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 .

Obama's Party

US President Mr. Barack Obama's ceremonial dinner party in honor of the Indian Prime minister being attended by uninvited guest has came as a funny yet serious incident. I am not too sure how would have the Washington taken it, had it been US president visiting India and we could not provide the proper security.

It also shows the serious problem which is being faced by the security agencies today . If they do too much of scrutiny with regard to the identity of the person, it might look little rude and people often feel offended. This is something which preciously happened with Shak Rukh Khan at the Newark Airport and he left no stone unturned to get the mileage out of it .

If the security agencies don't do the necessary due diligence and maintain the security of the place, it might lead to more serious security issues.

Election Time ..

This year’s general elections in India are not as exciting an affair as it used to be in the past. The real limelight has been taken up by other news like sub-prime crisis and its affect on world economy, terrorism in Pakistan, President Obama and M S Dhoni for their novel styles and achievements, IPL Blues and even Inflation numbers etc .  

The other important feature of this election is the lack of Real Issues.  I cannot differentiate much between the different national parties on the basis of their manifestos. They are all promising to alleviate poverty and built a strong nation, nobody knows how they will do it .I really don’t understand why we don’t have public debates where leaders from different parties put their views on different issues and provide us a way to differentiate between them. TV debates can be a cost effective solution as the penetration of television in India is quite good and people can sit in comfort of their homes to participate in the dance of democracy.

This year election has witnessed internet being used as a mode of communication by different political parties. BJP and congress is trying to woe the educated and the youth of the country by putting their advertisements and links in the popular sites which Indians mostly browse. Lets see how many of these internet displays gets converted into votes.  

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”.