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 !

How to improve your Car's fuel Efficiency ..

Recently went to CII maintenance expo and came across information from Petroleum Conservation Research  Association for improving the fuel efficiency of our four wheelers.. I found the it really informative and it has actually clarified lot of confusions. Few of the important points discussed were :

1. Stop the vehicles if the wait time is more than 15 seconds ( Based on research done for Delhi Roads ). I used to think that its 1 minute ..


2. Most of the cars are most economical if they are run at 45 kmph , Very tough to ride at such low speeds though!

3. Try to run the vehicle in top gears. It should be correct gear too !

4. Use of clutch only for changing gears.

5. Cleaning Air Filter, Fine tuning of engine.

Common-Wealth Game !

I write like..

Just came through a article on TOI which talks about a website which analyzes your writing style and tells you the author which resembles your writing style. Ahhh , as a blogger i thought, let me check my  writing style.


Browsed the website to find out if i resemble any of he greats. One has to just copy and paste few of the paragraph of your writings on the web page and click on analyze.  So after the first iteration the result says Issac Asimov , wow . I thought of repeating it if it was just a fluke or a random generator. On the second iteration with other text it showed David Foster Wallace. On the 3rd, 4th and 5th iteration with different text it showed the same result.

The website does some kind of analysis based on the number of words per sentence etc. So you have all the reasons to feel good on a Sunday morning thinking that you are not that bad at writing.

About Light and the Darkness

We all must have read or seen it n number of times, the great divide between the rich and poor in our country. Its so apparent and we start ignoring it as we get use to it. But I really start feeling it after reading 'White Tiger' by Arvind Adiga. 

The book talks about the story of India which is mostly left untouched during the growth of the country in last 2 decades, economist calls it India Vs Bharat where Bharat is almost the same as 20 years back. The author Mr. Adiga calls the people living in the fertile region of Ganges as Darkness ( so ironical )and coastal area as Light as most of the people in areas of Ganges are still deprived of the most basic necessities of life and those living near coast are much better off. The story is of the desires of the people in darkness who sees the world developing but when they look at there abysmal poverty, it leaves them strained and suffocated. The people in darkness are mostly working for people in light for making there life comfortable. They also want to own the comforts of life and lead a respectful life. But do they have even a remote chance of it of they lead a honest life ?

Now when I go around places, it seems like there is darkness everywhere, I can empathize with the kind of lives they are living, not sure of even next meal when we are thinking about how to finance a flat in our locality. 

The real problem is that most of India is still in darkness and not much is being done to address it yet. The day is not far when this rift might cause a civil war as rich will keep on exploiting the poor by underpaying for services or disrespecting them.

 I believe that we the people in light  should start working in our ways to bring light to the people around us in darkness, may be if not them, there next generation so that these people get humane treatment and there is more equity in this world. Remember only a candle can light another candle and Adiga's analogy fits so beautifully even here.

Customer Delight

All companies try to provide comfort to customers in all possible ways to attract them, but there are very few companies who can actually delight customer. I had an recent experience with a company which I least expected to do it. ICICI Bank !

I wanted to open saving bank account in ICICI bank for the comfort of internet banking. I just called them once and they followed it up very keenly and made an appointment with me as per my convenience. The formalities were completed in  minutes. This was all routine for all private sector banks who are tying to grab as many CASA ( current accounts / savings accounts ) as possible. The real satisfaction came when I told the bank representative that I don't have a passport size photograph with me and gave him a stamp size photo. The bank representative Hussain was happy to help me and when he visited me next time to hand over the debit card and cheque book, he also handed me 3 developed passport size copies of my photograph. Wow , this is going beyond my expectations. I just thanked him and thought that the bank has came a long way in keeping their customers happy.

So finally I am a happy ICICI Bank customer, hoping that the services remain as good as the initial experience.

Landing becomes even tougher ..

I always had fears while the plane is landing,  recent incidents of plane crash due to landing will make the air travel definitely tougher for me , I cant imagine how can the landing be so precise that it always hits the landing point, considering the speed of the plane and low visibility in the airports . May the soul of the people who have lost there life due to human error rest in peace.

I believe it also makes sense to travel by train ( as long as area is not naxal affected ) when the distances are within 6 hours. The time spend on airport in security check , boarding and collecting the baggage is considerably high which should also be included while the time comparison between train and air travel.

Stupid MRF Blimp

The IPL 3 is finally over, it feels so good that now we no more need to hear phony phrases like " Carbon Kamaal Catch, DLF Maximum or Citi Moment of success " .


I really pity the well paid commentators, who  were forced to speak these phrases and after months of repetition they might find it difficult to get rid of the new vocabulary. Advertizers should realize that broadcasting the same thing over and over again might create the top of the mind recall but can also irritate the customers.

  The stupid Air Balloon sponsored by MRF called MRF Blimp was especially portraid as something which is extraordinary.  It was not surprising when people were tweeting messages like " I'm just so happy that there's NO MORE BLIMP!!!! NO MORE BLIMP!!!!NO MORE BLIMP!!!!NO MORE BLIMP!!!!" 

Arindam Choudhary Latest Gyaan

Arindam Chaudhuri , Self Proclaimed Management Guru, Philosopher and Economist leaves nothing to chance when it comes to advertising his greatness in Media. No wonder thousands of students are paying Lakhs of rupee as fees in his countless number of colleges which he says are beyond IIMs. In last 10 years he has created a large chain of money sucking institutions by attracting innocent students who believed in his high profile media campaigns portraying the greatness of his institutions.

In 2005 his own students who felt cheated after getting admissions in the college started a blog to uncover the real Guru to the media. The media was not really interested in loosing there prime advertiser and the story never reached the common man through newspapers or television.

Mr. Choudhari now has started the campaign about his new book released in December 2009 " Discover the Diamonds in You " . The self proclaimed marketing Guru even forgot the need of providing respect to the audience in all your promotion exercises . His Advertisement says " After the successful Count your Chicken Before they Hatch and The great Indian Dream, The Management Guru Educates India with his new book , Blah Blah " . Mr. Choudhary, it will be a great help to all the Indians if you leave academia and stop Educating India.

Prof. CK Prahalad was not a socialist

As the news of Prof. Prahalad's death hit the Indian media channels, every news paper reported there version of him. It really hurts me when prominent newspaper are publishing there baseless theories about the professor. A newspaper described him as " Guru of Poverty and Profit " and also described him to be a messiah of poor. I really dont agree with the reports ..

Prof. CK was a great management thinker , one of finest India has ever produced , a global citizen, person who gave world two great theories of " Core Competency" and " Fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid ". There are very few management thinkers who gave two management theories. But he was never a socialist , if one reads his book Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid he always concerned about profitability of corporation and highlighted that the bottom half of the population has great potential to provide profitability to the corporates and if the companies start targeting this segment the condition of even poor might improve. Prof. CK Prahalad was socially motivated personality but not a socialist.

The death of Professor marks the end of an era and the world will never be same after him .

Youngistan and Ungli Cricket!

The new series of advertisement by Pepsi and Idea really make me think what are these creative advertisement gurus doing ?

We all know that Pepsi is targeting the young generation and half of India's population lies in that segment but what are you guys really want to show ? Is it a attempt of involving customer going terribly wrong ? What exactly is Sanjay Dutt doing in that huge suit which makes him look tiny ? I dont know ?

Idea has also disappointed its fan by the new Ungli Cricket advertisement , Indians are mad for Cricket but it doesn't mean that they can digest all kinds of shit thrown at them in the name of cricket. The whole set up looks clumsy and the idea of Ungli cricket looks really Ugly.

For Idea this advertisement is a total disaster as it was replacing the Hit " Idea can change your World " theme . Now for changing themes of the Hit campaign , you should really have some substance in your campaign ..

Both the advertisements are classic case of the waste of celebrity and also conveys that Celebrity endorsement never means that the campaign will be a hit. Some more thought should be put into the campaigns by big corporate houses as they have huge budgets for telecasting the advertisement and every time such ads are telecasted , people only loath them and left with no option but to switch the channel.

One more thought visit my mind frequently.. Why cant these celebrities tell the ad man directly " Boss Is mai Dum nahi Hai ! "

Tooth Ache in Flight

Even a thought of going to dentist scares me but last year finally I had to go to the Dentist when the pain became unbearable . The doctor performed the root canal therapy ( RCT) one of the standard therapy for the tooth decay.

A year passed and a strange thing happened , I started feeling pain in the same tooth whenever I am in flight. This made me uneasy in flights as I just cant sleep or eat during the boring flight hours, after the flight lands every thing again becomes normal. Initially I thought its just a coincidence but the incident got repeated every time I traveled in last 2-3 months .

Finally I decided to search it on Internet which confirmed that its the sign of some infection in the tooth, as the pressure varies at higher altitudes and one can suffer tooth ache in Flights. A early sigh to go to a dentist ?

I am not still convinced about the theories on Internet :-)

Flip Side of Internet Advertising . .

I was reading one of the articles today on Valueresearchonline.com on the problems with investment in insurance schemes which are offering highest NAV in last 7 years.
ICICI Pinnacle is one of the such schemes which is marketing itself using the website. Now in the photo the article is saying that all these schemes are nothing but crap and on the same page the advertisement still talks about investing in the scheme.

Vada-phone all set to enter Dog Business

Their are rumors that Vada-phone, the global telecom major has been in the final stages of negotiation with its distributors to cross sell dogs along with its Mobile connections in India.

“The dog density in India is very low at 1.2 dogs per 1000 homes and its easier and more profitable to sell Dogs in India rather than selling mobile phone connections “ remarked Mr. Sunil Puri

Renowned politician and animal right activist Meneka Gandhi has come out in support of the company but have suggested to the company to market stray dogs of Jharkhand and West Bengal instead of Pugs. In a interview with media Menaka said that there are only 1.411 Lakhs Dogs left after the Maoist started there killing spree and the telecom company can help in protecting the innocent animals from dying.

Meanwhile RBI has raised its concerns regarding the new venture. Increasing the density of dog population can have inflationary pressure on the food prices and they have suggested to the finance ministry to put a special tax on all dog owners.

Why UP and Bihar are not progressing ?

Inspite of rich heritage, human resource , having one of the most fertile areas in India , mineral rich states of UP and Bihar are not progressing .. Why ? Today I have got the answer of the same . Its the leadership crisis which has engulfed these high potential states of India . The leaders from different political parties does have the political will , vision and attitude to change the conditions of these laggard states. What a agony that a state like UP who can give the most powerful prime minister could not produce Chief ministers of even half of their ability for the state.

Lalu ji yesterday made the statement in public " If (they) think that the women would vote independent, then they are mistaken. If I asked Rabri to vote a certain way, do you think she would do otherwise? ". The statement is really disappointing and speaks loudly about the mindset of the leader. If even after education and interaction with the society people still carry such a mindset than only God can help them and I believe even the polical survival of people which such a mentality will be tough in future.

Microsoft distributing freebees ..

Just got another forward from my friend and he didn't spare anyone in his contact list from getting rich , Mr. Bill Gates seems to be getting bored of his fortune by sharing it with the people who will forward his emails. May be he feels its better to do some charity rather than loosing it through dwindling Microsoft stock.

Really beyond my understanding, how can well educated people just can't resist even the remotest chance of getting rich . Be it small gifts like cap to electronic gadgets like Laptops to hard cash $$$ , they will keep mailing maximum number of people..

Mr. Bill Gates has also just announced that people who will forward this blog links will also be rewarded ! :-) Anyone Reading ... ?

100th Post !

Never knew that this blog will remain active for so much time , Its been more than 1.5 half year and today I am writing the 100th post of freedom . Initially when I started writing the blog there was no fix theme of the blog and infact I never realized that Freedom posts has a theme. It was Sidharth Bedi , my close friend and and one of my inspiration for blogging who noted that Freedom does have a theme, He told me that your topics of post might vary but all of my posts make some kind of business sense. I must say that it was purely the confidence of few of the admirers which kept the blog alive and the frequency of post was maintained during all my phases of life .

Hope to continue this journey which I am finding very enjoyable . Thanks to all the readers of Freedom for your constant support and motivation throughout this journey.