Charged by passion, Driven by egos

It has been quite a while since I updated my blog. Though I promised to write more about Nigeria in my previous post, I could not find time to write about the experience. I thought my memories of Nigeria would fade over a period of time, making it difficult for me to recollect the experience. However it still seems to be lingering in my mind. The kind of brutal treatment meted out to the foreign tourists in the airport, lack of organized approach, failure to adhere to the rules etc made it a much more bitter experience in Lagos. In contrast, both my colleagues and the client were very friendly. How do I explain this? Can I say that it resembles India? Probably, yes.

Let’s move to the topic of this blog. Sometimes I wonder how boring it would be for the editors of the daily newspapers. If you categorize the front page news items in the last one year and sort it, do a count (*) and group by ( toad skills!!), you would probably get the following count.

26/11 and Pakistan’s involvement – 200
Warnings by Manmohan singh and ministers – 300 (sometimes they take off on Sundays and other holidays)
Pakistan’s rejection tactics – 250 (Sometimes AA Zardari would agree that terror elements in Pakistan is responsible for 26/11, then the next day he would release the arrested persons; even god cannot predict his behavior)
Kasab and his tactics – 120
Iraq bomb blast – 200
Afghan deaths – 150
Mukesh vs. Anil – 301.

I just gave 301 to the final item not just because it’s the topic of this post. In reality if you do the analysis you would certainly get this figure. Now imagine how difficult it would be for the editors.

Dhirubhai Ambani was passionate about his business and built reliance from scratch. It was very difficult for businessmen to do business in the license raj era. In spite of facing so many obstacles, he could grow it by leaps and bounds. The growth was possible because reliance was built with passion. Though there was negative publicity in the newspapers about reliance cheating the government, the public did not bother much because most of us cheat the government in some way or the other. I used to get inspired by the boldness of reliance group. Once there was some problem between reliance and BSE, I still remember the day on which I saw a full page advertisement by reliance about its intention to delist from BSE. Public debated that Ambani was stupid to do it. But, the next day BSE resolved the issue with Ambani. He was so powerful, yet he was not driven by ego, at least not in the eyes of public.

After his demise, the fight between Mukesh and Anil is the only story that keeps appearing in the front pages of the newspapers. They just want to prove each other, how powerful and mighty they are. Both have political clout, but yet they are not able to achieve success easily. I believe nowadays reliance group (Both RIL and ADAG group) is not able to achieve much because they are driven by egos, not charged by passion. If they have to as powerful as Dhirubhai Ambani, they should shed their egos and work passionately to achieve their objectives; else they would be riding for a fall.

My first impressions of “The dark continent”

When I was asked to travel to Nigeria for a Project, I was not really excited. Especially after reading the travel warnings issued by the US and OZ. Nevertheless I had to travel. I had no other choice…

My total travel time to Nigeria took almost 22 hours including the stopover in Dubai for six hours (and excluding the six hours it took from Lagos to Abuja). When I was in Dubai, I thought those were the last few hours in a developed country.

Lagos and Abuja: Lagos is the economic and financial capital of Nigeria. Lagos was the capital of Nigeria from 1914 up to 1991; it was stripped of this title when the Federal Capital Territory was established at the purpose-built city of Abuja. Lagos is similar to Mumbai (so they say) and Abuja is like Delhi.

I was supposed to land in Lagos and take a connecting flight to Abuja. (Not a bad idea; I could cover two cities)

When I landed in Lagos, the flight attendant handed over a photo copy of the landing card (Yes Photo copy!! There are no printed landing cards). They set the expectations very clearly even before arrival. I filled up the landing card and went to the immigration section. There were two queues: One for the foreigners and the other for Nigerians. The foreigners queue was very quiet. I heard a commotion in the Nigerian side. Everyone was shouting at the top of their voice. No doubt the foreigners queue was very quiet. Obviously they were terrified at the sight of Nigerians fighting amongst themselves. They would have feared that they might show their anger on them at any point of time. Finally we came to know the subject of the discussion. Some of the Nigerians in the queue were terribly pissed off with the facilities available in the airport. One of them mentioned to the foreigners that the passengers have to pay $1 for the trolley in the airport.

The Lagos airport was very small. I could not imagine such a small airport for such a big city, esp., when it’s the commercial capital of the country. There was only one luggage conveyor belt. And there were passengers from many flights who were waiting for their baggage. There was confusion all around. I realized why the Nigerian was so agitated. This incident gave me the first assurance that at least some of them are good, if not all.
When you come out of Lagos airport, they have a system of verifying whether you have picked the correct luggage. I thought they might have such a system as some of the passengers might take others baggage and get away with it. A person verified my baggage tag on the boarding pass and on the luggage. Then he asked me to give him some chocolates. Somehow I managed to convince him that I do not have any chocolates and ran towards the driver who was waiting to pick me up and take me to the Lagos National airport, for my travel to Abuja. I was wondering what would be the state of the national airport esp., when the status of the international airport is in such a condition.

The national airport was ten minutes drive from the international airport. The landscape of Nigeria is similar to that of India. National airport was slightly better when compared to the international one. I checked in my baggage and waited for four hours to catch the connecting virgin flight to Abuja.

When I boarded the flight to Abuja, for the first time in my life I faced a situation where two people were assigned the same seat number in the aircraft. !!! Weird isn’t it? This confusion has happened even though the boarding pass is generated in the system. There were several people in the aircraft complaining of the same issue. The flight was delayed for an hour, because of this confusion. Some implementation of IT system has gone wrong!!

The flight to Abuja took off finally, when the flight attendant requested some of them to board another flight and some people were accommodated in the business class.

A wonderful first impression isn’t it? Expect more on Nigeria and its people in my following posts. Please post your comments on this post. Am expecting it :). Thanks in advance….

Shortcut to happiness

Happiness is a state of mind. Nobody is happy at all times, but some people are definitely more fulfilled than others and it doesn't seem to have much to do with material goods or high achievement.

Not all events in our life fulfill our expectations. Destined events, good and bad are bound to happen in our lives. If you think about it spiritually, there is a reason for every event in your life. Bad events also help us learn certain things in life.

Also, when we get things in life after great struggle, it gives us immense satisfaction. In those days when I used to watch Doordarshan programmes like chitrahaar, if a good song is played in that, it would become the talk of the town next day. If they play a good movie on Sunday evening, all the roads will be empty. However nowadays we tend to ignore even the best movies, because we know that we can watch it some other day. When you get things easily, you would not realize the importance of the same. However when you struggle for something and get it finally, you cherish the same and value it. So don’t worry if you struggle in your life. You would taste success one day and enjoy the same.

It is said that “The best things in life are unexpected - because there were no expectations.” Hence scale down your expectations. This would keep you happy always.

Oh my god!! What a piece of philosphy I have written here…..Sorry guys I am feeling so sleepy. Hence I have written all this. Read the following paragraph. This will certainly provide you the shortcut to happiness.

First create a folder named “Happiness” in your computer. Then right click and create a shortcut. Then paste that shortcut in your desktop. There u go…..

Mediocre Media

It has been quite sometime since I had blogged. I was looking for some interesting topic to post here. My last post evoked some interesting responses, especially, the comments on Madhavan. I was tempted to criticize Shahid Kapoor in this blog post, but since my post could disappoint his female fans, I refrained from doing so.

I was really annoyed by the news item that blocks half of the newspaper columns for the past few weeks. It’s about the racist attack on the Indians in Australia. True, some Australians have attacked Indian students and they suffered in that process. Do we need to react so much for that? This is very common in many parts of the world. Bad elements do exist in all the societies. In many cases the victims would be whites. How do the media know that the attacks were motivated by racist intentions? If Australians are racist, then why are they not attacking other Asian student communities? There are more than 100000 Chinese students studying in Australia. Why are they not being attacked? Why are they not protesting along with the Indian students?

If attacks on the foreigners can be termed as racist, then in India lot of foreigners are being mugged / beaten to death very frequently. Scarlett case is one such example. Did the western media term it as xenophobic?

The quality of journalism in the western world is much better compared to that of India. In BBC or CNN you can never notice a news reader airing his opinions on the subject. They bring in the expert to provide opinion. For ex, I was watching Sky news channel during the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The terrorists targeted British and American citizens in that attack. In spite of that, the news readers were calm and composed. The newsreaders did not air their opinion. They had invited political and other experts from Asian region to understand the nature of the attacks and the people / organization behind the attacks.

Majority of the Indians are driven by emotions. Indian media tries to utilize this and sensationalize every news item. They just try to achieve higher TRP’s in this process. When people start losing interest in this news item they move on to the next news item for a few days. Don’t you think the Indian media needs to mature? Please leave your comments...

Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo

The effect of television advertisements upon the viewing public has been so successful and so pervasive that in some countries, it is considered impossible for a politician to wage a successful election campaign without the purchase of television advertising. Don’t worry!! For a change I am not going to write anything about politics.

Many television advertisements feature catchy jingles (songs or melodies) or catch-phrases (slogan) that generate sustained appeal, which may remain in the minds of television viewers long after the span of the advertising campaign. The advertisements relating to the telecom space has attracted so much of attention that it is almost impossible to ignore. Let’s take the good one first

THE GOOD

Of all the ads relating to the mobile / telecom sector, the advertisement which stands apart from the rest is the Airtel’s advertisement featuring Madhavan and Vidya Balan. This ad really connects to the audience. The background music is really pleasant. The chemistry between Maddy and Vidya is really great. The only thing that could be avoided is the Maddy’s grin from ear to ear ;).

THE BAD

No surprise here. It’s the ZooZoo ads. I am giving a bad rating to the zoozoo ad’s because most of these advertisements have tinge of negative element in it. Whey should a person pray only when he is on the verge of falling from a cliff?. Can’t they find out better situation for listening to a prayer? Moreover these advertisements are being aired at regular intervals making it very irritating at times. But there are many people who love these advertisements. In short, you can love zoozoo’s or hate them, but you cannot ignore them.

THE UGLY

The ugliest of all is the BSNL ads. In one of the ads, a person makes a call to another person only to listen to the caller tune. That too its a horrible song. On top of that he scolds the other person for picking up the call. “Pandu phone kyon uthaya yaar?”. In another ad of BSNL, a person is shown as a total failure. And then Deepika gives him a BSNL 3G phone. Then he becomes successful in everything he does.

Advertising is primarily a strategic weapon. A good advertisement puts enough emphasis upon your brand name so that consumers will remember it. And, it should give the viewers some positive information about your product. Don’t you think so?

In the name of Development

My first visit to Bangalore in the early 90’s, was a memorable experience. The traffic was much less. There was lot of greenery around. I simply fell in love with Bangalore.

I used to wonder why Chennai does not have the same amount of green cover as that of Bangalore. There are two major parks in Bangalore which it can be proud of: Lalbagh and the Cubbon park. In contrast there was nothing in Chennai. I used to consider Chennai as a desert when compared to Bangalore.

Years have passed by. Bangalore has become one of the major cities in the south. Lot of development has happened over a period of time. What is the cost that Bangalore has paid for all this development? There is so much of pollution; the green cover in the city has reduced considerably. The climate in Bangalore is no longer the same.

Adding to the problem is the Namma Metro rail project, the alignment of which necessitates felling of trees and acquisition of land belonging to the Lalbagh botanical gardens. Huge numbers of trees are going to be removed from Lalbagh to facilitate Metro rail project. Many Bangaloreans have vehemently protested against cutting of trees in Lalbagh. Earlier, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) had also proposed to cut nearly 3000 trees to make a road through Gandhi Krishi Vigyan Kendra (GKVK) campus.

Why can’t we have an underground passage for Metro rail throughout the city? It will involve some extra cost. But certainly it would not affect the environment. Even if the politicians forego 2% of what they make in a year, the additional cost of laying the metro can be met. In London most of the rail network is under the ground.

If our politicians have some sense left, they should try to construct the metro under the ground. They should try to implement all engineering projects with minimum environmental impact. If we continue to cut the trees and spoil the environment, it would have catastrophic effects on the next generation. Hope we realize this and take some positive measures.

Confusion Beyond Imagination

By looking at the heading you should have figured out what I am trying to convey. Take another guess. Well, let me give you another clue. Cleared Before Investigation!! I know this time you would have got it.

For the past few weeks the Congress Bureau of Investigation has been very active in giving a clean chit to those involved in the 1984 Sikh riots and the Bofors case. These are high profile cases for which investigations were going on (or was it supposed to be) for several years. The first case has been going on for 24 years and the second one probably more than that. Are they not ashamed of giving a clean chit to those involved in these cases after 25 years?

MMS also proved to the world that he is a puppet by giving a statement that CBI has neither consulted him nor involved him in the Tytler’s case (http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1246855). CBI would have never bothered to consult Manmohan Singh. They seem to be acting on the basis of the instructions from the defacto prime minister.

These incidents clearly bring into light that congress is getting jitters about the results of the 2009 elections. There is a sense of nervousness among the congress top brass that they may not come to power again. Hence they are trying to use the last few days in office to clear off their names from these highly emotional and politically sensitive cases.

As far as congress is concerned, glory days seem to be a thing of the past. About MMS; less said, the better