be characterised as 'cash-bigotry.' That strain of bigotry manifests itself at the workplace, inside commuter trains, at hotels and restaurants, in malls and in housing societies. Now, remember the hoo-ha about the 26/11 coverage?
Scores of well-meaning people got terribly exercised because most the TV grandees preferred the five-star wreckage to train station ruins. In fact, one TV notable admitted that her class might have been swayed more by the travails of those who could afford the kind of shoes she normally wore. Well, she did not quite put it that way, but you got the drift.
Salman Rushdie was shaken by the compensatory hand-wringing caused by the realisation that the CST victims were all but ignored in the early part of the terror trauma. He said that it was ludicrous to even think that rich people's blood was cheaper than that of the poor.
Well, he would have communicated the idea in different words; sang-froid in clipped tones sounds so wealthy! Anyway, Mumbai does not need the catastrophe of a terror strike to recede into cash-bigotry.It took a massive drive against drunken driving to curb the thought among rich brats that money was the fuel that made their lurching cars unstoppable and untouchable.
It surprises few Mumbaikars that a former gangster, Abu Salem, has apparently been made immune from torture not by diplomatic fiats issued by Portugal, but by the piles of 'khokas' offered as insurance against rough treatment.
And while you are in the malls, do you notice that those who hustle the more expensive brands are invariably more polite than those who dispense easy-on-the-budget goods? You could claim that expensive brands train their staff well? Is that so? I beg to differ.
Some of you may remember that I had once observed in this column that security guards at a suburban five-star were more likely to screen the baggage of 'non-suited' Indians than touch the laptop of a white guy in a T-shirt? Indians who dressed as though they were trawling through snow, were let in without any checks.
Mumbai, in other words, has an invisible class. In order to belong to it, you need to buy
a car which is much bigger than you need; you need to spend much more than you ought to; and yes, you need to flash the cash as often as you can to show you are superior.

The China Challenge

2009-06-20T10:22:00.001+05:30

BY R. Jagannathan (DNA)
The world is never short of rogue states. Think North Korea. Burma. Sudan. And even Pakistan. Rogue states exist because they have sponsors.
For much of the 20th century, and especially before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US and USSR backed every possible tinpot dictator in the world. Today, that chief sponsor of rogue states is China.
It backs each one of the four rogue (or near-rogue) states mentioned above. In its cynical pursuit of global hegemony, China provides succour to many unsavoury regimes as long as it can achieve its own strategic goals. These goals include finding cheap energy sources or overawing current and future rivals (Japan, Taiwan, India).
China is close to becoming a global Godzilla of the kind the Nazis had become in the 1930s. It is ultra-nationalist, racist, autocratic, monocultural and militaristic -- all vital ingredients of Nazism.
China is not quite Nazi Germany, but there's no one to hold it in check right now. The US cannot call the shots effectively without courting an economic catastrophe (China is its largest creditor). Russia is a much diminished superpower and leans on China to control the growing Islamist threat to its southern fringe. Japan is wallowing in its own economic misery. India is nowhere as big economically or militarily -- as yet -- to stand up to China. We don't even know how to begin.
China has always been the biggest roadblock to India's rise in the world, but what we know privately we have always sought to deny publicly. It all started with Nehru's disastrous handling of foreign policy in the 1950s, which culminated in our humiliating defeat in the 1962 border war.
A vain Nehru ignored sane advice from people of the eminence of Sardar Patel and Rajendra Prasad and the Chinese ran circles around him all through the 1950s while they were building up their military might and subjugating Tibet.
In the early 1960s, when China was sure it was militarily stronger, we got hammered. The only good thing to emerge from that war is that Indians have intuitively understood that China is not a friend. While we can be partners in the economic sphere, civilisationally we are rivals.
Unfortunately, this is not something we are willing to acknowledge formally. The only non-hypocritical official statement made by India about China came in 1998 after Pokharan II.
Defence minister George Fernandes said that our nuclear tests were intended to redress the power asymmetry with China. He was roundly criticised for speaking the truth, but he has been proved right.
For the last 18 years, the Chinese have been watching with dismay as India first became a global IT power and then started growing nearly as fast as them. Businessmen may love China's ability to give them a free run on profits (no labour laws, instant government decisions, etc), but the world gives India's ragtag democracy a higher degree of respect than China's centrally-driven capitalism.
Respect, though, is not enough. India's problem is that Nehru's ghost still hangs outside the Indian foreign ministry. We are paralysed by fear, hoping against hope that China will see reason and allow us to take our place in the sun.
Well, it won't happen. China only recognises power, which is why it has pursued military superiority with such doggedness since the 1980s. It has opposed India formally, and behind the scenes, at every forum.
At the Nuclear Suppliers' Group last year, China tried its best to scuttle the Indo-US deal. At the UN, China was the only country (apart from Pakistan) to steadfastly spike our dreams of permanent membership.
The Middle Kingdom is clearly the rogue state behind the clandestine transfer of nuclear and missile technology between Pakistan and North Korea. A nuclear and terror-supporting Pakistan is critical to Chinese plans to keep India bogged down in local insurgencies. A rogue North Korean state enables China to keep both South Korea and Japan off-balance.
At the Asian Development Bank, China's was the hand that nearly stopped a loan for Arunachal Pradesh. In fact, the clearance of this loan -- facilitated by India's strong diplomatic pressure on the US, South Korea and Japan -- shows that power needs to be projected when it comes to dealing with China. There is only one way to deal with China and that is by building our military, diplomatic and economic strength continuously.
Japan, South Korea and Vietnam could be our silent allies in this game, but even if the world does not want to play, we must be clear in our goals. We have to develop deterrent military and economic power to contain China and earn its respect. We have to dump the Nehruvian mindset of fooling ourselves into believing that China is a benign power. It is not. It is a rogue state under wraps.

The Ladder Trick To Get Regular Returns

2009-06-20T09:27:00.002+05:30

Diversification and investing for the long-term work as well for debt as they do for Equity. Here is how laddering can mitigate some of the interest rate and other risks in your debt portfolio
Diversification and investing for the long-term work as well for debt as they do for Equity. Here is how laddering can mitigate some of the interest rate and other risks in your debt portfolio
If the four-letter word, risk, drove you away from the stockmarket and towards fixed income investments, are you sure you are in the clear now? For investing in a fixed deposit (FD) or other products of its ilk has its own set of risks, often not apparent.
If you are parking your funds in short-term deposits, the risk is the least. However, the moment you try to use fixed income instruments to get a steady income over a longer period, the degree of risk increases; something few notice. Read on to find out what the risks are and how you can reduce them.
Suppose you are a pensioner putting your entire retirement corpus in a fixed deposit that pays interest monthly, quarterly or yearly. Assume, also, that your investment earns returns at 10 per cent per annum for five years. You enjoy the returns during that period. However, when the term ends, there is no guarantee that you will be able to reinvest that sum at the same rate of return.
If deposit rates go down after five years, as the current trend is, you will lose out on interest income. Worse, if interest rates rise during that five-year term, you will lose out on the higher interest you could have earned on sums invested later, unless you choose to break your deposit and reinvest. The problem with this is that you will not be able to benefit from the tax break that comes with specific five-year deposits. On top of it, you will lose interest on the sum that you had invested and will have to pay a penalty, if applicable.
What is true for a pensioner, is true for anyone else trying to get a steady stream of income from a term deposit or any other fixed income instrument. You will face the same problems if, say, you invest a lump sum amount to pay your child’s tuition fees out of that income, or provision for part of your home loan or car loan EMI payments from regular and fixed incomes.
For this, what you need to do is form a strategy for the long term. Just as in equity you cannot keep only one stock in your portfolio, in debt too you cannot depend on only one instrument. To mitigate risk, you need to invest across available instruments and of different tenures. Let us look at the tenures first.
To cushion your money against the vagaries of interest rates, you can use a strategy called laddering. As the name suggests, it involves creating an income ladder, one rung at a time.
If you want a five-year ladder, you cannot reach the fifth rung without climbing the first four. So, instead of investing your entire corpus, say, of Rs 5 lakh, in a five-year deposit, you break it up into five equal parts of Rs 1 lakh each. Then invest one block in a one-year deposit, another in a two-year deposit, and so on till you invest the fifth in a five-year deposit. A year down the line, the one-year deposit will mature and it can be reinvested in a five-year paper to create the sixth rung. When the two-year deposit matures, it can be reinvested in a five-year deposit to create income in the seventh year (see Rung By Rung).
Suresh Sadagopan, certified financial planner, Ladder 7 Financial Advisory, Mumbai, says, "FD laddering is good for someone who needs a regular income; more for a retired person."
When you ladder your fixed income investments, you can have deposits that mature every year. The amount received on maturity every year can be reinvested to lengthen the ladder. Laddering your instruments helps you commit to a longer term, while retaining some degree of liquidity.
Remember to rebalance your portfolio. Only the debt part of your allocation is supposed to be employed to make the ladder. Zankhana Shah, certified financial planner and head of Moneycare Financial Planning, Mumbai, says, "Laddering uses the concept of time diversification. It’s more of a strategy than a judgement. If investor A takes an FD for one year, and plans to reinvest it next year, he is taking a judgement call on future interest rates. If an investor B is doing laddering, he has a strategy where there is a predictability of interest and returns."
Reducing loss from premature redem-ptions. Since term deposits usually impose a penalty on premature withdrawal, often the benefit of breaking a deposit before its term expires and reinvesting it in a higher return deposit is lost, at least partially.
Besides, redeeming before maturity can be expensive, and difficult, in some instruments. For example, with National Savings Certificates (NSCs), premature withdrawal is allowed only after three years of the purchase. If you have bought Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP), you can withdraw before maturity after 30 months of purchase. Also, with these, it can take 2-3 days to get the money.
If you ladder your fixed income instruments, there will always be some amount of money that will mature every year or after the intervals you have planned, every six or even three months, for instance. This gives you access to funds in an emergency.
In a rising interest rate scenario, laddering may not give you an interest payout as high as you would have got by investing the entire sum at the higher rate. But the upside is that if interest rates fall, the overall return on your corpus will still be higher than the prevailing rate of return as there will be tranches invested at higher rates. So, over the longer term, the flow will be more even and predictable. Typically, the higher the risk, the higher is the return, and since you will be mitigating some of the risk, it would bring a slightly lower return. Says Sadagopan: "Laddering definitely makes sense as a decumulation tool for regular income generation for post-retirement needs."
The length of the ladder should be decided by the time till which you need regular income. If you are looking at a really long term, such as retirement funds, your ladder should be as long as the tenure of the deposit that pays you the highest post-tax return. If you are laddering bank term deposits, for instance, a five-year ladder is most likely. If it’s NSCs, the ladder would be six-year-long. If you need money to pay for your child’s college fees when he turns 18, and you start laddering when he is 15, you may need a three-year ladder.
There are broadly five kinds of instruments you can use for laddering—bank FDs, company term deposits, KVP, NSC, and deep discount bonds. Depending on how you ladder, you can even work out a regular pension with instruments such as NSCs.
An NSC is for a 6-year period and requires a minimum investment of Rs 100. There is no maximum limit for investment. Let’s assume for the purpose of saving tax that as a part of your debt portfolio, you need to buy Rs 24,000 worth of NSCs in one financial year. Instead of buying in one shot, you can buy Rs 2,000 worth of NSCs every month. After six years, when the NSCs you bought in the first month mature, renew them. Repeat the renewing procedure for the following months. Continue these purchases until your retirement. Once you hit the golden years, the matured NSCs will start yielding regular inflows as pension. The same objective can be achieved through suitable term deposits too.
It also makes sense to use a mix of instruments to keep your money secure. For instance, if you are going for a bank FD laddering, you can limit the amount in a single bank at Rs 1 lakh since that is the maximum amount that is insured under the purview of the Reserve Bank of India. In India, we have the advantage that banks, mostly in the public sector, offer almost similar rates for similar tenures. So, spreading your deposits across banks makes sense to get them all under deposit insurance.
Post-office instruments such as NSCs, KVPs or Post-office Monthly Income Scheme (POMIS), are guaranteed by the government. If you are buying deep discount bonds, go only for the ones that have suitable guarantees on repayment of principal and payment of interest.
No investment that bears any fruit worth its weight is completely risk-free. Havens are as safe as you make them. So, when going for fixed income investments, make sure that you do not take on more risk than you had bargained for. There is always a way to mitigate some of that.

A healthy diet for your heart

2009-06-20T09:26:00.000+05:30

A study by an Indian-origin Canadian researcher has established that the Mediterranean diet is the best for the health of your heart.
High on plant foods, vegetables, fresh fruit and nuts, and low on red meat, wine and dairy products, the Mediterranean diet has long been considered to be the best for cardiovascular health.
But now a comprehensive study by Sonia Anand of McMaster University near here has established that vegetables, nuts, monounsaturated fatty acids and "overall healthy dietary patterns such as the Mediterranean diet'' are best for reducing the risk of heart disease. Anand and her team of researchers evaluated about 200 dietary studies of the past 60 years in the US, Europe and Asia to find their link to coronary heart disease (CHD).
Titled 'A Systematic Review of the Evidence Supporting a Causal Link Between Dietary Factors and Coronary Heart Disease,' their study also found that glycemic load of foods and trans fatty acids are equally harmful for heart.
"The study concludes there are certain food groups or dietary patterns, that are beneficial, including vegetables, nuts, monounsaturated fatty acids, and overall 'healthy' dietary patterns such as the Mediterranean diet,'' Anand was quoted as saying in a university statement Tuesday. "We hope our comprehensive review will clarify healthy and harmful foods as related to heart disease for the general public,'' she said. "Concluding there is strong evidence that certain dietary patterns, or food groups which are clearly beneficial or harmful, is an easy message for health professionals to send to the general public,'' added the Indian-origin professor.
According to her, their ground-breaking study will encourage health professionals and dieticians to disseminate information to the public "in a less factual and more people-friendly manner.'' However, Anand had a word of precaution, saying that more research needs to be done to back their conclusions.
"What we have demonstrated is that, for some food groups and nutrients, there has been relatively weak information. Even though one study may be positive, there may be three others that are negative or conflicting. We really need to look at the totality of the evidence in the field before promoting something to the public at large,'' she said.

A tale of three crises

2009-06-20T09:17:00.005+05:30

Rajiv Bajaj has seen three crises in 18 years. That’s the basis of the lessons he offers to young scions
I am now facing the third crisis in the 18 years that I have worked at Bajaj Auto. I am, in that sense, a crises’ child. The first was an economic crisis that lasted a couple of years. Our volumes fell for the first time in our history due to a demand contraction. When I passed out of college in 1988, there was a one-year waiting list for the ‘great’ Chetak. But when I joined Bajaj Auto in 1990, there was no demand.
I was new to the company, but I was not naive to the task at hand. I moved quickly to do what one has to in an economic crisis: fix the cost structure. It was at this time that we moved boldly to minimise fixed costs by closing plants and retiring people. Since then, we have shut down three plants at Akurdi, one at Waluj and one at Satara, and spent hundreds of crores to bring our employee strength down by two-thirds, even as our volumes have grown three-fold.
Simultaneously, we pruned our variable costs, as we value engineered our designs and rationalised our supply chain down from over 800 suppliers to under 200. Eventually, this economic crisis receded in 1993, leaving in its wake a company that was rapidly healing from the ills of a bloated cost structure.
My chairman recently asked me if there was a need for any further measures in the current crisis. I said, ‘no’. We had done all that earlier. In fact, it is because of the actions that we took then that we are strong enough to weather the current crisis without having to resort to any disruptive knee-jerk reactions today.
Then, nine years later, came my second crisis, in 1999. Not so much an economic one, but a business crisis that threatened Bajaj, as customers moved overwhelmingly from our scooters to everyone else’s motorcycles. This time around, I was not new to the company, but I was naive to the task at hand.
In the first crisis, as a manufacturing engineer, I had the skills to correct the cost structure. But in the second one, I couldn’t do much because I wasn’t a quality specialist and I wasn’t a designer. But I had two brilliant executives in Abraham Joseph (who was 30 years old then) and Pradeep Srivastava (who was 35). Joe was a design engineer and Pradeep was a quality/manufacturing engineer. I would not like to take much credit for how we tackled the crisis. All I did was remove obstacles in the way of Joe and Pradeep. These two were naturally gifted, like a Vishwanathan Anand or a Tendulkar.
Joe worked on the products, beginning with the game-changing Pulsar, while Pradeep addressed processes, resulting in the benchmark-setting Chakan plant. In November 2001, the Pulsar rolled out of Chakan, and things changed for Bajaj. Customers came back. Our profitability, market cap and other ratings changed, and we walked away with every bike-of-the-year award.
It is due to such efforts and those that followed thereafter that Bajaj has remained the lone challenger of significance to Japanese motorcycle manufacturers who have marginalised all erstwhile competitors from the US and Europe to Taiwan and Korea.
We had lot of trouble in the second crisis, and people even spoke about differences between my father and me. They said my father was not in favour of expensive motorcycles and questioned the need to have one more plant, etc. But Dr John Wallace, our English management guru, sealed all doubts with one phrase: don’t defend the past, attack the future. Whenever we take any decision, we always ask ourselves if it carries the baggage of the past. Or, is it sharp and edgy enough to belong to the future? If you drag the past along, you won’t be able to achieve anything.
And now, once again, nine years later, I am in my third crisis. For me and for Bajaj, and I believe this to be true for most people and companies across the world, this is neither an economic nor a business crisis. It is, in my view, a crisis of confidence.
Words said at the Tokyo Automotive Conference in 2001 by Honda’s then-global CEO Yoshino-san will forever inspire me. When asked about his confidence in the future of a Honda, which was then being dwarfed by global automotive alliances such as GM-Fiat-Suzuki, Ford-Hyundai-Mazda, Daimler-Chrysler-Mitsubishi and Renault-Nissan, he said: Honda will exist because society will want Honda to exist.
Ultimately, Bajaj will exist only if customers want Bajaj to exist. And customers will so favour Bajaj only if it can offer them what no one else can. This confidence crisis is teaching me what soccer’s guru Pele meant when he said: when you control the ball, you control the score.
So, first of all, in this time of a crisis of confidence, what is our objective? It is, quite simply, to be the world’s foremost motorcycles maker. We can grow multi-fold globally and by at least double in India with motorcycles alone. I believe that this single-mindedness has a greater chance at success than fragmenting ourselves into heterogeneous segments does.
Take McDonald’s. Selling little more than a sophisticated vada-pav, its revenues last year were $23 billion, or about Rs 1,00,000 crore. That’s 10 times the size of Bajaj. Just as the McDonald’s brand has a strong hamburger centre from which it expands into french fries and coke, the Bajaj brand must have a strong motorcycle centre from which it can then stretch into scooters and cars.
Secondly, if being the world’s foremost motorcycle maker is our objective, what is our strategy? Our strategy is to be ‘distinctly ahead’—only by being differentiated do we grant the customer a credible reason to permit us a profitable existence. Which is why in 2006, I unambiguously expressed our commitment to 125 cc + DTS-i motorcycles.
To be ahead is important, but to be distinctly ahead is far more important. We will always stick to our strategy of being known as makers of a certain class of motorcycles. We will ensure that our technology is very distinct. That is why we fought the DTS-i battle with TVS Motor. That technology is not only about an isolated spark plug; it is the very basis of our existence.
Looking back, I cannot really say that we did everything with a certain strategy and that it unfolded neatly. That’s not how it happens. You learn only after you do. And having learned from three crises, this is what I would advise young leaders.
Always get the facts right, and then build a hypothesis based on the facts. For example, my hypothesis during the second crisis was that we are known as a value-for-money scooter company, while Honda was known as a value-for-money motorcycle company. We, therefore, needed to be distinct, perhaps by making a fast bike. Next, always conduct an experiment—there should always be a way to prove or disprove your hypothesis. When we wanted to make a fast bike, we first made one Pulsar. If we wanted to change processes, we first showed it in one plant (Chakan). The rest will follow.
It is a three-step process: get your facts and science right, put together your hypothesis, and find a way to quickly prove it. If it is disproved, you can always correct it. This approach can work for young leaders.
I learnt one thing from Narayana Murthy very early on. He said that the only form of leadership is demonstrative leadership. Wherever I felt I could contribute (like in strategy and manufacturing), I led from the front. When I joined in 1990, the first thing I did was to teach others. After the first shift was over, I used to sit with supervisor-level staff. I would do this five or six times a month, meeting 20 supervisors at each session. This way, I spoke to 100 people every month. Teaching is a way of leadership.
But, as I did with Joe and Pradeep, I always make sure the person best suited for the job leads the rest, and demonstrates how things should be done. And that applies to my entire team. Our team is in the age group of 40-45, as compared to teams at other engineering corporates, which are in the 50-55 year band. We are young. And we all believe in demonstrative leadership.

When it’s good to forget

2009-06-20T09:15:00.001+05:30

To sharpen your memory, you need to decide what’s worth remembering and what’s not
I often wonder whether my memory is as sharp as it should be, particularly when I read about people like David Thomas, who won the title of USA Memory Champion by recalling the order of an entire deck of playing cards in just 2 1.2 minutes. I don't expect to compete for his title, but, as a neuroscientist who has spent much of his career studying memory, I should know a couple of tricks that would enable me to go a round or two with him, right? I certainly hope so.
Thomas is obviously an exceptional person, but I do know a thing or two about brain fitness.the habits that keep us sharp. and I plan to share them with you in this column and future ones. Here's one of my favourites: know what and when to forget. A daily overload of information often makes us think our memory is declining when in fact it's simply glutted with too much useless data. Most of the information that comes at us every day is, frankly, not worth remembering. A fit brain will efficiently screen out and discard worthless or meaningless data so it can remember what's important. For example, the faster you forget your old PIN or access code, the quicker and more accurately you will recall your new numbers.
The benefits of forgetting were demonstrated recently in a Stanford University study published in Nature Neuroscience. Using MRI machines to monitor brain activity, the researchers showed that when volunteers searched for a fact they had committed to memory while being distracted by new but irrelevant information, their prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain involved in decision making, was very busy. Once they recalled the information and were easily able to remember it when faced with continued distractions; prefrontal activity slowed considerably—meaning their brain had edited out the info clutter and was now free to do important things like make decisions. To keep your brain fit, try these simple strategies:
Choose what you want to remember: Ask yourself whether new information will help you in the future. For example, at a party, learn only the names of people you hope to see again. Read the newspaper with the goal of remembering just what is important to you.
Make the best use of technology: Keep files and address lists on your computer, PDA, or cell phone current and let their data banks do the remembering. Still can't remember your husband's cell phone number because you only hit speed dial? That's the point!
Block unpleasant memories: Lingering bad memories that should have been processed and discarded long ago-of childhood trauma, emotional rejection, or any of life's inevitable disappointments-can blunt your mental sharpness. When you feel a problematic memory arise, replace it with a happy one. Imagine that you're ejecting a DVD and inserting a new one. Recall the joyful occasion in great detail-the sights and sounds of the event-and, in your mind's eye, try to relive it. With a lack of regular reinforcement, the intrusive memories will fade and slink off to a distant corner of your memory bank. You may not end up a memory champion, but you will have taken a big step toward brain fitness.

A Photographer's Dramatic First Person Account

2009-06-20T09:06:00.002+05:30

‘AK-47 was pointed at my chest’
TOI lensman Subhrajit Chandra found himself staring down the barrel of an AK-47 in Lalgarh, with Maoist leader Bikash’s finger on the trigger. Here is an account of the harrowing ordeal
It was the longest 10 minutes of my life. It could well have been my last. All it would have taken for the gunman was to squeeze the trigger a tenth of an inch...
All of Friday we were in Bhimpur, some 3 km from Lalgarh, where security forces had camped before the decisive assault. Around 2 pm, I came to Pirakata for lunch. Halfway through my meal, I got a tip that a group of Maoists had been spotted between Pirakata and Bhimpur. I immediately jumped in the car and we sped off towards Bhimpur. Five minutes later, at Kuldihi, I saw a mob of 30-40 rushing towards us. Four of them were carrying guns and the rest had axes, machetes, bows and arrows. I asked the driver to turn back but it was too late. Sensing that there was no escaping the mob, I asked the driver to stop.
A gunman was running towards me, weapon raised. You can’t mistake an AK-47. A chill ran through my spine. He was screaming at me. He had a gun. I had my camera. There was nothing to lose. I fired away. Within seconds, he was next to the car, the barrel just six feet from my chest. Soon, the mob had surrounded us. I lowered the camera and put it under the seat. There was no question of taking any more shots.
The gunman grabbed me by the collar, shoved me around a bit and asked me to hand over my cellphone. I was switching it off, when he grabbed my neck and snatched it away. Then he started questioning me, where I had come from and where I was going. I told him I was a press photographer. He asked if I knew him. I said no. (Later, someone told me he was Bikash, the Maoist leader active in Lalgarh).
He still had the rifle pointed at me and was very aggressive. “What the hell are you doing? Last night, shots were fired at us. Did any newspaper write about it?’’ he asked me. The mob joined the chorus. “Do you read the papers,’’ I shot back. “We know what we are saying. Park the car to one side,’’ the gunman shot back. All this while I had remained in the car. No one had asked me to step out. What was going to happen now?
Just then, we were joined by vehicles of other media houses. The gunman’s attention switched to them. Soon, 12 cellphones had been snatched and kept by the roadside. I got down and walked towards the mob. The gunman had started giving an interview to the TV crew.
After the show was over, we were shown another way that would take us to Bhimpur. Our cellphones were returned. With a silent prayer I left for Bhimpur.

# 43 - Suzuki Now Relies on India Sales

2009-06-16T12:00:00.005+05:30

Maruti Suzuki, the Indian operation, has emerged as the biggest contributor to the parent company's profits
Maruti Suzuki, for long Suzuki Motor Corp's biggest overseas operation in volume terms, has emerged as the biggest driver of its Japanese parent's profits, earning for itself greater freedom to take key commercial decisions and the promise of more cash to develop cars for the local market.
The Indian car maker's share of Suzuki's consolidated profit rose to 46% during the year ended March 2009, up from 30% in the previous year. Maruti's topline is around 13% of the Japanese group's consolidated revenues.
"Maruti is definitely becoming more and more important in the Suzuki stable," the Indian company's MD Shinzo Nakanishi told ET, adding that Maruti's net sales had risen 14% last fiscal year, a period that saw Suzuki's net sales fall 14% to 3.05 trillion yen.
Maruti, in which Suzuki owns a 54% stake, ended 2008-09 with sales of nearly 800,000 units, its highest in 25 years, making it a rare bright spot in Suzuki's global operations, at a time when the automobile sector has been hit hard by a severe recession worldwide.
"All major markets, including the US, Europe and most of Asia along with Japan, were down last year. Maruti's performance has been much better than these markets," Mr Nakanishi said. A Maruti spokesman said the company accounted for largest share of profit among Suzuki's global businesses, clarifying, however, that this profit was not repatriated to Japan, but held as reserves and reinvested in expansion projects, new models and new engines.
Maruti's rising clout in Suzuki pie will yield it two benefits in the future, Mr Nakanishi said. It's parent will spend more on local research and development and grant it greater autonomy on export decisions. "Suzuki will definitely spend on R&D for Maruti, but with a focus on India and neighbouring markets," Mr Nakanishi said.
Maruti, which makes every second car sold in India, has already started taking a call on exports, independent of its parent's thinking. For instance, while Nissan is sourcing 30,000 units of Maruti's A-Star model to be sold as Pixo in European markets, Maruti is less eager to do such contract manufacturing deals.
"We want to do a small number of OEM-led export deals because the firms change offtake plans suddenly depending on demand," Mr Nakanishi said. "So, although Suzuki in Japan is doing a Nissan-like deal with Mazda, we are not interested."
Unlike the A-Star or Alto, which it ships for sale overseas, Maruti does not plan to export its new model Ritz, and is yet to take a call on whether it would phase out its oldest model, the M800.
Maruti's capacity to produce one million cars a year means that it has enough headroom to roll out all its brands. "But if demand suddenly becomes so high that we don't have the capacity, we will do a rethink on which brands to phase out from our stable," Mr Nakanishi said.
"There's no decision on phasing out M800 and our engineers have told us they can scale up its engine to Euro 4 version," Mr Nakanishi said. "We will see the demand and take a call."
(BW)

The Communicator adds:
Maruti Suzuki can continue with its winning streak mainly due to its vast service network. The Maruti car is gradually attaining the status of the Ambassador or Premier Padmini of yore - a breakdown can be attended to at every nook and corner of the country. But one important aspect the company needs to pay attention to is the complacency that seems to be setting in amongst its POS (Point Of Sales) staff. Their attidude seems to be 'Take it or leave it. We are the market leader after all." Such arrogance will not do. Remember, Hyundai India emerged from nowhere to become a major mainly on account of its pre and after sales service.

# 42 - A Tear For Yakub Memon

2009-06-15T07:48:00.008+05:30

4 Aug 2007: Yakub Memon fell into CBI hands partly by chance and partly on his own volition. He had flown from Karachi to Kathmandu in July 1994 for a second consultation with a lawyer cousin from Mumbai. (The first meeting, also at Yakub’s insistence, had taken place earlier in Dubai.) He wanted to return to India, he said, “to clear his name”. A majority of the other Memons, with the exception of two brothers—Tiger and Ayub—also wanted to do the same. His cousin advised caution. While Yakub may believe that the rest of the Memons had nothing to do with Tiger’s bomb conspiracy, the ‘atmosphere’ in India was strongly against the family, he was told.
Yakub though had come prepared to surrender. He was travelling light—his luggage primarily consisted of a cache of documents, video and audio cassettes establishing Pakistan’s complicity in protecting the Memons after the bombings, if not revealing its actual role in masterminding the conspiracy.
Until Yakub’s totally unexpected arrest, India had given up hope of ever nabbing the Memons. Or of producing evidence to indicate a Pakistani hand behind the bombings.
Immediately after the return of the Memons in three separate batches spread over several weeks, then home minister SB Chavan told me in an interview published in India Today: “It was by chance that we got Yakub Memon, but his arrest has helped us clearly establish beyond doubt that Pakistan was fully involved.”
India’s prime concern at that time was to try and convince Washington about the Pakistani hand. Thanks to the return of the Memons, the Home Ministry finally had something to show. “In a three-hour presentation, my officers gave a complete briefing to the new US Ambassador Frank Wisner,” added Chavan. “I don’t think any objective person could reach any other conclusion (about Pakistan’s involvement).”
Yakub had carried the evidence to Kathmandu in a burgundy briefcase (his favourite colour). After his cousin advised caution, he was walking through airport security to fly back to Karachi when a large bunch of keys in his briefcase showed up in the X-ray image looking suspiciously like a handgun.
The briefcase was opened, and out tumbled the Memon family’s Indian passports. Yakub was detained, and eventually landed in CBI hands on August 4th.
Yakub’s failure to return to Karachi days earlier on July 24, however, had triggered a pre-arranged signal for the rest of the Memons. For them it meant Yakub had gone to India and surrendered, and if they were to follow suit they had to flee Karachi before the ISI woke up. They immediately flew to Dubai using the Pakistani passports issued to them under assumed names.
This created a huge challenge for the CBI. Especially in those days, Dubai was like a city out of a Graham Greene novel—crawling not just with South Asian gangsters and ex-Soviet Bloc prostitutes, but also with sinister operatives from various national security agencies. To complicate matters, Yakub’s wife Rahin had delivered their first child after landing in Dubai. It wouldn’t have taken the ISI too much time to ferret out the Memons and bundle them back to Karachi.
The CBI had to get to the Memons first. In a remarkable cloak-and-dagger operation lasting three tense weeks, CBI officers located the Memons in Dubai, kept them hidden from the ISI, and safely brought them to New Delhi in two groups—first Yakub’s father, mother, three brothers, and a sister-in-law, along with two children, and then his wife and new-born daughter.
Only Tiger and Ayub stayed back in Karachi. The CBI then heard the Memons’ incredible story. They were frequent visitors to Dubai, and some, like Rubina and Ayub, had become permanent residents. In March 1993, Ayub insisted that the close-knit family celebrate Id together in Dubai, and they left Mumbai shortly before the bombings.
After the bombings, Tiger turned evasive, and it gradually dawned on them that the reports from Mumbai were true—a Memon was behind the outrage. Barely a week later, when Tiger suddenly rushed them to Karachi, where they got entry without visas, they also realised that Tiger had done it at Pakistan’s behest.
This provoked father Abdul Razzak to physically thrash Tiger in front of the others soon after they landed in Karachi. The strongly built, hot-tempered Tiger took the beating quietly (just as he later accepted their decision to return to India, though, as Yakub said in court, Tiger warned him: “Tum Gandhiwadi ban ke ja rahe ho, lekin wahan atankwadi qarar kiye jayo ge (You are going as a Gandhian, but over there you will be labelled a terrorist).”
In Karachi, the Memons got new identities, a 20-room mansion to live in, and money to start new businesses. But all the Memons, except Tiger and Ayub, felt troubled at being branded back home as terrorists and traitors. They also felt out of place in Pakistan, forced to conceal their past and suppress their real persona. They had to pretend they were Urdu-speaking Mohajirs instead of what they really were—Gujarati-speaking Sunni Muslims from the Kutchi Memon community.
Initiated by Yakub, the idea gradually took root that since they were not involved in the bomb conspiracy, they should go back to Mumbai and clear their names. “They had a kind of naive faith that since they were innocent, they would be acquitted,” an official recalled.
The Memons felt only Yakub may get punishment for secondary offences stemming from his involvement, as a chartered accountant, in Tiger’s silver smuggling business. But even this could get offset by the fact that the Memons had brought crucial evidence implicating Pakistan.
“Yakub naively thought the country would feel indebted and he would get lenient treatment,” the official added.
The circumstances of the Memons’ return though were so amazing that the media soon began alleging a “deal” with the family, or even with Pakistan. The CBI’s then Director K. Vijay Rama Rao angrily said to me in an interview: “There is no deal with anyone. Absolutely.” He also made it clear the CBI did not intend to turn the Memons into approvers.
Accusations of a deal put Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao’s administration completely on the defensive. It was, therefore, decided to ignore the circumstances of the Memon family’s return and instead throw the anti-terror act at them. All the returnee Memons ended up in jail, including the parents, the daughters-in-law, and the mentally challenged youngest brother Yousuf. They were all arraigned as terrorists, and no mention was made of how and why the Memons had come back.
Vijay Rama Rao was right: there had been no deal with the Memons. This is what made their return even more extraordinary. The Memons came back because they believed in their innocence. More importantly, they were convinced that since India was a democracy their rights would be protected, that the government would be even-handed and that they would get a fair trial.
They have been proved wrong on all counts.
Rubina got rigorous life imprisonment only because a Maruti van used by Tiger’s men was registered in her name. But she wasn’t even living in Mumbai at the time of the bombings—she had shifted to Dubai six months earlier.
Essa, who was hospitalised with a brain tumour and suffers from morbid obesity, and Yousuf, diagnosed as a schizophrenic, also got life only because the flats and garage where the bomb conspiracy was hatched by Tiger and his men were registered in their names. There is nothing otherwise to link them to the conspiracy.
Yakub has been condemned to death. He was found guilty of arranging money for the purchase of vehicles used by the bombers and organising air tickets to Dubai for some of them. (From the Gulf, these men flew to Pakistan for arms training, using tickets arranged in Dubai by the absconding Ayub.) But such activity was normal for Yakub, since he had access to Tiger’s hawala bank accounts linked to silver smuggling. It does not necessarily show knowledge of or participation in the bomb conspiracy.
A trickier charge is that he asked his driver to give a bag containing hand grenades to one of Tiger’s men. Yakub denies it, but his driver and two of Tiger’s men confessed. Gun-running has always been a part of the Mumbai underworld’s business, so even if Yakub is guilty on this count it doesn’t necessarily establish advance knowledge of the bomb conspiracy.
The offence, like Sanjay Dutt’s, merits conviction under the arms act, with a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. For the same grenade bag incident, Kode has given seven years to Yakub’s driver, and 10 years to Tiger’s travel agent. Only Tiger’s manager got death—not for handling the bag of grenades but for planting an RDX-packed vehicle outside a cinema theatre.
In contrast to the Memon convictions, a Tiger gang member who was involved in all three aspects of the conspiracy—arms training in Pakistan, smuggling of arms and explosives to India, and loading and deploying of bomb vehicles (his car near the Shiv Sena headquarters killed four people)—was pardoned by Kode. Badshah Khan (an assumed name; his real identity is protected) got married after the bombings, has three children and lives comfortably in an upmarket Mumbai suburb.
The 1993 Mumbai serial bombings were the result of a heinous conspiracy, and the guilty must pay for their actions. But India is a democracy, and democracies normally don’t submit to lynch mobs. The treatment of the Memons does suggest that the government failed in its duty, choosing not to take a politically unpopular path and play fair with the family.
Our leaders have often said that not a single Indian Muslim joined the al-Qaeda in the past because India is a democracy. An open and fair society with a robust judicial system, they said, does not produce jihadis. So it’s all the more ironic that India’s most notorious Muslim family which voluntarily returned to the country to face trial because of its faith in the system today feels that it made a big mistake.
The Government can still make amends. I have a small proposal. The Congress vetoed the BJP’s demand for a special screening for MPs of an authentic film on the bomb conspiracy, Black Friday, which was based on a well-researched book by The Indian Express reporter S. Hussain Zaidi. They should go ahead with the screening. And after the MPs have seen the film, the Government should get officials who were directly involved with the return of the Memons to tell the full story of their homecoming.
It’s an exemplary tale, one that a leadership with imagination and courage could have turned into a celebration of our open and pluralistic society. Instead, the fate of the Memons now threatens to strain one of India’s age-old faultlines.
(Maseeh Rahman, IE. In March 1993, at the time of the serial bombings, the author was the Mumbai bureau chief of India Today)

The Communicator adds:
A very convincing argument for undoing a wrong done. Unfortunately no government will make "amends", not even the Congress. The country's oldest political party recently swept back to power at the centre and one of the factors that acted supposedly in its favour was the Muslim vote. But this is not a Hindu-Muslim issue. It is a national security and deshbhakti issue. By seeing to be siding with the Memons, the Congress cannot afford to antagonise patriotic Indians, and that includes Muslims as well.

# 41 - Nike Introduces New Intercourse Shoe

2009-06-14T22:32:00.004+05:30

BEAVERTON, OR—In yet another first for the world's premier athletic footwear manufacturer, Nike announced Tuesday the nationwide launch of the Air Fornicator, a lightweight copulating shoe designed to maximize sexual performance.
"Nike is proud to continue its commitment to new and innovative products with the first ever sneaker developed exclusively for sex," president and CEO Mark Parker said. "Stylishly sculpted and contoured for enhanced comfort, the featherlight Air Fornicator provides superior energy return to reduce fatigue and boost the libido."
"With this shoe you will last longer, experience more pleasure, and fuck smarter," Parker added. Nike design engineers subjected the Air Fornicators to a battery of erotic tests on multiple surfaces (see photo above).
According to a Nike press release, the Air Fornicator's cutting-edge support system creates maximum foot stability, which in turn improves coital alignment, increases clitoral stimulation, and deepens penetration. The revolutionary midsole component reportedly works to adapt to the user's pelvic motions and cushions the overall shock of repetitive grinding.
Retailing for $175, the Air Fornicator will be available in high-tops and low-tops and in a variety of passion-inducing color schemes.
Senior Nike footwear designer Barry Hudson said the shoe's outer sole was constructed from a durable carbonized rubber to improve grip, enhance traction, and prevent slipping on a variety of surfaces, including carpeting, concrete, wallpaper, hardwood, and silk. In addition, Hudson claimed that the rounded CliMax-brand air heel facilitates more efficient thrusting and lustful pounding.
"We made dozens of adjustments to the tread pattern to ensure balance, as well as proper support for arched backs," Hudson said. "And the soles were designed to minimize sliding around in bodily fluids. You can make love standing up in a puddle of massage oil and you won't fall down."
Nike's research department performed thousands of trials on the Air Fornicator over a 16-month period, including a number of stamina tests and other off-site experiments intended to gauge the intercourse shoe's robustness. Engineers, who observed couples in a variety of sexual positions, found several cases in which the Air Fornicator suddenly flew loose during intense coitus, a problem they remedied by tightening the lacing pattern and adding a Velcro strap for security.
A nationwide marketing campaign for the copulation sneaker will debut this Friday with a 60-second television ad scheduled to air on all major networks. The ad, shot in black-and-white and accompanied by the Led Zepellin song “Whole Lotta Love,” features a montage of several slow-motion scenes. These include a shot of a sweat-covered man pleasuring his wife, who reaches climax seconds later, shattering their bed’s headboard; a high-angled pan of a woman rolling her wheelchair up a steep hill while making love to her partner; and finally, a close-up of an Olympic runner, who bends over to lace up his Air Fornicators, before the camera pulls back to reveal his teammate approaching from behind with a strap-on dildo.
Sales for the new shoe are expected to be strong.
"My wife enjoys it when I make love to her, but I usually wind up feeling tired and sore," focus group volunteer Michael Nelson said. "Since getting the Air Fornicators, though, I've been giving it to her all the time. It hardly even feels like fucking anymore."
While Nike marketers found that consumers responded favorably to the product's claim of helping them "get into the erogenous zone," a small percentage were still not convinced. "I'm not going to spend $175 on an intercourse shoe when I only have sex like once a month at most," Dallas native Erica Graham said. "They would probably just sit in the closet and gather dust."
(The Onion)

# 40 - The Joy of Less

2009-06-13T14:12:00.006+05:30

By Pico Iyer
“The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles.” The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen,” though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5. In Japan, the late 18th-century poet Issa is celebrated for his delighted, almost child-like celebrations of the natural world. Issa saw four children die in infancy, his wife die in childbirth, and his own body partially paralyzed.
I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.” I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.
So — as post-1960s cliché decreed — I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.
I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world). When the phone does ring — once a week — I’m thrilled, as I never was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in Rockefeller Center. And when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all. While I’ve been rereading P.G. Wodehouse, or “Walden,” the crazily accelerating roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much where they started. “I call that man rich,” Henry James’s Ralph Touchett observes in “Portrait of a Lady,” “who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination.” Living in the future tense never did that for me.
I certainly wouldn’t recommend my life to most people — and my heart goes out to those who have recently been condemned to a simplicity they never needed or wanted. But I’m not sure how much outward details or accomplishments ever really make us happy deep down. The millionaires I know seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.
Being self-employed will always make for a precarious life; these days, it is more uncertain than ever, especially since my tools of choice, written words, are coming to seem like accessories to images. Like almost everyone I know, I’ve lost much of my savings in the past few months. I even went through a dress-rehearsal for our enforced austerity when my family home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground some years ago, leaving me with nothing but the toothbrush I bought from an all-night supermarket that night. And yet my two-room apartment in nowhere Japan seems more abundant than the big house that burned down. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nibbling at sweet tangerines in the sun. When a Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued. If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies. In New York, a part of me was always somewhere else, thinking of what a simple life in Japan might be like. Now I’m there, I find that I almost never think of Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue at all.
(NYT)

Also read: Pico Iyer interviewed by Rolf Potts

# 39 - Hot mail: Austrian boss proposes to Gujarati boy

2009-06-10T22:50:00.003+05:30

Ahmedabad: Like many love stories, this too would have remained untold but for a jittery phone call from a Gujarati boy to his boss in Austria.
Anang Naik, 35, a medical scientist, who had come home on leave, had called up office to extend his vacation so that he could marry and pacify his ageing parents keen to have him “settled”.
What followed was an urgent mail from his boss. “Would you mind considering me for marriage?” it said. And that is how Anang won his bride, Dorris, who flew down to Ahmedabad to get married on June 6. “For me it was now or never,” confesses Dorris, who is revelling in her new avatar as the Indian bahu, wearing sarees and rolling out chapatis and making moong, Gujarati style.
Anang works as a lead medical researcher in Laurus, a firm owned by Dorris. When he visited home this time, there were many marriage proposals, with his parents demanding that he should not go back to Austria unless he got them a bahu.
Anang gave in to parental pressure and made that call to Dorris, asking her to extend his leave. She promptly shot a mail. “I was at a loss. But then, I realised we had a lot in common. She too is a vegetarian and a teetotaler and we share a good understanding. Maybe I had not realised my feelings for her. Like a scientist, I hardly ever thought with my heart,” says Anang. Dorris says she always felt comfortable in his presence and likes the fact that he is sensitive and honest. The Naik household is delighted to finally have got a bahu while Dorris says she loves being in a “big Indian family”. “Back home, this concept is so alien. I love the warmth and sense of togetherness,” she said.
(TNN)

The Communicator adds: The best part of the story is in the last sentence. Out here, we try our best to get away from our families, sometimes large, sometimes dominating, sometimes not leaving you with any "space" of your own. But as Dorris points out, it are these very families that bring joy and warmth into your lives. The nuclear family has its advantages but the joint - or even a family with just parents attached - has more plus points. Ask any working woman.

# 38 - Hope for the living dead

2009-06-09T22:26:00.004+05:30

Lal Bihari ‘Mritak’, who leads a group of people declared dead by greedy relatives wanting to grab their property, plans to set up a branch in Mumbai
In 1976, Lal Bihari, a worker in a Banarasi sari weaving unit in Mubarakpur in Azamgarh district, was declared dead by relatives in his village – some 25 kilometres from his workplace – so that they could lay their hands on the small parcel of land that his dead father had left him.
In a stroke of his pen, a petty revenue official despatched him to a purgatory where he was neither dead nor living. It took Lal Bihari – then in his early twenties – 18 years to get his ‘life’ back. During that fight, Lal Bihari met thousands of living dead like him. It was for people like him that he set up the Rashtriya Mritak Sangh.
He found out that in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Delhi, government officials, politicians and the mafia ran a racket that robbed people of their property after declaring them dead. The gangs, of course, worked with the help of the victims’ relatives.
When Lal Bihari left his village of Khalihabad-Khanjarpur to work in the weaving unit, he had left his house and tiny piece of land in the care of his cousins. His mother accompanied him to Mubarakpur. The property that was then worth Rs 1 lakh had been left to him by his father who died when Lal Bihari was nine months old. Meanwhile, his uncle – his father’s brother – cultivated the land and used the earnings from the tiny plot to supplement his own meagre income. When Lal Bihari turned 18, he told his cousins (his uncle was dead by then) that he wanted his meagre inheritance back. That was when his aunt and cousins decided to ‘kill’ him. So, as he laboured at the sari factory, his family connived with government officials at the Tehsil headquarters to declare him dead.
Lal Bihari learnt of his ‘death’ when he applied for a loan from a bank. He went to the Tehsil office to get some identity papers and found that according to official records, he was dead. “I had a bank account, ration card and voters identity card. But nobody was ready to believe that I was the person mentioned in the documents. There was no photograph on these papers in those days. I realised that my relatives had connived with government officials to declare me dead. I was devastated,” Lal Bihari said.
Unlike many others like him who surrendered to the designs of their avaricious relatives, Lal Bihari fought back. He approached the courts, the state legislature and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). He also took his campaign into the streets: he sat in dharnas outside the state legislature, made posters highlighting the issue and approached local newspapers for help. He contested assembly and parliamentary elections, both of which he lost. But by this time, Lal Bihari had managed to draw attention to his issue. He estimates that he spent close to Rs 1 crore in his fight to be counted among the living once more. In 1994, a district court declared him ‘alive’ and in an act of magnanimity, he donated his piece of land to the very relatives who had plotted to grab it.
He then made it his life mission to create a fellowship of the living dead. In Uttar Pradesh, the NHRC is now investigating 300 cases of living people declared dead. Five of these are from Azamgarh district. Many victims of this racket live in Mumbai and Lal Bihari wants to help them get their ‘lives’ back.
Meanwhile, a film based on his life has been planned in Mumbai. And as a reminder of the two decades that he spent to rise from the ranks of the dead, he has added the suffix ‘Mritak’ to his name.
(MM)

# 37 - What is the BJP all about today?

2009-06-07T11:37:00.009+05:30

As the BJP begins post-mortems of its defeat in the General Election and tries to institute a generational change in its leadership, many suggestions have been put forward about how it can recast itself.
The first suggestion — made by Arun Jaitley in an article in the Indian Express — is that the party must abandon shrillness because voters prefer moderation.
This sounds sensible enough but the problem is: can there be a BJP without shrillness? Its chosen persona is of the Hindu with a grievance. And a party of grievance can hardly mumble its complaints.
In the Eighties, when the BJP sprang to national prominence, it tried a dual approach. LK Advani would wring his hands and pretend to be the mild-mannered fellow who had been driven to anger by the injustices that had been heaped on Hindus. But even as Advani was doing his impression of RK Laxman’s common man, the message was being hammered away by a host of others who were shrill, almost by definition: Uma Bharati, Pramod Mahajan, Sadhvi Rithambara etc.
Since then, the BJP has always been shrill. Over the last few years, Advani himself has abandoned the mild-mannered fellow impersonation and revealed a nasty, combative side, attacking Manmohan Singh with needless viciousness.
During the last campaign, the defining characteristic of the BJP was pointless shrillness. Forget about Narendra Modi, what about the rest? Jaitley himself wasted his own time (and everybody else’s) by going on about the threat posed to Indian democracy by Ottavio Quattrocchi, massively exaggerating the significance of a 25-year-old scandal that most people had forgotten. Other spokesmen echoed this line (“this is a dark day for Indian democracy”: Sudheendra Kulkarni).
When the BJP talks about ‘shrillness’, it means Narendra Modi’s speeches during the campaign. But Modi was not their only problem. All of them — including Advani — were shrill.
And frankly, I don’t think they know how to conduct a debate in any other way.

The problem with the BJP and
the reason why it gropes
for old issues to blow up again
and again is that it is a party
with no core beliefs. Nobody
is really sure what it
stands for any longer

The second suggestion, made by Swapan Dasgupta in The Times of India on Thursday, is that the BJP should play down its Hindutva agenda. Dasgupta has long rejected the Hindu basis of the BJP’s agenda and argued that the party’s best hope lies in recasting itself as a modern, right-of-centre, internationally-minded grouping.
This is an interesting suggestion but it does not belong in the real world. There may or may not be room for such a party within the Indian political system but that party is not the BJP.
To ask the BJP to recast itself in this fashion is akin to asking the CPI(M) to transform itself into the party of free speech, pro-Americanism and private enterprise. In other words: good idea; wrong party.
The BJP without Hindutva is like Pizza Hut without the pizza. Most of the BJP’s cadres are committed to some form of Hindutva. The party’s bosses in Nagpur are only interested in promoting a Hindu agenda. And much of the BJP’s support base likes the party because of its Hindu agenda.
A third suggestion, which first surfaced during the campaign itself, is that the BJP’s problems are the consequence of a leadership crisis. Halfway through the campaign, sections of the BJP began talking about Narendra Modi as a potential Prime Minister, even while Advani was still fighting for the job.
Now, the BJP is open about the leadership problem. When leaders say “we missed Vajpayee’s leadership” what they really mean is “Advani wasn’t up to the job.” Proponents of this view argue that new leaders will revitalise the party. Perhaps they will. But who will these leaders be?
It is now clear that Advani wants Sushma Swaraj to succeed him because a) she is a mass leader, b) she is not Murli Manohar Joshi and c) she stood by him during the campaign when his other protégés rushed off to embrace Modi.
But is Sushma a 21st century leader? It is not unlikely that Rahul Gandhi could be the face of the Congress during the 2014 campaign. Is Sushma going to be effective in countering all the things that the Congress will claim that Rahul represents: youth, a forward-looking approach, empathy with the Kalawatis and other disadvantaged people of India etc?
It is hard to say. Certainly she will have to transform her persona from the xenophobic, rolling pin-wielding middle class housewife she now represents. And with Sushma at its head, the BJP will more or less have embraced shrillness as its tone of voice, regardless of what Jaitley wants.
But if not Sushma, who? Arun Jaitley perhaps. But does he have the electoral credentials any mass leader will require? Narendra Modi? Could be, even if the current mood is against him.
But do any of these people strike you as having the ability to lead the BJP in the way that Vajpayee did? Rahul, on the other hand, strikes most people as being quite capable of following in his mother’s footsteps.
Which leads us to the real crisis of the BJP.
The problem with the BJP and the reason why it gropes for old issues to blow up again and again is that it is a party with no core beliefs. Nobody is really sure what it stands for any longer.
We saw this in the campaign. It’s all very well for Arun Jaitley to call for moderation and an end to shrillness but for many years now he has been Narendra Modi’s ambassador in Delhi. He has consistently defended Modi’s behaviour during the Gujarat riots, has attacked anyone who dares question Modi and during this campaign, he sang Modi’s praises.
Or take the Varun Gandhi case. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the BJP should have stripped Varun of his ticket.
But the only people in the BJP who spoke out against Varun were its token Muslims (Shahnawaz Hussain and MA Naqvi). Other leaders either helped Varun’s legal defence or portrayed him as a victim, railing against the Election Commission.
When such leaders talk about the need for a moderate BJP, what credibility can they possibly have?
Then, there are the economic issues and the nuclear deal. The Vajpayee government would have grabbed the nuclear deal — we know this because Brajesh Mishra has said so. Yet Advani found pretexts to oppose it, before hurriedly re-arranging his position once again during the campaign.
So it is with liberalisation. Where does the BJP stand? Is it the party of the global economy? Or is it the party of the bania who wants no regulation for himself but regulation of all his business rivals?
We still don’t know.
For me, the defining moment of the campaign came when Yashwant Sinha went on TV. Yashwant is an old friend from the 1980s, an essentially decent and moderate man who finds it difficult to live it down that political circumstances drove him to the BJP just months after he had attacked the party in Parliament over the Babri Masjid demolition.
He was asked about Modi. I waited for Yashwant to give a reasoned or evasive reply. Instead he declaimed, “Narendra Modi is our most popular leader. He has all the qualities required to become Prime Minister of this country.”
I knew then that the game was up. The BJP had become a party full of people who stood for nothing except for political opportunism.
(Vir Sanghvi, HT)

The Communicator adds:
One major drawback about the Congress is that none of its leaders can see eye-to-eye, at the national, state or even the zilla parishad level. But the Congress has one unifying name: Gandhi. Madam's decision is final (in the future, it could will be Rahul Baba's). The BJP unfortunately doesn't have the luxury of one name that can act as a glue. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's voice was heard to some extent. But now it's a free-for-all. So Bhairon Singh Shekawat does not like L K Advani who hates Murli Manohar Joshi. Sushma Swaraj abhors Arun Jaitley. Uma Bharti could not get along with anyone and was shown the door. There are mini-wars in nearly all states. For example, in Maharashtra, Nitin Gadkari and Gopinath Munde are tugging the party in opposite directions instead of pulling it in tandem like a cohesive whole. Fractional infighting of this kind all over the country has had disastrous results, clearly evident in BJP's poor results in the 2004 as well as 2009 general elections.