Armed with a sound

The busy city of Mumbai is playing host to its favorite deity- Lord Ganpati. As the ten day long festival kicked off yesterday with his birth anniversary being celebrated, the city’s annual extravaganza is afoot despite swine flu threats and drought scares. With the arrival of the idols in many homes along came the sounds that will dominate the landscape for several days to come. Drums, cymbals and loud cheers of the accompanying devotees heralded “bappa”as he faithfully returns to bless them.

Mumbaikars are not alone in their tradition of making a lot of hullabaloo to mark this special occasion. Across India and in fact in many cultures across the world, making loud sounds is part of many rituals. In Bengal women make loud ululating sounds during weddings to ward off evil spirits. Conches are blown during most religious ceremonies and in the native Indian traditions, loud animal like sounds are used for everything from calling the rain Gods to curing the sick.

Most crowds instinctively know to cheer out loud to mark their approval of a person or boo to show disagreement. In Islamic traditions, mosques come with tall minarets built specifically for the “aazaan” or the call for prayers to the faithful. We beat drums to rev troupes up for a battle and then to celebrate victory. And when two people are arguing, each tries to be louder, because we perceive loud sounds as intimidating.

In this world of headsets, honk free zones and chatting (where LOL is a poor substitute for a hearty guffaw) our basic instincts still have a hold on us. Just as we crouch when physically attacked and blink when someone flicks a hand in front of our eyes, most of us use the weapon of our voice when announcing that we are happy, upset or just staking a claim on our territory.

Decency and honesty promote efficiency

Our renters of two years gave us their notice recently and along with the usual pangs that one experiences when an investment property is being vacated, we also felt a twinge to see such a good family go.

In the two years that they were occupying our house, we barely had the need to communicate with them and any minor issues were settled deftly, simply over an e-mail. One time when our downstairs room flooded, both sides kept their ends of the responsibility and the problem was solved quickly.

Even as he is moving out the guy has been good enough to show the house to prospects, bear witness to the signing of the lease with the new renter and we instinctively know that when we get the house back from him it will be clean. In return, he knows that he will get back his safety deposit from us in time and we have fully cooperated with him in making recommendations to his new land lord and ensuring that only the serious prospects come to see the house so as not to disturb his family.

Sitting thousands of miles away from each other, such efficient contractual relationships have been possible because both sides have shown basic decency and a willingness to not only honor contractual obligations but also co-operate in the spirit of kindness.

While this maybe a very small example, it shows that when people follow promises they have made and are willing to be reasonable, it saves everyone time and money and makes things much more efficient. Can you even imagine the headache, money and lost work hours it would have cost us if the renter had in anyway not followed his side of the contract? Now expand this example to the obligations between companies, or between Governments and its citizens. Unless each side is willing to be honest there will always be frustrations and losses.

No one knows what the outcome of the KG-6 Basin gas dispute will be and what the whole truth is, but since such a large set up can not exist without prior contracts and understandings, surely someone is choosing to twist the law late in the game to benefit themselves. And in the process is willing to cause waste and loss of such criminal proportions.

Sonia Gandhi beats Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton

Forbes released its annual list of 100 most influential women in the world. The list covers a range of sectors from large Corporations to non-profits and of course politics, and as such is a comprehensive representation of the female horsepower in the world today.

For me as an Indian woman, the fact that Sonia Gandhi (President of the ruling Congress party) came in well above Michelle Obama was something to smile and talk about. It is no mean feat for Sonia Gandhi to beat the likes of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama who have an instant advantage by being associated with the most powerful and influential administration in the world. Both the above-mentioned women travel the world, are regular features on the news in any country they visit and have a much more mature PR machinery backing them- all advantages over our Mrs. Gandhi. One is the wife of an ex-President and the other is married to one. So what makes Sonia Gandhi more powerful than them?

Forbes unequivocally acknowledges her as the “leader of India’s most powerful political party” and calls her the “dominant force” in the country. And I think that is where the key lies. By giving Sonia Gandhi her due place in the list, Forbes is acknowledging the growing importance of India. With a population of over 10 billion people and one of the few economies to continue to show a growth potential of almost 7%, India is a market no one can ignore. So a woman who has the capability of influencing this market must necessarily get her due credit.

But Sonia Gandhi’s supremacy, it must be acknowledged, is not just derived from the size of India. It is also derived from the political and social complexity she faces every day and the consecutive successes she has managed to deliver. Initially ostracized by many as non-Indian because of her Italian lineage and language handicap, she has managed to overcome both issues and put those concerns to rest once and for all. She has shown remarkable political astuteness and true spirit of public service by giving the Prime Ministership to a man like Dr. Manmohan Singh when she could have easily chosen to promote herself or her children (nepotism being an accepted part of Indian politics).

She has played tough with both her allies and rivals as and when required and against all odds lead her party’s Government to broker the successful nuclear deal with the US and win the recent elections by an unexpected majority. Both Hillary and Obama are yet to notch up any such significant achievements and thus must bow down to her.

In the end it must be said that while she may have lived under the shadows of her equally powerful Mother-in-Law and endearing husband when they were ruling India, it is clear that she learnt her lessons well. She has developed her unique blend of quite assertiveness that the world is noticing and acknowledging. Let us hope that as time passes she can parlay this influence and power to get India an even greater recognition and stake in the world stage. Congratulations and all the best Mrs. Gandhi!

Why fight over a book about the past when you have a whole future to re-write?

Much has been said and debated about the miserable losses that the BJP faced in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. Rahul Gandhi’s hurricane campaign in the North took the saffron brigade by surprise and when defeat hit them they reacted like any ordinary men- pointing fingers, squabbling and playing the blame game.

But what one really hoped through it all was that their talks of introspection and serious re-organisation would result in a new face of the BJP, emerging ready to give the Congress a run for its money in another four years. But the recent debacle over Jaswant Singh’s book “Jinnah: India- Partition- Independence” shows a party driven more by religious ideologies, communalism and living in the past rather than facing the concerns of a new India.

Few people in India- the small minority who know and care enough to have an opinion about the long gone political figure- are big fans of Jinnah. Most history books paint him as the opportunistic Muslim who stole away a part of India by riding the wave of the British divide and rule policy. But that is where it ends. It is an opinion about a political figure, held by a generation that is moving on. For the others (and I fear this may well be an overwhelming majority) he is a non-issue. Let us consider a simple scenario- does an opinion on Jinnah in any way matter to the every day lives of the majority in the country today? What is more important to the person who goes to the polling booth on the morning of the election- the candidate’s track record and future capability to reduce prices, build better roads and create more jobs, or his or her opinion on Jinnah? I think the answer is obvious.

This week as the BJP meets in Shimla for its chintan baithak or a brain storming session, it is doing so under a cloud of controversy over what should have been a non-issue. Yes a party has its ideologies and must stand by them, but they need to be prioritized. What should be the priority right now for the BJP- Jaswant Singh’s personal intellectual opinion or what the Congress is going to do them in the next elections? By making an issue over Jaswant Singh’s book the BJP is letting its already depleted reserves of energy and momentum get fragmented. So the question to be asked is- why fight over a book about the past when you have a whole future to re-write and very little time to do so?

Tata DoCoMo repeats the shampoo sachet success story

The city of Mumbai is covered with the advertising blitzkrieg unleashed by Tata DoCoMo, the latest entrant into the highly competitive GSM cellularservice market in the country. Bridges, buses, hoardings on busy intersections all scream out their message “Per second billing”, enticing you to switch to the service and pay for only the time you talk.

The pricing is brilliantly simple at 1 paisa for each second making it sound cost effective. But look deeper and you will find that in fact talking for a whole minute on Tata DoCoMo will cost you twenty per cent more than its rivals! For example, the average cost of a local call is about 50 paisa per minute on Vodafone but with this service you would actually pay 60p. But the marketer is playing on our psychology that we do not talk in blocks of one minute and this will save us in our overall billing. And this is where the marketter wins.

The positioning seems to be working. A news article this morning in the Times of India quotes that over 80,000 people bought sim cards in the very first day in Mangalore alone. Now I do not have stats on how many sim cards sell in the largest cities across the developed world but I am pretty sure it is nowhere near 80,000 and Mangalore is not even the largest city in India.

Tata DoCoMo has managed to catch the pulse of the Indian market. It is doing to the cell phone market what the small sachets of Chic did to the shampoo market- making smaller sizes available at costs that are feasible. Just goes to show that conventional wisdom has a lot to teach us- we just have to be willing to listen and apply is wisely.

The Madoff conviction is no more than a Nuremberg Trial

Conservative estimates put the number of dead in the Holocaust at six million, the number of Nazis involved in these crimes as sixty thousand and the number tried and convicted at the Nuremberg trials was two hundred. Conservative estimates put global financial losses at $20 trillion of which Madoff’s share was $171 Billion and he alone has been sentenced to 150 years.

Trying and punishing Madoff while necessary and critical is no more than a token. His shame is the shame of an individual and was a far simpler swindle than the one created by the pillars of Wall Street. He is an old fashioned crook who used a ponzi scheme till the feeder pipe ran dry. But the chiefs of investment banks like Lehman Bros., AIG are guilty of creating a whole new system which is so complex and convoluted that even today there is no way to pin point the blame and the cause of the fall. They set in motion an avalanche the end of which no expert can predict. No financial model or historic precedent is capable of telling us when these “toxic assets” will be flushed out of the system so that clean money can start flowing again. Madoff was a tumor you could operate and throw out but these whiz kids and greedy people have created a cancer that has spread everywhere.

The chiefs of these institutions need to be brought under the scanner just as Madoff has been. Additionally, all those highflying executives who raked in not just handsome fees from clients, but also bonuses from their organizations, must share the responsibility. In their defense many of them say that they were merely carrying out orders. But so did all the Nazi guards who simply acted on command to save their own lives.

If these words seem a little harsh (after all we are talking about the loss of money and not of lives) it is time we looked at the human cost of these events. For millions of families this situation has had a very tangible effect- one that will live with them forever. Surely the conviction of one Madoff will never be enough to prevent this from happening again. So let us not congratulate ourselves on bringing to justice Madoff while the big criminals roam free.

State Bank of India- an unlikely mirror of Indian history

Most of us have dealt with this icon of Public Sector banking at some point or the other in our lives. Many of us happily and many grudgingly (yours truly belonging to the latter category). But despite its infamous babugiri , SBI is a surprising saga of Indian history.

It has, for example, as its subsidiaries Bank Of Hyderabad, Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, all established at various times by the then Rajas of the Princely states to mange their finances. The Hyderabad subsidiary even managed the Osmania Sicca- the state currency of Hyderabad. At the time when the various Princes still ruled their roosts, these subsidiaries must have given them a sense of control, but now as the SBI looks to merge them into the parent company it is an indication of the maturity of the banking system of the country and how the country is leaving its past behind.

A look at what happened to PSU Banks and especially SBI during the past year also holds a mirror to our financial system and the Indian mentality. During the recent economic crisis the top IT companies of the country chose PSU banks over private sector banks to deposit over Rs.20, 000 Crore. While ICICI and HDFC Banks were reeling under the shock of steep rise in cash withdrawals, almost all PSU Banks saw a record jump in new accounts and deposits. So much so that led by the SBI, PSU Banks were the first to cut loan rates.

And this is what we Indians really are- we may talk of liberalization, efficiency of the private sector banks, the new approach to buying everything on credit- but when push comes to shove, we will trust the good old SBI and PSU banks. Why? Because we know the conservative Indian Government governs them, and we will put money in fixed deposits rather than risk them in the stock market. SBI was built by and for the Indian way of dealing with money.

As SBI moves forward with its consolidation and modernization efforts, it stands as an example of modern India- one that is learning to accept that competition today demands agility but at the same time understands that at a basic level nothing much has changed. An average Indian even today is still far more concerned with saving for tomorrow than spending today.