The Nexus

Politics and businesses often work hand-in-glove. They need to as they feed off each other. It is some kind of symbiotic relationship. I think it is required as well. But at times, they forget the consumer or think that the end consumer is a gullible, non-suspecting and defenseless if the two join hands.

Something similar happened when A Raja, Minister of Information Technology and Communication, said that TRAI needs to put together a proposal to fix minimum tariffs. The statement goes on to say that it will benefit the end consumer to a great extent. I do not think anyone from the Ministry or TRAI (Telecom Regukatory Authority of India) would be able to articulate the ‘benefits’, since there aren’t any. This is clearly an in-your-face shameless PR job.

I do understand that the Indian Telecom scene is fiercely competitive. Most firms have been facing a falling ARPU (Avg. Revenue per User). Hence, such a proposal will help the telecom companies to cap their downside. In effect, the end consumer would become price neutral beyond a point as everyone might end-up offering the same rates. Telecom market might become less competitive and companies, to their immense relief, might see the end of the era of falling tariffs. Of course, this comes at the expense of the customers (you and me) who stand to gain from the competition!

This also comes at the expense of an operator(s) who is more efficient in running its business. Such an operator would not be able to pass on any cost benefits to the customer beyond a certain point as TRAI would have capped the minimum tariff. This would imply that an operator would have no incentive to makes operations more efficient or seek better technology to become more competitive.

In a time when we are trying to make businesses more open and competitive, government should avoid taking such retrospective steps. I hope sense prevails and TRAI comes up with a proposal to do away with such an idea. As with everything else, only time would tell!

On Wednesdays

"Hagar - the Horrible" From today's newspaper (Could not get the toon strip)

Hagar is back to home after a long and strenuous day of looting etc. Helga answers the door and before she can say anything, Hagar bursts, "I HATE Mondays"

"But today's Wednesday", A bemused Helga replies.

"In that case, I am not crazy about Wednesdays either!", Says Hagar.

I cannot agree more.

Childhood Dreams

Was reading this article on WSJ that talked about a Professor at CMU. Someone by the name of Randy Pausch who gave his last lecture at CMU a few days back. He is suffering from Pancreatic Cancer and will die in a few days.

This one is so full of life! So I am linking it up here.




Do not worry, I am not giving up cynicism but am not that comfortable with my numbness anymore.

The Twenty-Two Yard Jihad

Yes, we did it! I think an occasion big enough to get me out of my slumber and type out a small note on this page. It was an awesome feeling. A match worthy of a final. Seems to be a good year for India in sports. First Football then Hockey and now Cricket. The 'boys' did us proud.

However, I found the post match conference very interesting. With Shoaib Malik thanking all the Muslims all over the world for supporting Pakistan and getting all apologetic for letting them down.

“I want to thank everyone back home in Pakistan and Muslims all over the world. Thank you very much and I’m sorry that we didn’t win, but we did give our 100 per cent,” Malik said.

Who is he playing for? He should realize that only a small proportion of all Muslims live in Pakistan and not all of them are interested in Cricket. Incidentally, who would Kaneria play for? I believe the answer would be Pakistan and not a specific religion. Almost all teams today have a mix of multiple ethnic identities in their teams.

I think that religion or faith is a personal thing and that is the way it should be treated. As a captain, he should understand that he is speaking for his team. Even though almost all of his team is made up by Muslims, I doubt religion is the reason why they play. I think the glamour, money and pride in playing for the nation (in that order at times) are the reasons why anyone in the sub-continent would be attracted towards the game.

The seductive powers of Religion and the need to confirm socially has played a strong part in the team dynamics of Pakistan. With Yusuf Youhana converting to Islam from Christianity, Sayeed Anwar sporting the beard and the wide cracks in team structure because of public display of religious beliefs - team Pakistan has seen it all. And not all with great results. It has been a bad year for them (apart from T20) and it would do them some good to concentrate on the game and avoid religious overtones. It has taken some time to reduce racism in the cricketing world and the last thing anyone would want is polarization in the name of religion.

Off the Road

Sometime back we started getting bored of the usual running haunts in Bangalore and then someone suggested these two places. Two amazing ways to start your weekend. The one overlooking the lake is from the monolith of Savan-durga and the trail going into the woods is of Bellandur.

Next time you come down to Blore, do remind me to take you to one of these places.

सब दीवारें तोड़ दो!

Saw this on a trip to Nandi Hills

Total filmy laga - the fort that might have been of tactical importance has become lovers' hideout! Actually, the amount of grafitti on the walls really ticked me off। But I will reserve my views on ASI and its attempts to 'conserve' monuments for some other time. Don't know if this story took off at all or may be this was some guy's imagination at work but if it happened, it surely would have been interesting!

Nine Decades of Non-violence

Read this article, Nine Decades of Non-violence, in The Hindu (August 23, 2007). It is a piece about Baji Mohammed who is one of the last living freedom fighters of India. Sainath starts it off as a telling tale of our increasing religious intolerance but soon veers on to the journey of Satyagraha and our own freedom.

Some excerpts:

“We were sitting in the tent, they tore it down. We kept sitting,” the old freedom fighter told us. “They threw water on the ground and at us. They tried making the ground wet and difficult to sit on. We remained seated. Then when I went to drink some water and bent down near the tap, they smashed me on the head, fracturing my skull. I had to be rushed to hospital.”

Baji Mohammed is one of India’s last living freedom fighters — just one of four or five nationally recognised ones still alive in Orissa’s Koraput region. He is not talking about British brutality in 1942.(Though he has much to say on that, too.) He’s describing the vicious attack on him during the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, half a century later. “I was there as part of a 100-member peace team.” But the team was given no peace. The old Gandhian fighter, already in his mid-seventies, spent ten days in hospital and a month in a Varanasi ashram recovering from the injury to his head.

Lets Kill The Brand

These things often start with an advertisement. Somebody in the HRD ministry had this idea of putting up an advertisement in all the newspapers calling for applications to the IIM director’s post. This is indeed in line with the tempestuous relationship that the IIMs have had with the HRD ministry of the governments of the last decade. One might want to ask, what is the big deal with a seemingly harmless advert? Traditionally, the Director’s name has been proposed by the governing council of the institutes and the approved by the HRD ministry. The approval has been a formality but it seems that things might change as the man in the charge of human resource development for the nation wants to meddle more. Bakul Dholakia (Director, IIMA) was initially combative and then allegedly struck a re-conciliatory note (With TOI group, everything has to be allegedly).

What is the big deal with autonomy? Institutes like the IITs and IIMs want greater autonomy because they want the freedom to fix salaries (get/retain the best faculty), start cross-border collaboration programs, improve infrastructure, spend on capability building initiatives etc. However, governments have wanted to increase their grip on these institutes of excellence because it makes strong political statement. I am not sure about the target segment of voters that they are trying to approach via this increasingly meddlesome approach.

So while these steps try to destroy the last vestiges of idealism and excellence in the country, I hope someone wants to build something as well. Governments should try and build alternate brands to the IITs and the IIMs. Merely creating more of such institutes might be counter-productive at best. It would be better if they inject funds for infra development and to attract better faculty at the NITs and the next line of Management institutes. While such steps make headlines, I really wonder if Arjun Singh is bothered beyond gaining some cheap publicity out of this. Would be great if his bunch of cronies apply themselves to improving the primary and the secondary education infrastructure than with such retro steps. Anyway, all this would be nothing more that noise for them so let me not waste my time either.

Lage Raho

As I type this there are at least three online petitions trying to garner, what else, support. The petitioners are pitching the case of Munna Bhai to our government. The underlying motif being that the guy who preaches Gandigiri cannot be bad. He should not be made to serve his (excessive) sentence. Have we lost it totally? I would want to think that the answer to that is NO! However I seriously doubt the sanity of the 148 and 4300 people who have signed it on gopetition.com and petitiononline respectively.

Here’s an excerpt from the petition on petitiononline.com (You will have to read the comments to believe them with some comparing Sanjay Dutt with Valmiki)

Sanjay Dutt has already suffered 14 long grueling years waiting for the verdict… He has served 18 months in jail as an under trial….He has already repented a lot more for a mistake committed in his youth… As far as I can remember we all have always been taught that the reason a person is jailed is in order to make him a better person .. a more reformed individual fit for the society… And in no way is a person jailed just to punish him…. So why jail a person who has already repented and gone through so much of anguish and pain in the last 14 years of this trial ..Why jail a person who is already reformed? Why jail a person who is in no way harmful to the society… And anyway who are we to punish some one for his mistakes … Just like Jesus Christ once said “Let He Who Is Without Sin Cast The First Stone”

I never knew that Law aims only to reform and not to punish. Whatever happened to the good old idea of setting a precedent and acting as a deterrent to any deviant behavior! Another argument put forth is that if a person has asked for forgiveness and apologized for the ‘mistake’ he should be let off. Would we be willing to do that in the case of a normal thug?

May be I should not be reacting to this. May be it is too childish… just a simple case of confusing the screen identity for all that the person stands for. May be it is just a belief that future should have a smaller weight attached to the past. But that does not mean that one can get away from his past. And that is the way things should be! It is important to set this precedent so that public personalities understand that they are not above the law. Hope that the budding Salmans, Pataudis, Nandas and others with the financial muscle would take a lesson from this and would sincerely try not to side-step the law all the time.

Jhoot Bole Kauwa Kate!

Routine.

Handphone alarm goes off at 5:15 AM – the familiar screech and the flashing message of ‘WAKE UP!’ I woke up with the desire of snuggling back into the comfort of the quilt. Desire often comes with a gnawing guilt. This time it was the commitment to Praveen that I would tag along for the Wednesday Speed training at Cubbon park. I did what felt right!

I caved.

So I shot a message that I had sprained my ankle and would not be able to join in. Thus, buying some more time for sleep (and exonerating myself from any value judgment that preveen might make). Guilt had her own way of finding her way back into my consciousness. Hence, when I woke up at 7:00 AM I was remorseful for not having run. So I rushed and put on my shoes. A healthy 6 Km run at an above average pace. Felt great! Last 600m, I sped and guess what, I sprained my ankle!

Am just hoping that I would be in shape for the weekend runs!