All because we don't connect with fish...

The Bluefin Tuna. As numerous once as the American bison. As majestic as the bison. Today it faces the same fate as the bison - complete annihilation. Time article here. Below is a para from an old but eye-opening NatGeo feature on Bluefin:

Do we countenance such loss because fish live in a world we cannot see? Would it be different if, as one conservationist fantasized, the fish wailed as we lifted them out of the water in nets? If the giant bluefin lived on land, its size, speed, and epic migrations would ensure its legendary status, with tourists flocking to photograph it in national parks. But because it lives in the sea, its majesty—comparable to that of a lion—lies largely beyond comprehension.

And another excellent portion...

...all agree that the fundamental reform that must precede all others is not a change in regulations but a change in people's minds. The world must begin viewing the creatures that inhabit the sea much as it looks at wildlife on land. Only when fish are seen as wild things deserving of protection, only when the Mediterranean bluefin is thought to be as magnificent as the Alaska grizzly or the African leopard, will depletion of the world's oceans come to an end.

Full read here: Still Waters, The Global Fish Crisis

But you know, the rot is deeper. Man will not rest till he exploits and ruins every single natural resource at his disposal. The Anthropocene (Age of Man) is truly here, and we have already permanently disfigured a great planet in an unprecedented fashion. Decimated its biodiversity. Read more about our age here:

Enter the Anthropocene—Age of Man

'My main brand is better. Always. Period.'

I came across a couple of news articles recently which talk of how MNCs in India are trying to 'adjust' the relative strength of their portfolio brands to mirror their global situation. What that means is that globally Brand A might be stronger than Brand B, and if the case is reversed in India, the corporate honchos will do all they can to make Brand B weaker than A.

The first example is Coca Cola India, which is (as usual) trying to push brand Coca Cola ahead of its brother brand Thums Up. Link here. The other example is of Volkswagen trying its best to prove to Indian customers that the VW brand is actually superior to Skoda. Link here.

Neither company is trying this for the first time. Coke has been attempting fratricide on Thums Up for over a decade now, and VW has been after subsidiary Skoda's brand equity since they entered India in 2007. Both have failed spectacularly - and yet they continue their efforts. Why?

The articles highlight some of the management thinking that goes behind such decisions: "We need our brands to be consistently positioned across the globe", "We want to offer our consumers the same experience world over", so on and so forth.

Maybe I don't understand long term multinational branding strategy too well, but it looks like these companies are actually going away from what customers are telling them about their brands. The current strategy of keeping Coke prices lower than Thums Up prices is still ok - at least it isn't actively hurting Thums Up. But Coke did exactly that a few years back when it famously stopped ALL marketing support for Thums Up while egging the Coke brand on. As a customer did you or I care? We still drank Thums Up by the droves and kept it a clear No. 1 in India. Today thankfully Coke gives brand Thums Up good marketing support, though the itch is always there to support brand Coke more (from the article: "...Vision 20:20 as it's called internally, most critical markets have been asked to show volume growth for the flagship brand")

The VW-Skoda story may not have such a reasonably happy ending though. Skoda entered India early (in 2001, vs 2007 for VW), and has built some tremendous brand equity here over the last decade. VW is forcibly trying to put Skoda 'in its place' - as a 'budget brand' below brand VW. Therefore all Skodas are now ~5-10% cheaper than VWs. There are two things to consider here.

One, the Indian customer's love and respect for brand Skoda is driven by the core product offering - the Octavia, Laura, and Superb have all been massive hits here. And all play in the 'premium' space, so lower pricing may not matter for customers. They may simply see Skoda as an even better deal - strong brand with great pricing.

But two, there are fears Skoda quality may go down to ensure the lower price points can be met. Now that would be a tragedy. And an ironic one at that. Skoda is a brand on the move, shedding its legacy quality issues in Europe and become a truly strong player. If these same legacy issues cause it to forever remain an underling brand to VW (with poor quality at that), then we would have come a full circle!

Newspapers in the news

GigaOM has an interesting article on how paywalls are a terrible idea for newspapers. The debate has been raging for years of course, and I have written in the past how solutions like DoubleRecall could help avoid paywalls. Mathew too says newspapers should look beyond the oh-so-obvious paywalls to create revenues:

To me, it makes more sense to try and figure out how to take advantage of the Web in order to provide something that the current market is likely to value, instead of focusing on how to squeeze as much as possible out of a declining market. 

However, how many newspapers have ever managed to 'creatively' monetize a website in a sustainable, ongoing fashion, without resorting to paywalls? In a sense, paywalls are the newspaper guys' answer to the book publisher guys' $10 ebooks. Sure there is no variable cost of selling each additional ebook, but you still have to charge folks per ebook to keep business running. Of course the fundamentally low cost of ebooks will probably shake up the publisher industry's high overhead costs in the long run, and reshape publishers if not destroy them completely in the long run.

However the newspaper industry has a far worse problem. While book publishers undertake the real job of hand-holding authors, helping them publish, and promoting their books (basically they do some value addition), most newspapers are just news aggregators (thanks GigaOM for the thought). And I think thats a key funda, one which may point to the long term future of newspapers, beyond just the current paywall debate.

So your newspaper basically picks up articles from agencies like AFP and Reuters, adds a few local (city/state/country) articles from a few journos on their payroll, prints them on a sheet of paper, adds a ton of advertisements, and delivers them to you in the morning. For this task their costs include

a) Payments to the agencies like Reuters
b) Printing costs
c) Salaries to journos / editors directly on their payroll (and hence not part of item 'a')
d) Overheads, overheads, and more overheads (advertising sales teams, subscription sales teams, printing staff, middle managers, regional managers, HR, Finance, etc. etc.)

Now these paper guys are having to compete with Google News, Yahoo News, Huffington Post, and a ton of other online aggregators, whose costs are only 'a', and in some cases, 'c'. Paywalls or not, how the hell are they going to compete with leaner online news aggregators whose only handicap is lack of journos / editors covering local news? If I may do some crystal gazing...

In some time agencies like Reuters and AFP will also add journos / editors covering local news onto their own payrolls. Or maybe new agencies will get created specifically for local news. But once that last bastion of newspapers is breached, there will be a big shakeout in the industry. Most smaller newspapers (who have little original content) will get wiped out. Larger ones like NYT may survive for a while. Meantime, the online guys get better and better at understanding your news needs (they are already much better at it than your print guys, who force feed random stuff down your throats all the time!). And as the final nail, some online aggregator will probably start offering a reverse newspaper down the line for the remaining paper format addicts. Imagine a Google News offering low-overhead printout and delivery (locality-level) of a Google newspaper in your exact preferred layout, but in paper format. Don't you think that might mean curtains down for conventional newspapers?

Take it, Tenez!

Nadal quits ATP role as Federer stands firm

Nadal and Federer have time and again sparred off the tennis courts too - in the ATP players council. The boiling issue has been whether players should be ranked basis their performance over the past 1 year (current scheme), or the past 2 years (proposed). For a change I have been rooting for the Federer camp. You see, I agree with Nadal's concern that the tour is too taxing on players as they have to trot around the world to a new tournament every 2-3 weeks just to maintain their ATP points. But while 2 year based rankings may improve the fatigue situation, they will simply not reflect real form and competitiveness of players. For example, ESPN analysis towards end of 2011 shows that, even after one of the best seasons ever, Djokovic would still have been No. 2 behind Nadal had there been a 2 year ranking! I say player fatigue and resultant injuries is a very pressing issue, but can't there be other ways to address it? Reducing number of tournaments is an easy yet difficult-to-implement one, so maybe they should increase the profile (and awarded points) of mid-rung tournaments. That way top players will know they can get better returns on their efforts by choosing all Grand Slams, a few mid-rung events, and only a few lower rung affairs. Others can choose a more grueling mix if they please, with only limited chance to leapfrog higher ranked players purely on the basis of higher appearances.

But wait, isn't that what the ATP is already doing with its ATP Masters series of titles? :)

PS: All this reminds me of the ICC cricket rankings. I was wondering why India did not become No. 1 in ODI rankings even after lifting the World Cup in 2011. The team has of course gone into spectacularly decline since. Did the Reliance ODI Ranking predictor know something we didn't?

PPS: The title of the post 'Tenez', points to the origin of the sport's name. From Wikipedia: "It was not until the 16th century that rackets came into use, and the game began to be called "tennis", from the Old French term Tenez, which can be translated as "hold!", "receive!" or "take!". An interjection used as a call from the server to his opponent."

Are you sure you are more intelligent than a dolphin?

Dolphins deserve same rights as humans, say scientists
Do read the above BBC article if you want to alter your perspective even slightly.

The great tragedy of our times is that, while we have (after centuries of slavery) accorded all human beings equal rights ('human' rights), we are not able to protect even the most bare basic of animal rights (the right to survival). Many animal species are emotionally complex and extremely intelligent. Its just that we humans, in our minuscule understanding of the world, never took the hints (see my previous article here). Its only now that we realize that several species have highly advanced languages. Blurs the line between man and animal, does it not? God knows how many more amazing things about other creatures will we get the chance to discover, before we banish them forever into extinction.

Diwali Dhamaal

There were fewer crackers this Diwali. Thank God. Hope the birds, dogs, and old people had a better day. Many people felt the awareness campaigns pulled it off. Agreed - the campaigns are picking up steam year after year. But the bigger reason if you ask me is this:

https://twitter.com/#!/RukeshR/status/133141450132172800
Backing article here

Diwali 'Atom Bomb'. Damn thing can apparently cause 120 db sound. Courtesy Deepak Agarwal

Progression

This is how my thoughts have progressed over the last few years - across the interlinked disciplines of Physics, Religion, and Metaphysics. Quite volatile. Is this the end point? Who knows!

Existence of a Higher Power -> Multiverse Theory -> Buddhism (Selflessness is the goal) -> Atheism -> Determinism -> Quantum Uncertainty -> Nihilism

Being Human

These are pictures of Prairie Dogs. Cute creatures, aren't they? Well, humans are responsible for *deliberately* decimating their population by 99% over the last century.

Prairie Dogs are among the world's best animal communicators, with one of the most sophisticated languages in the nonhuman world. Their yips and cries (from which they got the name "dog," although they are actually rodents) represent complex statements containing information they want to impart to each other: like the differences between the colors of clothes worn by passersby, or whether a human carrying a weapon had one on a previous visit. Just a hundred years back, these intelligent beings used to cover huge swathes of land all across North America. In August 1841 George Wilkins Kendall came upon a "commonwealth" of prairie dogs whose "mercurial and excitable denizens" provided some sustenance for the famished and disoriented members of the Texan Santa Fe expedition. He admired the "wild, frolicsome, madcap set of fellows...ever on the move...chattering away the time, and visiting from hole to hole to gossip and talk over each others affairs." Kendall was referring to the socially integrated activities of these animals, which include mutual nuzzling, grooming, and "barking" to express territorial claims.

These animals used to live in colonies which were so organized and so massive they would be called 'towns'. Stretching across hundreds of acres, these 'towns' would be divided into 'wards' by physical features such as ridges and gullies, and further subdivided into coteries or family groups of up to 8 individuals. One particularly massive 'town' in the Texas of the 1890s measured 100 miles by 250 miles, and contained an estimated 400 million Prairie Dogs.

Over the course of just 60 years (1901-1960), all these towns were utterly destroyed, billions of Prairie Dogs poisoned or shot, because they were considered 'varmint' and a threat to human cultivation. Apparently the poisons would take hours or days to take effect, causing the creatures immense pain before killing them.

So these intelligent, social animals had been around and thriving for millions of years, but man comes along one day and decides to kill them all to make space for himself? Wow. But the worse part is, it is now understood that these creatures don't really compete with livestock for food. In fact, they are an integral part of the prairie ecosystem - Prairie Dogs are a 'keystone' species upon which many other species of plants and animals depend for survival. But we had to come along and with our half-baked knowledge, kill them all and decimate the entire ecological balance, didn't we?

It doesn't end there. Today, 'Varmint Hunting' is a sport which is legally permitted in many states of the US (since the Prairie Dog continues to be classified as a 'pest'). Here is a description:

A particularly sadistic method of eliminating prairie dogs is by blowing them away at private "recreational" shooting contests, where shooters sit at tables near or within a colony and aim high-powered rifles at the animals as they emerge from their burrows. These "sportsmen" don't like to waste their bullets, so if they just injure a prairie dog, they consider it entertaining to watch him die slowly rather than waste another bullet. The National Rifle Association calls this cruel, bizarre event "varmint-hunting." Shooters have their own charming terminology for the various maneuvers they perform. A "triple" is one bullet that hits three dogs on a mound who are hugging each other in fear. In the "flipper," the force of the shot flips the animal backward. A "red mist" refers to the explosion of a prairie dog from a direct hit. This "sport" is accompanied by cheers from onlookers and participants, and, of course, prizes for the best shots.

The death tally at the eighth Annual Prairie Dog Extravaganza in North Dakota was 4,912, shot in a six-hour competition by 70 participants. A hunter's annual take in Utah can reach 6,000 Prairie Dogs. Just for comparison, imagine an alien coming down and killing 6,000 human beings in one season - 'for kicks'.

The shocking stories of the American Bison and the Passenger Pigeon run parallel to that of the Prairie Dog. Just like Prairie Dogs, millions of bison used to roam inner North America till the 1800s. Early settlers remarked on "plains that were black and appeared as if in motion" with the herds of bison. Then they were shot en masse - just for their skin, while the carcass of the 2,000 pound animal would be left to rot. The bison almost went extinct by the 1880s, but thankfully some have survived. Today some descendants of the mighty bison remain in protected reserves, living relatively solitary lives, instead of being tiny specks in mighty black herds stretching miles across. Passenger Pigeons weren't so lucky. These birds used to live in enormous migratory flocks. One sighting in 1866 in southern Ontario was described as being 1 mile wide, 300 miles long, and taking 14 hours to pass a single point with number estimates in excess of 3.5 billion birds in the flock. By 1905, the birds were extinct, mindlessly murdered by humans.

That's a pile of Bison skulls. Just skulls, not the whole skeletons. Link

But its not just 'them yankees'. Humans have been experts at wiping out other species for thousands of years - across the world. India had some of the thickest jungles in the world uptil just over 100-200 years ago. Then man became 'civilized' and wiped out almost all of India's forest cover. Now the Indian hinterland comprises just millions and millions of acres of farmland with impoverished farmers and their malnourished children trying to eke out livelihoods from laughably small patches of land. All jungles have been cleared out, all wildlife wiped out. Tiger population has fallen from 100,000+ to 4,000 in just 100 years, their range decimated by 93%. While we humans have, you might say, 'swarmed and infested' the Indian peninsula to the point of breakdown (our population quadrupled to 1.1 billion in the time that the tiger's fell by 25 times).

Everything that is not grey used to be tiger territory ( = almost all of India)

Human Population across centuries. Note the unbridled explosion since 1950. And yet not enough people think we are out of control (Source: BBC)

Unfortunately this is not just a feature of modern man. The arrival of man on North America 12,000 years ago is believed to have caused the almost immediate extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, Saber-toothed Tiger, and many more species. 2/3rd of the large mammals on North American disappeared in a short period after man's arrival. I can imagine and even defend a prehistoric man fighting it out for territory with mammoths and saber-tooths, and winning - but what of the one-sided decimation of all other species in today's world? What gives us the right to exterminate other intelligent species in the name of our own 'progress'? To close, I will just quote Agent Smith's classic dialogue in the Matrix:

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure. 

Some References 

http://www.emagazine.com/archive/1868
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/279358/prairie_dogs_dont_have_much_of_a_prairie.html
http://www.prairiewildlife.org/prairiedogs.html
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/tcp01
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#19th_century_bison_hunts
http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/finder/tigers/maps.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100701072732.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515

Alma Matters

So I visited the IITB campus last weekend after so many years. Had been there to give an informal talk on consulting as a career option - you see, placement season is approaching. The talk was fine and all that, but I roamed around the campus after, and it just brought back so many memories. Nostalgia is so sad yet sweet. So many things have changed in my life in these last 5 years, and yet life on campus carries on just the same. 'Freshies' were running the gruelling 'crossie' race, sophies were graduating to badminton and squash, messes were still dishing out insipid fare, and rusted cycles were still all around. A lot of infrastructure has also been added. Here are some pics: Picasa link

They are different...

Came across a very interesting ad campaign recently: the superbowl ad for the Chrysler 200. It uses the 'Imported from Detroit' tagline to appeal to American consumers' hearts. Very astutely done in my view, because a purchase decision can sometimes be strongly driven by what your heart says rather than your head. Especially for an automobile, which is very often an extension of a user's identity. Happy to note that the campaign won 5 Cannes lions.

There are also follow ads with the same theme which are available at Chrysler's official YouTube channel.

Also came across advertisements from Tata Steel which talk about corporate values instead of product superiority. Check them out here (the ads on TV are 30-40 second clips - this is the unabridged version I guess). Watch out for the messages in the end:

The reason I liked the campaigns is because through them, the respective companies are playing to their strengths and trying to connect with customers.

Advertising 2.0

Just found out about this awesome company called DoubleRecall. Its an ad mechanism which shows web users a small advertisement and then requires them to type two keywords from the ad before they can access content. I can hear the groans..."This is the mother of all annoying ad mechanisms; move over banner ads". But wait, this is so awesome because these ads act as backdoors to content which is otherwise premium (paid). Ever got annoyed with FT.com's annoying paywall? 10 dollars a month or something like that. But now, you could probably simply read a short ad and type in a couple of words and bingo, you would be through! This has got to be one of the most innovative ad mechanisms ever! We have all read about Web 2.0, but looks like advertising has finally woken up to 2.0. Read more about DoubleRecall here. And as GigaOm points out, you can check the ads being put to use at CNN Money - especially in the latest news section.

There are pitfalls for sure: The service would definitely generate much higher recalls, but would the additional amount advertisers get willing to pay, compensate publishers sufficiently for them to open up all their paywalls? Would the nature of this advertising be sufficiently clear to readers or would they just get annoyed thinking of it as an advanced form of a banner ad? And will advertising-crazy publishers (I am looking at you Times of India) perhaps misuse the service to interrupt reader access to even free content? We will have to see how this pans out, but I am pretty hopeful!

Tablets, Ecosystems and Business Models

Just read about Amazon's awesome plans for its tablet. Its speculative, but if true this new tablet will definitely be a game changer. Consider this: everyone keeps talking about how a tablet needs an ecosystem to survive, and many pundits particularly analyzed tablet strategy after the recent HP debacle. However, Amazon is not just banking on an existing ecosystem, howsoever successful (Android), its creating an all new one!

When you think of it, it appears like such a smart thing to do. Two reasons why:

1) Amazon is massively modifying the OS's visual interface (but not necessarily the nuts and bolts). Now its not just another tablet in the wall, its clearly an Amazon product.

2) More crucially, Amazon is modifying the entire pricing game by making the tablet just a tool for delivering paid content. As per the planned model, Amazon's customers are going to be purchasing tonnes of paid content such as ebooks, music or and movies, thus enabling Amazon to subsidize the price of the device itself. Sales could zoom because the device is priced so low. Seen it before? Of course we have seen it with ebook readers. Lesson is: forget ecosystems, the Amazon guys seem to be masters at creating profitable business models. The difference is: the business model is not just about creating a nice ecosystem for end-consumers, its also about figuring out how best you can monetize your products and services. Now why didn't anyone else think of it before?

You might say companies such as Samsung or HTC don't have Amazon's strength in context to create such a model. But they could have definitely tried! Think about it: did Apple have bulletproof music record licenses in its bag when it thought of a product like the ipod back in 2002? No, but Steve Jobs had the vision to create such a product so he went ahead and negotiated music licenses before launching. Couldn't a Samsung have negotiated with, say, a Netflix and brought movies to its tablets seamlessly? A seamless movie app might or might not have been a killer app (a-la ebooks), but it could have definitely given consumers a compelling reason to choose a Galaxy tab over an ipad (not just Samsung, every single player in the market is currently struggling to come up with a compelling reason). And now Amazon's tablet is going to offer ebooks and movies in addition to plain old web browsing and apps (and probably at a discounted price too). Beat that.

An interesting point it raises is that of Google's Android business model strategy. They were (are) the masters of the PC based internet, but were starting with a blank slate in 2007-08 when it came to the mobile internet. What did they do? They went and ran away with the idea that search and search alone was going to bring them all the revenues they needed from the mobile internet as well. So they created Android and distributed it for free to the entire world of manufacturers. For sure the platform is hugely successful, but don't you think they missed a trick or two when they chose to ignore all the other ways of monetizing mobile devices? In my view these other ways could have been much more renumerative than just search. Even sticking to just software, they could have probably kept a more controlled environment and possibly asked for a cut from all paid apps, like Apple does. Or tied up with content companies such as Netflix like I suggested above. Or heck, why not just move into hardware? Amazon wasn't ever a device manufacturer was it? Still they got their hands dirty with the Kindle so that they could control the ecosystem. I will bet you Amazon is making tonnes and tonnes more money on the Kindle than Google is making through Android / Honeycomb. And the irony is, Google recently got their hands dirty with hardware anyway by acquiring Motorola for...wait for it...defending the Android ecosystem! Something for Larry and Sergey to ponder over!

PS: Turns out I was not the only one taking a hard look at Google's success outside of search. Adam has bad news not just about Android but about all of their non-search businesses.

The Job of a CEO

Recently I have been thinking a bit about CEOs and the challenges they face. There is loads to be said on the topic (most of it already said) but here are a couple of notes from my end:

Some might think its a nice cushy job being at the top, but in reality, its probably the toughest job possible for someone who really wants to lead his/her company. If you think of it, by default a company is always on autopilot when it comes to the CEO's involvement. Whether (s)he does any productive work or not on a given day, its work as usual for the company. So a CEO has to manage his/her time very carefully. There has to be a good mix of:

A) Engaging with company personnel, both senior management as well as employees

B) Engaging with external entities like key clients, shareholders, business partners, the media, etc.

C) Closely monitoring the current and upcoming projects / offerings

D) Planning for the future of the company

That's a quick and dirty list, there might be some key items I am missing. But truth be said, most senior managers would already be experienced and competent at managing their daily calendars. Give or take a bit, most managers can ensure that their time is well spent on all four (or more) of the above key items on their plates. Most good managers would also probably be good at items A through C. Which brings us to D, the deathly item. This one requires Vision. This is where Steve Jobs breaks away from the pack. It requires passion, creativity, balls. This is the make or break item. Unfortunately many CEOs seem to fall into the break category by attempting to do too much.

I have been reading with interest how HP's new CEO Leo Apotheker has been trying to steer the company in a certain direction (towards enterprise, away from personal computing). Most pundits have panned the choices he has made - while on the surface he seems to be following IBM's Louis Gerstner's moves, it may not necessarily work for HP. Here is a great article on what HP is doing wrong. And here is another. They bring out interesting topics such as:

a) A CEO's dilemma about letting a good thing be, versus showing the world his work, his plan, his agenda

b) The problem of planning for the 10 year horizon when a CEO's job may only be for a few years. Also, balancing growth with quarterly performance expectations

c) Working in a territory outside of your comfort zone (Leo is the ex-SAP CEO hence more comfortable with enterprise than consumer businesses. Is that why he dumped WebOS without giving it a fair chance? On similar lines, many pundits are also panning Nokia's Stephen Elop about eloping towards his old company Microsoft when devising Nokia's all important platform strategy)

d) The problem of squeezing a company too dry by going for aggressive cost cutting. HP's old CEO Mark Hurd seems to have done it, putting pressure on the incoming one to deliver results which are tough to replicate.

The articles also bring out some crucial questions about the role of a board. How careful should they be when hiring a CEO, especially from an outside industry. Or, how much should they engage when CEOs talk about large scale changes such as big M&As or spinoffs. I mean, here is the new CEO talking about selling off the main business of the company. Admittedly, HP's PC business is low margin, but hey, this is the global market leader PC brand we are talking about! The world's biggest PC company. Can a CEO shrug it off so easily? Where is the discussion, the debate?

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. That's it from my end for tonight.

What ails Infrastructure in India?

When I think of problems with infrastructure in India, the first thing that comes to my mind is: Funding (or rather, the lack of it). If you think about it, there is simply no comparison between the government infrastructure budgets of India and say, China. Our government just does not seem to have the money to build thousands of miles of high speed bullet train corridors, or 12 lane freeways, or dozens of world class ports. Where is the money in India? The flagship road infrastructure agency NHAI here has a miniscule Rs. 15,000 Crore budget annually, give or take a few. That is no comparison to the trillion dollar budgets China's agencies have. Can an MMRDA ever think of demolishing all of Mumbai and rebuilding it, a la Shanghai? So why is the Indian state struggling with infrastructure funding? Lets look around at how others built their infra.

The Middle Eastern nations built their infrastructure by pouring billions of dollars of oil money into the sector. This money was always in state hands as petroleum is routed for export sales through government owned entities. But China does not have such resource driven luxuries, so where is their money coming from? I mean, if a Chinese factory exports plastics or toys or electronics or whatever, the revenues go to private hands right? So who is bankrolling the massive infra projects? As an answer, I find it amazing that a primary source of revenue for the Chinese government could be indirect (taxes on corporates). When we then move to India, is it just that Indian exports are so much lesser, or is there inefficiency in resource management (corruption / loopholes in corporate taxation) too?

When I briefly brought the topic up with Pankaj Vaish of Citigroup*, he said that in his mind the key issue isn't actually lack of funds with the government - its execution. If infrastructure execution in India were actually smooth, the private sector would be more than willing to pump in all the money required for all our projects. He pointed out that our land acquisition is so slow and tormented, coordination between agencies so poor, and pace of approvals and execution so slow that international players simply don't feel confident about investing into Indian infra. These are entities otherwise sitting on trillions of dollars of money ready to be invested in emerging markets. Why would they not want to diversify their EM portfolio between equities and some stable, long term infra financing? Very fair point. So the fact that we are a democracy (and a badly administered one at that) is stopping our infra from taking off. Hmm.

There is one caveat though. Private funding for PPP projects (Public Private Partnerships) works well only when we talk of positive NPV projects such as toll roads or airports. You might say many other infra projects have viability gap funding to ensure PPP, but there is an implicit assumption in there. That the government has enough money to provide the viability gap funds. Which goes back to what I spoke about earlier right? Think about it, if you consider a project like the rebuilding of an entire city, there is only so much return it can generate. So private money can't bankroll all (or even most) of such a project. Not just this, there are way too many such infrastructure projects which are a social responsibility on the government's part even if they are not economically viable. The PPP model cant be a panacea - a solution for all cases in my view. Example: Urban planning (Metros and other Mass Rapid Transportation, Building Reconstruction, Intracity roads), Rural roads (difficult to impose tolls), High speed train networks, etc. Even if some of these projects can be successfully completed using Viability Gap Funding, I think we will still end up with too many projects which fall short of funds. Any ideas?

*Pankaj is the Head of Markets, Citigroup for all of South Asia. He was part of a panel discussion I attended recently in Worli. The two other members part of the discussion were Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, popularly known as India's Warren Buffett, and S P Kothari, Deputy Dean of MIT Sloan School of Management. I particularly sought out Pankaj's views on infra after the discussion because of his astute observations on other macroeconomic issues India is facing, particularly inflation.

The trip

From the glaciers and muck of Rohtang Pass, on to the Ganja fields of Manali. Past countless landslides and raging rivers. Then past the grand old Grand Trunk road and on to the shiny facades and rotting roads of Gurgaon. Followed by a lunch by the Taj. The real one in Agra. Past the countless cows of Bundelkhand. Then a night dash across the Chambal valley - beautiful in the moonlight. Past broken Madhya Pradesh roads and past the dense forests of Central India. Past amused monkeys and Pench's Rudyard Kipling resort. Onto the home run - the under-construction expressways of Telangana. Himachal Pradesh to Hyderabad. 2200 km in 60 hours. One hell of a roadtrip.

The Tu-144

Just came across the amazing story of the Tupolev Tu-144. One of the biggest engineering disasters I have read about!

Boredom and Creativity

Interesting piece by Dilbert's Scott Adams on creativity and how its linked to boredom. I am not sure we can (just yet) draw implications of the lack of boredom to how society is stagnating, but definitely on a personal level I do agree that you need time on your own to be able to be creative.

On the one hand, being so tuned in to the world (smartphones, tablets, kindles, etc.) actually helps stimulate things in your head. At least someone like me, I observe things, and I think. The more external stimulus I get, the more my mind starts racing. So its good in a way. And most of the things that I have ever blogged about came to life in this fashion.

But that's only one kind of stimulus. When I try to embark on something different, something bigger, then all these devices become distractions. I am having to fight out time from my schedule so that I can complete that short story I have been writing. And also certain other heavy topics that I like to think about - such as economics - I need time alone to muse. Ever noticed how all your best ideas come about when you are in the shower or the loo? No? Well at least that's the case with me. Guess its something to do with lateral thinking. Your brain gives you the best solutions when its not directly thinking about the problem. New perspective you might say. Not just showers or loos, I am glad to report that long commutes also out work for me and my brain. So next time you are stuck in traffic why don't you put on some nice music on the radio and let your mind wander?

Before I close, let me mention that I do think the information 'overload' of our times can be quite dangerous if all you do is consume mindless, purposeless content. It is one thing to read all the latest gadget news through your smartphone, or download some great books over your kindle, but if all you do is watch lame youtube videos or countless movies or reality shows on television, then in my view you are definitely abusing the marvels of technology. In this battle between boredom and creativity, I guess there needs to be a balance between entertainment and education; information absorption and thought generation; too little free time and too much of it. Cheers!

(Yes I know the last line is a motherhood, thank you very much!)

Values, a luxury not a choice

A couple of weeks back I was trying to go home from work around 8pm and it was raining like crazy. It took me a whole hour to find a cabbie who would agree to take me home. I kid you not, a full 60 minutes – during which I walked all across Nariman Point and even reached Churchgate, fully drenched despite the umbrella. People who have lived in Mumbai can appreciate how hard it gets to find a cab when its raining. When I finally did find a cab, I promptly began venting about how Mumbai cabbies act like crooks when it comes to taking on passengers, especially when its raining (FYI, the law states that a cabbie cannot refuse a passenger irrespective of where he/she wants to go). I was righteously indignant, but he said something that shut me up. He said,

“Sir, rules are rules, but a man has to look out for himself. If I try to be a sincere guy and take you home to Wadala when its pelting, I will probably not find another customer there for hours. I still have to pay a flat Rs. 400 to my seth for a 12 hour shift because I don't own the car. But you will not pay me a paisa more than the meter fare, will you?”

“Or, fording through waterlogged roads, maybe my rundown old cab will break down. Will you walk away unconcerned, or will you try and help me get it repaired? Or do you think there is a government department or an insurance company who will help me out if my car breaks down in the rains?”

“On a more elementary level, every day of my life is spent trying to scrounge out as much money as possible. There is a wife and kids and parents and siblings all waiting back home for me to earn some money so that they can live. Sure I would like to be the ideal cabbie who is honest and upright and stands up to his customers – who wouldn’t – but do I have the luxury of putting values ahead of money? “

It was compelling logic. If you put values ahead of selfish gains, your kids wont be able to afford even a half-baked education back in the village. If you die or something unfortunate befalls you, no government will give a damn for your family. It’s a wild wild world, and each man has to look out for himself.

And that is a large part of the problem we face in countries like India. Too many people are running their lives six feet from the edge, desperately trying to make a life out of the deal fate has handed them. Can you or I afford to lecture them on values? Sure there is rapid economic growth. But that is far too often distorting the wealth equation than resolving socio-economic issues for the unfortunate millions. Having started from abject poverty, this country is rapidly morphing, and wealth is being created within the span of years, even months, instead of lifetimes. While millions watch from the sidelines, unable to participate. Those with half a chance – like the cabbies who rejected me – are racing as hard as they can trying to make ends meet. Perhaps the land of Gandhi does not have the luxury to value values in today’s circumstances.

Sure you might say everybody has a choice. And I am sure there are many in this great land who continue to uphold values above many other things in life. But I don't think you or I have the right to judge the rest very harshly.

PS: I have been thinking about Values a little bit lately. There are some interesting themes to cover in business values too. Will cover them soon.

Letter from a Blackberry insider

Interesting letter by a BlackBerry insider. Though BB disputes it, it does appear genuine. And carries some thoughtful insights into what is going wrong out there.

http://www.bgr.com/2011/06/30/open-letter-to-blackberry-bosses-senior-rim-exec-tells-all-as-company-crumbles-around-him/

A trillion or two here and there...

Every banker and consultant - analyst, associate, manager or VP - would agree with me that their lives become hell if someone spots an error in their calculations. If its a small error, then you get a telling down; if its a big error, you get hell. Imagine then what fate awaits the unfortunate soul who probably made the biggest error of them all: an error worth a whole 2 Trillion Dollars! Guess that's one more person to add to the list of the unemployed in the US!

Evangelism, and whats in a name

Came across this interesting blog on 'Evangelist Marketing'. How to create offerings that turn consumers into evangelists. Fine read for sure. While I agree with the author on many things, I do disagree on a couple of things.

Of course marketing plays a big role in the listed devices (iPod, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Netflix) seeing evangelist movements, but a huge factor is also: Exclusivity. All these case-in-point devices showcased by Alex Goldfayn are essentially Category Creators. And what are the other devices we compare these with? Cameras and TVs. Exclusive? Heck not!

When early adopters and tech fans got their hands on the iPhones and Kindles first, they got the chance to tell other people about how radically different their new device was. And no doubt these evangelists loved doing it. But they love doing it only as long as its exclusive. See many iPhone evangelists these days in the US, with 50 million phones already in circulation? I thought not.

However, I think marketing often can play a strong role in creating high consumer excitement for even non-category-creator devices. I can only think of Apple here, but its still a strong example. The latest MacBook Air is not radical, but it is a product that does its job very very well. And look at how excited it is making some people. Apple has diligently gone about creating a cult around itself and is reaping the results. Other examples of brands achieving cult status? Harley Davidson. Porsche. Louis Vuitton. Creating a cult brand is not an easy task, and is as much about choosing not to play in certain areas, as it is about playing in certain areas. But lets not get there right now. A lot of firms can learn some elements of marketing from Apple if creating an entire cult brand is not their cup of tea. I am talking: Simplicity. The HBR article talks about this theme a bit; let me add my two cents.

The ipod was a clean product, but also one *with a clean name*. How easy is it to consider researching / buying an iPod Nano vs a Sony Walkman A Series NWZ-A844/T? And how easy is it to evangelize one of these products with friends? In ebook readers again, The Amazon Kindle is a product with a similarly simple name. I am not too tuned in to the Netflix service but I am sure all its options have got simple, catchy names.

Some food for thought as we conclude: We are now seeing even component makers catching on to the naming game. The Samsung Galaxy S (called I9000 earlier) runs a processor called Hummingbird. What was the original name? S5PC110. In response we have other phones running Snapdragon processors. The Android OS has versions which are deliciously called Froyo (Frozen Yoghurt), Gingerbread and Icecream Sandwich. The response? Windows Phone 7 has a version called Mango coming up. Keep cooking up the yummy names guys!

My thoughts take flight...

[Click here to view the cartoon properly]

Nice one by Abstruse Goose. It brings up the interesting theme - Pace of technological advancement. We are actually advancing at a super fast clip, and all indications are that if you or I are airlifted 100 years into the future, we will be as clueless as people from 1911 would be in the world of 2011. However, mankind has a fascination with flying and with space, and that is where technology appears to have failed us. I mean, where are all the space colonies? If the Mars colonies are still a few decades away that's understandable, but why aren't there at least some astronauts visiting Mars by now? In that context, it appears that we have achieved a big squat zero in aerospace in the 42 years since 1969. Why, the Concorde was a supersonic jet which first flew in - guess the year - 1969, but was actually retired by 2011! So has aerospace failed us? This blogger thinks, maybe its not technology. Maybe its some other force holding us back from spreading our seed in outer space. Allow me to speculate...

Firstly, man has had many significant achievements in aerospace. Its no mean feat that there are thousands of heavier-than-air aircraft criss-crossing the world all the time. Which means not only have we mastered the technology, but we have made it practically safe and commercially feasible to carry millions of people in metal tubes flying at 30,000 feet altitude. Try telling that to a 19th century man. So indeed man has conquered gravity in a way, its only that he has not been able to conquer gravity on a large scale. Think about it, the biggest aircraft to fly has been the Boeing 747 (coincidentally, it made its first commercial flight in 1970!). We all marvel at the 747's size, but seriously, a length of 250 feet? Is that the best we can do? We can build bridges which are dozens of kilometers in length, but 250 ft is great for an aircraft?

Do you remember this iconic image in Independence Day? Why can't we imagine humans to build a similar craft which is maybe 2-3 kms along each dimension (length, breadth, height)? And craft of such scale would be necessary if we want to colonize other planets. Imagine the amount of stuff we would need to carry. Maybe you would get iron and some metals over there, but wouldn't you require lots of other materials to be airlifted? Think plastics, glass, rubber, fabric, organic stuff. Thousands of tonnes - if not millions - would need to be sent across. And what is our current payload limit? 2,000 kilograms is a great deal for space missions. Heck, that's the payload of an average pickup truck back on Earth.

Indeed our problem has been that conventional energy sources seem to have met their match in gravity. 9.8 m/s2 is a lot of acceleration to be facing every second an object is in the air. I haven't done the math, but it would require massive amounts of energy to lift even a thousand tonne object at surface level. Hence we are stuck. The reason why we can't go to Mars using current conventional energy sources is the same reason why we had to retire the space shuttle program: the technology exists, but its just unbelievably expensive!

I think, maybe things could have been different if we had been on a planet with lesser gravity - for example, the moon, which has a sixth the gravity of the earth. But I am not too sure. Maybe its a scale thing. An ant can lift 50 times its own weight, an average human not even one time his/her own weight. Similarly internal combustion engines have proved they can move payloads a few 'x' their weight (think trains), but cannot be expected to *lift* weights of that magnitude (fighting against a super strong gravity instead of a weak friction force). Therefore I am compelled to think the next advancement in space flight may come only when we are able to harness new sources of energy. Nuclear propelled motors? Fuel Cell powered motors? Who knows. But can you imagine the downward thrust that would be required to push up something which spreads a mile across? I am thinking we need even more radical technology. Something which can make the below image possible:

Technology that will allow objects to hover easily without requiring massive, massive downthrust. I am thinking more 'fundamental physics' than 'mechanical engineering'. Go physicists! Give us applications of Higgs boson or some stuff like that which will maybe help us work around / reduce the whole problem of mass itself! This kind of technology I am talking about does not even have primary science backing it up yet, so even if it were ever possible from a physics standpoint, we would still be looking at a few decades to make it practical and feasible. Hope my lifetime is enough!

Crowing away to glory

I wonder why people dislike crows. Ok, their cawing isnt exactly melodious, but still, whats there to hate about them? Some people even think of them as bad omens right (think The Omen)? But here is a very interesting piece of research on crows...

The crow knows your nose

Get out of my way!

Why do Indians honk so much? The honk is so integral to our driving that the average motorist would feel a sense of bereavement if he is made to honk less. The honk is second nature and fundamental right, righteous belief and ego masseur...all rolled into one. 'I honk, therefore I am'

To be sure, this is not a condition that afflicts only Indians. Motorists across the developing world share this annoying habit. You could say its a function of the more chaotic roads here, but you would only be partly right. There seems to be a fundamental difference in the way an average person approaches driving in the developed vs developing world...

In the civilized* world a honk is used very rarely, and only as a sort of emergency warning for others using the road, saying Hey! Watch out! In India too of course the horn is sometimes used to avoid accidents, but more than that, its used as a form of DEMANDING RIGHT OF WAY. Yes, most of the times you honk in India, you are just screaming out your demand...GET OUT OF MY WAY!

GET!

OUT!

OF!

MY!

WAY!!!!

Think about it. If you are speeding down a road and you approach a junction, instead of slowing down you just honk repeatedly. What you are saying is: I don't care about slowing down for you - I am just gonna honk hard and repel you away - well out of my way. Same holds if you spot a pedestrian crossing the road a few meters ahead of you and don't want to slow down, or you want to change lanes and can't wait your turn, or any of a hundred different scenarios where you just want to assert your right of way.

I have been cutting down on my honking over the last few months, and now there are instances when I can complete the entire 14km commute to work or back without honking even once. On some occasions there is indeed no way I can not honk, and I imagine this percentage is certainly higher than the equivalent percentage in a city like London or NY. But my honk rate has surely become 90 or 95% lower than my fellow Mumbai motorists. All this while being entirely safe - in fact safer! Because now I must slow down if I see someone in my way -> lesser speed implies lesser risk of collision.

But lets try and understand the psyche of a honker. There are many who simply haven't the exposure. They have learnt to drive on Indian roads, are taught to honk as often as possible, and simply know no other way. These folks can and will definitely convert into the non-honker types as India gets more civilized*. I am just one of them who has crossed over to the other side (hope you don't see this blog as some sort of higher-ground-taking).

However there is also the other type. The motorist for whom the daily commute is equivalent to a prehistoric battle of domination, and the road is where he gets to mark his territory. For this person, nay, man**, the horn is an ultimate tool of ego deliverance.

I can talk a bit about this whole ego thing for this guy, all the bluster and bravado, the need to prove something to the world etc. But I am just going to show you a gem of a comic instead:

Source: FlyYouFools. Check it out if you haven't already - every single comic. You will love it!

http://www.flyyoufools.com/page/53


Text below the comic: Now you won’t feel angry when the person behind you feels obliged to make you aware of the fact, that the light has turned green. This usually happens 534 microseconds after the change. Don’t feel rage. Feel sympathy for the guy.

I will leave you with one last thought. The extent of calm driving (and gigantic silencers) goes down as we move from the developed world to developing countries, and even within India it goes down as we move from a Mumbai to a Baroda to a Jalandhar. Its not just education or awareness - why do people from smaller towns feel the need to impose themselves that much stronger? Over to you.

Update: I have realized that for a peaceful, honk-free drive you do need a couple of factors to be in your favor. Most important being, you should not be getting late to reach someplace. Others may be person / situation specific?

*I know that's a strong word but well deserved in this context

**It is always a man so why implicate the poor women? To quote FlyYouFools again, 'Ever seen an over-honking, bass thumping, large silencer sporting woman driver?'

Winged happiness

I was working late in the night just now with the windows wide open when a bird flew in. I was shocked and quickly turned off the fan - thankfully he/she didn't fly into the fan. Then the poor guy (I will assume he was male) struggled for a while flying into the wall while I tried to direct him back to the window. He managed to get close to the window after a while but got stuck in a corner.

He was so beautiful and so fragile. Though he was small, I could see his chest throbbing while he frantically tried to get out of the corner. Each time I brought my hand close by to help, he would get all the more frantic. Eventually poor guy stopped resisting and accepted my help. And here comes the beautiful-est part of the incident...

He hopped onto my hand (index finger) and stayed put while I brought my hand near the window. Then, when he was facing the open window, he chose to stay on my finger for a while - perhaps he was catching his breath now that he trusted me. And only after a few seconds did he go off flying into the night sky, having left behind a fan (well, two, if you count the villainous ceiling fan).

His little feet perched on my finger brought back so many memories of childhood times when during summers, back in the village I would spend so much time playing with hens and chicks. Nature is so beautiful. If only we could take care of it better.

PS: I took a coupla snaps of the little guy while he was stuck in the house. Wont try to guess what kinda bird he was, but will upload pic soon :)

Black Irony

Times of India: Government commissions study to estimate amount of black money

Why waste time and effort to come up with what is only going to be a piddly estimate? Shouldn't the mantris just ask their CAs ki account mei kitne paise pade hai??

Zero is NOT equal to Zero

Its a long time since I have blogged about mathematics. Dont worry though, these are simple thoughts.

So what I want to talk about today is zero. We have been taught since childhood that Zero is a great number (invented by Indians no less, hence all the pride). Granted. We were taught that arithmetic was able to leap ahead because we gained the capacity to express large numbers using zero at the end (10, 100, etc.). So far so good.

But if we dig deeper, the function of zero which allows us to use a base-10 system is what we call 'Positional Notation' (see the link to understand better). In fact this Positional Notation applies for all other base systems as well. My grouse is, why the hell did the ancient Indians use the number Zero (as in, nil) as the positional notation instead of a brand new symbol - say, x? I (with my limited mathematical faculties, admittedly) don't see any reason why it makes sense for the Positional Notation to be equal to the number Nil. Lets see how things could have looked otherwise.

100 could be represented as 1xx

105 as 1x5

50 - 40 = 10 as 5x - 4x = 1x

50 - 50 = 0 as 5x - 5x = 0

(Here finally the zero appears in its true role - that of poverty - instead of masquerading as a multiplier, a giver of power!)

I continue to think: is there perhaps some mathematical reason why the positional notation needs to be the number nought? Perhaps 2^0? But the zero here is the number zero, not the positional notation. Cant think of anything else.

If I am right about this, then I am forced to conclude that the ancient Indians simply had an amazing sense of humor. They made a zero, the lack of something, a scarcity, a poverty, a failure, into the most important digit in math!

Pictured: Chanakya

Dream On

So I had this weird kind of dream the other day. Its not the dream itself - a pretty mundane dream it was - but the style of the dream that was weird. This was early in the morning and I was trying to drag myself out of bed. My body refused to yield until finally I got up. I got out of bed and brushed my teeth and shaved. I began planning my day, and entered the shower. Which is when it suddenly hit me that I wasn't actually doing all of these things - I was dreaming! I quickly jumped out of bed and redid all those activities, this time for real. My first thought was: Wow my mind had me mindfucked out there for a while!

Now, I don't know if you found it out of the ordinary at all, but to me having such a vivid dream which exactly followed the expected course of events as reality would demand, was disconcerting. I saw the dream in full detail, and while it was still on there was no way I could tell it apart from reality. Painters and creative folk - and even regular folk - will tell you about the fantastic nature of most dreams. In their surrealistic fashion, dreams defy the laws of gravity and reason, bend physics and sort out metaphysics. They question ethics and challenge boundaries. They bring back old wounds and forgotten joys, bring back those we love and those we hate. I read up on dreams after this particular dream of mine, and found fascinating stuff such as this, this, and this.

And so while dreams are usually manifestations of the complex un-hingeing of the brain, I find it odd that they can also act as receptacles of the purely mundane. Not so much the ability, as the intent. Its hard to imagine a dream that stoops so low as to mimic plain, old, boring, drab, real, reality, just so that my body can catch two more winks of sleep! And the funny thing is, this is not the first time such as dream has occurred to me. I remember now that as a child I had once peed in my bed because my stupid brain fooled me into believing that I had woken up and walked into the bathroom and opened my fly, all ready to let fly. The rest is, as they say, watery.

U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century’s End

U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century’s End

10 Billion people! Gets me thinking yet again: Why don't our policy makers give more importance to population control?? Nowadays the sexy areas of policy are all education, healthcare, and economic growth (healthcare to a lesser extent). These are all important issues, but if you ask me, Population Control is the one area of policy that should receive the most attention (media coverage, planning, and resources). A rupee spent on a free condom well used would probably save the state a few thousand rupees in life time costs, if not more. As also save the world from the stress of one more human being with all his/her needs.

Note: I am not advising forced sterility, or anything of the sort! Just large scale availability of condoms alongside high intensity awareness programs (in each and every settlement in each and every village). That would itself reduce female fertility a lot - no need to coerce the unwilling lot!

Thought provoking article on poverty

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Blonde-in-Bombay/entry/the-imaginary-corpse