Democracy and Crony Capitalism

The story about the crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street is interesting. Of what I had read these demands were made first by Michael Moore.

The story seems a bit exaggerated, but then it can also be the truth. But there is an interesting point to study in terms of democracy. 'Does democracy exist or is it crony capitalism all the way?'

There would be about 3 steps to see it.  

Step one: Choose 10 countries which have functioning democracy for last 2-3 decades. (This will remove rogue states)

Step two: Establish which of the countries have placed maximum information online regarding level of transparency.

Make a grid column and check how each country fares

(1) On bio and financial info of its elected leaders available to the public

(2) Access to voting patterns of each representative at the democratic forum (Senate, Parliament etc.)

(3) Publicly if it’s possible to establish if the close relatives such as spouse, child, father, mother are related to which companies/conglomerates. Listed companies in India/US have to declare who all are on the board of the company and also about individuals/companies that hold more than 1 per cent of the company. 

Step three: The five countries with highest score on democratic transparency can be studied.

(1) Mark what questions were raised by a peoples representative?
(2) Was the question positive or negative for the company/sector/ business
(3) Establishing if the individual has financial interest to the company/sector/business
(4) Also, how a representative vote on laws affecting sectors of an economy against the individual's financial interest in that sector or on a specific company.

P.S.

1. A friend of mine had done a story in 2008 for Economic Times where he sifted through the question hours of Lok Sabha and came out as which national/regional party had questioned for which company/conglomerate. I don't remember if the questions were marked as positive and negative to check the biasness or not.

2. It seems like a lot of work and there will still be scope for error. (Perhaps using the capabilities of the software written in this article -- Palantir -- should make the work relatively possible.)

3. If you have ideas to improve the way in which one should do the story then feel free to share the ideas or if you come across a similar story do share that as well or if you plan to take up the study then feel free to ask for any assistance 




Continued to 

Rebuttal on Swaminathan A. Aiyar's recent column

Swaminathan Aiyar's latest column was "Gulf Oil: Declining US oil imports could push up Indian expenditure on Navy".

I am too lazy to summarize his points so you wil have to put in the effort of reading there. Sorry.

India's navy expense will go up but it will not be because of US shifting out of Gulf. I don't agree to his reasons. It will go up because of ambitions.

1. Its still a decade to 2020. For the simple idea just open any of such studies that were published in 2001 stating how the world would be in 2011. And check the original figures of 2011. You will get a clear idea of why such studies shouldn't be taken too seriously. One should read them but not make a hypothesis based on them.

2. Aiyer's argument that US will shift out of gulf and make ways for China is also not quite correct. US will muddle in the middle east for two reasons. First it will be there because the 'Israel Lobby' will make sure that US remain in close proximity of the country for emergency support. Second, US had no business in Vietnam and yet it fought the communist. The USofA is too used to playing police and making sure it has strike capabilities all over the world within few hours. And for this goal it will maintain its hold in middle east.

Recently to counter the growing presence of China in South China sea, the USofA decided that it will station marines in Australia. (Link).

Chanakya's Chant

"Chanakya Chants" has two parallel story running in different ages. One is a historic fiction describing how Chanakya achieved a united 'Bharat' for his protege Chandragupta Maurya. The other parallel story is from modern India, 60 years after independence, and how Gangasar made his protege Chandini the Prime Minister.

In the historical fiction, some of the events are facts which we have read during our school years, and then there are lots of fiction to make the reading interesting.

Where as, reading the current times had a mixed feeling that it was not entirely fictional either. Rather all that has been described has actually occurred over the 60 years since independence.

Just to give you some examples. We had lady prime minister (Indira Gandhi), she was endorsed and placed in power by a famous kingmaker in the Congress party, named K. Kamaraj.

Then there is a mention of how a trader profits from the licence raj implemented in the country. The trick described in the book is similar to what Dhirubhai Ambani was accused of doing.

On the whole the concept of the entire story is that corrupt and vile nature of human beings are not new. The only thing that has changed is the form and how different people try to achieve it. Assassination was a more common way of eliminating enemies during Chanakya's time, and in the new age 'character assasination' is more preferred.

The life of both the protagonist's across the  both the eras' show that to attain power takes a lot of sacrifices of various emotions and also of conscience.

It does give an impression that at certain times achieving goals are more important than the means used to attain them. And on other occasions no matter what decisions one takes, it will be deemed as wrong. Like, is it right to allow two kings to go to war and let thousands kill each other or is it correct to use deceit and let the  two kings decide through a dual and then kill the surviving king using an assassin!

In short, Aswini Sanghi's second novel should be read by those who have keen interest in either politics or fictional history, it will be worth the time. The novel has a crude language, even the choice of words is not eloquent. It feels very disconnected when on occasions the characters of the novel are using the famous quotes that are attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde and Mao Zedong  then on other occasions these characters blurt clumsy lines used in colloquial language.

A policy error on Maruti's part

There is continuous problem that has been cropping up at the Maruti's plant. Every now and then they are shutting it down for fairly long period.

But no one, it seems is actually trying to solve the underlying problems they are just playing the immediate game.

To start with the main problem is that temporary workers are paid less and have less amenities but companies prefer them because its easy to issue them pink slips (in other words fire them) when there is a slow down.

This is definitely a skewed system.

The solution would be to pay higher wages (i.e. cash in hand) to temporary workers.

The easiest I could think of was to pay 20% more to temporary workers than the permanent workers. That should even out the playing field between temporary and permanent workers.

Permanent workers get less cash in hand and more benefits plus firing them would be difficult. Meanwhile temporary workers will be paid more because they will have more risk, the risk of losing the job.

Why is the state government not suggesting such simple solution or coming up with a solution that is (a) practical (b) solves the real problem?  A policy problem cannot be solved by signing agreement and playing strikes and suspension.

The Centralized or Autonomous Security System

I couldn't figure or a better headline but then whatever.

Foreign Policy has placed an interesting article on its website. Though the entire article is from an American security perspective but then there are lessons for everyone to pick up.

In the light of 'Stuxnet' affair and the hacking of different US government website shows that it is possible to hack absolutely anything.

Online or systems which are not online. Either way you can be hacked but the best way to increase security is to de-centralize the electronic security system and make sure to keep it off-internet. If Osama Bin-Laden can do it so can everyone. This does not mean you are cent per-cent secured but it improves the chances to remaining secure for longer period. There will be an argument for centralized and online security system as it will result in higher efficiency. Then in that guess its better to see what the worst case scenario will be like if there is a breach of security

Rest you will figure it out once you read the article, right now I am too lazy to summarize it, and I dont doubt the intelligence of the readers.

'The Big Short'. How the world jumped off a cliff

Although there are many books on the subject of what happened in 2008, which we keep referring to as financial meltdown, panic etc. This book is an excellent read for those who do not know anything but would like to know about it without bothering much of complicated explanation.

Before dissecting the book, a few words about the author just to lay the foundation of why he was able to write this book the way he did it.

Who is this guy, ‘Michael Lewis’?

Michael Lewis did his BA in history from Princeton and then pursued MA in Economics from LSE (London School of Economics). He then got a job with Saloman Brothers and worked at its bond desk. He left the company and wrote his first book Liar’s Poker, describing his experience at Saloman Brothers.

In both the books – Liar’s poker and The Big Short – he has mentioned many times how amusing the financial landscape is. Read the following first sentence of the The Big Short “The willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grown-ups remains a mystery to me to this day.”

Ah! So this guy actually understands finance. But most importantly he is not blinded by money and so he managed to walk away from it.

The Big Short – A True Story

In this book, leaving out the nitty-gritty of the financial crisis, the author -- Michael Lewis -- has focused on two things. The book’s idea was to find out the people who first identified the problem in the financial world. And in the process of introducing these people, and their thought on investments; along with that he has also explained the problem of the financial world.

It is common that once an event passes away or has occurred there are many experts or pundits who claim to have predicted it.  But how seriously should these people be taken? This is the tough part to answer.

Had someone put in their hard earned income and reputation behind their rationale, well such person should be taken very seriously. Because they will lose out on everything, economic and social, if their rationale doesn't come out properly in real life.  

The entire book is about the people who understood the fallacy of profit that the market had built and exploited betting against it. Lewis also meets these people to find out how they came to understand that the castle of modern finance had its foundation in air, and it will fall the moment people wake up from their slumber.

Reading through his search leads to the conclusion that there were four main people who understood and placed their money where there mouth was. These set of people shorted the sub-prime market even when the world discouraged them and against all odds at the end they made truckloads of money.

The first guy mentioned in the book is Steven Eisman, a cynical money manager who does not hesitate to speak his mind and be honest. One of hedge fund manager who described Eisman to Lewis said, “He’s sort of prick in a way, but he’s smart and honest and fearless.” He understood what was happening way back in 2002 although he was shown how to short the sub-prime market only in 2006.

Then the second character is introduced, Dr Mike Burry, who perhaps created the very instrument a carried out the first trade where he shorted the sub-prime market in 2005. In fact, it was his insistence that made all the banks creates the financial product called CDS (corporate default swap). And he was a neurosurgeon by education who also understood equity investment. He started a blog where he would discuss his thoughts on specific equity trade, which eventually many people started following and they were actually making money. How refined he was with investment ideas on his blog can be gauged from the statement made by money manager at a big Philadelphia value fund: “He is doing value investing – in the middle of the dot-com bubble. He’s buying value stocks, which is what we are doing. But we are losing money. We are losing clients. All of a sudden he goes on this tear. He’s up fifty percent. It’s uncanny. He’s uncanny. And we are not the only ones watching him.”

So once Dr Burry realises his potential, he opens a hedge fund called Scion Capital.  The moment he made this announcement on his blog, investors piled up. And hence the doctor began his new career as a hedge fund manager. Somewhere in the middle, it is revealed ‘why the doctor is such a genius,’ but at that point the book feels like a personal tragedy where the protagonist discovers that he is not special as he thought he was. (I will not reveal any further about this person. Read it to find out.)

After this the readers will be introduced to Greg Lippmann, a Deutsche Bank trader. “The least controversial thing to be said about Lippmann was that he was controversial. He wasn’t just a good bond trader, he was a great bond trader. He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t even rude, at least not intentionally. He simply evoked extreme feeling.”

This description should say it all. He is one of the people who dealt with Dr Burry while providing him with the CDS. And once he understood what Burry was doing and that bonds containing home mortgage loans are crap.  Lippmann was the guy who went around approaching selling the idea of CDS. He is also the person who showed Eisman on how to short the entire sub-prime market.

Then, the readers will be introduced to two more guys, Jamie Mai and Charlie Ledley who would form the company called Cornwall Capital. These two along with one more person, Ben Hockett, short the sub-prime market. What made these people unique was that the two partners of Cornwall Capital had opened their account for investing with $110,000. They had managed to convert this in to $12 million in a span of two years! There was nothing brilliant or genius about their methodology, it was pure common-sense.

It’s a great book. One should read it just so that they understand that most part of finance is not complicated, it is simple. The book tries to explain an important event. It is unsettling to know that so many smart people had actually no clue about that they were trying to build profit from thin air and in ways that belies the common sense! 

Despite making money, Eisman explains how it feels to be on the other side: “In 2008 it was the entire system that was at risk. We were still short. But you don’t want to the system to crash. It’s sort of like the flood’s about to happen and you are Noah.  You’re on the ark. Yeah, you’re okay. But you are not happy looking out at the flood. That’s not a happy moment for Noah.” 

Writing with a yawn

After the two blast in Norway, a lone gunman opened fire at a camp island. In total the death toll was more than 90.

The first reaction was that it was the 'Muslim terrorist' and some group even claimed the responsibility for it.

Many people died and in the end it was revealed that the gun-man was mentally deranged.

Looking at this -- http://www.hindustantimes.com/After-HuJI-IM-claims-responsibilty-for-Delhi-blast/H1-Article1-743138.aspx -- it feels that all terrorist organization want to claim the responsibility and add a star of accomplishment on their wall. (just like they do in schools, and these days in office)

Puts me all the more in doubt that most people have no clue about what they dealing with. And I am not the only one, It seems that yesterday afternoon some people were betting that by evening the government will state that IM is responsible. (which got true). The wildest and yet a possible theory is that perhaps it was done to remove attention from core issues, cash-for-vote and corruption.

Today the volumes in television would go up only when there was a news related to the Bomb-blast, something that.


I couldn't think of a better headline and was very tired plus the deception of headline would be good fun. 

Observations on SEO

Based on this google’s blog and the questions under the sub-head "What counts as a high-quality site?"

It seems the focus for websites should not be on seo (search engine optimization), that has cropped up as an industry in India, but its more to do with creation of high quality and authoritative work. The seo concepts and ideas should only be used to create an easy index so that the 'crawler' can easily identify the page. 

Just as we use an index to search in a book, the tags, description etc will help the crawlers to identify and index properly. To put in in simple words -- the website should have high direct traffic, which sort of reflects its brand value. And the website should be easy to navigate and index by Google’s crawler.  

Thus people who are not aware of a topic/subject and hence when they search on google, the evaluation for the result will give the highest point to the subject expert (meta Description and the company background), followed by direct traffic density (brand value) and definitely this will be supported by easy navigation for its crawlers (page description and tagging).  

My experience working in the business segment of the media industry, my knowledge as of now says that I should follow the following websites for business related news:  

reuters.com -- Business and breaking news  
blooomberg.com -- Business and breaking news  
moneycontrol.com -- Business and breaking news  
livemint.com -- Business news and good analytical views on breaking news  
vccircle.com -- India related private equity news and all merger and acquisitions in India valueresearchonline.com -- Mutual funds news and numbers  

Then other website of interest would be  
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com 
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com 
http://www.business-standard.com 
http://www.indiainfoline.com  

All of these cover Indian businesses in the media industry. Now that you also have an idea of where to look for what. just follow the simple exercise.  

So in the google’s search box if we type a mutual fund’s name, not a fund house name like Franklin Templeton, but the name of the exact fund like ‘Franklin India Bluechip’. 


Then the top results should represent -  

• Franklin Templeton (the fund house) 
• Value Research (the expert) 
• Money Control (the expert) 
• Economic Times (the expert)  

Similarly if we search with a company’s name like ‘RIL’ the result will start from the company’s website followed by other sources but most of these results don't come as a surprise to me. If the search ambit is increased to ‘RIL Valutaions’ it will make a difference in the result but even they are not all that surprising.  

This leads to a conclusion that site ratings matter on things like direct traffic, claim of expertise which has been recognized over a period of time etc This is not surprising considering the article on google in The Atlantic Magazine.

p.s. Not so sure but I think the search result also takes into account if we are logged in or not on gmail/orkut or any other google affiliates or how many people receive mails from a website, which sheds light on their popularity. I need to do some testing and reading on these part.

A Wednesday

Yes, 'have stolen' the headline from the movie from the name of the movie. Will save you (readers') the harrasment of thinking.

The day started as usual. Searching for story ideas to keep myself busy and be productive. Meeting targets and deadlines, the usual stuff. Read an interesting article in Mint where the editors were complaining of the current rating system.

But then suddenly the newschannels started screaming that reports have come that there was a blast in New Delhi outside the high-court.

Of the six televisions that were blasting soundbites trying to gain attention. One particular channel said the sentence "There has been a blast outside the highcourt in New Delhi" nine consecutive times with slight variation of speed and trying to sound serious, as if the first time or the second time the viewers didn't get it. And they were blind enough to not read the alert that was flashing right at the center of the TV.

Them there was another channel where the host concluded even before anyone can actually understand the situation that this was done by a terrorist outfit from outside the country. Sounded as if wanted to claim, he was the one who did it, that was the level of surity.

And then Rajdeep Sardesai was talking about how the CCTV was not working nor were the metal detectors. This led me to think that perhaps the mere presence of security theatrics does work because whoever did it did not try taking it inside.

There were couple of things that were surprising about this. First it was a bold move considering that there was recently a blast in Mumbai. Second, the choice of location, why the high court in Delhi? Attention does not seem to be the motive here because there could be many other locations which would have got the imagination of the crowd. It was also not a location which was VVIP sort, it was near it but not the brightest of spot.

So either these guys were absolutely dumb or this puzzle will only be solved on flick.

And as for the interesting article I was reading on Mint. I think you should also read it.

Wild guess

The New York Times headline was screaming "Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama Says"  And all other headlines and news channels were making useless noise as always.

It seems no one is paying attention is that this operation was carried by a small group of trained people. What was not achieved by huge army with all modern technology was actually achieved by a small set of people. Making an important point that to kill or capture serious terrorist does not require a regular army combing through hostile ares, it only increases the over all collateral damage (Afghanistan) without giving any actual benefit. The effective strategy is to send few highly skilled people after the intended target. This is a old battle tactics used to take out snipers. Perhaps going forward there will be much discussion on the learning and observation from this result.

Though not sure, let me bet that when the hue and cry subsides, it will come to light that, ‘it was basically an assassination of Osama carried out by the CIA under the executive order of the president.’ that’s how they got him.

Greedy tip

Among the seven deadly sins that mankind is afflicted of, I would say "greed" is perhaps the most common. Maybe because of my profession, I have managed to notice more instances of greed .

Well I am associated with business journalism, mostly covering personal finance -- Stocks and Mutual Funds -- for over two years. Even in that my domain was mostly about writing features on stocks (Jan 2009- Dec 2010). And everytime I would mention about this, most often people would ask me for a quick tip to make a quick money.

My response was the same then and now, investing is not a fun game. It is not easy money. You will have to do some work to make money. Its like an activity, you can enjoy it only if you like working hard. And I would always offer them tips on how to study the market and understand stocks. Was even ready to help them learn everything that I know.

Alas! Not many people would agree that its not easy money, and then most will actually stop asking or saying anything. Sometimes I get the feeling, they think I have no clue about my job.

In a way, it was sad to see how everyone wanted the easy money. It seemed they had forgotten the proverb: "Give a man a fish and he will not be hungry for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll never go hungry".

Everyone wants a fish and doesn't care about tomorrow.

In school I had read a story. I am sure you must have read it too. Don't remember the exact text but it goes like:

Once upon a time there was a man. He was poor as compared to some of his relatives but he had everything in his life, a nice house, decent work, good family and was able to meet all his commitments. Then one day he made a statement that if given a chance he will make a lot of money and even the devil cannot take away from him. 

The devil heard and decided to take the challenge. 

The guy started making money and grew rich. Then one day, he was given an offer that he can have as much land as he can run and cover. The man started running, and though he was tired, he thought if he could run a little more, he will have that extra land as well. In the end he dies, ran too more than he should have and the only land that he actually got was the space in which he was buried. 

Now what I don't get why don't people ever understand the lesson.

Taking a leak with 'wikileak'

The pun in the heading was intended! Don't bother if you didn't get it.

Anyways, it has been interesting to read the different aspects of wikileak stories, no pun or sarcasm intended here. I have been keenly following the wikileak stories just like most people, not taking anything seriously. Because not every information is worth demand attention.

Before starting out. Let me make it very clear. I am not trying to defend, accuse etc here. To the best of my ability its just an exercise of information classification or lets say understanding the value of information in the so called 'information age'. (Yeah, I know its three information in a single sentence but move on).

One needs to understand the importance along with the difference between Views, Truth & Facts. 

Although nearly everyone reading this will say they know it but its better that I state it in clear terms because I want to, and this is my blog so I will do it.

A "fact" is a reality that cannot be logically disputed or rejected. For example, fire is hot, and it can burn your skin, now you can think or believe what ever you like, but if you pan to dispute with this, then go visit a doctor.

"Truth" is usually derived from a fact, but primarily it is a matter of believe. For example, Bush is an idiot, now most would find this statement as the truth, but definitely many would say its not true. Same goes with the argument God exists! Many will find it as a statement telling us the truth and many won't.

Ah! now cometh the word "Opinion" or let us say view, it is usually an inference that we would have either derived or formed for some reason or perhaps no reason. A smart person justifies their opinion and then there are those who do not do so. Either way don't bother much about it.

Now coming back to business of wikileaks, the only part which I find (an opinion) important are facts, the rest of the parts which would come under truth or opinion is only good for some clarity but not worth unnecessary commotion.

Now the beauty of the leaked diplomatic cables from India is they all fall in the category of views or sometimes as truth.

Horse trading, not the literal one, buying votes for cash, is not new I guess we all have heard our share of the stories. The only proven case to my knowledge is of PV Narasimha Rao, that he had bribed MPs in 1990s to prove his majority on floor of the house. But in recent years its been a common trend that MLAs in states have been put up in expensive hotels with guards to ensure that no horse trading affects the floor voting pattern for the parties. The only way around it is to make sure that we choose better MPs in our elections and hope that they have the backbone that defines a leader. There is no amount of policy that can replace the individuals' who eventually take decisions and implement it through actions.

In India lobbying is not official. That doesn't mean it has not taken place in the past or does not take place at present and will not happen in the place. Its among the oldest tricks in the book at different points of time. Diplomats have always functioned as 'emissaries' and for ages they have also been involved in propaganda. 

So far the recent wikileaks have not have had anything that are startling revelations, most of them are mere truths and some are views of diplomats to the superiors. Something quite common and expected. So, I would prefer if a journalist or the media at large puts up some effort to dig for a startling information, a fact, rather than giving importance to frivolous information under the bizarre claims of new revelation of truth.

Some things never change!

I have now started making a lot of those one man surveys, that Khushawant Singh used to make. And have come to some bizarre conclusions. It seems the Jal Board of nearly all the cities -- Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata etc. -- in the country love to own tankers of pathetic condition. These tankers are supposed to take water to areas facing water shortage. And guess what, none of the respondents of my survey remember to have never seen a water tanker that did not spill water on the road!

In fact one of my friends in Delhi said, "The easiest way to find if a water tanker has passed a road is to see if there is any trace of water on the road."

Another friend from Mumbai had said, "While there is scarcity of water in the city its pissing off to see water leaks and water spilling all over the road from a government owned (jal board) water tanker." 

I guess there are certain things never change.

Practice

Like any other activity, riding a bike is also a matter of practice. I have learnt this the hard way.

I was no expert on riding, ever. But fear never had a grip over me till few years back. For the last two and half years or maybe three years, I have not been riding a bike. And now when I do ride, there is this lack of confidence and a certain level of fear that has a grip over me. 

So I wanted to figure out a way to deal with this. And it seems that Malcolm Gladwell's book, 'Outliers: The story of success', can be the saviour.

Anyways, this problem shall be dealt with over a period of time. The book explains the interesting study by Anders Ericsson which is '10,000 hour rule'. Its simple, one masters a skills as a result of dedicated practice, it is the magic figure of practicing for 10,000 hours. And then he goes on to give many examples of successful people e.g. Bill Gates, Beatles etc.

Since I have no desire to become a great biker, hopefully even few hundred hours of riding should work out!!

Although I am not sure if there is an empirical analysis but there is an age age old maxim, "Practice makes a man Perfect", so there is not much hope for me either. Except riding the bike on every possible occasion. Even Rome was not built in a day, perhaps with time the riding fear will lessen.

False tone

I am sure; some of your friends must have bought a Tata Indicom or Docomo at some point. Do you remember their complaints? If you don’t remember then just call up your friend who had used any of the Tata’s telecom offering and ask them, if they would like to use or let’s say rely on the service (Indicom or Docomo or Virgin) again for their office or their personal work? Also try and recall if you have you ever heard any corporate connection with the services of Tata telecom? My memory fails on any such information.

During college days (like two years back), I remember many of my friends having a reliance connection to talk to their parents, as their parents also had reliance at home. And they would keep a second mobile to call up friends and use locally. This second service would be one of the major three: Airtel, Vodafone (former Hutch) or Idea (then it used to be Spice in Karnataka and Punjab).

Only one friend took Tata Indicom for calling home since it had a better offer. Two months later, the mobile and the service found its way to the dustbin, and the easiest way to infuriate my friend during those days was to ask "How’s the service of Indicom?"

The second time I heard about their service quality was when one of my friends bought Tata Photon, the USB dongle. Well this particular customer was satisfied with the service initially. Till he reached Jamshedpur, also sometimes called as the Tata Steel's city. Apparently the USB didn’t work in the region, I meant in Tata Steel’s city.

So, the simplest way to check out a loser or a winner in the service sector is to crosscheck with about three questions. How good is your service? And how fast can you adapt to technology? Are they using technology to enhance the experience of the customer? And is it worth the cost?

The recent article by Forbes on Tata's telecom business was good. There were lots of information in the article, how the telecom business is run and what Ratan Tata may be thinking. They even tried giving some suggestion of what could happen.

The most interesting part I found was now it plans to merge all of its telecom businesses under a single umbrella. Its still better to be late than never. 

The second interesting information was: "Customers will normally switch to market leaders or if the network has exceptional voice clarity. Tata has neither the leadership nor the right type of network. It has the 1,800 MHz frequency band, which isn't the best for voice clarity and competing on that front will be hard."

And "Worse, it has to pay other operators for carrying traffic for it in some very key markets." This certainly was information for me.

Somehow I felt the conclusion was over dramatised, "Srinath may be an insider but some of these tasks are so tricky that even for someone of his experience, tying up all loose ends may just take too much time. And that's a commodity that might run out for the Tatas even if their money doesn't."

When was the last time when Tata's have closed down a company after investing so much? If you can’t get an answer to that then keep watching.

'12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal': Eid Milad-un-Nabi

According to the Islamic calender, based on lunar movement. Today (Feb 16, 2011), is 12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal, it is widely celebrated as Eid-Milad-dun-nabi also known as Mawlid in colloquiol arabic marking the birth of Prophet Mohammad. There are two interesting facts about this celebrated day.

First, he was born and he died on the same day of the Islamic calender, 12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal.

The second interesting fact is, celebration on the 12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal started only 400 years after his death.

The topic is covered well in Wikipedia. It is inevitable to conclude that the only reason why the then government encouraged the celebration was to boost the rulers power base, or perhaps it was done to divert public attention.

Whatever, be the cause, it goes without saying that the birth of Prophet Muhammad was the significant event. But the point is that the companions of Muhammad did not observe this event. Also, Muhammad did not observe the birth or death anniversaries of anyone, nor did he advise his followers to observe his birthday. There is not a single instance in any of the biographies where such a celebration is noted.

Considering all of these together, perhaps its best to treat 12th of Rabi'-ul-Awwal as another normal day.

'Jago re'

Once in a while its good to be on a very long vacation, there is lots of time on our hands to look at what has been happening around the world and reflect on it.

It was interesting to read about how the so called strong economies of the slowdown year (2008) are getting a bit shaky -- Canada, China, India and Germany. That’s something to worry about especially if you are living in one of them. Maybe it might us a chance to make some money, the mid 2009 way. Turmoil in Middle East and North Africa, whooha, it would be good fun to read some of the articles by conspirator theorist. It may give some nice ideas on writing short stories, probably even a novel. 

Falling skeletons from the 'cabinet' of the Indian government. It seems the so called smart businessmen are not so smart. Their smartness is more a result of willful negligence on the part of our so called leaders of natural assets like spectrum, oil fields, mines etc.

Ambani's were famous of pocketing the government for their benefit, the Radiia tapes have put a blot on Ratan Tata as well. But who cares, most people will not fail to praise the advertisement which are part of the 'Jago re' campaign and fall flat on their face when the time of action comes. Ironically the advertisement is supported by a Tata group company. Wonder if they will shut it down.

This reminds me of an incident. One day, I went with a friend to a nearby mom and pop store. There was one customer shouting over the shopkeeper. Apparently the shopkeeper was trying to sell an expired product. It was his bad luck; the customer caught the plot and threatened that if he tries to pull the trick again, the shopkeeper will have to deal with the consumer complaint department.

This threat was the result of an advertisement campaign by the state government. The ad was on the lines that consumers’ should not allow themselves to be cheated and if they notice something like this then they can get help from the consumer complaint forum. The ad used to end with a quip "Jago grahank jago". (Wake-up customers wake-up)

Coming back to the scene of the incident. After the customer left, the storekeeper turned to his friend, who was also present there -- "Grahank aisa jaga hai ki sone ka naam hi nahin leta". (The customer has woken up in a way that they are not even thinking of falling asleep.)

It would be nice if the people of the Republic (of India) someday also ‘wake-up’ the way it has been put up in the advertisement campaign. Perhaps then we will get the chance to fulfill our tryst with destiny.