Breaking News ..

The 24 hours run media channels don’t leave any stone unturned in making claim of first reporting. They call it breaking news. Last Saturday just 1 hour after the Mehroli bomb blast was reported, a esteemed news channel was actually boasting of being the first news channel to report the incident. They were feeling really proud to cover the tragedy first which rocked the capital first. I really wonder that how long they can actually show this kind of reporting without hurting the sentiments of their viewers.

As excellently portrayed by the movie “Mumbai Meri Jaan “ the news channel are on a constant look out for stories to fill their free airtime . If they are unable to get the spicy stories they have to show the same news repeatedly which won’t help them to maintain their TRP ratings. And for worst they nowadays shows the repeat telecast of comedy game shows to fill the gaps, What a comedy !

They constantly play on the emotion of the viewers. Even this time after the blasts I saw them asking the silly questions to the bereaved parents who have lost their child in blast “How are you Feeling now? ” Are you people crazy!

Few months back when I was watching a popular Hindi news channel they were showing a story about a lady who was thrown out of house barely 2 days after the marriage. The correspondent after reciting the story in a very tragic and dramatic fashion introduced the lady by saying “ Aayiye ab aap ko milata hu 2 din ki suhagan se “ .The lady’s face was flushed with tears listening to it. This clearly shows disrespect and inhuman behavior. It’s like adding insult to injury with clear and vested motive of adding spice to the news item. There should be no excuse for such people who abuse their profession in such a manner. And what is the editing team doing, Infact I really wonder if there is any editing team for such news channels?

As lot of my friends have observed, one fact clearly emerges out of the growing crowd of 24 hours TV news channels. The fact is that its mainly the Hindi or regional language News channels which are doing such crap reporting , The likes of Aaj Tak and India TV being on top of the list .Do the management of such news channel thinks that listeners to such channels are intellectually inferior or insane. There is no reason for such treatment for listeners of Hindi channels.

The whole setup looks so illogical. I think we people are also responsible for this in a way. The day people stop watching these channels, they will have no option but to improve their reporting. But there is a big need of having a regulator .By having a regulator we can have some control over the quality of offerings .It may actually lead to some red tape too but it might stop the abuse of “Freedom of Expression”.

State of Anarchy ..

I can't remember any time when I’ve felt more insecure staying here in my country. There is a total state of anarchy. Bomb explosions have rocked the whole country into a vulnerable zone of insecurity. Now when I was travelling from Delhi to Mumbai, I can see it on my Parents faces, they were not as confident as they used to be. I told them that I’ll manage this routine travel on my own but that day itself there was a bomb explosion in Delhi and their concern was genuine. Mummy asked me to stay away from the crowded place, I was just thinking that how can someone stay away from crowded place in Mumbai where everywhere it seems like a big chaos, hundreds and thousands of people are emerging from every nook and corner, all in a state of hurry . But I told her Yes.

Thinking of blame game our politicians are playing in the comfort of their Z+ security, Media cursing Intelligence agencies for the lack of surveillance and Police blaming ATS for their inability to track terrorists, what can a ‘AAM AADMI’ do? He is just a mock listener to all of it. The real question remains “Is it actually in the reach of these different agencies to stop someone from burning their own house? “

How can the police and intelligence agencies track the action of so many citizens. They may track the flows of big explosives like RDX, but they can’t stop someone from throwing Crude Bombs in open roads on innocent kids. The crude bomb which was used in the recent Mehroli blast can be easily produced by anyone. The secret recipe of Bomb is no more secret when substandard news channels are freely showing it on mass media that how easy it is to manufacture a bomb. Anyone can easily buy these common chemicals with medicinal usage and cause the blast. It will indeed be a tough job for the police and intelligence agencies to manage this situation.

There was also lot of talks about the spirit of Mumbai in the media after the train blasts, they reported that people are still travelling by local trains, using the same affected route, their spirits are intact. But my question is “Do they have a option? “. Life in Mumbai will be standstill without trains, how can a person who travels from Virar to Mumbai Central daily manage his travel without Local Trains. Nobody wants to put his life at risk. It’s not the spirit; it’s the lack of real options!

I think the time is ripe for the government to make some strict rules and set examples by differentially treating these arrested terrorists in such a fashion that it will make the other terrorists think twice before putting their dirty plans into action. It won’t be death of democracy as articulated by so called human right activists. It will be a slap in the face of terrorism and a act to safeguard humanity itself.

About Heros and Villains ..

Just few months back all the Newspaper and Media channels were flushed with news of Tata Motors launching NANO , the dream car made for middle class Indian who aspires to drive comfortably with his family in comfort of a four wheeler but can't buy the existing brands due to the high cost. The cute looking car was coming at literally half a cost of existing Maruti 800 which is the cheapest car now in market. The worlds applauded India for the frugal engineering , a new break through in applied sciences , comfort at bare minimum cost.Countess number of patents were filed for it , surely they dont needed any scantily dressed models to launch it.

Mr Tata gave a promise to the people which he is fulfilling even when the commodity inflation is touching new peaks . My friend in Tata motor told me that there in the office there are huge posters saying " A promise is a Promise " , so true only a gentleman can keep his promise and they feel so proud about it. We all are proud of it .


Today Tatas have made the final announcement that they are moving out of Singur. it will be a loss of more than $100 million , delay in schedule of launch , huge loss to the vendors who have set up the plants there to follow Just in Time (JIT) methodology to reduce cost.I think these losses may look huge but nothing in comparison to Singur which could have been part of history , could have been known to the world because of NANO and its even bigger loss to Bengal which is trying hard to shed its image of investment unfriendly destination.

Indian politics have shown lot of dirty faces but I think this will be amongst the top, when likes of Tatas are promising rehabilitation , price and jobs to land owners . why are people creating silly issues about it. Its a classic example of short sightedness where at times local issues take much more importance for some people of prominence and the whole Nation is discounted for the local cause. I dont understand why someone who is not the representative of the people , who has been defeated in the elections is taking the whole administration for a toss.This is surely not the democracy I have learned in books.


Mamta Bennerjee might have not done any good for the people of West bengal but here she surely has done a big mistake which people will remember for long time. She is truely deserves a Razzie Award . May this episode bring some sense to the politicians of India ! We dont need such people but we have the problem of plenty .


One more thing which is clear after this incident is that the TATAs are the best employers to work with , as for them its the employees which matters , they are ready to take losses to avoid agony and discomfort for there employees .Mr Ratan Tata has again shown why he is so admired in the world . I dont have words to describe him , He is my Hero !

Is it Safe to Invest in Indian Equity Markets ..

After the advent of globalization in mid nineties the Indian Stock Market has repeatedly shown its strength of being well regulated and trustworthy institute, thanks to the efforts of SEBI but still for Indian punters it is hard to digest the monotonous upswing in the capital markets from last few years . The main rationalities behind it is the periodic down trends in the market when it’s the small investors who have lost heavily, be it the black Monday after the fall of BJP in the general election , be it the havoc of rising oil prize or the inflationary pressures , is it common to only Indian mindset or is it a global trend of being a skeptical towards the stock markets ?

Last 8 months has been dreadful for the global capital markets due to sub prime woes which has engulfed almost whole of US and Europe due to securitization of Debt , the companies are still writing off billions of dollars of assets due to the subprime lending and the world commodity prices has also become a pain for central bankers , there are more than 60 countries facing double digit inflation , the oil bills is increasingly putting pressure on the inflation and growth of economies , Sensex along with the major world stock exchanges have seen major corrections , it has come down from the level of 21000 to 14000s , the real question now is that is the correction over and is it safe to invest in equities now ?

The Indian stock indices mainly Sensex and Nifty are seen as heavily overvalued by many of the analyst who keep bringing there dooms day theory now and then , they say that Indian market is at P/E ratio of 18 which is very high as other high growing economies like Korean , Brazil , Russia which is also showing tremendous growth is at a P/E of 11 , so is it worth investing in market at this time when Oil is boiling , federal interest rates has seen five negative interest changes in past 1 year just to pull the ailing US economy out of recessionary pressures and Japan is no more distributing dept at zero interest rates. Another theory much hyped by the promoters of doom is the redemption of foreign investor’s money from capital market to more secured bond market as the interest rates are hardening in India and other emerging economies, with these theory in newspapers now and then we can hardly blame the Indian mindset for panicking under slightest hint of trouble.

If we see the historic bull run , the shortest bull run lasted for 16 years in Japan and by that landmark we have barely reached the half stage , but again our impatient mind constantly remind us that our valuation are reaching a peak , the international scenario is no more stable with lot of economists say is the compounded effect of loose monetary policies right from from the dot comm. Bust and now they can no more hide it. . By analyzing our industrial growth one can find that India has shown a 7+% GDP growth in last 16 consecutive quarters , high industrial growth with full capacity utilization in most of the sectors , SEZ being seen as increasing the demands of industrial goods and for that capacities are increased to milk the profit , so is there any need to panic, When we compare Indian market to its peer we forget that India is one of the best regulated market where we are giving a big pie to FII’s , if we compare China where capital market is still suffering from xenophobia , FII’s are seen with distrust and most of the companies are state regulated we can easily find the answer to the high valuations , Indian market have 50% more listed companies compared with any Asian market which can be attributed due to loose IPO regulations which still need to develop to filter hundreds of dead companies coming to equity market for funding , the trading volumes are also a cause of concern for lot of companies and its only 400-500 companies which are actively traded out of 9000+ companies ..

So the question again comes ‘ Is it safe to invest now ? , Is it the time to do some bottom fishing ‘The answer is not easy but one thing is timely tested and trusted by all that if we are long term investor in any market we will seldom loose our money and most of the time can make a good Fortune , but timing the market is not easy., As warren Buffet says , don’t invest in equities, invest in business you trust and invest in them thinking that even if stock markets gets closed for next 10 years your company will still be there’. So what are you betting on!