Sunday, June 29, 2008

Indian Players Versus Global Corporations

The balance of power in the business world is shifting slowly but strongly. The era of domination by the global corporations is over. They have to fight for every square inch of space with their homegrown rivals. I believe the same story is going to repeat in the Indian retail space.

The global corporations earlier dominated by their capital, talent and expertise. The new financial order entails easy access to capital for everybody. The markets are more transparent and global capital today is chasing the best opportunity everywhere. The talent today is much more mobile and it has discovered that the domestic companies provide enough excitement, faster mobility and more opportunity to add value. The movement of talent also leads to faster dissemination of knowledge and expertise.

Besides these, the local companies have great local relationships and understanding. So today key players in India in retail others can match any corporation in financial muscle power. They would have acquired size, insights and the right business models by the time the foreign entrants start their businesses. The lead time along with the local insighting will be of immeasurable strategic advantage and almost impossible to neutralise. So the Tescos and Carrefours will meet worthy rivals when FDI opens and they come here.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

High Real Estate Costs and Retail

The real estate rates in the country today are truly stratospheric. At their basic, the commercial rates (both capital value and rents) reflect the profile and the potential of the catchment area. But rates get skewed by the demand-supply mismatch, the amount of black money (esp. in India), the market sentiments and the dynamics in other channels of investment.

The rates in India are amongst the highest in the world. The commercial lease rates in markets like Khan Market have crossed Rs. 12000/- per annum. The markets like GK1, M Block in Delhi or Linking road in Mumbai are close to Rs. 8000/- per annum for good real estate. This has been caused by low supply of good real estate, euphoria in India’s potential and huge inflows from abroad -from Indians, foreign funds and investors.

The lease rates are comparable to those in the richest countries. The market potential is nowhere close to them. This means that the retail business starts off with a great handicap. The businesses have to find new sources of efficiencies to offset the high real estate costs. The real estate costs in Indian markets today, are seventy to two hundred percent higher than what the potential truly reflects.

This, more than anything else, is likely to slow down the retail growth in a couple of years when the excitement of new business models dies down and the reality of cash strikes back. Several players will find the losses unsustainable.

The answers, however, lie in factors which are very difficult to be addressed. The long-term solution lies in building infrastructure which spreads the population better and reduces commute time, more supply of quality real estate with better regulation and urban planning, reducing black money (which tends to get most into real estate) and making the current opaque regulation system more transparent.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Old Delhi

















Here are some interesting snapshots of Old Delhi on a grey, cold Sunday afternoon in winter. This is where the past exists both in its inspiring architecture and its way of life.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Organised Retail in India- What will happen in 2010?

To say that the Indian market is hotting up would be an understatement. Every player has grand plans and it will be interesting to see the winners and losers. But the retail industry is generally a safe industry to be in. Amongst the leading 480 retailers in the world,94% made a profit in 2005.The average net profit margins were 4.2%(for the entire sample) and 4.5% for the profitable retailers. This gives hope for the Indian industry. But the real dampener today could be the astronomical realty rates. On the plus side again, retail, unlike product companies, is a tried and tested model and one could be profitable by adapting the elements of the model to the market.

But who is looking at what in the next five years?

Reliance, the big brother, is eyeing 100mn sq ft of space(Wal Mart had 490 mn sq ft in 2004) with 68 distribution centres and presence in 784 cities and 1600 small towns by 2011.The turnover - an eye popping 1,00,000 crores ($22.3 bn)!

Spencer’s has plans of 2000 stores and 6 mn sq ft of space by 2009.

Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar are looking at having 11.5mn sq ft of space and sales of Rs. 10,900 cr by 2010.

The other big ones like Bharti- WalMart and the Aditya Birla group follow a different PR strategy and are generally keeping their plans under wraps.

Subhiksha is another player which has grown rapidly and has the capability to scale up significantly.

There are other domestic emerging players like the Wadhawan group which have announced their aggressive intent through acquisitions.

Then there are Tesco and Carrefour closely eyeing the market.

However, the Indian market is big and has the capacity to accommodate about ten players with upwards of $2bn turnover(next four years) and some regional players. But the winner will be the ones who understand the customers and get their supply chain and people equations right.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Biology and the 21st century

Suddenly ,Biology is taking centre stage amongst sciences. After Charles Darwin, Physics and Chemistry took over and provided the glamour in sciences.Einstein, Schrodinger, Madame Curie were the stars of the scientific world.

In 1953, Walter Crick and James Watson discovered DNA and that set off a chain of events with unimagined consequences. First the scientists could understand DNA,then they discovered that they could slice off parts of it and attach new parts and then genome was decoded.Over time they also found out that many diseases, physical differences and even behavioral traits can be explained by genetic variations.

Today, we stand on the threshold of the greatest era of biological research. Research into the brain, biotechnology and unraveling the details of human evolution are amongst the most exciting fields in science today.

Countries like the US are aware of this at a political decision a making level and they are taking measures to see that a top class biology Ph.D. earns more than any other professional.

India, as always ,will catch on the revolution when it is a tad too late.

The Size of the Retail Pie


There is justifiably a large degree of excitement about the Indian retail industry. I hope to throw some light on the way the industry is shaping up through this blog.

The India Opportunity:

Let us see it from two perspectives.

1.The penetration of the organized market in India is barely 4% in 2006.In the US, it is 80%.In Thailand it is 40% and in China which allowed organized retail only 20 years back it is 50%.Clearly, there is a lot of scope.

The growth in the market is being driven by:
a) Rising incomes (8%+ GDP growth, higher income households growing faster than other categories)
b) Demographic dividend (larger percentage of working and younger population)
c) Increase in the number of working women (now 26% in key cities)
d) Change in preferences to western style shopping due to media, travel and shortage of time

2.The size of the market is enormous.

India has been rated as the most attractive retail market in the world by A.T.Kearney in
2005 & 2006.This rating is based on more than 25 retail-specific and macro-economic variables.The total estimated retail market size in 2005-06 is $282 billion and the organized market was $12 billion. Out of this the food and grocery segment is $211 bn and the organized segment in this sector is $2bn.The total organised market is expected to reach a size of $40bn in 2011(27% CAGR) and $100 bn plus in 2015.

With the exception of biotechnology and possibly internet on a global scale, this is the largest opportunity anywhere in the world. To put it in perspective, the telecom sector in India is just about $10bn and the organized FMCG sector is $12 bn.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Have You Seen These Billboards?

It looks like several ad folks in Mumbai have run out of ideas. The clients with their mindless quest to win at any cost have not helped either.

The hoarding for Mumbai Mirror, a sister publication of TOI, goes :

"Come on ! Give me a hundred pelvic thrusts."

I am sure no one can understand the logic of this sentence for a newspaper.

And I saw another hoarding for Euphoria Gym in Juhu:

"Some people think starving themselves is a shortcut to fitness. The Somalians beg to differ."

Utterly insensitive and in bad taste. The copywriter also probably does not know that there are more children in India with premature deaths than sub-Saharan Africa.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Cromwell In Lok Sabha

Oliver Cromwell was one of the signatories to the death warrant of King Charles I and established the Commonwealth. He declared himself the Lord Protector in 1653 for five years.

He dissolved the ‘Rump’ parliament and then formed his Barebones Parliament to which he assigned all power.

He gave the following speech on dissolving the Rump Parliament.

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of potage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money; is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not bartered your consciences for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stables, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this house; and by which God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do; I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place; go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves begone! Go! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go!

Four hundred and fifty years later the words ring loud and true for our Loksabha.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Yeh Bombay Hai

The infrastructure in India is charitably described as lousy. The worst roads are unfortunately in Mumbai, the commercial capital and Bangalore, the IT showpiece city.

Patna today has better roads than either of them. I do not know who is responsible for this shoddy state of affairs-the centre, the state government or the local municipal corporations. It could be even the corrupt contractors and local politicians. But strangely, the general public does tolerate filth, potholes, stray animals and even unpaved roads in the middle of the city.

Mumbai takes the cake in filth and a lackadaisical attitude towards its own roads and cleanliness. So the city which has fabulous citizens, a rocking nightlife and immense professionalism has decrepit looking buildings, animal shit on roads and in many parts only mud and potholes.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Class Discriminations in India

There are very few societies more class-ridden than India. While the country focuses on caste, the discriminations based on class do not let merit and fairness prevail. Caste in educational institutions undermines the concept of merit. But class works beneath the superficial surface and insidiously destroys justice and merit.

Class in the Indian context is a nebulous and complex concept.You can feel it, you practice it but you cannot capture it properly. It is tied at a gross level to caste but also to economic wealth, family station, your English pronunciation and also the colour of your skin! So a poor man is going to be beaten up in the police station but a rich man will stay unharmed. It is very rare even in the most merit-based institutions in the country to see a driver's son being friends with a privileged doctor's child. We do not let people of a different class rise and the concept of merit is twisted to suit the dominant section's interests. In a more open society like the US, you find some of the most influential figures like Clinton,Oprah or even Larry Ellison come up from devastated families and economically deprived backgrounds. But the surreptitious discriminations practiced by Indians do not let any person from a lower class rise similarly, except in academics and research etc. where merit cannot be subjugated.

So the leaders in any part of life today come up from the same relatively privileged 5% of the population.

This is also because we sub-consciously tend to magnify the importance of anybody with the right background and do not really give due importance or respect to people of a lower class. This is part our cultural heritage. The minister's son or the industrialist's nephew will always get the blue-blooded treatment in class compared to the boy with the most merit. Marriages are closely tied to the status of families perpetuating class differences again. The great stories of our society are about kings and princes not about ordinary folk doing extraordinary things. God Rama was not born to a poor man but to a king. The heroes of Mahabharat are all from princely families. Karna grew up as the son of a charioteer and so he was not allowed to participate in the archery competition to win the hand of Draupadi. He wins another archery competition defeating the Pandavas and Kaurava brothers and the crowd is stunned by his prowess. But when they discover that he is not from royal blood, they stop applauding.

A country of a billion people has only a few figures like Rajni Kant,Lal Bahadur Shashtri or an Irfan Pathan who come from a different class and have managed to stand out. Some child from a deprived class, who wants to dream and achieve will always find odds like this daunting and will give up in his quest.

This makes the talents of a large part of the population unavailable for our growth. But there are no easy answers to this. Centuries of mindset and discrimination cannot be undone in a few years.






Saturday, October 07, 2006

Regional Disparities

According to the 2001 census, only 43% of rural households (56% in urban) in India have electricity.The regional disparities are even more disturbing. The level of electrification in rural Punajb, HP and Haryana are 90, 95 and 79 percent. In contrast, the levels in rural WB, Assam and Orissa are 20, 17 and 19 percent respectively. Bihar has a level of 5.1 %.


The percentages of Punjab, HP and Haryana rural households getting tap water are 16, 38 and 83. The number of rural households getting tap water in WB, Assam and Orissa are 7, 5 and 3 percent respectively. The figure for Bihar is 1.38 %.

So much for being one country and so much for Jyoti Basu's 30 year reign due to the prosperity in rural Bengal.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

How Good A leader Is Manmohan ?



In around a month, Manmohan Singh will reach the midpoint of his tenure as the Prime Minister. There will be assessments followed by bouquets and brickbats in equal measure. He has been successful in bringing down the communal temperature, sustaining the economic growth, forging a brave new foreign policy path, initiating some landmark acts like RTI, launching programmes like Bharat Nirman and the rural employment guarantee. He has alienated the urban educated sections because of the reservation policy, failed in convincing the left on several reform initiatives and not managed to make any headway on preventing terror.

But how good a leader is he? By common thinking and opinion polls, he is not a good leader. But going by research on leadership he is probably the best we ever had. The most influential theories on the personal characteristics of a leader have been by Plato, Warren Bennis and Jim Collins.

Plato propounded the concept of the ' philosopher king ‘. According to him the king should either be a wise man or a lover of wisdom. On this yardstick, India today has probably no politician better than Manmohan. And no past PM, barring Nehru comes close to him in knowledge and wisdom.

Warren Bennis emphasised the importance of self-knowledge and inner voice in becoming a leader. He also spoke about having vision, a broad education, curiosity, virtue and risk-taking as essential ingredients of a leader. It is difficult to assess any past PM on self-awareness and inner voice but amongst the other parameters aggregated, Manmohan scores more than any PM except Nehru. He however fails badly on risk-taking.

Jim Collins studied more than 1400 organisations over a thirty year period and arrived at the concept of 'level five' leadership. Level 5 leaders exhibit a paradoxical combination of personal humility and ferocious resolve. They are mostly shy but competent. Abraham Lincoln, possibly the greatest leader America has produced, was a typical level 5 leader. He was described as quiet, peaceful and shy by author Henry Adams. Level 5 leaders have always achieved more than the level 4 leader who is the charismatic and visionary type. Here again, Manmohan could do better on resolve but on the overall attribute he would rank higher than the earlier Indian PMs.

Many great leaders also develop an elaborate inner life due to hardships and traumas in their early years. Manmohan Singh grew up in poverty, battled against odds to do well in academics and then excelled as an economist. This broad experience of life in different facets makes him more complete as a human being than any of his predecessors.

The only dimensions where he falls short are risk-taking ability and resolve - definitely an outcome of his days as a bureaucrat. As a leader, he also has to operate more on instinct than on caution. Whenever he has risen beyond these limitations as in the nuclear pact with the US or the reforms as the finance minister, he has stood tall.

Friday, September 29, 2006

The Future Arrives Faster Than You Think

A friend has commissioned a project on "Futuristic Business Opportunities" with some ISB students and that set me thinking about predictions for the future. It is a difficult terrain and the world's greatest experts have fared badly in it. In 1990, John Naisbitt wrote 'Megatrends' and Alvin Toffler wrote 'Powershift'. In both, India features as a peace-loving, backward, democratic country which buys a lot of arms and has satellites. Neither could predict the arrival of India on the world stage. Both thought Japan will set the fashion and cultural trends of the future. China's emergence is suspected but not the scale of its achievements and growth.

Let us just look back at 1995 in India .Even ten years back, nobody would have thought that India would be an emerging superpower in 2005 . We cannot today manage without a cellphone and e-mail which barely existed then .The aspirational products for the upper-middle class were microwave ovens,compact music systems , 1000 cc cars and holidays in Bangkok. Today the aspirational lifesyle elements are Plasma TVs , 2.5 lit SUVs and holidays in Serengiti .The hottest job sectors were then in consumer goods sector. Today, it is sort of passe. Ten years back,the senior executives earned about Rs 8 to 10 lacs in a year. Today it has reached Rs 35 to Rs 50 lacs . There were no malls or multiplexes in the country and today any self-respecting one million population town has malls. There were no Indian CEOs of global companies or widely- known management gurus .The last decade has thrown up Rajat Gupta,Rana Talwar,Prahalad,Mohan Sawhney,Indra Nooyi and Vindi Banga etc. to the top echelons of corporate success.

The interesting thing about these movements is that practically none of the mainstream media was able to either spot or predict these changes. So the only possibility of predicting even for ten years is possibly to go through expert opinions in specialised journals or research papers . One megatrend in India has been that the it has closed the gap with the rest of the world in lifestyles. But in cultural trends it has Indianised itself more in line with many countries in the world. So today Bollywood movies excite the passions of even the snootiest in our cities. Hindi pop music has become acceptable in all circles.


Going by the present trends and overall global directions ; it seems positive that India, China, South Africa and Russia will start playing important roles in the world displacing France, Germany and Britain . The upper-middle class ,with the greater purchasing power of the rupee,will have actually a better lifestyle than westerners including having customised nature or heritage holidays and premium cars like Porsche 911 or Audi R8. The lower-middle class then will have a lifestyle which the middle class has now .

India will be amongst the principal players in auto componenets, healthcare and tourism besides IT . We will also see a dominant presence of Indians in Wall Street and international media houses in the next five years .

But certain things may not change - like the Congress and BJP squabbling over Ayodhya, India being at 117 in the FIFA rankings or Rekha dancing to a sensuous number .

Sunday, September 24, 2006

What do We Eat Now?


The list of foods that we can eat is shrinking faster than an aspiring model's waistline. Even as early as twenty years back, we were able to eat several dishes with pleasure and without worrying that we were murdering ourselves.But now the list of items with dubious value is longer.

The first item on the list is milk. This was supposed to be the panacea of all food deficiencies. Dara singh drank two jugs of it everyday and so did the Gods. It was holy and healthy, affordable and nutritious. It had Calcium to make our bones strong and Protein for our growth. But today its parentage is under severe question. We are told that no animal drinks milk of anybody other than of its mother and so cow or goat milk cannot be suitable for us. It has growth hormones more suited for calves than humans. We are also told that in large parts of the world like China and Africa, they do not drink milk at all and yet are flourishing. The propaganda juggernaut has become so powerful that Maneka Gandhi could even work out an alternative career on this and so could numerous talk-show hosts and anti-milk doctors.

The second unfortunate item on the list is eggs. They were supposed to be repositories of protein and wholesome. They were eaten every day during the breakfast by our erstwhile rulers. So as children we were given eggs-poached, fried, boiled or in a pudding. The super manager Russi Mody used to have sixteen-egg breakfasts. But now eggs remind us more of cholesterol that protein. You start feeling vaguely uneasy in the heart when you take even a two-egg omelette. The upper limit of taking eggs is three a week. So out go all the Spanish omelettes, noodles with eggs or even Moghalai chicken which come with boiled eggs.

The third pariah is the humble bread. White bread , made of refined flour, was an all-time food. It came as toasted bread in breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and as recommended diet when we had fever. Today refined flour is the cause of troubles in pancreas,heart and kidneys !

The other nutritious food like ghee and red meat have been so much calumnised that they are almost treated like nuclear waste.

Fruits and vegetables were the last of the protected species which no body could touch. But the long arm of medical research has even not left them in peace. Apparently,twenty different kinds of pesticides go into the production of a fruit or vegetable now. So an apple a day was expected to keep the doctor away and I started eating apples everyday. But apple has pesticides in seeds and its core besides the skin. So the only way to eat the fruit is to wash it in warm salt water for thirty minutes, take away its core and then chomp it with a prayer that no more pesticides are left. Grapes are supposed to be positively lethal with pesticides oozing out of every pore. I am told that the fox in the story does not even jump for the grapes because they are carcinogenic.

The green you see on a ladies finger is actually a coating of a dye. The brinjals and spinach are more chemical than vegetable. Rice and potatoes are fattening. Fish could have the deadly lead in it. All processed foods are unhealthy-so out go Maggi and cornflakes or even jam.

I wonder how long will the restaurant boom last with all these frightening truths staring them in the face.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Lalu Prasad Turns Into Jack Welch


I have been tracking Laloo (not Lalu as he calls himself now) for a long time. I got fascinated by this rustic man with tremendous wit and humour ten years back. I also knew he was the smartest operator in Indian politics - anybody who can install his wife, with a primary education , as the chief minister has to be really a smart cookie. He also gave a voice to the downtrodden.

But the lower castes in Bihar under his patronage started doing what the upper castes had indulged in-plunder, terror and exploitation. The state treasury was shamelessly looted by Laloo and his cronies. The state went back in time. But Laloo survived through his buffoonery and political savvy.

I had to follow his motorcade once on a drive from Gaya to Patna. Laloo had just lost the lok sabha elections and you expected him to be down. But he was irrepressible on the route. The route itself was lined with his supporters on both sides - thousands of emaciated, bare torsoed men and children cheered him as he went by. I had to follow his motorcade as nobody in Bihar can overtake him. Laloo stopped in four places where he opened the door of the car, put his feet up and had samosas and jalebis offered by the locals. He got down in a few places to give im promptu speeches.One interaction went like this.

Village Youth : We do not have jobs. Can you help us? You did not give us jobs when in power ?

Laloo:What have you studied? Do you speak English? Do you know computers ?

Village Youth: (now befuddled and embarrassed) No.

Laloo: The government at the centre now is not allowing me to expand employment in Bihar. They allow only multinational companies who want candidates with knowledge of English and computers.

The entire village then starts cursing the centre.


Laloo has a unique way to use humour and twisted logic to set his own agenda in a conversation.

He is now employing the same tactics in portraying himself as the great turnaround specialist of railways. Anyone with a modicum of experience in running an organisation knows, that it takes much more than allowing a bureaucrat a free hand (which is all he seems to have done) to achieve any sort of improvement. For an organisation of the size, complexity and mindset of the railways obviously it would take enormous effort to make any dents.

The railways have started delivering results possibly because of a) initiatives already in place before b) economy growing c) factors in the transport sector d)some changes brought about by Laloo's team e) other environmental drivers.

But the media is portraying him as a management genius.He has been given the entire credit for the performance.This is absurd.I also suspect management schools are playing to the gallery in this.

Nobody who has mismanged a state badly for so long can overnight become a genius like this. This is simply not human nature.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

In Agra


Went to Agra on a holiday. The folks in Delhi smile indulgently when you tell them you went to Agra of all the places-it sounds quaint !

The beauty of Taj never fails to astonish me. Amongst the wonders of the world and the architectural masterpieces, it is the only one in the lists for its perfect beauty. The colosseum, the great wall of China or the pyramids are there for their size or other unique attributes. But the Taj exists possibly as the most beautiful monument in the world. It seems perfect in shape,symmetry,design and aesthetic appeal. It would have been even so much more wonderful when the marble would have been completely white and the inlay work was not damaged.

Contrast this with the city of Agra- filthy, chaotic and rough. The touts, the guides and the autowallahs treat fleecing the tourist as their divine right. I cannot even fathom how the poor foreigners would be getting taken for the ride of their lifetimes. The facilities outside the five stars are pathetic. The town boasts of only a Pizza Hut , a Dasaprakash and Zorba the Buddha restaurant where you could possibly eat. There are no coffee shops where tourists can spend their time. The result of all this is that many of them who could actually spend four days in Agra in seeing the Taj, the fort, Fatehpur Sikri and the other monuments prefer squeezing everything into a day. Fatehpur Sikri is actually worse than Agra in this - my car was stopped twice by local hoodlums to ask for money and the moment I reached the fort, I was surrounded by salesmen of all kinds.The government anyway is sleeping.

The stories about Taj are so intriguing. Shah Jahan's hair supposedly turned grey overnight after Mumtaz's death during childbirth. The hands of the builders were all chopped off so that they would not be able to repeat the construction anywhere. The bottom of the monument has tiny cells where apparently all the workers were kept after the Taj was built and they were not allowed to go outside. All of them died there.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Indian Art in the Stratosphere


In December 2002, my wife and I went to a gallery in Calcutta which claimed to be selling affordable art. I was always interested in Indian art and I had some knowledge about a few painters. The proprietor of the gallery recommended an ink on paper by Shyamal Dutta Ray. I had not even heard of him.But the owner seemed genuine and the painting was aesthetically good. We bought it for fifteen thousand rupees.
The art market boom was in its incipient stages then. Neville Tuli was just beginning to get some media space and there was some talk about Indian artists generating excitement in western art markets.
Then the interest in India began. The westerners interested in India began to buy Indian art. The non-resident Indians with wealth and some aesthetic interests reached a critical mass. The rich domestic Indians also saw art as a great status symbol. The market exploded. The prices today have reached absurd levels.
I got mail today from a gallery about a self-portrait by Paritosh Sen for one lac rupees and I had seen this piece being tagged at twelve thousand rupees a year and a half back.
But does anybody understand art barring a few pundits ? I cannot claim to say that I can identify great art even after visiting countless exhibitions and galleries. Some art hits you immediately with its power and beauty. But many great art remain incomprehensible and silent in their impact. Mona Lisa in Louvre would have probably been missed by many as a smallish and non-descript painting without its fame. The Shyamal Dutta Ray painting has been hanging in my house for the last four years (now worth a few lacs) but nobody, repeat nobody, has so far cast a second glance at it.
So it is only a status symbol and no rich household is complete without a piece by a well-known painter. It stays there as does the latest B & O music system. Who cares whether it is great or simply average or even bad ?

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Timbuktu and Mali


Today, Timbuktu means a place from nowhere. It seems to be beyond the end of the known world. It is actually a town in Mali in West Africa. Mali is a poorly governed, impoverished country today. Thomas Friedman in his book discovers that ,even in Mali individuals have started using open-source software and to him it is almost like the final acceptance of the concept of open-source software. Naseruddin Shah fantasises of sending his wife to Timbuktu on his 25th marriage anniversary in Omkara.

But it was not like this six hundred years ago. Mali was then a country of fabled wealth. It was said that gold grew on trees in Mali. It was for about twenty years ruled by Mansa Musa (part of the Mansa family) when it reached the zenith of its glory. Mansa Musa undertook the Haj and went through Egypt. He distributed immense amount of riches wherever he went. Apparently, he gave away so much gold in Egypt that it caused inflation and the price of gold crashed by twenty five per cent.

The world-traveller of those days Ibn Battuta heard so many stories about the Mansa regime that he went to visit the kingdom. This is after he had visited many other countries including India. But even he was astonished by the scale of opulence and grandeur in the palaces.

Around 1360 AD the descendants of Mansa Musa were pitted in a terrible conflict with the descendants of his brother Mansa Suleyman and this led to the ultimate annihilation of the dynasty and the end of the glory for Mali.
This is the ruthless cycle of history. It changes everything.

Utter Rubbish

There was a time when I used to think that everything printed in the newspapers and magazines is the absolute truth. Growing up in remote places of Orissa,a copy of The Statesman or the Sunday magazine were items worth looking up to. Later, I joined a B-School which itself was written about in the press and for the first time I realised everything written is not true. But I gave the benefit of doubt to the media.

Working in the corporate sector also did not open my eyes to the bullshit perpetrated as news for a long time. But I was not sure about why they wrote what they wrote. Then I discovered the P.R.agencies. And I realised ,that may be fifty per cent of what is written in respectable newspapers could be trash handed over by the agencies. In fact,any article talking about the plans and expectations of a company or an industrialist or a politician is usually only that-plans of smart operators who know how to use the media.

I know of an industrialist, a rogue would be the better word,who appears on CNBC and speaks to ET about his future plans and anyone who knows him can bet his backside that they are a load of utter rubbish.

Why is this so? It is largely because journos with some exceptions get sucked into the -You scratch mine and I will scratch yours- cabal of politicians, businessmen and their bosses. And there are the usual issues of dal, roti and kids.It is the same situation for people who start off as honest bureaucrats. So in this country it is an open secret that several politicians have made thousands of crores but no newspaper or magazine has managed to investigate that. It is only left to Bollywood to talk about the issues with anonymous characters.

So what is the answer to this mainstream media malaise? Is it going to be the blogs? They can be powerful because they can be set up at no cost and hopefully it will give rise to some fearless individuals fighting for truth and justice.

Individual liberty overrides group identity

  Group identity vs. individual Liberty has played an outsized role in human progress and by inference societies. After the early Greek flou...