Centre Point of India

Nagpur isn't really a exciting place, sun beating down on you even in the month of November. The only thing I was excited about was to see the Centre Point of India, yes the point from where the East, West, North South parts of India are equidistant. ! Wow centre of this huge country ! Must be awesome ..

So me along with Sid asked our Cabbie to show us the Centre Point , he told us " Do you mean Centre Point Hotel Sir " . No we told him . Finally he left us somewhere in between and we kept searching for the place, no body there seems to know about the Centre point.

Finally some learned man told us that the place is called the "Zero Mile". Hmm, the name is in interesting. Finally we reached the place, and was aghast after seeing the condition of the place. Thay have simply killed it !

The place was uncleaned, surrounded by political and business hoardings. The centre point of India and no maintenance what so ever. Tried to click a few photographs, Planning to write to the authorities. Where are our taxes going ?

When will we start marketing our country ?

Once upon a time in India..

Recently happen to visit Sevagram, the place where Mahatma lived with his team and planned and implemented the project " Freedom of India " . All the great freedom movements were actually thought through and discussions on the future directions for the pan India movement was done at a place which is almost the centre point of India.  The simplicity of the place and lifestyle of Mahatma really makes you think   "What Am I running for ?"

Clicked few of the pics during the trip ..

Barkha Dutt Episode : Not a surprise

Although very few newspapers are reporting the controversies of alleged lobbying by the celebrated journalists like Burkha Dutt and Vir Sanghvi, people are slowly getting the feel of the reality. Media does not want to publicize or comment on the episode as it might lead to problems for them . "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones on other."

It was not at all surprising to find Burkha and Sanghvi involved in such practices. The whole media is like that Only the stories which are well paid are told by the media. Needless to say all controversies relating to page 3 people, linkages of actors and actresses just before a movie release, editorial with a biased stance are the profitable products of our media. We all know now why one of the leading newspaper of India was so critical about CWG scams just after loosing its bid to be the media partner of the event. Its all about conflict of interest and media have power to portray anything in the way they want.

Burkha dutt has always been a loud mouthed women, making big statements which catches public attention. I still remember her article , " Like Father , Like Son" she published after the son of Late Promod Mahajan was found involved in a drug overdose case. In her article she critiques Promod and tries to suggest that the son of Promod is so much like Promod Mahajan himself. It was a profound insult to a dead man. The lady leaves no one when it comes to publicity . Now if we just use the same analogy in case of Burkha, the character of whole Dutt family can be easily sketched , but will any sane person do it .

Its so easy to be the one, holding the mike and asking difficult question, making witty remark and commenting on the integrity of the person but its so difficult to be a real genuine person using your power responsibly.

Black Money : Making India Uncompetitive

 Indian economy is over a trillion dollar economy but lot of economist says that the parallel economy (in the form of black money or undisclosed transactions ) is as big as the real economy. Billions of rupees are never shown to the tax man to avoid tax . This black money is really bad for India. It is making India uncompetitive in business at a very fast pace . How ?

Black money usually goes into the investments where it is hard to detect. Usually people keep the black money in cash but it is hard to carry it every where and there is no return on it. Real Estate is the prime investment destination for it as the prices paid in white are abysmal and a very high amount to black money is involved to evade tax. Very high proportion of black money is chasing very few investment destination of real estate. The  real estate prices are shooting over the roof. Now when the land prices are abnormally high due to vested interest of people some of the speculators bring in even more money in the real estate market which increases the costs even further. In a nut shell the black money is creating a bubble in the real estate market.

Now land and real estate are essential part of the infrastructure required for industries. Due to soaring cost of infrastructure the industry is finding it tough to be profitable. The entry barriers for small size co-operations are even higher. If you want to have even a small office in rime locations the money which is charged to you is as high as one in developed economies like USA or Europe with the pricing of products and services nowhere close to it. How will the industry in India survive in long term if the real estate price goes on increasing.

A Passing thought: It is good that lot of Indian black money is parked in the Swiss Banks as it will only worsen the condition of property markets in India.

Indian Judiciary : Can't Get Worst !

Indian Judiciary might be seen as a important part of the Indian democratic system, but its very difficult to cope with it. Yes, as a citizen of the country I have my rights protected but the slowness of the judiciary makes life difficult .

Anyone can do anything here as one knows that the Judiciary is slow and nothing will happen. It is really painful to see likes of molester cop Rathore to again get a bail after years of struggle by the affected family. His smile is a tight slap on the face of the system which is giving no justice to people who are suffering.

In my lifetime I have not seen any powerful person to get the real taste of prison, be it the actors crushing laborers on road, be it the politicians involved in serious crimes, be it powerful people exploiting every little person for their individual gains or be it influential people inciting violence and hatred in the minds of people of the country. Anyone can do any thing here as long has one has muscle power, money power or influence on the system. Sanjay Dutt can be a lone exception to this case.

Even in so called consumer court it takes years to get a judgment.  In case you miss any of the hearing the case is rejected. In case the accused party misses the hearing the court is adjourned. Even if you get the decision in your favor after years of effort, the other party can move to the civil court which will again takes years for judgment.Thinking of all this a common man just drops the case and just feels cheated.

We are doing all kinds of reforms in India, how about reforming the judiciary. No Jessica Lal killers or Ruchika's molester should go out of the hands of our legal system. No person should be able to bypass the judiciary of the country.

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 !

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.