De'ja' Vu , The Great 2008 Recession

Summer of 2008 was simply unforgettable. Recession was tough on us as the students as it was on the people who were employed in various corporations. I can never forget the time, maybe that was a good thing which keeps me grounded all the time.

The recent times has so many similarities with the recessionary times. It simply feels like a de'ja' Vu. Various similarities are:

1.  Sensex nearing all time High:  The levels are just a ting lower than the previous high which followed a crash.

2. A Big IPO lined up in the form of COAL India , similar to Reliance Power IPO which turned disaster in the end.

3. Precious Commodities at all time High: The Gold and Silver almost touching all times high.

4. Inflation nearing Double Digits

5. Strong Rs and weak dollar : The rupee has touched almost 44 to a dollar


6. US trade deficit: Widening to $ 40 Billion/ month which is scary .

7. Excited  Retail Investers : Participation in recent IPOs have been really out of ordinary .

8. HR hiring anyone with a degree like there is no tomorrow.

9. Real State prices doubling every 6 months . 

I hope it doesn't goes the way it went last time. The fundamentals looks much better this time . Lets see how it goes, I am optimistic this time.

Empty CWG Lanes

Its been 2 days that the common Wealth Games are over. CWG lanes are now open for the general public and I must say its a big relief from every day traffic hassles . There has one really interesting observation. People are still not using CWG lanes and they continue to use the other crowded lane. It is really surprising. What can be the possible reasons for the same :

1. People don't know that CWG are over: Since the CWG lanes still shows CWG written over it, people are not choosing it to avoid fines . Likely to happen, knowledge about current affair of an average Delhi hunk is not debatable. They at time even dont know about who is the chief minister of the state .

2. People showing anger and boycotting CWG Lanes: Highly unlikely.

3. Human Programming: As the people are using only non CWG lanes from past 13-14 days, they have been subconsciously programmed to use only the non CWG Lanes or we can say , they want to take the usual roads and are avoiding the roads less traveled. :)

Whatever may be the reason, I am just loving it !

Poor PR Practices ..

India and China are being compared on a regular basis in both national and international media nowadays. Its bound to create some animosity between the two countries, Than our Chief of Army Staff yesterday came up with an statement " China and Pakistan are two of our Biggest Irritants " , he even added that " India should be prepared for war on two front with both China and Pakistan " . I was least amused by such an undiplomatic comment . Is there something in it which people don't know ?

The only message I have for him is, WTH. Everyone knows it, you sitting at such an post of honor and responsibilities should not utter a word which creates doubt in the mind of our not so friendly neighbor. If India wants to be prepared to take on any country , talk to the concerned people who can sanction you funds for doing so. Giving open ended statement like this will only deteriorate our relationship with countries like China .

I don't know if there is a post of public relation officer in the ministries or is there a communication department who is handling all such statements from people at the highest positions. Likes of Kalmadi , Lalit Bhanout  and VK Singh only makes India a laughing stock in front of other countries.

Analysis: Common Wealth Indian Performance

Indians have every reason to be proud of our record second position, podium finish in the overall medals tally at common Wealth games 2010 conducted in Delhi . Its also the time to actually analyze where we did well , where we went wrong and how can we improve in future .


Overall Analysis

Last time we won 22 gold medals in Melbourne , this time ours medal tally reflects 38 golds. We are good 16 golds ahead of our last CWG performance. The overall increase in medals will start to look less rosy when we deduct the gold medals we have won in the games like Wrestling ( 10 Golds), Archery ( 3 Golds) ,Tennis  ( 1 Gold) which were not played in earlier version of the games at Melbourne. So the net real addition of medals was limited to just 2 Golds.

Shooting: Compared to last year the performance remained same with no real addition to the medals .

Hockey: The team lifted their game at the right moment, aussies were just too good for us.

Tennis : Remained a big disappointment, our players were beaten by unknown players, may be the era of Lee Hash is finally coming to an end.


Weight Lifting: The game was again disappointing for Indians , it started with doping controversies and India ended with just 2 golds out of the event.


Archery : This looks to be the game where Indians can really go to Olympic level in no time. Our inexperienced young player were really performing well against the best of the teams.

Badminton: The sport has shown that India has really emerged as a big power in Badminton lead by likes of Saina Nehwal.

Athletics, Swimming, Diving: A big hole , we need to get into the medals in these events as bulk of the medals comes from them. If India wants to lead the medal tally, it was to do well in swimming and Athletics.

Gymnastics: Who can be better than India, land of Yoga in Gymnastics ? We just need to nurture our talent young.

Common Wealth Winners !

CWG games finally coming to an end with a spectacular closing ceremony. Last 14 days have been really awesome, it generated so much curiosity and interest, for the good everyone was actually concerned about some sport other than Cricket.

The turning point of the CWG can easily said to be the opening ceremony which brought smiles and pride on the faces of Indians who were thrashed by media around the world. And Indian athletes lead from the front by winning medal in almost all sports.

The best part of the game for me was easily the close contest for the second sport between India and England, at one point of time it looked like England will easily walk away with the second position as they have a lot of athletes in finals of various events. God has his own plans, except the dismal hockey performance for the gold medal match, Indians actually won every thing which came there way in last two days, be it boxing, table tennis or Badminton . It was truly an awesome performance, specially for a nation which is obsessed with cricket and most of us don't even remember the names of our sporting heroes.

We registered a great beginning in the sports like swimming and even gymnastics. We were spectacular as ever in wrestling and shooting.

CWG2010 can become the turning point for the sports in India. As its seen all over the world, all rising nations eventually do well in sports, I hope the same becomes true for India too and we lead the medal tally for Olympics in our life time.

Why Blame Politicians for corruption ?

Common Wealth Games Corruption, Why are we blaming bureaucrats and politicians for large scale corruption . I have the following questions ?

1. Why do we idolize our wealthy relatives without checking out their means of income and wealth ? And even when we know that they are corrupt, our respect and appreciation within society for them never change. 

2. Do we prefer to  bribe the Traffic Police man rather than paying actual penalties ? How much money are we annually saving out of it, nothing, But we still do it , right ?

3. Do we lay more stress of wealth rather than knowledge, personality or behavior of the person ?Do we speak with same respect and admiration to people with equal education but unequal wealth status ?

4. Do we prefer to worship Laxmi more than Saraswati ? Why so ?

5. Are we showing all our rental , interest and other sources of income for our Tax returns ? Is that because we  are afraid or tax man or due to strong value system ?

6. Do we publicly look down on people who bribe or receive bribe? Do we do it even when they are our relatives, friends, parents or close acquaintance ?

7. If we have a option of saving or gaining 1,00,000 which might have potential damaging affect on government of country by 50,00,000, what will you do ?

Changing politicians is out of our circle of influence and criticizing them will not change them . What we can do is that we can change ourselves and once society starts reforming the politicians will themselves change. The day most of the Indians have proud answers to these seven questions, we will not have much of problem with the rampant corruption in the society.

Credits : Inputs from lot of people who influence my opinion and knowledge. 

Reliance ..

 As far as i see, Reliance has always tried to provide best price to its customers and that has been a consistent strategy in all its companies big or small. Have they ever considered differentiating them-self by quality of services, socially conscious group  or by creating a niche. Naah ! The prime reason might be that they always want to capture a larger market which makes sense.

Reliance is much more of a company whose strength lies in Public relations, Project Management and Financial Engineering. Over the years they have shown us that they can get the large market share within no time by aggressive pricing , can get the facilities built before time because of there project management capabilities and has always been a darling of the financial markets. But they never attracted the best of the marketing talent, never have they boasted or tried to go aggressive on the branding of the company.

Reliance ADAG group and RIL group has survived and made it big even without much of branding and marketing initiatives primarily as there offerings were much more of B2B ( Business to Business Marketing ).  Off late ADAG group has ventured into many of the B2C ( Business to Consumer) businesses like Reliance Entertainment, Mutual Funds, Telecom etc where they have to start thinking about the branding aspect of their company.

Its not that ADAG group has not tried for branding , particularly for Reliance communication, they came out with "Sehwaag ki maa ka phone aaya hai" advertisement. I just cant stop smiling thinking about that advertisement, its really tough to find logic behind it . Why the hell will Sehwag's Mom call a spectator in the stadium and how did the spectator came to know by looking at the number that Sehwag's Mom is calling . But all that is past, they were trying to enter a uncharted territory so initial hick-ups  ( popularity called as teething troubles by business managers to safe themselves from Senior Management bashing :-) ) were bound to happen .

Yesterday I called up Reliance Capital ( Another ADAG Company) Customer Care  for a query regarding Reliance Mutual Fund and during the waiting period they played Voda-phone Tune. I was amazed and surprized and than I asked my friend to check out if its Voda-Phone tone only, he confirmed it. Its a  classic case of marketing disaster, as a Group if you can not promote your own company , why are you playing your Competitors Song !