Showing posts with label IIPM Ranking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IIPM Ranking. Show all posts

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Movie Review: Yamla Pagla Deewana 2

You would be a brave moviegoer indeed to subject yourself to this monstrosity, especially if you’ve been through one round of the Yamla Pagla Deewana assault.

The Deol trio possesses oodles of charm all right. But does that mean that the threesome would be just as appealing when they indulge in outright buffoonery? Watch Yamla Pagla Deewana 2, directed by Sangeeth Sivan, if you aren’t sure of the answer. But if you are, stay away.

Dharmendra, Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol are joined by an orangutan in this moronic comic caper about a father and son duo that is out to con the world in the face of stiff resistance from the third member of the family – an honest son/sibling who swears by mehnat ki kamaai.

Sunny Deol is Just One Singh, as Johnny Lever (in the guise of a bumbling avatar of Shahrukh Khan’s Don) puts it after being pilloried mercilessly by the Super Sardar.

And the ape is Einstein – yes, that is what the orangutan is called – and his IQ is higher than the two men in its charge in London, Dharam Singh Dhillon (Dharmendra) and Gajodhar Singh Dhillon (Bobby Deol). These two guys are Varanasi thugs who have landed in the UK in the hope of swindling a wealthy nightclub owner, Sir Yograj Singh (Annu Kapoor), of his riches.

Varanasi was the setting of the first film and that is where the sequel opens. Dharam Singh’s upright son, Paramveer Singh Dhillon, is now a UK bank loan recovery official who takes it upon himself to protect the interests of the man that his dad and brother are trying to dupe. The conmen have no idea that their intended prey is deep in debt and is struggling to save his business.

There are two girls in this soup, both daughters of the bankrupt tycoon. Gajodhar has his eyes on one of them (Neha Sharma), while Paramveer falls for the other (Kristina Akheeva).

The rigmarole make about as much sense as Dharmendra’s attempts to communicate with the orangutan. Gibberish infects the entire film and the air of inanity thickens to such an extent that what is supposed to be humorous repeatedly takes the shape of tiresome gags.

On a serious note, it is hard to believe that 77-year-old Dharmendra is in such dire straits that he is reduced to this. One can only pray and hope that the generous rabba that Sunny Deol keeps appealing to in the film, will save the Deols from any further misadventures of this nature.

The spirit of Salman Khan is invoked on numerous occasions in the course of YPD 2 and Bobby Deol even spouts lines from films of the Dabangg star.

Read more.....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
ExecutiveMBA

Monday, September 09, 2013

Sidney Herbert to Florence Nightingale

Crimean War was fought between Russia on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, France, and Sardinia on the other. The causes of the conflict were inherent in the unsolved Eastern Question and dispute between Russia and France over the Palestinian holy land. British statesman Sir Sidney Herbert, who was head of Britain war office, wrote this letter to Florence Nightingale urging to mobilize and train nurses for the war victims. Nightingale responded positively and was awarded with the sobriquet “Lady with the lamp” when war got over.

16 Feb 1855, Crimea


You will have seen in the papers that there is a great deficiency of nurses at the Hospital of Scutari.

The other alleged deficiencies, namely of medical men, link, sheets, etc., must, if they have really ever existed, have been remedied ere this, as the number of medical officers with the Army amounted to one to every 95 men in the whole force, being nearly double what we have ever had before, and 30 more surgeons went out 3 weeks ago, and would by this time, therefore, be at Constantinople. A further supply went on Thursday, and a fresh batch sail next week.

As to medical stores, they have been sent out in profusion; lint by the ton weight, 15,000 pairs of sheets, medicine, wine, arrowroot in the same proportion; and the only way of accounting for the deficiency at Scutari, if it exists, is that the mass of stores went to Varna, and was not sent back when the Army left for the Crimea; but four days would have remedied this. In the meanwhile fresh stores are arriving.

But the deficiency of female nurses is undoubted, none but male nurses having ever been admitted to military hospitals. It would be impossible to carry about a large staff of female nurses with the Army in the field. But at Scutari, having now a fixed hospital, no military reason exists against their introduction, and I am confident they might be introduced with great benefit, for hospital orderlies must be very rough hands, and most of them, on such on occasion as this, very inexperienced ones. There is but one person in England that I know of who would be capable of organising and superintending such a scheme; and I have been several times on the point of asking you hypothetically if, supposing the attempt were made, you would undertake to direct it.

The selection of the rank and file of nurses will be very difficult; no one knows it better than yourself. The difficulty of finding women equal to a task, after all, full of horrors, and requiring, besides knowledge and goodwill, great energy and great courage, will be great. The task of ruling them and introducing system among the, great; and not the least will be the difficulty of making the whole work smoothly with the medical and military authorities out there. This it is which makes it so important that the experiment should be carried out by one with a capacity for administration and experience. If this succeeds, an enormous amount of good will be done now.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Saturday, September 07, 2013

Movie Review: Go Goa Gone

Saif Ali Khan is a bit of a freako in B-town who, despite enjoying star-lineage, is truly different.  The Chhote Nawab has a definite life beyond movies, is a voracious reader, known to have a scintillating wit and is forever open to the unconventional.  Story goes that when the director-duo went across to Saif for a narration in the hope of getting him to play the lead role, initial zap & bewilderment [“a movie about zombies?  Are you guys nuts?”] was followed, very soon, by hysterical laughter and a firm commitment to not only act, but produce the film as well!

As expected, G3 is bizarre and has zero reference to context in terms of anything Bollywood has ever done in this unusual, crazy genre.  What for chrissake is a zombie-com??  This could pose as a huge roadblock with fans of the usual B-town staple [toilet humour, action & rom-com] but audiences with open minds and willing to enjoy the whacky & weird are in for a treat!  Three fun-loving guys & their girlfriend rock at a rave party in Goa hosted by a mad-looking Russian and get bombed with booze & drugs.  They wake up to find that they are in zombie-land.  Scared like hell, they run helter-skelter, clueless about the next move and given some kind of protection by the crazy Russian, who himself is scared shit too but doesn’t show it, feigning bravado.  Its pure, unadulterated madness cut loose unleashing wisecracks powered with manic energy on an overdrive.

The performances are uniformly good – Kunal Khemu, Vir Das, Anand Tiwari and the girl Puja Gupta.  Saif as the crazy Russian [with that funny golden hair] is superbly spot-on too.  It’s a very different genre with the concept of zombies coming centre-stage and all the action around them offering a novel experience.  The camera work – lensing Goa & Mauritius – is sumptuous, the music appropriately wacky, but as a narrative – situations & dialogues – can sometimes be a bit tiresome due to its repetitiveness & forced gags.  After all, how long can you keen the zingers going fresh, hilarious & original, na?  Everything considered, however, a great bold leap into a whole new fun-land!  Heavily recommended for al lovers of whacky fun!  Bravo Krishna & Raj … Go, Goa, Gone will go places!


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Monday, July 29, 2013

The end of poverty

Will World Bank's plans to eradicate poverty by 2030 succeed?

Jim Yong Kim, President of World Bank, has set out on an ambitious goal. He is looking to remake the world in his own image that will surely appear utopian to many. What Kim wants is to have “a sustainable world where all households have access to clean energy. A world where everyone has enough to eat. A world where no one dies from preventable diseases.” That looks like a tall order but the World Bank has a plan of its own. It is to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. At a time when the world is yet to recover from a full-blown recession and where more than one-fifth of the population still languishes in dire poverty, Kim's chances of fulfilling his dreams may look improbable, if not impossible.

However, this bleak economic picture is not deterring the World Bank from pursuing its lofty goals. Its stated mission “to end extreme poverty within a generation” has not been compromised. The target itself is an update of the Bank's Millennium Development Goals (MDG) set in 2000. It was born out of the Bank's desire to end the misery of 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day. The MDG goals, according to World Bank, are reasonably supported by the organization’s data, which showed a drop in absolute poverty from 43% in 1990 to 21% in 2010.

However, there are two impediments in the way of accomplishing Kim’s dream. First, the environmental challenge of climate change could act as a big dampener to economic growth and development. The lives of 360 million people would be in jeopardy by the turn of the century if the root causes of climate change and its devastating effect on food grain production are not tackled. Experts predict that catastrophic climate changes would be brought about by noxious emissions and increasing pollution to the environment. Environmental abuse would lead to a rise in the global temperature by as much as 4 degree Celsius – an outcome that must stopped at all costs. Second, the developing and underdeveloped nations will need to catch up with the richer nations through sustainable economic development if they aspire to lift their teeming masses out of poverty.

The problem is that lifting the first impediment can have a negative impact on the second. That is because industries in the developing world are mostly environmentally non-compliant and polluting. So enforcing emission norms would mean shutting down manufacturing units. That is one reason why the geographical pattern of poverty reduction is largely lopsided – only 45 out of 84 developing countries are on track towards meeting the environmental goal. Likewise, the prospects of achieving sustainable economic development appear not too bright considering that it requires adroit planning, inclusiveness and uniform wealth distribution, which are often missing in the developing countries’ economic agendas.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Thursday, June 06, 2013

EPA proposes, industry disposes

Why its environmental proposals have failed to pass muster

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) deadline of April 13, putting a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions on new factories, has fallen flat on its face. As a result, it has been forced to extend the deadline. The emission target was set by the EPA a year back to limit the release of CO2 per unit megawatt hour of electricity for new factories to 1,000 pounds. But the target makes life difficult for factories, especially coal plants, which on an average emit about 1,768 pounds of CO2. Given this reality, it's not surprising that the EPA directive has prompted over two million outraged comments, forcing it to extend the deadline and ponder on the validity of the imposed targets.

This is not the first time that the EPA has been constrained to stretch its deadline. Even before, complainants have moved court, putting the brakes on EPA's plans. Most of these legal manoeuvres have been prompted by economic reasons. But to say that the impasse was created only because of stakeholders wanting to protect their financial interests would be stretching things a bit too far.

Of course the EPA move would affect the economy negatively, at least in the short run. But it also goes to show that policy wonks haven’t got their maths worked out prudently. The EPA model for Tier 3 improvements doesn’t factor in, according to the Environ International Corp, any health betterment for the people. On the contrary, as per the American Petroleum Institute, the gasoline price will be hiked by 6-9 cents per gallon. And that’s an indirect cost on top of the $10 billion direct capital outlay. Clearly, the internally made model of EPA is flawed to its roots. It neither provides a solution to human health improvements nor does it help in mending the economic frailties as they exist.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

His madam's voice

Attacks by Trinamool leaders on institutions are prompted by Mamata Bannerjee

Attacks by Trinamool Congress leaders on rivals and institutions in West Bengal has more to do with the diktats issued by Chief Minister and party supremo Mamata Bannerjee than any criticism of Marxist regimentation.

Naturally then, when the ebullient all India general secretary of the party Mukul Roy took head on the State Election Commission (SEC) and launched a vicious personal campaign against the State Election Commissioner Meera Pandey, going to the extent of describing her as the stooge of CPI (M), it became crystal clear that he was merely doing his leader’s bidding.

The Bengal Chief Minister can go to any extent to attack and malign her political adversaries, as was evident during her war of attrition with the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the UPA government. Following in the foot steps of his supreme leader, Roy used choicest invectives against Pandey, a fact which irked even Governor M K Narayanan to make a point: ``All I have to say is that such intolerant utterances about somebody who is carrying out constitutional responsibility is unfortunate.” Attributing motives to SEC’s refusal to hold panchayat elections on a single day as suggested by Mamata and hher team, Roy remarked “ I have a strong feeling that a conspiracy is under way to delay the election in order to keep  the CPI(M) happy. I think there is an understanding with the CPI(M)”. But that was not the worst; he added for good measure that ``she was seen in company of some senior CPI(M) leaders”.

Senior bureaucrats have not taken these jibes and allegations lightly. They are waiting for the right moment to hit back. They say their rulers have developed a habit of attacking and insulting officers to cover up for their own failures. State Election Commissioner Pande is known for sticking to rules. In the past, she has even antagonized senior Left Front ministers but the political leadership always appreciated her sound bureaucratic approach and allowed her to function.

Mamata in fact favoured holding panchayat elections in December this year in a single phase. The time was important for her as she did not want intra-party feuds to dominate electoral proceedings. But the major problem against holding elections then was revision of electoral rolls and completion of delimitation of the wards. It is said that at least 10 lakh new young voters have been enrolled. In addition to the present incumbents, officer bearers of the panchayats would continue to be in office till May 30, 2014. Obviously there was little that the new representatives would have done if the elections were held in December. Later the government suggested a two-phase poll. But in view of the high stakes and sensitivity of the elections, Pande preferred not to take a chance and suggested a three-phase poll.

A closer look will reveal that irrespective of whatever Roy has been saying, the fact is that Mamata has made it an ego issue. She has come to brook no challenges to her decisions. Pande by sticking to her stand, therefore, is guilty of opposing the chief minister. The SEC intends to hold the elections in April, 2014, so that the new members would be ready to take charge after May 30 and it makes sense.

It is worth recalling that the same Mukul Roy addressing Trinmool workers on December 1 last year had said that panchayat elections will be held in April-May and asked all party members to sink their differences and work unitedly. He should be able to answer what significant changes had taken place since then to necessitate a change in his party’s and the state government’s stand.

West Bengal Panchayati Raj Institutions have altered the face of the state. There has been all round development in the quality of life for the rural population. The villages now have an institution which has transformed their standard of living to a higher level than under the present Left Front regime.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Alagiri alone

The elder brother has lost decisively to younger brother Stalin. Appanasamy analyzes the agony of Alagiri.

M.K Alagiri, the elder son of DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi, appears lonely, desolate and shocked. If he had read up a bit of Indian history, he would have still been lonely and desolate, but not shocked. More than 300 years before Christ was born, the younger son of King Bindusara vanquished all his elder brothers and became Emperor Ashoka. More than two hundred years before Bahadur Shah Zaffar was exiled in Burma ending the Mughal dynasty in India, one of his more famous predecessors Aurangzeb had usurped the throne from his elder brother Dara Shikoh. Even in modern dynasties, Alagiri would have found similar examples. In the 1970s, when Indira Gandhi was giving the final touches to the Establishment of the Gandhi dynasty in the country, she chose the younger son Sanjay Gandhi to inherit the mantle and the throne. Mercifully, there was no fratricidal battle here as the elder son Rajiv Gandhi had absolutely no interest in anything except flying planes. It is only the inexplicable cruelty of destiny and history that made Rajiv the ruler of India.

Alagiri seems to have lost decisively to his younger brother M.K Stalin in the race for leading the DMK after Karunanidhi. The final nail in the proverbial coffin seemed to to be hammered on March 30 when Stalin chose Madurai, the so-called stronghold of Alagiri, to celebrate his birthday and his anointment as the successor. Barring a few die hard loyalists, Alagiri helplessly watched enthusiastic DMK cadres desert his camp with gusto and embrace Stalin as the new leader. Well before this very public humiliation and sidelining of Alagiri in Madurai, the patriarch Karunanidhi had made it crystal clear to DMK cadres that Stalin would lead the battle against arch rival J. Jayalalitha, the current Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Just in case, Alagiri still nurses some illusions, the DMK has served show cause notices to a few loyal supporters of the elder son for anti-party activities. Their crime? They ostensibly boycotted the March 30th birthday celebrations of Stalin in Madurai as a gesture of support for Alagiri. The rest seem to have got the message loud and clear and have fallen in line.

According to reliable sources in Chennai, Alagiri tried the twin tactics of a virtual and veiled revolt and an emotional appeal to his father. Both seem to have failed. When DMK was deliberating the withdrawal of support to the UPA government over the Sri Lankan Tamil issue, Alagiri seemed to be the sole voice of dissent insisting on continuing the frayed alliance. But to Stalin and the patriarch Karunanidhi, the message from grassroots cadres was unmistakable: it was imperative for the DMK to sever all ties with the Congress for its own political survival. Once the decision to withdraw from the UPA was announced, other ministers belonging to the DMK promptly resigned. Alagiri refused and sent in his resignation separately two days later, after holding meetings with Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. Clearly, that angered his father Karunanidhi even more. Sensing the collapse of his revolt, Alagiri flew down to Chennai and apparently had an emotional meeting with his father. According to sources, Alagiri complained that he was hurt because he was in charge of the southern flank of the party and was not even consulted when the decision to withdraw support to the UPA was taken. Apparently, Karunanidhi bluntly told his son that he never took interest in party affairs and hence  had no right to complain. Karunanidhi seems to have added sarcastically that visiting Chennai and meeting his mother does not constitute party activities.

For seasoned observers of Tamil Nadu politics, the recent speculation over who will inherit the mantle from Karunanidhi seems to be pointless. According to them, the inheritor was decided way back in the Emergency during the 1970s when Stalin led youth DMK cadres against the Indira regime. Stalin was jailed and tortured. Alagiri apparently stayed away from politics at that crucial juncture. Subsequently, Stalin served as a Mayor of Chennai and kept in touch with grassroots party workers at all levels. Even during 2001, when Jayalalitha, after storming back to power had ordered the arrest of Karunanidhi, it was Stalin who faced her wrath rather than Alagiri. According to party insiders, Karunanidhi seems to have noticed how Stalin has always been prepared to go to jail and face troubles as it is considered part and parcel of political life. In contrast, Alagiri prefers to avoid all that. They cite the example of, how Durai, Alagiri's son sent absconding and evaded arrest for more than a 100 days when he was accused of illegal granite mining. DMK sources say Karunanidhi was not happy with it as it created a perception that family members of the DMK had so much earnings that they needed to hide it. The party is very sensitive on this issue after Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi had to spend a long time in Tihar jail in the 2G scam case.

DMK insiders say that Karunanidhi was incensed when he heard reports about his elder son hobnobbing with the likes of P Chidambaram. The DMK still nurses a deep sense of betrayal over the manner in which A Raja and Kanimozhi were treated by the Congress. More important,  DMK leaders know that Congress big shots like Chidambaram are worried because they have virtually no chance of winning Lok Sabha seats without an alliance with either DMK or AIADMK. Given this backdrop, DMK leaders think that Alagiri was allowing himself to be used by the Congress.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Book Review: Calcutta: Two Years in the City

El Dorado in the mist 

The name of the city in the title of this delectable book is as significant as it is deliberate. Author Amit Chaudhuri insists that he calls Calcutta by its old name when the language is English. It automatically becomes Kolkata when he speaks in Bengali. That is actually the way it has historically been. The official renaming of the city (in 2001), he believes, is probably one of the factors that has hastened its decline.

Chaudhuri, novelist, classical musician and academician, writes that “out of the remnants” of the great city and “through a single act of renaming, eventually arose a new one – without pedigree or history; large but provincial; inhabited but largely unknown – called ‘Kolkata’.”

Death and rebirth; decay and the hope of regeneration; and multiple departures and returns – those are the broad themes that the author tackles in this part memoir, part social analysis centred on a city that exercises an almost difficult-to-define hold on the mind and heart of the writer.

An elegiac air hangs over the mesmerisingly episodic book, which reveals various facets of Calcutta and presents a deeply observant and sympathetic portrait that does not flinch from identifying the snapping points that led to the marginalisation of what was, a little over a hundred years ago, the “second city” of the Empire.

The lamentation is loud and clear, but it never becomes baleful – it is elegant, shot through with genuine emotion, and bewitchingly lyrical. Chaudhuri tempers his hard-nosed look at the many distortions that have crept into the city’s soul in the last 30 years with an unflinching sense of belonging that facilitates total candour.
 
Chaudhuri grew up in Bombay and was educated in England. The eastern metropolis was only a city of vacations for him until, in the late 1990s, he decided to gravitate towards Calcutta.

Why did he move to the city? The answer: “Because I’d been rehearsing that journey for years: as a child, in trips from Bombay in the summer and the winter; and later – in my continual search for a certain kind of city – in my reading. And Calcutta would make its way back to me, unexpectedly, through Irish literature and Mansfield and Eudora Welty and the writing of the American South.”

But while Chaudhuri continues to live intermittently in the city and draw sustenance from it, he feels that, like “the career of poetry in the globalised world”, Calcutta is near extinction. “I could still tap the magic of its neighbourhoods when I wrote my third novel, Freedom Song, in the mid-nineties; but, after that, I felt I couldn’t do so any longer – just as a teenager might outgrow a ‘phase’ of writing poems…”

But in this book, the idea of which he resisted for three years, he brings “the drama of the place” alive through varied vignettes of life on Park Street, bustle of humanity outside the Sealdah station, and in the more rarefied homes and clubs of the ‘ingabanga’ (Anglicised Bengalis who still revel in the mores of the colonial past), besides a host of other settings.
Rarely has a book about a city been so personal in nature yet so expansive in scope. Chaudhuri guides the reader into and through parts of the city that he particularly likes – Park Street is high on that list. “Park Street,” he writes, “is neither Oxford Street nor the Champs-Elysee, but here, in the stretch between Chowringhee and the junction of Free School Street and Middleton Row, it has an energy comparable to no other downtown district that I know.”

He also describes, with not a little horror, the inability of the city to protect the historic colonial and “genteel bourgeois” structures that define its character. He holds up Berlin as a contrast. “When I was last in Berlin three years ago, the memorialisation of the past was relentless, but the attempt, by Berliners, to embrace and re-inhabit the city’s troubled post-War history was striking too. Calcutta has still not recovered from history: people mourn the past, and abhor it deeply.”

He infers: “If Calcutta suffers in comparison, it’s not really to other cities, but principally to itself and what it used to be. Anyone who has an idea of what Calcutta once was will find that vanished Calcutta the single most insurmountable obstacle to understanding, or sympathising with, the city today.”

He clearly does not love the Calcutta of today, a city that is “neither moored to its past nor part of a definite future”. The book obviously dwells at length on contemporary politics in Calcutta and Bengal but, since it covers only two years (2009-2011), it stops just short of the ouster of the Left Front government.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Monday, May 27, 2013

Power to the weak

TSI had, on December 23, 2012, done a story Enabling sensitivity on the lack of a dignified life for the physically challenged people in the country. The story highlighted how despite the growing awareness, India still lacked genuine sensitivity towards such people and how they face routine embarrassment and discrimination despite a plethora of laws. Though the country already has laws that ensure rights and rehabilitation of people with disabilities, their condition has not improved much over the years. The story specially focused on a new rule in the state of UP as per which only people with a 100 per cent disability would be given free passes in the government run buses. The new law was not only inhumane, it was also in sharp contrast to the old law as per which people with even 40 per cent or more disability could avail of the facility. 


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
BBA Management Education

Friday, May 24, 2013

The Raging bulls

It’s a throwback to the 1970s with added dollops of swagger and attitude. Saibal Chatterjee looks at how the new age bollywood blockbusters have ditched their candy floss fixation.
Salman Khan Anger is all the rage again. With the heat soaring on the big screen, ‘being Dabangg’ pays at the turnstiles. No wonder kickass cop Chulbul Pandey, the nemesis of all crooks and cretins that are hiding in small-town crevices, is on the prowl a second time. His mean streak isn’t just intact; it has been significantly enhanced.

Rs 100-crore box office grossers are passé. Salman has already topped the Rs 200-crore mark with Ek That Tiger, the tale of an unstoppable secret agent who scours the world in search of enemies of the nation. The industry is now talking in terms of Rs 300 crores for Dabangg 2. Breathing fire is big business today.

It isn’t just the wisecracking, swaggering Pandey who is hitting the high notes of fury with his duniya jaaye bhaad mein (to hell with the world) brand of dialogues. He has the likes of Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgan in Singham), ACP Vikram Rathore (Akshay Kumar in Rowdy Rathore), bodyguard Lovely Singh (Salman Khan in Bodyguard) and Sanjay Singhania (Aamir Khan in Ghajini), to name only a few, for company.

It certainly isn’t lonely out there, and these motor-mouth men, flaunting six-pack abs and using their guns with as much felicity as their wits, are outdoing each other in the scramble to grab a piece of the action pie. And no one is complaining. When Bajirao Singham growls Aata majhi satakli (Enough is enough, I’ve blown my fuse) every time he squares off against an adversary, the applause from the audience is instantaneous.
He is an upright police officer who brooks no opposition, be it netas, goons or fellow cops. They are all fair game as he gives explosive vent to his spleen. A rotten system calls for rough and ready methods in order to be cleaned up.

Reminiscent of the heady heydays of Amitabh Bachchan’s legendary angry young man persona, the rage that is thundering in the hearts of Hindi movie protagonists of Singham’s ilk is, pretty much like it was way back in Deewar and Trishul in the 1970s, a reflection of the dark and vengeful mood prevalent in the streets of the nation.

The scenario is set: the common man is a hopelessly harried creature, at the receiving end of the machinations of corrupt politicians, venal criminals and unctuous policemen. Enter the Enforcer. From the lanky Big B with bloodshot eyes to the hunky Hrithik Roshan with his my-way-or-the-highway method of dispensing justice, Vijay Dinanath Chauhan has come full circle.
In the 1990s – those were the years that immediately followed India’s economic liberalization and the consequent process of globalization and heightened consumerism – glitzy NRI romances and big fat Punjabi wedding flicks held sway over the masses. Love was in the air and it manifested itself in songs sung blue on the streets of New York and London or in the picturesque vales of the Swiss Alps.

It was a colour-spangled, languorous dreamscape in which anger and violence had no place. Minor setbacks in matters of the heart did. But no problem was ever big enough to push the hero over the precipice. He strummed the guitar, hummed a ditty, and serenaded his girl with all the charm at his disposal and all was well again!

Shahrukh Khan, despite early box office successes as an anti- hero in films like Baazigar and Darr, switched tracks to emerge as the soft-at-heart romantic. He was Rahul or Raj, a lover boy who launched many feminine fantasies. Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai defined the era.

What’s more, even Salman Khan thrived in this new ambience of collective well being, appearing in romances like Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, films in which everybody sang and danced till the cows came home. Cut to the 2010s. The music may not have gone out of the lives of the Dabanggs and Singhams, but the guns are out and the fists are flying like never before.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
BBA Management Education

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Can the land of rising sun rise again?

The newly-elected government in Japan has come up with a blueprint for growth that might just be enough to put an end to decades of economic stagnation and falling prices and usher a new era of growth. And there are reasons to be hopeful

The Japanese economy has begun 2013 with a great deal of uncertainty. The economy is fragile and perhaps in recession, and a new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is at the helm. Yet for the first time in 20 years critics across the globe are somewhat optimistic about the economy’s future. The reason is simple. Abe has some fresh ideas that might just be enough to lift the economy after two decades of underperformance.

Since his party’s (Liberal Democratic Party) comprehensive win in December 2012 election, Abe has been vocal on national security and on a radical economic plan (his election agenda too) that will form the focal point of his administration. And there are reasons to be hopeful. The incoming government has already provided a blueprint for growth that if successful could bring the Japanese economy back to life.

Abe’s new plan stands on three pillars. The first is redefining the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) “price stability target” to consumer price index growth of 2% y-o-y over the medium to long term, from the previous 1%. The second measure is that the current quantitative easing (QE) programme, which is set to expire on December 31, 2013, would be extended indefinitely, mirroring the US Federal Reserve’s current programme, called QE infinity among other things. The third and the final component is a commitment by the BoJ to increase monthly asset purchases from the current rate of about 3 trillion yen per month to 13 trillion yen per month starting January 1, 2014. No doubt a sharp shift in policymaking under Abe was keenly anticipated, but these moves are not as dramatic as they appear from the top, particularly the third constituent.

The total value of BoJ’s assets under current QE programme stands at 40 trillion yen (as on December 31, 2012) and is perhaps the best single gauge of the extent of the BoJ’s QE programme. For uninitiated, three things determine the size of a central bank’s balance sheet – new asset purchases (or sales), depreciation or appreciation in the value of existing assets, and the rolling over of government bonds as they mature. The BoJ’s 3 trillion yen in monthly purchases between now and the end of 2013, alongside some short-dated government debt paper reaching maturity, gets the BoJ to its target of 76 trillion yen, the proposed final target of the current asset repurchase programme.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

Thursday, May 09, 2013

INTERNATIONAL POLICY: RUSSIA’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Although Russian economic growth came in at 5% y-o-y in Q4 2011 and registered 4.3% growth for all of 2011, it is still way below the 7% average clocked by the economy from 2000-2008 and is much lower than growth rates seen in China and India. Further, the economic growth was bolstered by a jump in oil exports in the last quarter of 2011 (see chart). The good news for Russia is that oil prices have only moved north since the economic crisis (on March 1, 2012, Russia’s benchmark Urals crude exceeded $125 a barrel, the highest since July 2008). The bad news is that the nation that has proven oil reserves of 79 billion barrels representing 6% of the world total and 45% of non-OPEC reserves is critically overexposed to oil prices, where even a slight disturbance in global oil prices could destabilize the nation beyond control.

One shouldn’t forget that such a scenario has occurred twice before. First in 1998, when the devastating Ruble Crisis hit its shores on August 17, 1998. Second, more recently in 2008, when the price of Russia’s benchmark Urals crude fell 77%, which not only caused an 11% peak-to-tough decline in Russian GDP, but also saw the economy witnessing a capital exodus.

The stark difference between the Russian economy ‘with oil’ and the one ‘without oil’ drives the nail much deeper. While the overall federal budget posted a surplus of 0.8% of GDP in 2011, the non-oil deficit was 9.6% of GDP.

On the other hand, growth in Russia is likely to stay dynamic through the rest of the first half of 2012 as household consumption (which accounts for about 50% of Russia’s GDP by expenditure and accelerated to 6.4% y-o-y in 2011 from 5.1% in 2010) will get additional support from increased military salaries and pensions and making a cut in the social security tax.

Moody’s Analytics expects the Russian economy to lose some steam as the year progresses, and predicts a GDP growth of about 3.6% in 2012.

But then, the more Putin promises in government spending, the higher the oil price needs to be to balance the budget. Along with that comes a political issue too. Scott Anderson, the New York based Sr. Economist at Wells Fargo Securities tells B&E, “Higher oil prices will not give Putin much incentive to follow through [with reforms], while vested interests will make the path to reform difficult.” In fact, since Putin announced $260 billion of spending programmes during the election, plus a defense programme totaling $763 billion, the oil price needed for balancing 2012’s budget is likely to be around $140 a barrel (rising continually thereafter) – a really big number to achieve. But if the US bombs Iran, oil prices will only go upwards.

But there’s another issue that’s strangely not yet caught global media, and that is dangerously increasing levels of capital outflows from the nation. Capital outflows from Russia totaled $84.2 billion in 2011, the second-highest figure since 1994 and a big jump from the $33.6 billion that exited Russia in 2010. In fact, the trend continues in 2012 – capital outflow from Russia amounted to about $17 billion in January 2012 alone. Although Russia is running an external surplus and retains a large stock of forex reserves ($505.40 billion as on March 22, 2012), it can only accommodate a moderate level of capital flight. Add to this the fact that Moody’s Analytics expects the fixed investment growth in Russia to fall from 5.2% in 2011 to 2.9% in 2012, and you may just have the start of some disastrous implications. Add all that up, and you have a significant probability of real per capita income falling in 2012-13.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

“Affordable housing should be made compulsory for end-use”

In an exclusive interaction with B&E, Nikhil Bhatia, Head of Western Region for CBRE South Asia, talks about rising real estate prices, the role of fund managers and affordable housing

B&E:
The Indian real estate sector is currently experiencing a phase of rising prices and low volumes leading to a massive dent in sales and home absorption rates across the country. Does it bother you?

Nikhil Bhatia (NB): There are three key components which drive real estate market growth. They are: strong counter parties, location, and pricing. Since top builders, say for instance the Tatas, the Godrejs, the Mahindras are partnering with counter parties that are bankable and inter-related, their projects get completed on time. This is especially applicable in a high interest rate scenario. Home buying sentiments fall because most banks refrain from providing funds for infrastructure development as a result of which the project gets delayed. If the counter party is strong, then the buyers confidence gets a boost.

B&E: Why are real estate prices rising in India, especially in Mumbai and the National Capital Region (NCR)? Do you think that private equity (PE) deals make real estate projects costlier and unaffordable?

NB: Nowadays, private equity players are entering into structured debt financed transactions with developers where the latter are given about 13% to 14% regular coupons by the former. The builders in return retain a balance in redemption as premium so that in case of a default, they can use the collateral as a safety net. Thus, a $14 coupon is serviced every quarter in transactions. If both a builder and a PE player are using land together at par, then they both agree to a 12% to 15% minimum hurdle negotiation. Probably PE deals are making projects costlier, but at the same time builders are left with no choice. They have to raise money and PE funding is the most accessible in times when banks stop lending. It’s another story altogether, of course, if the builder is cash rich enough to raise enough funds from internal accruals.

B&E:
But this arrangement only works for builders and trading investors. Don’t you think this is the right time to do away with PE deals in the real estate sector?

NB: I don’t think so. In fact, if implemented wisely, PE deals benefit both, the investors and and the fund managers. A fund manager can buy land with PE funding. Builders see opportunities and buy that land making it a lucrative transaction. The higher the level of maturity the higher returns it generates for fund managers.

B&E: Are investments back in realty? How have revival strategies worked for top builders and services firm including CBRE?

NB: Yes, investments are really back. Undoubtedly there is enough capital available for the real estate industry even now. Fund managers are looking at the key takeaways while entering into deals with PE players. They can see their investments maturing in the next few years. In fact, companies such as Blackstone, Ascendas, New Vernon, and IDFC have shown interest in buying core assets.


Tuesday, May 07, 2013

“The FDI policy is still not ideal on several counts”

In an interview with B&E, Arvind Mediratta, COO, Bharti Walmart, talks about how the company is trying to improve supply-side dynamics for bringing about a farm-to-fork connect

B&E: Now that FDI is alowed in retail. will it help resolve some of the pressing issues in the food supply chain?

Arvind Mediratta (AM): The solution, we believe, is a partnership between the local and foreign players, suppliers, retailers and the government. We, at Bharti Walmart, have an initiative called the Direct Farm initiative, through which we’re reaching out and working with 7,000 farmers across seven different clusters in India. We are educating these farmers on modern agricultural practices, soil nutrient testing, pesticide usage, crop rotation and harvesting practices. Farmers are consequently getting better prices and timely payments. We have also set up model farms in each of these clusters and the yield has improved dramatically. Due to the limited storage infrastructure currently, a lot of things go waste. There is an opportunity for us and other players to set up state of the art distribution facilities, especially temperature- controlled rooms for fresh products – farm produce, non-vegetarian items, dairy, frozen bakery products – to minimise wastage and, of course. to ensure food safety.

B&E: What are the key challenges you are facing in terms acquiring solid growth and working towards an expansion strategy in the Indian market?

AM: As we open up stores in different states, there is a lot of complexity coming in. One issue is the APMC Act, wherein you require a licence for every municipality you operate in. For instance, when you operate five stores in Punjab, you require five different licences. If I buy something from Maharashtra – say grains from Nashik and oranges from Nagpur – I have to pay the APMC fee separately. Also, food habits are very different. The specs for daal, for instance, are different for different states and at times even within the same state. The acceptance for frozen chicken is still very low. We sell frozen mutton, but they want freshly slaughtered mutton. Second, the cold chain infrastructure in the country is woefully inadequate. Look at the power constraints. I may have a diesel genset back-up, but the small stores that sell these products may not have any power supply. So products go waste. 


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
 
2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
BBA Management Education

Monday, May 06, 2013

When dreams touched the sky...

About 37 years ago, ISRO launched its first experimental satellite – Aryabhata. Although all signals from the satellite were lost after just five days in orbit, Aryabhata’s successful launch was indeed the beginning of a glorious chapter for India and a long and efficacious odyssey for ISRO ... and it continues till date

September 9, 2012 wasn’t a typical day for the scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). ISRO’s workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was about to make yet another journey into outer space, and as such all eyes were on the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. And when the PSLV C-21 rocket, standing 44 metres tall and weighing about 230 tonne, on its 22nd flight, soared into a clouded sky at 9.53 am carrying two foreign satellites – the 720 kg French satellite SPOT-6 and the 15 kg Japanese micro satellite Proiteres – ISRO had created history. It was agency’s 100th successful satellite launch mission into space. It’s no mean feat for ISRO as SPOT-6 is the heaviest satellite to be launched by the agency for a foreign client so far since India forayed into the money-spinning commercial satellite launch services after 350 kg Agile (of Italy) was put into orbit in 2007 by PSLV C8. With these two satellites ISRO’s total tally of launching foreign satellites now reaches 29. Impressive number. But, for ISRO, it all started just 37 years ago when it launched India’s first experimental satellite – Aryabhata.

The launch of Aryabhata was a landmark in the history of India’s space mission. Launched by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1975 from Kapustin Yar using a Cosmos-3M launch vehicle, Aryabhata was built to conduct experiments in X-ray astronomy, aeronomics, and solar physics. 1.4 meter in diameter, the 26-sided polygon rocket’s 96.3 minute orbit had an apogee of 619 km and a perigee of 563 km, at an inclination of 50.7 degrees. All faces (except the top and bottom) were covered with solar cells. Although all signals from the satellite were lost after just five days in orbit (due to a power failure), Aryabhata’s successful launch was indeed the beginning of a glorious chapter for India and a long and efficacious odyssey for ISRO.

“It was a wonderful experience. All that I can say is today’s science is yesterday’s fiction and tomorrow’s technology. We have to have a long term view of these things and develop the whole spirit of science,” Prof. Udupi Ramachandra Rao tells B&E, recalling the drama and events that unfolded before the launch of India’s first satellite. A renowned space scientist and the former Chairman of ISRO, Rao led the team of 250 scientists and engineers that scripted this historic event. Agrees Anant Patki, who joined ISRO as a design engineer in 1967 and was stationed in Kapustin Yar Cosmodrome for the launch, as he tells B&E, “I was in Russia at the time of the launch. Prof. Satish Dhawan, then Chairman ISRO, along with Indian ambassador was also present at Kapustin Yar Cosmodrome. I still remember the team was simply ecstatic to see the rocket zooming the satellite into orbit. Thrilled, we all knew that a glorious chapter had begun.”


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
 
2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
BBA Management Education

Friday, May 03, 2013

“Reverse innovation cannot happen by accident”

Hargopal M., Head, Finacle, proclaims that Finacle achieved success in global markets because it was developed with that vision in mind at the outset

B&E: When Finacle was developed by Infosys, was it meant to be a reverse innovation opportunity?
Hargopal M. (HM):
Well when we developed Finacle, it was not going to be targeted at any particular market. First of all, Infosys’ ambitions in the product space itself came about in the banking space, because the banking space is a lot more standardised. So, an enterprise class of a product makes sense where there is a general commonality of the business rules. We always had global aspirations for Finacle, and within the banking, the core and other things, you cannot really position for a small niche. For example, a small bank started with our offering at that time. Today it’s around Rs.150 billion in assets. So it means that technology can be a game changer. It doesn’t have to be a certain size – small or medium or large. We also felt that apart from global aspirations, Finacle should be able to service customers across segments.

B&E: So why did India become so important initially?
HM:
In a way, if you really look at the growth path, although we had aspirations to make it large, the difference it created was for emerging markets to begin with. These markets did not have any legacy and they had huge diversity in customer segments, et al. The adoption was much higher in these emerging markets. We started with India to begin with, and were able to demonstrate significant compelling value. Between 2000 to 2010, the GDP of India grew by 135%. Deposits grew by around 525%. The lending book increased by 375% for banks as a whole. But if you look at new employees, they grew by only around 5%. This means they managed this growth by bringing in efficiencies with the technology. From the consumer point, they have made a significant difference. Also by using the technology, they have been able to multiply client acquisitions significantly without significant increase in the business cost. The business infrastructure hasn’t grown with the clients they have brought in. If you look at the entire core transformation wave, it started with A-Pac, got adopted in Europe. Now it is going to Western Europe and other advanced markets. The demonstration of the value and the impact of the innovation was that by bringing in the common platform, you are not only able to bring the common business practices, but also able to bring in time to market, time to compliance and a differentiated customer experience. That way, it is very significant. Around 43% of Finacle’s customers now come from the Global 1000 banks.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
 
2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
BBA Management Education

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Is China fudging shamelessly?

Genuine concerns on manipulation of data cast serious doubts over the way the Chinese economy is progressing. Considering how this has serious implications for the world’s second largest economy, and consequently for the world at large, China must work together with international experts to sort this out at the earliest

Pundits call it ‘the’ case in point when it comes to superlative achievement in a holistic sense. Optimists insist that it is the next centre of power for the world. Pessimists call it the beginning of an end. China, in the past one decade, has quadrupled its GDP from $1.2 trillion to $7.3 trillion and ultimately became the world’s second largest economy – that too amidst the global economic slowdown (read this issue’s cover story on the Chinese story, which is a joint research between Cornell-IIPM Think Tank-B&E)!

Nobody can dispute China’s unparalleled progress, but the mysteries inherent in some of their official statistics are clearly discomfiting. Paradoxically, for this 2nd fastest growing economy, the overall electricity consumption is showing a reverse trend. It doesn’t require rocket science to establish a correlation between industrial growth (a vital part of national income) and electricity consumption. It’s more astonishing a fact since China was among the countries that, to protect industrial growth, rejected a proposal to contain electricity consumption to fight global warming.

According to a report by The New York Times, regions like Shandong and Jiangsu have seen a decrease in electricity consumption by over 10%. The report further revealed that the “coal stockpiled at Qinhuangdao port reached 9.5 million tons this month, as coal arrives on trains faster than needed by power plants in southern China. That surpasses the previous record of 9.3 million tons set in November 2008, near the bottom of the global financial downturn.”

Interestingly, local Chinese officials are known to keep two sets of accounting books as their performance is measured on economic targets. Apparently, officials often manipulate local data to show a rosy picture in their region. John Lee of Newsweek wrote in July 2010, “Statistics come in from all over the country. The provinces compile them with impossible speed – [in] around two weeks, or three times as fast as many developed economies with much more efficient processes of data collection.” US takes over a month to assimilate such information (with 1/4th of the Chinese population) and India takes more than a quarter.

The Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which reveals financial activity with respect to trade of goods, further raises concerns. China’s official PMI (March 2012) was around 53 points (anything above 50 is considered a healthy economy), while the PMI projected by HSBC China was less than 48. More interestingly, the two figures have shown wider variations during global recession (and slowdown) as compared to normal periods.
 

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles