It’s the end of the year and the holiday mood needs a light irreverent post. Its not a holiday around here, but since the rest of the world has caught holiday fever, we have “embraced” it as well.
Airlines are notorious for doing fairly dumb things – I think the rarified air in which they fly does some things to the brain cells. I had blogged about Ryanair’s idea of charging to use the toilets. But...
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Being an expat
What’s it like being a foreigner ? An expat living outside his or her home country ? I am an expat myself- an Indian living in China. Many readers of this blog are expats themselves. Most of us are expats because our jobs, or the jobs of our spouses, took us away from our native land.
The Economist has a beautiful article on “being foreign”. A superb and stimulating article I strongly recommend....
Monday, 28 December 2009
The fastest train in the world
China is a very competitive country. It likes to make a competition of everything it can win ! So its not surprising that last week it unveiled the “fastest train in the world”.
The train in question is the bullet train between Guangzhou and Wuhan. Guangzhou is where I live – the southern China city, known earlier as Canton and close to Hong Kong. You can be forgiven for not knowing anything about...
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Zaijian, Ni hao (Goodbye & Hello)
It is customary at this time of the year to look back and reminisce about the year gone by. This year, its also the end of the decade – the “noughties” as they are curiously called. The media, traditional and new, is dominated by the recounting of events of the past decade –the horror of September 11, the tsunami, the Sichuan earthquake, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wonder of the Beijing...
Friday, 25 December 2009
Holidays is a cultural thing
Today is Christmas day – virtually everywhere in the world, today is a holiday. And here I am , at my desk, pretending to be working. For its not a holiday in atheist China. Despite the best efforts of companies to tempt the Chinese into “Christmas shopping”, the day remains stubbornly irrelevant here.
I have a stream of people walking up to my desk today. They are all asking me to approve carrying...
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Pay a tax if you tan
The US healthcare bill that is doing the final rounds in the Senate today is a landmark piece of legislation, if passed. It has aroused intense emotions and divided America. But an obscure part of the bill, buried in the thousands of pages of legalese is illustrative of the way lobby and pressure groups have come to influence economic policy.
In the first draft of the bill, a tax was proposed on...
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Who can you trust now ?
Conventional wisdom has been that a sovereign guarantee is the best form of security you can have when you lend money. You can be pretty much sure that your money is safe if you buy government debt. Doesn’t matter which government, if you leave aside rogue states like North Korea or Myanmar. Conventional wisdom that is.
That was before the financial crisis. As the crisis spread, Iceland was the first...
Monday, 21 December 2009
In defence of business
The word business is nowadays accompanied by a metaphorical holding of the nose. Post the financial crisis, businessmen would probably rank just above bankers and below more traditional last placers like real estate agents, in the list of reputable professions. Readers of this blog would know that the author is a staunch defender of business and advocates the view that the profession is unfairly...
Sunday, 20 December 2009
The low point
This week has been the low point in my infancy in the blogging world. A combination of traveling, ridiculous working hours and the difficulty of actually getting access to the internet when traveling overseas without paying up a complete fortune, has made this a barren week. No posts at all and unforgivable delays in responding to comments. Sorry.
There are, of course, periods in business life, which...
Sunday, 13 December 2009
Its time to leave the village
You may have followed the travails of our city bred yuppie here and here. He survived the attentions of the peacock. He managed to escape being hitched. He got over the close association with bovine sex life. He even learnt to ignore the ever present gun. But , at last, the time came for him to leave the village and go back to the city – back to normal business, back to the life he was used...
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Is small scale more desirable than large scale ?
Why is the Government of India so fixated about small scale ? For some reason, the thinking seems to be that small scale is ethically more acceptable than large scale. This is nonsense – both economically and morally.
I am reacting to the news that the government is considering stipulating that public sector enterprises would be required to source 20% of their purchases from micro, small and medium...
Sunday, 6 December 2009
A great organisation
The house of the Tatas has been synonymous with values which are unique in the annals of business history. This post is about why they more than deserve their illustrious reputation.
This is from an e mail doing the rounds – these are apparently notes taken by Dilip Ranjekar , CEO of the Azim Premji Foundation. I haven’t requested permission from Dilip, or the persons who forwarded me this mail,...
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Bhopal happens and nobody is prosecuted
This week marks the twenty fifth anniversary of the worst industrial disaster in history – the leak of the deadly methyl isocyanate from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. Thousands of people died and the horrors have been well documented.
This post focuses on one notable aspect of what happened after the disaster. Or rather what didn’t happen. Nobody has yet been prosecuted in a court of law for...
Sunday, 29 November 2009
A man of substance
Meet Sadashiv Chandrakanth Khodke. His life was turned upside down, exactly one year ago, when the despicable scum called terrorists attacked Mumbai. I heard his tale on a BBC podcast and it touched me – and it’s the subject of this Sunday’s non business post.
Sadashiv was a waiter in a restaurant, holding a steady job. His misfortune was that he was in VT station at exactly the wrong time. He was...
Friday, 27 November 2009
The world's most outrageous CEOs
The media loves to makes lists – the richest people in the world, the biggest companies in the world and so on. Forbes has compiled a rather unusual list – the 10 most outrageous CEOs of 2009.
Bernie Madoff would have been a slam dunk for the winner – but his place in the sun was last year – so he’s disqualified.
This year’s list is full of people who have been charged or indicted of fraud. Robert...
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Rupert Murdoch vs Google
In the blue corner is Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon – Chairman of Newscorp, owner of The Times and the Sun in the UK and New York Times in the US, and the TV Channels Sky, Star and Fox News. In the red corner is Google – the titan of the on line world. The bout has begun.In question is the issue of on line news – who owns it, who pays whom for it, etc etc. Now we are perfectly willing to pay a...
Sunday, 22 November 2009
The day when India was on top of the world
One of the greatest of days in Indian sport , to me THE greatest day in Indian sport, was the day in March , long ago, when India lifted the hockey World Cup in Kuala Lumpur. India beat Pakistan in the final to win the World Cup for the first, and alas thus far the only, time.The greatest day was actually...
Friday, 20 November 2009
Flights of fancy
Of all the markets in the markets in the world, one of the most nonsensically regulated is the air travel market. Countries are still clinging on to the antiquated notion that somehow national interests are involved in the aviation sector and “national airlines”, however dinosaur like they may be, must be propped up.
This post is prompted by the news that Germany has asked Emirates to raise its...
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Romance is in the air
This seems to be the season for whispering sweet nothings. K and C are engaged in a very public courtship as I blogged here – its progressing at such a snail’s pace that its probably more exciting to watch grass grow. K has threatened to abduct and carry away C, and C is saying “bah” as women are wont to do !
But there’s another rumour doing the rounds. Yesterday curious things happened with Colgate...
Monday, 16 November 2009
Is the consumer a king or a tyrant ?
“Remove baby before folding the stroller “ is a famous example of the American legal system gone crazy. It remained an object of mirth until it became all too real last week. For, Maclaren, a small privately held maker of baby strollers was faced with a massive crisis on a similar sort of a problem.
Maclaren’s strollers are actually of a reasonably high safety standard. However it appears that when...
Sunday, 15 November 2009
The continuing idyll of our yuppie
Our city bred yuppie has settled down into the village, mastered the art of managing without plumbing and has been proposed to. If you’ve missed this story of a couple of weeks ago, click here.
Statutory warning : This is a X rated post. Youngish readers and those with sensitive feelings please leave now !!
Of course the company has not put him here to bask in the adulation of the village belles....
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
When good politics was better than good economics
Yesterday was 9/11, written in the British way. It is as momentous a day as its American equivalent is tragic. For it was on this day, 20 years ago, that the Berlin wall collapsed. And Europe would never be the same again.
A trillion words are being written about the event and the celebration and the hoopla surrounding it. This blog is loath to add to that total, and in any case is not a political...
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Work Wife Balance
This weekend's irreverent post is a guest post in le embrouille blogueur's blog. I am flirting with deep danger by continuing to needle the fair ladies, but then, this Sunday is that sort of a Sunday. Ladies - this is all just for some idle fun ; don't take anything seriously ! Click here to read this po...
Saturday, 7 November 2009
The taxman and Windows 7
If you are in India and wanted to buy a Windows 7 box, you could not do it legally. Never mind that Windows 7 was released globally about 2 weeks ago. Never mind that much of Windows 7 development happened in India. Why ? Because the babus (pedantic officer) at Customs wanted to tax the stuff twice !!
This is an example of the nonsensical complexity that abounds in India’s taxation law and the missionary...
Thursday, 5 November 2009
The right royal mess at GM Europe
Politicians should, in general, not meddle in business. A great illustration of this danger is the mess brewing in General Motors Europe.
Facts of the case are as follows. When GM was entering bankruptcy last year, the fate of GM Europe was in serious doubt. In any case GM Europe had too much of manufacturing capacity in Germany, the UK , Spain and Belgium. Even under normal circumstances a big restructuring...
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
The "Ants" of China
China places an enormous value on education – both the society and the government are, rightly, obsessed with it. As a nation it has done a fantastic job of educating huge chunks of its population and providing them with job opportunities. But it’s a massive task and sometimes education and jobs are not always in tandem. This was brought out to me in vivid detail when I read the book review of Ants...
Monday, 2 November 2009
If something is too good to be true, it is too good to be true
Since the beginning of the year, the prices of all sorts of risky assets – shares, oil, etc have increased by fantastic proportions. Take equity. In virtually any market in the world, you would have made returns of 50% plus, even if you are an idiot. Did somebody say we were in the midst of a huge crisis ? Here was massive money to be made, by just being there. Sounds too good to be true ?? As the...
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Oh, the joys of village life
A couple of generations ago, our great grandparents made the decision to leave their villages and move to the city, largely in search of a better life. In just two or three generations, we have completely lost the understanding of what village life is. One company decided, many decades ago, that city bred yuppies, who it was mostly recruiting as trainees, must spend two months in a village to reacquaint...
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
An ode to Pan Am
The words "appalling" and "airlines" are synonymous in the language (allegedly English) spoken in the US of A. It wasn't that way some time ago. Pan Am was synonymous with "wonderful", as long as it flew. It was THE airline in the US. Unfortunately it went bankrupt in 1991. But the brand is still powerful amongst a certain generation (not comprising readers of this blog !). Those with a taste for...
Sunday, 25 October 2009
One people divided into warring nations
Moreh is a border town between Burma and India in the state of Manipur. If you go there, you'll hear a strange language spoken - Tamil. When Indians were kicked out of Burma some 50 years ago, many Tamils who had settled there began the long walk back home. Some came all the way back. Many decided to just cross the border and stay there. Hence the Tamil in Moreh.
At the other end , the famed Grand...
Friday, 23 October 2009
Obil Boil
Oil on the boil again, screams the headlines in India’s Economic Times. Or as our wonderful little friend Chotu might say, Obil Boil. I am certain that his words were prescient and not just a child’s lisp of mama’s olive oil.
Crude oil prices have touched $80 a barrel. The US dollar has continued to weaken and since oil prices are globally stated in US dollars, they are bound to rise further. I argued...
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
What was he thinking ?
You normally associate business leaders with high intellect, sound judgment, and in general, greater ability than many of us, mere mortals. Then I read this front page report in today's Guardian in the UK.
I had promised to myself that I'd stop writing about either bankers or Goldman Sachs after my last two posts on the subject. But what can you do when somebody makes a speech like that. And where...
Monday, 19 October 2009
When shareholders’ and company’s interests don’t coincide
What happens when the interests of the shareholders do not coincide with what’s good for the company ? Ordinarily there should not be any conflict – the company should have no interests of its own other than the interests of its shareholders. In the capitalist model, the interests of management or the employees – doesn’t matter; they operate solely to safeguard and promote the interest of the shareholders....
Sunday, 18 October 2009
A treatise on buyer behaviour based on observational experience, with particular emphasis on matters sartorial
Frivolousness on a Sunday is unbecoming of a serious business writer and therefore the idea of a light post is hereby being discontinued. Instead this is a learned treatise on buyer behaviour.
The mere sight of an Indian lady getting ready to embark on a shopping expedition to buy a sari for Diwali, or a wedding, is sufficient to strike terror of the sort Osama bin Laden can never hope to achieve....
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