Badri Seshadri's Pages

Tele-terrorists

2011-08-09T09:31:00.000+05:30

Last week, while at a petrol bunk, in a moment of weakness, I entered my name and my mobile phone number with an attendant there. He lured me into the trap by offering to include me in a lucky draw. I have, in the past, won a suitcase from VIP through a lucky draw. This time, I was hoping for an all paid vacation to Port Blair.

Two days later, a tele-girl called.

"A very good evening to you sir. Can I take two minutes of your time, please?"

"Yes, what can I do for you?"

"You had entered your name in our lucky draw, sir. Do you own a Mahindra four-wheeler?"

"No, I do not."

"Do you own any other four-wheeler?"

"Yes. A Ford."

She must have gasped. A Ford? A Ford? She then dropped the bombshell.

"As a special gesture, we would like to invite you to a membership from Club Mahindra, a holiday..."

I cut her short. "No, I will not be interested."

"Why sir?"

I was floored. How could I answer this question? I had to think quickly on my feet. "I already have a Club Mahindra membership." That was an excellent answer. She waited for a second and threw the next dart at me.

"Sir, in that case, will you refer your friends?"

"No. I don't have any friends that I can refer. If I did refer them, they wouldn't remain my friends."

She thanked me and cut the call.

This seems to be a nice way of collecting phone numbers and addresses. Offer some freebie and idiots like me will give all our personal details. Then, you can resell the database to every tele-marketer.

Seems like a good idea. I should try this somewhere myself and sell them all books.

US credit rating in Tamil Media

2011-08-08T17:50:00.000+05:30

Today's Dinamani has an article on how India is in the 14th place of Nations that have lent money to the USA. Though technically correct, the US didn't beg India to borrow some money. US Govt. issued treasury bills and India, along with several other Asian countries, stood in line to subscribe to them. It was not the lender setting out stipulations; but the borrower setting out terms. Countries like China, Japan and India had no other option but to take up these highly rated paper, even though the yield was low because they had dollar surplus. The headline for this story in Dinamani reads: US still owes India Rs 1.83 lakh crore, suggesting that there is a likelihood of US running away without repaying in full.

Dinamalar has a longish article titled US getting hammered, credit rating brought down. The article is reasonably complete but wouldn't make much of a sense to a Tamil reader, as it lacks the context. This is more a news wire story translated into Tamil.

As an aside, Dinamani pronounces Poor correctly, Dinamalar makes it 'puvar'.

I couldn't locate any story in Dinathanthi, which I am looking forward to. Dinathanthi tries its best to make such complex news easy to the lay Tamil reader, with the correct context.

Land grabbing in Tamil Nadu

2011-08-04T16:33:00.002+05:30

The new government headed by Jayalalitha is on an arresting spree. Yet another former DMK minister was arrested today on charges related to land grabbing. Already one former DMK minister is in judicial remand. There are talks of possible cases against MK Azhagiri's wife Kanthi.

Land grab is the easiest way to make money for the politicians. They do this when they are in power. Grabbing government land (poramboke land) without a clear title is the easiest. Then, the acquisition can be legalised over time with appropriate orders. I am not fully aware of the process. I will be grateful if someone can educate me on this.

The second method is legally acceptable but morally repugnant. The Chief Minister uses his discretionary powers to allocate land owned by the government to his chamchas at rock bottom prices. Then, this land is parcelled and resold to developers for a huge profit. This is a widespread issue. Former Karnataka CM Yeddiyurappa is accused of this (amongst many wrongdoings). Jaffer Sait, ADGP (now suspended) of Police and head of intelligence in the previous DMK government has been accused of this. So are several others.

The third method gets into the murkier world of underground. You threaten poor, invalid and meek with dire consequences and take over their land on forged power of attorney documents. The meek will simply suffer. They cannot complain as the police will not file cases against the ruling party goondas. They give up. Ugly though it may be, this seems to be the perennial resource for the politicians.

It is on this account that almost everyone in the DMK and his dog is being accused off now. There have been such allegations against the jailed MP and former telecom Minister A. Raja. Kanimozhi, Rajathi Ammal and their alleged benamis are accused of such doings. As mentioned above, Azhagiri is accused of the same. Almost every single minister in the previous government and probably all the MLAs are accused of this. I am yet to hear of Stalin or Karunanidhi being directly accused.

One of the moves by Jayalalitha widely acclaimed (except by the DMK) is setting up a special complaint cell for this purpose. And the cases are streaming in.

Nobody, except the die-hard DMK cadre, believes that the cases are foisted falsely on these people. DMK leaders are rather talking about inaction on cases related to AIADMK people during the 2001-2006 period. (Surely DMK government should have processed them then?)

Sanctity of the private property is paramount in our modern democracy. No one has the right to take away the land owned by ordinary people without convincing the particular person and paying the right market rates. (Government with its eminent domain is another issue and needs to be discussed elsewhere.) That politicians can easily break this is a dangerous scenario. I applaud Jayalalitha for this aggressive move, even though it has been taken to spite her opponents. This will set a chain of events whereby DMK will prosecute the evil doing of AIADMK in the next term and so on. In the meantime, the civilians will get emboldened to create institutions to prevent such fraud being committed on them by thugs of the political parties.

Till then, we will watch with glee one more former minister going to jail.

US Debt Crisis

2011-07-30T09:02:00.000+05:30

It is generally accepted that nations can have a certain amount of debt in their books. Especially if their economy is growing steadily. What should be the percentage of this debt compared to the size of the national economy (GDP) is a matter of debate.

This sovereign debt is useful, in that it offers a lot of old people an excellent investment possibility. Especially if the debt is from a top-notch country, whose economy is stable, whose paying power is steady, and is rated well by the rating agency. The US was one such. Pension funds normally subscribe to such debt. Countries with excess foreign exchange will subscribe to this. Right from China, Japan, India, Russia and Brazil hold the US treasury bills.

However, US economy has been going downhill. US govt. deficits have been increasing drastically. There are several infographics explaining the crisis very well. This Washington Post graphics shows that for the current year, the revenue deficit for the US govt. will be nearly 33%! That is, for every $3 the government spends, it has to borrow $1 from others. One can look through the spending and see that a big chunk of the spending is in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (amounting to roughly 50% of the total spending), another major spending of nearly $900 billion on defense and an interest repayment of around $251 billion.

This level of borrowing is unsustainable. Their existing debt by the end of 2011 will be $15.5 trillion. It is also expected that over the next 10 years, they will have to borrow a further $6.7 trillion. That is, by 2020 (or 2021), the US national debt will be around $22 trillion.

This is a nation, whose financial health is extremely weak. All indications are that it is not going to be fixed even in the coming decade. US debt is likely to become costlier; that is nations that are lending money to the US will start charging more interest, making the interest repayment costs very high.

What could be the alternate solution? Drastic budget cuts (which will sound very republican, but that is the only solution) including in defense (which the republicans don't like), increase in tax rates for the corporates (very democrat-ic) and enforced compliance, more spending in own healthcare infrastructure like Britain rather than the spiralling cost of Medicare/Medicaid etc.

American system of Social Security is too complex. It is not easy to completely dismantly that. These are people who have paid taxes over the last few decades and it is not fair on the part of the government to simply cheat them out of their entitlements. But the government has to work out some deals to ensure that future Social Security payments are not too high; which would also mean that they should probably start charging less Social Security taxes now. Which would mean, they will have to find some other way of increasing revenue, which would mean increasing income taxes. But that may not be sufficient.

Therefore, the federal government should consider imposing a federal sales tax across the country, over and above any state sales tax. Even a marginal 2% across the board sales tax (from cigarettes to liqour, consumer goods to heavy machinery, gasoline to food) will result in substantial earnings for the federal government. It is not clear to me whether there is any constitutional provision that will make it impossible for the federal government from charging such a tax. If so, it is the job of the legislators to amend the constitution appropriately. I can't see any other way out.

BJP and Yeddiyurappa

2011-07-29T21:15:00.000+05:30

Why is it so difficult for BJP to sack Yeddyurappa? That the man is corrupt is so obvious. The evidence is mounting. If he is not sacked immediately, then BJP will lose the position it has built in Karnataka. That Yeddyurappa has contributed to that should not be reason enough to stick to him now.

BJP can gain a lot by letting Yeddyurappa go and after 5-6 months call for a flash election with someone else - perhaps Ananthkumar - at the helm and may end up with a better majority that what it has currently.

Poor Economics

2011-07-27T09:06:00.000+05:30

I am reading the book Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty and the Ways to End it by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. I haven't read a book that has impacted me more. Every page has made me pause and think. There is so much to quote from it and discuss, I will be violating the fair use policy on quotation. Do read this book. I strongly recommend it. Here are couple of paragraphs from the book that I read yesterday:

In a study [in India] designed to find out whether ... prejudice influenced teachers' behaviour with students, teachers were asked to grade a set of exams. The teachers did not know the students, but half of the teachers, randomly chosen, were told the child's full name (which includes the caste name). The rest were fully anonymous. They found that, on average, teachers gave significantly lower grades to lower-caste students when they could see their caste than when they could not. But interestingly, it was not the higher-caste teachers who were doing this. The lower-caste teachers were actually more likely to assign worse grades to lower-caste students. They must have been convinced these children could not do well.

And then, as a continuation,

Children themselves use this logic when assessing their own abilities. The social psychologist Claude Steele demonstrated the power of what he calls "stereotype threat" in the U.S. context: Women do better on math tests when they are explicitly told that the stereotype that women are worse in math does not apply to this particular test; African Americans do worse on tests if they have to start y indicating their race on the cover sheet. Following Steele's work, two researchers from the World Bank had lower-caste children in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh compete against high-caste children in solving mazes. They found that the low-caste children compete well against the high-caste children as long as caste is not salient, but once low-caste children are reminded that they are low-castes competing with high-caste children (by the simple contrivance of asking them their full names before the game starts), they do much worse.

How do we work towards helping every child achieve its fullest potential? How to we eradicate the ills of a caste system that has psychologically impacted Indians (both "high" & "low" castes) that one's intelligence and ability are linked to the castes in which they are born, even though it has been proven convincingly by scientists that such is not the case?

RBI increases Interest rate again

2011-07-26T14:51:00.000+05:30

In what is certain to seriously affect the middle class consumers, RBI, afraid of inflation, has increased the interest rate yet again, by 50 basis points today.

My current home loan (which I will be exiting by September 2011) with ICICI Bank, is at an interest rate of 14.25% and that was before the current increase. Not sure, if ICICI will promptly up it to 14.75%. I am shopping around with other banks, and the interest rate appears to be more like 10-10.5% depending on the type of facilities you are looking at. This could also go up by the same 50 basis points.

Surely, there are better ways of handling inflation? Where will this lead us to? Industries will collapse at this sort of interest rate. Middle class will stop buying houses and vehicles. This will in turn affect the manufacturing and white goods sector, and so on.

Raising interest rates has hardly impacted the inflation though. So why do the same thing again and again and hurt the middle class?

Raja's defense

2011-07-26T08:23:00.000+05:30

It is still unclear to me what CBI's case is against Raja. If they say that he has taken money from Telcos to give them license without going for auction, then CBI has to provide the proof for the same - money trail, evidence for conspiracy etc.

If, on the other hand, they are showing that his not auctioning the spectrum meant that companies like Swan and Unitech making "profits out of re-selling the spectrum" resulting in loss to the exchequer to the tune of around Rs 22,000 crore, then the case is a non-starter.

Raja's defense yesterday, focused on this very issue.

Interview with Bill Gates on his Educational Philanthropy: WSJ

2011-07-25T11:40:00.000+05:30

An excellent interview in Wall Street Journal with Bill Gates:

"I watched the movies. I saw 'To Sir, With Love,'" he chuckles, recounting the 1967 classic in which Sidney Poitier plays an idealistic teacher who wins over students at a roughhouse London school. "But they didn't really explain what he was doing right. I can't create a personnel system where I say, 'Go watch this movie and be like him.'"

Instead, the Gates Foundation's five-year, $335-million project examines whether aspects of effective teaching—classroom management, clear objectives, diagnosing and correcting common student errors—can be systematically measured. The effort involves collecting and studying videos of more than 13,000 lessons taught by 3,000 elementary school teachers in seven urban school districts.

"We're taking these tapes and we're looking at how quickly a class gets focused on the subject, how engaged the kids are, who's wiggling their feet, who's looking away," says Mr. Gates. The researchers are also asking students what works in the classroom and trying to determine the usefulness of their feedback.

It is important for us in India to carefully follow what Bill Gates is doing in the educational space. Over the last 65 years we have invested a lot in education (not enough, but still a lot). It has not achieved what we wanted.

We need to look at improving the quality of education as much as the quantity of education.

AIADMK - DMK final positions

2011-03-22T18:57:00.003+05:30

The final positions are out.

AIADMK has booted out MDMK from its camp, as Vaiko, the leader of MDMK has not agreed to the offer from AIADMK. The rest of the alliance partners are intact. So the final tally is:

AIADMK: 160
DMDK: 41
CPM: 12
CPI: 10
MMK (Muslim party): 3
PT (Dalit party): 2
AISMK (Sarath Kumar): 2
Indhiya Kudiyarasu Katchi: 1
Muvendhar Munnetra Munnani: 1
Kongu Ilainjar Peravai: 1
Forward Block: 1

Opposed to this is DMK-Congress-PMK alliance.

DMK: 119
Congress: 63
PMK: 30
VC (Dalit party): 10
Kongu Nadu Munnetra Kazhakam: 7
Muslim League: 3
Others: 2

In my view, AIADMK has a minor edge over the ruling DMK. Congress is the biggest weakness in the DMK grouping. There will be considerable infighting within Congress (as is evident in their not announcing the candidates so far). While there will always be a certain degree of unhappiness in every party for the given seats, it is very important how quickly a particular party chooses its candidates and how quickly they start campaigning in their constituencies.

In the last elections, DMK's manifesto was considered a major reason for winning the elections. One has to see the manifesto along with the usual anti-incumbency combined with a reasonably strong grouping put together by DMK. This time DMK has again come up with a loaded manifesto. The battles are not anymore fought with ideology; it is all about freebies.

Last time it was colour TVs. Now it will be wet grinders or mixie - your choice. And several more. I will write in detail about what is on offer from DMK.

AIADMK has not yet come up with its manifesto. It may not have many freebies in them. It will have to be seen whether people are swayed by the offer a wet grinder or a laptop.

DMK-Congress: A shotgun wedding

2011-03-12T10:48:00.000+05:30

After several days of intense negotiations, some tantrums and a few back room deals, the ruling DMK has given 63 seats (out of 234) to Congress in the coming assembly elections.

This is extraordinary as this leaves DMK only 121 seats to contest. PMK which was earlier given 31 has been downsized to 30. VCK has been given 10, Kongu Munnetra Kazhagam 7, and 3 more to smaller parties. This would mean that even if this combine wins the assembly elections (very unlikely), DMK will need Congress and PMK to form a coalition ministry.

Congress demanded an agreement to form a coalition government before the elections while DMK disagreed with that. But now, de facto, Congress has achieved precisely that.

The 'sell out', as it is seen by the DMK cadre is alleged to be linked to 'going slow' on CBI's investigation into 2G scam. If indeed this allegation is true, the future cannot be bright for the combine.

DMK is between a rock and a hard place. Having tasted victory in securing the seats they wanted, Congress will now continue to tighten the screws, and demand the choice of seats which are considered winnable. This will only result in more consternation amidst DMK and PMK cadre. The end result is a poor showing by the cadre.

At the end of the day, beyond the supposed 'money power' and 'bogus voting' that DMK is accused of, it is the enthusiastic campaign by its supporters that has helped the party and the coalition to win the previous elections. But this time, the cadre do not seem to be happy at all.

On the other side, Jayalalitha has not yet worked out any deals with MDMK, CPI and CPM. She probably thinks they have nowhere else to go, as DMK coalition is complete. So she can play hardball and give these three together around 30 seats and no more. These three, on their own, are incapable of winning a single seat. The communists will probably have the ability to hurt the winning chances of either grouping in 4-5 constituencies.

MDMK's Vaiko is a sad case. He has been loyal to Jayalalitha, who is not known much for rewarding such loyalty. Vaiko has seen his support base dwindle by the year and defections have eaten into his party. He is in no position to negotiate for anything from Jayalalitha. He can consider either merging his party into AIADMK or take a political sanyasa. The communists are also fast becoming irrelevant in a reasonably equitably growing state like Tamil Nadu. Their earlier power bases such as the Thanjavur agricultural delta and Coimbatore industrial region have probably deserted them fully now. Agriculture has dwindled in Thanjavur while DMK, AIADMK unions have replaced the communist power base in Coimbatore.

Back to DMK-Congress. There will be another round of intense feuding, with open dissonance, followed by a few more CBI raids. Then Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi wil appear together with Karunanidhi in a couple of well publicised public meetings. But the frosty relationship will be visible for all to see.

I can't see how DMK alliance will win this time, money, Azhagiri and Stalin notwithstanding.

AIAIDMK - DMDK: a winning combine?

2011-03-05T09:57:00.000+05:30

DMDK has finally done a deal with AIADMK.

All these *K parties are likely to confuse the non-Tamil Indian. But the Tamils thrive on this. The tentative grouping on the AIADMK front is now as follows (as told by a friend):

AIADMK: 144
DMDK (Vijayakanth): 41
MDMK (Vai.Ko): 18
CPM: 12
CPI: 10
MMK (Muslim Party): 3
PT (Krishnaswamy, Dalit party): 2
AISMK (Actor Sarath Kumar): 2
FB (Actor Karthik): 1

They add up to 233. So one seat is still unclear. Deals have been clinched with only DMDK, PT, MMK and FB. Though others have not yet signed the deal, this looks most likely.

Compared to this, DMK has not yet worked out the deal with Congress. DMK cadre are angry with Congress in the wake of the 2G imbroglio. There is a feeling amidst DMK folks that Congress is putting undue pressure on DMK - pressure beyond the normal electoral negotiation such as action on A. Raja and Kanimozhi on the 2G scandal, Shahid Balwa's loan and/or investment in Kalaingar TV, selective leaks from Radia tapes and so on.

Such a marriage made at gun point will not work. They will actively work towards defeating Congress in those constituencies.

On the other hand, the AIADMK-DMDK combine will be out on the streets starting today to canvass heavily. How far will Marans and their TV power come in handy to help DMK is questionable. The patch up worked out between Marans and Karunanidhi family seems too fragile. Stalin vs Azhagiri is another major factor afflicting DMK.

Considering all this, I think AIADMK-DMDK combine will walk away with an easy win.

Mass Paperback Publisher Goes All Digital

2010-08-07T08:17:00.003+05:30

A friend forwarded an article from The Wall Street Journal, about a mass market paperback publisher Dorchester completely switching to e-books and print-on-demand books.

I was expecting this to happen. Though some authors will feel aggrieved, they will all come around. More publishers will move to this model of a cheap e-book and an expensive print-on-demand printed book. Those who don't like gadgets will have to pay a premium for the on-demand printed versions.

This is a bad news for the book shops. In all the developed countries, this will speed up the closure of book shops. We will still need the publishers for a while as they bring in the editorial capabilities. Online gatherers like Amazon will flourish. If this trend continues, even the Publishers will be history, as freelance editors can ply in their trade and authors can become self-publishers. However, in such a scenario I do not know how 'super-star' authors can be created. Probably through trending in twitter?

In India, print books will stay on for at least another decade (probably more). Devices take longer to spread across in India. Credit cards and other online payment mechanisms are still under-developed. Book reading habit itself has not spread widely. But if schools start adapting e-books and an ipad like device - books and notebooks rolled into one; the younger generation may jump to e-books straight away.

Today, the single biggest problem for a regional publisher like us is to manage our inventory and constantly reprint books that go out of stock. We need to be very careful about the number of copies printed. Too many and you lock in capital and you have the risk of unsold copies. Too little and you have rush for a reprint immediately. Cost of paper keeps going up. Warehouse cost and handling cost keep going up.

We don;t publish all the books we would like to, simply because we do not know whether the cost of printing them will be recouped back. We are unsure how we can distribute a book, at low print runs. E-books eliminate these risks. There is no need to stock anything and yet you have an unlimited stock. You can take up riskier books. You can crank up more titles.

Provided you have the readers who can access the books and pay for them.

We are working on our own E-book strategy, and may in the coming months release some new titles only in the E-book format. We may probably move a whole lot of our older books (which sell very little) into E-book and POD only model like Dorchester (the e-book version will be cheap, the POD version, expensive).

Commonwealth Games

2010-08-02T09:14:00.000+05:30

I have a deep fear that Commonwealth Games will turn out to be a disaster. That it will be so for our sportspersons is reasonably known. We will win under 10 gold medals and will finish 4th - as always. We are unlikely to do any better; though chances of finishing lower always exist.

It is the organizing of the game that I am worried about the most. Newspapers talk about every conceivable problem. A stadium leaking rain water minutes after it was opened by two senior ministers in the Indian Government, a temporary roof at a table tennis court collapsing, Chairman of the organizing committee Suresh Kalmadi unable to pull his foot out of his mouth, BCCI refusing to accede to the 'donation' request of Rs 100 crores, allegations of corruption, Indian High Commissioner in UK suggesting that a letter shown by Kalmadi may be a fake, Kalmadi's own party members attacking him... the list is endless.

Amidst the usual chaos that is so natural to India, Delhi is witness to a lot of structures coming up. How many of them will be finished on time, how many of them will be safe for the athletes and the spectators and how many of them will be useful to the people afterward?

During the World Classical Tamil Conference in Coimbatore in June 2010, Coimbatore airport was to sport a new look as thousands were expected to come from all over the world, including the President of India, Pratibha Patil. But we could see unfinished concrete blocks, jutting iron rods and an unfinished pathway through which buses full of passengers were driven through. One month after the event, the situation was still the same. Likewise, much of Coimbatore saw superficial improvements probably incapable of withstanding a few spells of rain.

Will it be the same in Delhi too?

Will it offer anything of lasting value to the residents of Delhi? Will we ensure that we will not be a laughing stock in front of the world, when the games start?

Wikileaks, India and Pakistan

2010-07-27T19:06:00.003+05:30

While wikileaks has embarrassed the US, Pakistan are probably the most pissed off by the leaks. It is one thing to keep saying that they are partners in the 'war against terrorism', but totally another to defend the same in the light of solid 'evidence' that the US do not trust Pakistan.

I listened to the Pakistani Ambassador to the US in BBC World News, claiming emphatically that Pakistan have spent money and lost lives in fighting the war on terrorism in Afghanistan. No one will deny that. But, at the same time, it is not easy for the Pakistani Ambassador to deny that several rogue elements in the Pakistani establishment have always colluded with the terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. NY Times opinion clearly touches on this point.

As far as most of the Americans are concerned, Pakistan is destabilizing the war efforts of the US. That is why, NY Times headlined the wikileaks story as: Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert.

Can all this help India in some way? It is important for India to curtail Pakistan from easily getting military and other aid from around the world. However, it is not in the interests of India to have a bankrupt Pakistan. It will destabilize that country to such an extent that Pakistan will become a Somalia and there will be a hundred jehadi warlords roaming the country.

So, Pakistan should get aid - civilian aid. And the aid should come with a lot of strings attached. The strings should be in the hands of a global consortium. And India should join such a consortium so that it can control the rogue elements from capturing power in Pakistan. Part of the task should be to force Pakistan to cut down on its military spending. This will help India save up substantially on its military spending (focus mainly on China). Part of the job should be to de-nuclearise Pakistan (which won't be easy).

So far, Pakistan got away by saying it was the most important ally of the US in the war against terror. Now, it has been proven that such is not the case. We in India should really be looking forward to the American response to this.

One point though. The information leaked out to public only now. But the American officials knew about this all along, and hence they should have been tougher with Pakistan already. But, now the media and public will pressure the US administration to act, and act fast.

Americans should remember that some of their soldiers were killed in Afghanistan because some Pakistani elements helped Taliban.

Profits up, but manager in jail

2010-07-26T22:17:00.000+05:30

Sterlite has announced an increase of 50% in net profit for the first quarter ending June 2010. But one of its vice-presidents is languishing in jail, because the management screwed up.

Varadharajan, Vice-President (Indirect Taxes) for Sterlite based in Tuticorin was arrested on Friday night on the charges of Sterlite evading excise duty to the tune of over Rs 700 crores.

One would have expected that the company will work towards getting the employee out on bail on Monday, but that has not happened. The next hearing is apparently only on Thursday.

It is unclear to me how a vice-president should be held liable for such an act. If anything, the Chief Executive or the Finance Director (in the board) should have been hauled up in front of the court. Instead, we see the CEO M.S. Mehta announcing the company results, while a lower level employee is thrown in jail.

It is time the corporate top men - full time executive directors and chief executives - take full responsibility for the acts of their companies and not get their lower level employees undergo punishments on their behalf. Any decision to pay or not to pay excise duty would have only been taken by the CEO along with the approval of the board, given that the amount disputed is over Rs 700 crores.

It is also a wake-up call for the professional managers. Never accede to what the owners and directors want you to do, if you think it is against the law. You can always quit the company and find another job. It is not worth spending even one day in a jail, for some fat cat in London to make obscene profits.

Nokia, Foxconn gas leak problem

2010-07-26T15:34:00.000+05:30

News reports indicate that leaking of a noxious substance in the Foxconn factory inside the Nokia SEZ in Sriperumpudur near Chennai has resulted in several workers affected by nausea, coughing of blood and breathing problems. A Tamil website vinavu.com has a more detailed story.

This is a distressing news. Nokia should also be pulled in to deal with this problem. Foxconn is a dedicated manufacturing facility for Nokia's mobile handsets. It has subsequently come to the light that Foxconn does not have certain necessary approvals for re-opening the plant. This plant was not functional for a few months because of low orders and was restarted only recently.

Nokia should come out with a report of its own about what caused this problem and what measures are being taken to avoid recurrence of such a problem.

Further, Foxconn and Nokia should jointly announce reasonable compensation and that too immediately. Nokia cannot shirk away its responsibility in this case.

Looking through vinavu.com's website, it is shocking to find that the employees take home a paltry Rs 3,270 for working 26 days. For factory work, this is horribly low!

What is the minimal wage law in India? Something has to be done to increase this to a reasonable level.

It is because of instances such as this that capitalism gets a very bad name.

$35 Indian notepad

2010-07-26T08:38:00.001+05:30

When I saw the announcement from HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, I couldn't believe it. As usual, newspapers heralded the announcement. Then came the skeptics with their clear arguments. The bill of materials comes to nearly $50.

That is what I thought too. A 2 GB RAM, wi-fi connectivity, around 32 GB storage space, a touch screen, a processor and so on, cannot be given away for $35 (of which half is a subsidy from the Government, we are told).

What India needs is realistic goals. Not this kind of nonsense. Our students need cheap computers and decent Internet connectivity. We need enough manufacturing companies to produce these devices.

Even in poor households, if one can demonstrate the use of such a device, people will be ready to buy it for anywhere up to $150.

These devices need sufficient processing power to play audio, video and flash animation - minimum requirements for educational purposes. Linux OS with Indian language Unicode fonts and software keyboard for all the Indian scripts should be present.

Let us hope that we will have some such under Rs 10,000 devices out in the market in less than an year, than what this vague announcement offers.

Muralitharan 800

2010-07-24T14:00:00.001+05:30

I have watched Murali bowl from his debut Test. He used to be an ordinary bowler. I can't remember when he transformed himself into a match winning bowler. If one goes through statsguru, one should be able to figure out that critical timepoint.

Even after he became a matchwinner, Indian batsmen handled him quite comfortably. Until Murali developed his doosra into an art. A wild spinning off break, or a power packed top spinner can be handled well, if you can estimate the spin in the delivery. But doosra makes you so confused.

My biggest disappointment was that my favourite batsman Dravid could never deal with Muralitharan properly.

Somehow, Murali's 800 wickets seem so unreal. Next time I see his picture in a newspaper or a TV, I am unlikely to remember his 800 wickets. The only picture in my mind is him strapped to some biomechanical probes, wanting to prove that he is not a chucker. I can only remember the pain in his eyes.

The Australians dealt with him in the most unfair manner. That includes Darrell Hair as well. But the Aussie fans were incorrigible. Right through that tough period Sri Lankan cricket machinery stood firmly behind Murali. And in particular Arjuna Ranatunga.

For that unflinching faith the Sri Lankans had in Murali, he has delivered back, more than his share.

Good bye Murali!

Nimbus Retains Indian Cricket Telecast Rights

2009-10-21T09:44:00.001+05:30

Read my detailed article on BCCI and Cricket Rights.

Nimbus has retained the Indian cricket telecast rights for the next four years. The current rights were due to expire in March 2010. This is the first time in the last several years where the rights have simply been retained by Nimbus, without going through a bid process. Nimbus had the right of first refusal and exercised it and the board also pegged the price reasonably.

It is also the first time over the several years, where the revenue is going down. The original deal for the last four years was $612 million. This was brought down to $549 million because of (a) Government ruling that ODIs to be shared with Doordarshan (b) Radio rights to be given to All India Radio (c) England tour cut short because of Mumbai terrorist attack.

Now, the fee is further revised down, and on current exchange rate comes to only $431 million. The reason suggested is the upcoming World Cup in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and its impact on the number of Test and ODIs India will play at home.

However, there is another important reason. It is that, the value of the ODIs have gone down tremondously. The TRP ratings have fallen. The advertisement revenue has fallen. This is the effect of T20 on cricket telecast and rights fee.

The biggest fall out will be for countries such as New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and England, when ESPN-Star Sports look out to renew their rights.

The cricket righs have reached a plateue - at least for now.

Cricinfo news

DNA report quotes an unnamed BCCI official saying that web streaming rights for Indian cricket can fetch up to $100 million. The BCCI official is foolish. This is simply not possible. The IPL web rights holder cricket.com simply vanished, after promising millions of dollars. These numbers are unsustainable.

IIT eligibility

2009-10-20T10:15:00.001+05:30

[Update: Minister Kapil Sibal says this whole thing was misquoted or wrongly reported.]

All newspapers are reporting Kapil Sibal as stating that students should get at least 80% marks in class XII exams in addition to qualifying and getting a high enough rank in JEE. Apparently, the current eligibility is 60% in class XII.

The 60% rule itself is surprising to me. In 1987, when I went to IIT Madras, no such eligibility rule existed. We were expected to pass the class XII exams conducted by an approved board. That was it. The IIT administration asked for my mark sheet to take a cursory look. That was it.

What is the need for introducing this 60% and 80% rule, if the JEE is considered to be a comprehensive test of the fundamentals? (That JEE itself needs massive improvement is another issue.) It is another matter that getting 80% in class XII should not be difficult for any of the top 5000+ rank holders in IIT JEE. But the very demand seems ridiculous.

Sibal has a tough problem in hand, dealing with the educational mess in the country. He should not waste his time on small matters such as this.

M.A in Kalainjar Thought

2009-10-16T20:33:00.001+05:30

In a first of its kind move, Madras University has decided to introduce a two-year masters level program called M.A in Kalainjar Thought. For the uninitiated, Kalainjar is the honorific for the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.Karunanidhi. The masters program will explore the body of work written by the serving Chief Minister.

As far as I know, there are no such courses run by Madras University for Darwin Thought or Newton Thought. I am not even sure whether Madras University is offering any such program on Gandhian Thought. Or about Thiruvalluvar Thought!

Needless to say, this is the stupidest move I can ever think of. The other two courses, one on Periyar Thought and the other on Anna Thought, are also dodgy courses. A course on Dravidian Movement and its impact on social, political and cultural landscape in Tamil Nadu is a better idea.

News from The Hindu

A confusing election and the Sri Lankan question

2009-05-09T07:35:00.000+05:30

As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, the current parliamentary election is nothing short of confusing to the voters. The one overpowering issue is Sri Lankan Tamil crisis, something that does not directly affect the lives of the people of Tamil Nadu. However, the emotional ties between the Tamils of Tamil Nadu and that of Sri Lanka, and the suffering the Tamils of Sri Lanka have undergone in the last 3 decades have moved almost all the people of Tamil Nadu, except a minority.

This has forced almost all the political parties to take a stance on this issue. That is what confuses the people. To start with, some parties distinguish between the suffering Tamil masses and the armed revolutionary group LTTE. Some others do not distinguish the two and believe that the hope of Tamils lie entirely with the wellbeing of LTTE and its leader Prabakaran.

The principal parties AIADMK, DMK have queered the pitch a lot in the run up to the election. AIADMK's Jayalalitha, until recently, was not bothered about the Sri Lankan problem at all. She was vehemently anti-LTTE and vowed to drive them out of whatever little presence they had in Tamil Nadu. Though Karunanidhi's DMK was not seen as an overt friend of LTTE, the party was also not seen as an out and out enemy of LTTE like Jayalalitha was.

However, DMK is a partner of Congress in the centre and depends on that party for survival in the state legislature. Congress party hates LTTE and Prabakaran for their part in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. As far as the Congress headed Central Government is concerned, LTTE is a proscribed organization in India and Prabakaran is a proclaimed offender in the Rajiv Gandhi murder case.

Parties such as MDMK, PMK and VC in Tamil Nadu accuse Congress government of openly supplying arms, logistical support and diplomatic support to the Sri Lankan government and military in their war efforts to crush and demolish LTTE. In the last 6 months the Sri Lankan army has successfully destroyed the hold of LTTE and now LTTE is restricted to a mere 3-4 square kilometres, with Prabakaran on the run.

However, the unfortunate Tamil people have suffered endlessly in tha hands of the Sri Lankan military. 'Collateral damage' or wanton destruction of lives, several thousand Tamils have been killed and even more maimed for life.

At the other end, the Tamils took up the liberation struggle because they were subjugated, their rights curtailed and a federal structure was denied to the people. Several decades of peaceful struggle yielded nothing. Sinhalese majority is authoritarian, narrow minded and contemptuous of the minority. While it is understandable that the Sinhalese despise LTTE, it is difficult to see Sinhalese intellectuals talking openly about a sensible federal political solution. One or two Sinhalese journalists who were critical of the Government's approach have been bumped off by unidentified gunmen.

A victorious Sinhalese army and government will exact their revenge. Tamils will be vanquished, their rights further curtailed and the poor people forced into deadly concentration camps. The world powers will cry for a while and move on.

In the last few decades, nowhere in the world, minority struggles have succeeded by way of peaceful negotiations.

In this background, Indian parliamentary elections appeared to take a specific direction in Tamil Nadu. It looked as if a lot of people will vote out the DMK-Congress combine. The pro-Tamil, PMK and MDMK now partner AIADMK. Jayalalitha herself changed her stance and started talking about getting a separate Eelam in Sri Lanka for the Tamils (a promise she certainly cannot fulfill). She undertook a fast.

Perturbed by this, Karunanidhi also undertook a sudden fast, and several other Government sponsored agitations. The drama continued and it was announced that because of Karunanidhi's fast, the Indian government extracted a 'ceasefire' in Sri Lanka. The reality was that Sri Lankan army merely announced cessation of heavy arm fire on civilians. However, world media reported heavy shelling even after the drama of a fast. But with the help of pliant Tamil Nadu media - two TV channels are controlled by Karunanidhi's family - we were all informed that there is no more fighting in Sri Lanka and people are safe, thanks to Karunanidhi's fast!

Other issues have simply vanished in this confusion. To be honest, other issues have to do with governance at the state level and they should not be issues to be discussed in this election. The sorry state of electricity in the state should be reflected in the next assembly election. Corruption is taken for granted, but by both DMK and AIADMK. So one cannot distinguish the parties on that basis (Unlike a Lalu Yadav - Nithish Kumar fight in Bihar).

***

For the first time in the last few elections, I am personally confused about who to vote in my constituency. I will probably remain undecided till the 13th morning, as I walk down 100 metres from my home where my polling booth is located. I will probably be undecided until I reach the electronic voting machine. My vote is certainly not for DMK's Dayanidhi Maran. It may not be to AIADMK's Jinnah. Perhaps some poor independent candidate may get a vote from me this time.

Political agitations to stop the war in Sri Lanka

2009-01-20T10:03:00.000+05:30

All attempts in Tamil Nadu to stop the war in Sri Lanka have failed so far. The latest - an indefinite fast by Thol.Thirumavalavan was stopped in 4 days. Now, there is a proposal of 10 days of bandh. This will be an ill-conceived move again.

Sadly, this is because the political parties are not united in their support for the cause and bicker amongst themselves. Smaller parties go on their own and stage violent agitations, making it difficult to get complete public sympathy for this cause.

Every time there is an all-party meeting on this topic, the key opposition parties AIADMK and MDMK stay away. Now, the communist parties have also moved to this camp.

PMK and VCK put tremendous pressure on DMK to act. However their public posturing makes it difficult for DMK to act. It is like asking a person, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" You cannot answer in the affirmative too.

Just to make the matters worse, VCK and other fringe groups make it a point to attack Rajiv Gandhi statues and on one occasion have ransacked the Congress party headquarters in Chennai.

It is imperative for the friends of the Sri Lankan Tamils to know that without the support of Congress party, they cannot stop the Sri Lankan army moving into the Tamil areas. The Indian general election is three months away and the chances are that Congress will still come back to power.

This is where Thirumavalavan goes wrong again and again. At least Ramadoss has understood this point and is asking for reconciliation with Congress.

It appears to me that, the person best suited to present Tamil Nadu's case to the centre on stopping the war in Sri Lanka is actually Ramadoss and not Karunanidhi. However, Ramadoss doesn't have the power and Karunanidhi is unwilling to make a move.

Time is running out for lakhs of people in Mullaitivu and surroundings, suffering heavy shelling by the Sri Lankan army. The humanitarian crisis is not known to the rest of the world because there is no coverage whatsoever.

The political roadmap for bringing peace to Sri Lanka would work as follows:

1. An attempt to stop attacking Congress party and Rajiv Gandhi. A complete reconciliation with Congress and full support of the party in stopping the war in Sri Lanka. Here the issue of the LTTE must be raised and kept for later discussions. Stopping the war and bringing the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE to the negotiating table is more of a priority.

2. Removal of policy making people in the external affairs ministry who have no understanding of the Sri Lankan issue, and replacement of the same with officers who are sensitive to the sufferings of people in the neighbouring country.

3. Immediate effecting of ceasefire. Unless the Indian Government leans on the Sri Lankan Government, this will not happen.

4. Once normalcy returns, then one can move to the next step of discussing various peace solutions. A solution may not be possible even in the next decade, but stopping the war and ensuring that it does not flare up again, will save several lives.

Thirumavalavan's hunger strike

2009-01-17T07:54:00.000+05:30

The chief of Viduthalai Chiruththaigal Katchi (VCK), Thol.Thirumavalavan is on a hunger strike (entering third day today) to force India to demand a stop to the war in Sri Lanka.

It is unclear if India will make a move in this regard. A directive to force feed Thirumavalavan from centre will be issued and the chief minister of Tamil Nadu will be forced to ensure this.

DMK has been unable to force the Congress lead UPA to move swiftly to stop the war in Sri Lanka. A strong faction in the Indian Government wants the war to continue, to decimate or at least cripple the LTTE. However, the impact on the people of Northern Sri Lanka (Vanni) has been disastrous.

With weapons of considerably lower calibre, Sri Lankan army has killed, maimed and rendered Tamil people homeless, than what Israel has done in Gaza in the last month. Both Israel and Sri Lanka claim that the damage to civilians is collateral.

With virtually no TV coverage of the affected Vanni region, there is no outrage in India. The political parties in Tamil Nadu have failed to highlight the problems in Sri Lanka to political parties in other Indian states.

Thol.Thirumavalavan organized a public meeting last month in Chennai on "Recognizing Tamil Eelam as a separate country". Doubtless, it is an extreme solution. The administration ensured that the event coverage was spiked; no television channel even talked about this. Initially, Thirumavalavan was not allowed by the Tamil Nadu government to organize this event. He had to move the Chennai High Court to get the clearence.

The Sri Lankan Tamil problem has not yet become a poll issue in Tamil Nadu. Unless that happens and the political parties fear that they will lose votes if they do not bring immediate relief to the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Indian government will not move forward. Until then, the Sri Lankan army operation will continue.

Thirumangalam bye-election

2009-01-15T08:23:00.000+05:30

DMK has won the bye-election 2009 in Thirumangalam. In 2006, AIADMK/MDMK coalition had won this seat on a narrow margin of less than 5,000 votes. This time, DMK has won with a massive margin of 39,266 votes.

In 2006, MDMK polled 45,067 votes, whereas in 2009, AIADMK got, only 40,156 votes.

There are two main sources of additional votes for DMK. The total number of (valid) votes polled has increased by around 18,000. The 'others', including DMDK have lost around 15,000 votes compared to the 2006 election. AIADMK coalition has lost around 5000 votes.

All these votes have gone to DMK, totally around 38,000+ - which is the victory margin of DMK.

I can only attribute DMK's money power and threats that have forced the voters to turn up en masse and vote for DMK.

One can understand people being bribed to vote, and they may genuinely feel that they should vote for DMK as they have received Rs. 5,000 + other freebies. To a lot of people, that is a lot of money.

How can we rationalise the 'threat' element? Voting is anonymous. Still, several uneducated voters of Thirumangalam might have felt that DMK somehow has the power to identify who has voted for who. This, coupled with the known rowdy actions of M.K.Azhagiri, son of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi would have frightened several voters.

Over the last three years, DMK has lot the support of three important allies. The two communist parties have moved out of the coalition and have joined with Jayalalitha's AIADMK. PMK has stayed away from both the parties. VCK has moved from AIADMK camp to DMK camp. However, in Thirumangalam, VCK and PMK would have contributed very little. The two communist parties, would have accounted for around 5,000 votes, if at all.

That would mean, the swing achieved by DMK is even more, to compensate the loss of around 5,000 votes going to the opposite camp.

Yet, this election cannot be seen as a trend in any sense, for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

DMK cannot spend this sort of money in every constituency. Its 'top management' cannot focus on all the constituencies with campaigning.

However, three months is a long time in Tamil Nadu and the kind of coalition that is put together will determine the outcome. Unlike the last election, my guess is that, this time, the parliamentary seats will be shared roughly 50%-50% between DMK and AIADMK groups.

PMK is most likely to join the AIADMK group. BJP may not get anything as it is unlikely to be part of either AIADMK or DMK groups. DMDK may also draw a blank. It is possible that BJP and DMDK may come together to fight the elections, in which case, they will end of as number three everywhere.

Books I bought at the Chennai Book Fair

2009-01-14T16:01:00.001+05:30

Dilbert and the way of the weasel, Scott Adams
The wonder that was India, A L Basham

The communist parties and the LTTE

2009-01-12T09:27:00.002+05:30

To follow up on yesterday's posting, two quotes found in Dinamani today will make my assertion clear.

Talking to newspersons in Coimbatore, CPM's Brinda Karat said: "There should be a permanent political solution to the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka. The sympathy shown to the Sri Lankan Tamils should not encourage entities that support the LTTE. The Sri Lankan Tamils and the LTTE are different from each other." (Dinamani, 12/1/2009)

Speaking at Paramakkudi, CPI's D.Pandian said: "No one can fight for a cause for a period of 30 years without the support of the people. Therefore, one cannot dismiss the LTTE away as mere terrorists." (Dinamani, 12/1/2009)

I mentioned yesterday that the two communist parties have not made their views on the LTTE clear, while showing pro- and anti- stance. They have today made their stance fairly clear.

CPI favours talking to the LTTE and recognizing them. CPI(M) does not and considers the LTTE, untouchable.

LTTE and the Tamil Nadu political parties

2009-01-10T11:59:00.002+05:30

We can group Tamil Nadu (based) political parties as follows:

1. AIADMK, Congress - Vehemently oppose the LTTE. If possible, they avoid mentioning the sufferings of the Sri Lankan Tamils.

2. PMK (Ramadoss), VCK (Thol.Thirumavalavan), MDMK (Vai.Ko) - Actively support the LTTE. If threatened with arrests, pipe down a little bit, only to resurface again with open expression of support.

3. DMK - thoroughly confused as to what to do. By nature, pro-Ealam and hence pro-LTTE, but depends on Congress for support in the state legislature. Also, a key player in the central coalition ministry and hence cannot be seen to be actively "anti-national".

4. BJP - though a fringe player in Tamil Nadu, has suddenly come up with a pro-LTTE stand, asking for the removal of ban on the LTTE in India.

5. CPI - Tamil Nadu unit of the party is pro-Ealam, though will not openly talk about the LTTE.

6. CPI (M) - Anti-LTTE though they will not openly make any statements.

7. DMDK - Vijayakanth'a party. No explicit statements so far.

8. Several Periyarist, Tamil Nationalist outfits which are outright pro-LTTE.

***

MDMK, PMK, VCK see the LTTE as the only group capable of safeguarding the interests of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Periyarist, Tamil nationalist groups see the LTTE and Prabhakaran as somewhat larger - on par with a Sangam era Tamil hero or victorious Tamil kings who vanquished other kingdoms. They are therefore willing to accept the decimation of other Tamil armed groups/peaceful groups in Sri Lanka by the LTTE.

Congress sees the LTTE as the group that killed their leader Rajiv Gandhi. This 'personal' enmity is the reason why there will never be a rapprochement between Congress and the LTTE. Further complication arises when the fringe supporters of the LTTE consider Congress as their enemy and attack the party verbally and also physically. This strengthens Congress' resolve to increase their opposition to the LTTE even further.

AIADMK will remain anti-LTTE as long as Jayalalitha is at the helm of this party. She also seems to harbour personal enmity, the reasons for this are unclear, against the LTTE.

For all the others, support or opposition to LTTE is not steadfast. They can always change their tune according to the situation. There is nothing ideological in their stand vis-a-vis the LTTE.

***

Is it acceptable for a democratic country or constitutional elements within a democratic country to encourage or support armed fight in another country?

Those who support the LTTE in Tamil Nadu contend that the LTTE has taken to the arms only because of Sinhala chauvinism - constant attacks and periodic riots against the Tamil minorities in Sri Lanka, colonisation of Tamil lands by Sinhala farmers, unreasonable restrictions on Tamils from getting into higher education and jobs, imposition of Sinhalese language over the Tamils, imposition of Buddhism everywhere, lack of sufficient representation for Tamils in the Police and the military, to name a few.

The LTTE's supporters say that all peaceful means of convincing the Sinhalese majority on devolution of power to the minority Tamils did not work. Therefore, frustrated Tamils took to arms, which resulted in a clutch of armed groups such as EROS, TELO, LTTE, EPRLF, ENDLF and so on. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the LTTE emerged stronger by decimating or forcefully merging other groups.

***

The Sri Lankan Tamil problem has several aspects that need to be addressed. There should be more vigorous debate in Tamil Nadu and across India. There is no solution to the Palestine conflict without having a dialogue with Hamas. Even the UN recognizes this. However, in Tamil Nadu and India, talking about the LTTE is a taboo.

Tamil Nadu based political parties should not shy away from talking about the LTTE.

I will discuss more on this in the subsequent posts.

Satyam Computers fiasco

2009-01-07T21:51:00.001+05:30

What a sad story. They have not given dividends at all in three of the last four years. The only year they paid, it was nominal. This is a company supposed to be in the top 5, in terms of revenue amongst the IT service providers in India. It showed a revenue of more than 8500 crores in the last financial year.

I feel sorry for the employees - around 53,000 of them. This company now cannot be resurrected. No one will acquire the company. There are likely to be class action suits in US, and serious proceedings in India too. The assets of the company may also not be parcelled into a new company and sold off, as the contracts are easily movable to TCS, Infosys, Wipro or HCL. Besides these contracts, they do not have any assets worth talking about.

The employees will find the going tough today as there are so few jobs going around in IT these days.

Quite devastating for corporate India and the auditing fraternity in India.

Let us hope there are no more skeletons about to come out.

Satyam accounting fraud: NY Times

Providing evidence acceptable to Pakistan

2009-01-06T22:47:00.002+05:30

There is no way, India can provide evidence acceptable to Pakistan. Putting it another way, whatever evidence India comes up with, Pakistan will find them not up to the mark.

That is because, Pakistan cannot accept openly that its territory was used by terrorists to stage the attack on India. If Pakistan accepts this fact, then India will push Pakistan harder to act against the terrorists. Pakistan cannot do that. India may ask for their extradition. Pakistan cannot do that. So, Pakistan will continue to stonewall India.

However, India should not get frustrated by this and continue to apply pressure on Pakistan and the International community - by which I mean US, EU and China. Others do not matter much. Pakistan needs funding from these three to survive. India should protest heavily if it appears that they are likely to offer loans to Pakistan, before Pakistan resolves the Mumbai problem with India.

Alternately, India should offer Pakistan development loans (in Indian Rupees, not in US dollars), if Pakistan acts mercilessly against the terrorists (by extraditing them to India), and also cracks down on the Jihadi elements in ISI.

M.K.Stalin caught distributing money to voters

2009-01-06T09:30:00.003+05:30

Bye-elections shouldn't be taken very seriously. But, not so in Tamil Nadu. The results of Thirumangalam constituency will not make a change in the governing set up in Tamil Nadu. A vacancy arose when MDMK candidate from Thirumangalam died of heart attack. By the rules of decency, MDMK should have been asked to put up a candidate for that seat. MDMK is part of the coalition headed by Jeyalalitha's AIADMK. Big Sister Jeyalalitha, instead, decided that AIADMK will contest the seat to ensure that DMK is defeated.

In the meantime, Madurai's de facto Governor, M.K.Azhagiri vowed that he will make DMK win the seat.

The first contest was who will be the candidate for DMK. M.K.Azhagiri and M.K.Stalin, the two sons of DMK Chief Minister Karunanidhi staged a shadow fight and Stalin won. Azhagiri cried wolf and refused to campaign citing eye surgery. He was finally persuaded to campaign, but one could see his unease in TV. Stalin and Azhagiri appeared together but Azhagiri rarely spoke.

But then, Azhagiri rarely speaks. His goondas do the needful. They too believe in action than words.

Not that people in this constituency think this is some kind of referendum on DMK rule. Both AIADMK and DMK are fighting to demonstrate to other political parties, which way the upcoming Parliamentary election results will go.

So, both parties have let loose the purse strings. Both parties have resorted to large scale bribery of the voters. In an earlier bye-election too, there were talks of each voter being given Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000. Now, because of inflation, the going rate seems to be around Rs. 5,000.

Normally, such talks are rarely backed up with hard evidence. Yesterday, however, AIADMK controlled Jaya TV showed a video snippet of M.K.Stalin distributing cash. Note that M.K.Stalin is the newly elected Treasurer of DMK and is the Minister for Municipal Administration and Rural Development in the Tamil Nadu Government.

The Election Commission is filing a case. Stalin claims he gave the money as a birthday present to a child and that he can produce 'evidence' if asked.

It is unbelievable that so much money is being spent by DMK and AIADMK. The only way the voters can teach these rascals a lesson is by electing DMDK candidate from this constituency. DMKDK is the party founded by actor Vijaykanth. Though there is probably nothing greatly redeeming about the DMDK candidate, it is essential that obscene money power be punished by the voters.

The Fall of Kilinochi

2009-01-05T14:50:00.002+05:30

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) have lost their key city, their de facto capital Kilinochi, to the Sri Lankan army. Sri Lankan army have gained ascendancy over the last several months, starting with Mavilaru in the East, culminating in "liberating" Eastern Sri Lanka from the control of LTTE. Now, their progress is the North has pushed LTTE cadres to surrender positions held by them for close to a decade.

LTTE are far from out. They will step up suicide attacks in Colombo, and could possibly expand this all the way to Matara in the South.

The humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka is worse than in Gaza. Since we get Gaza beamed into our houses non-stop, we sympathise more with the Palestinians.

The Tamil Nadu based supporters of LTTE have been ineffective in getting proper coverage of the Sri Lankan issue in the Indian media, and also in sensitising non-Tamil Indians on the Sri Lankan problem and the role expected to be played by the Indian Government in bringing this crisis to a stop.

I intend to touch upon some of the aspects of the Sri Lankan crisis and the views of various Indian political parties in this regard, in a series of posts.

Pranab Mukherjee and the Congress headed UPA Government cannot shy away from their responsibilities. They cannot delay meeting the Sri Lankan Government any further. The war in Sri Lanka must be stopped immediately and only India can play this role effectively.

Chinese publishing company's dual language publishing idea

2008-07-31T09:06:00.003+05:30

A Chinese book publishing company, People's Medical Publishing House has acquired BC Decker's medical and dental books. [news from Publishers Weekly]

Going forward, People's Medical Publishing House (owned by Chinese Health Ministry) will be publishing medical and dental books in English and Chinese. The parent company will also be translating several of the back titles into Chinese.

This is an excellent idea. There are several US, Canada, UK based small publishing houses which can be acquired by Chinese and Indian companies for the value of their content, and republish translations of such books into Chinese and Indian languages. Sometimes, this will work out better than merely buying translation rights.

Pearson group revenue, profit up

2008-07-29T09:43:00.002+05:30

In the first half of 2008, Pearson Publishing Group increased its revenue to UKP 1.97 billion, up 6%. Its operating profits was UKP 124 million. [The Guardian Report]

The breakup is interesting:

US Educational sales: UKP 713 million
Rest of the world Educational sales: UKP 365 million
Financial Times: UKP 374 million
Penguin: UKP 408 million
Other: UKP 110 million

Espresso Book Machine expected to roll out in UK

2008-07-27T22:35:00.003+05:30

UK's The Sunday Times reports that soon the US based OnDemandBooks will offer its Espresso Book Machine to Blackwell, a chain of over 60 book stores in the UK.

I was quite impressed with the concept of the Espresso Book Machine when it debuted.

The machines are 9ft long, 5ft high, and allow customers to type in the title they want to buy. After about seven minutes, the book is printed out, trimmed and bound, selling for the same price as its shelf equivalent at the shop.

The fun in this machine is not placing it in a book shop! But anywhere where there is some space - like restaurants, tube stations, reception area of a large office complex - typically wherever vending machines sell crisps and colas. The machine needs an internet connection and has a nice touch screen interface for browsing the books and a credit card swiper to grab the money.

This may not still work in the Indian context for a while. Or, I may be wrong. Who knows? We may have a bunch of such machines placed all over India within an year or two.

However, when it comes to really printing on-demand books for physical distribution or internet ordering, this is not the machine. Solid heavy-duty Xerox, HP printers can offer for better pricing. Amazon's BookSurge offers a much better pricing than the 7c a page offered by this machine.

Innovation in promotion?

2008-07-25T12:08:00.002+05:30

The Wall Street Journal reports that Stepehn King's new short story collection is being promoted by converting one of his unpublished short story in to multiple episodes of animated video.

However, these clips (25 of them) are being sold through Amazon and iTunes for $3.99. I would have thought it would make more sense to make them freely available, allowing people to download and watch them in large numbers and then go on to buy the book by paying hard cash.

Anyway, an interesting model.

Canada publishing revenues in 2006

2008-07-11T19:31:00.003+05:30

In 2006, Canada's book publishing revenue was Can $2.1 billion, down 1.2% from the 2005 revenues. [Source]

The operating expenses went up by 0.9% because of increased salaries, wage and other benefits. Thus, the profit margin has come down to 10.3% from 12.1% the previous year.

Interesting stats. Now, how long do we have to wait to get the stats for the year 2007?

Vodafone Crossword Awards

2008-07-03T21:40:00.000+05:30

For the translation category, the award was shared by Chowringee and Govardhan's Travels.

Our two shortlisted entries didn't win any.

IPL official website stats

2008-07-02T09:49:00.002+05:30

The owner of www.iplt20.com, Live Current Media Inc. has revealed that it received "50 million page views from over 5.2 million unique visitors during 18 April to 1 June 2008", reports IndianTelevision.com.

iplt20.com received substantial promotion in the TV coverage.

Whether this kind of page views can be justified by the $5 million tag deserves analysis.

Live Current Media Inc. has also indicated that it will "launch the official BCCI site www.bcci.tv in beta before the 18 July Test match between India and Sri Lanka and global cricket site www.cricket.com in beta by August 2008."

Simon & Schuster's Christian imprint for children

2008-07-02T09:45:00.002+05:30

Newsweek reports that Simon & Schuster is setting up an imprint called "Simon Inspirations", to publish Christian religious books for children. This is the first time a mainstream publisher is doing this.

The new line, which includes 13 titles this year, will skip Bible stories and focus instead on books like Karen Hill's upcoming "Finding the Golden Ruler," which teach Christian values without delving into specific doctrine.

The Asli paperback writers

2008-07-01T09:16:00.003+05:30

Nilanjana Roy, Chief editor, Westland/ Tranquebar writes in her column in Business Standard:

I asked one publisher who the average pulp fiction reader was. He admitted that most pulp fiction readers, especially in the languages of Hindi and Malayalam, were male. But he added, "College professors, site labourers, some housewives, young students, businessmen, salesmen, rickshaw-walas — everyone but you English-speaking types."

Pity the Anglicised, for they don't know what they're missing.

Indeed! Nilanjana also says:

There were whole worlds enclosed in these ridiculously cheap paperbacks, printed on either the thinnest or the most coarse paper one might get, that were unavailable to the English-speaking reader.

The Indian language speaker doesn't mind walking to the nearest corner shop to buy the "coarse" paper novel costing Rs. 10-15. The Anglophone wants something sophisticated, which will cost Rs. 200-500. It may be quite possible to create Rs. 10 paperback novels in English but distribution will become a nightmare.

In Tamil, for example, 25-30% will be the margin given to the agents, who in turn retain around 10% and pass the rest on to the shopkeeper. For a book priced Rs. 15, the retailer will mostly get Rs. 3, the agent Rs. 1.5, the author Rs. 1 - 1.5 (per copy), printing cost around Rs. 5-6 (at print runs above 10,000) and the publisher, the rest (Rs. 3 per copy sold!). Are the English publishers ready for this game? Even if they are, the distributors, even if offered 50%, will not touch it, for it is too cheap to deal with. Therein lies the problem.

This is why, real pulp will work only in the Indian languages and Anglophones will have to be content only with some translations once in a while.

Sivakasi printing industry in decline

2008-06-30T17:48:00.004+05:30

Business Standard article talks about how while India has seen 300% growth in the printing industry, Sivakasi's growth has been less than 15%. From a high of 60% market share of the Indian printing, the small souther Tamil Nadu town has now merely a 20-25% share.

Sivakasi for long has been the printing capital of Tamil Nadu. It still continues to be, though if one believes the BS article, Sivakasi is fast losing out. More corporate investments have probably not happened there. I can see a lot of solid investments in printing machinery and infrastructure happening in Chennai. Other state capitals have also shown significant investment in this space.

In Chennai alone, there is massive excess capacity in printing because of RR Donnelly setting up a massive printing facility in Nokia SEZ in Sriperumbudur. Till that point in time, Nokia were giving a lot of jobs to various Chennai printers, but now they get all the printing done within the SEZ.

Sivakasi's leading printer Srinivasa Fine Arts may still be growing at the rate of 30-40%. They seem to have significant overseas orders. However, other, smaller printers in Sivakasi may be facing trouble. The only hope for a lot of them is to open up marketing offices in Chennai and other state capitals, aggressively seek out jobs and then get them executed in their Sivakasi facilities.

Self-publishing for Kids

2008-06-28T17:43:00.001+05:30

Via The Christian Science Monitor Via Boston Herald

A site called Tikatok allows children to write a story, draw pictures, scan them and send them to the site, where the same will be put together as a digital book, which can be purchased for $20.

This is a great idea.

I thought of a similar idea when we launched our children's imprint Prodigy Books. My idea was to go to a school, get all the kids in a particular class involved in putting together a story, then each of them to draw specific pages, put them all together right there as a digital book, print them and give each child a copy.

We never implemented this.

India will require a different costing model.

I have been trying to convince my daughter to do a book but she has not spent enough time on this. She loses her interest after she draws a page and goes on to other things - worse, mostly it is to watch television. I should show her this site and encourage her to finish a full book!

I have also tried convincing my wife and daughter together to make an animated flash movie, for which the story and pictures are to come from my daughter and the animation effort and flash packaging from my wife. That has also not materialised, so far.

Pulp fiction in Tamil

2008-06-28T12:20:00.002+05:30

My colleague Satya blogs about Mukul Kesavan's glowing review in Outlook of an English translation of Tamil pulp fiction from a new publisher called Blaft.

Mukul says,

When I was in college, railway station bookstalls were crammed with Hindi novels by Gulshan Nanda. I never read a novel by him, which I regret because it’s strange to be cut off from someone that so many are reading. But like many Anglophone Indians, I find reading in an Indian language a chore. The reason our reading lives aren’t nourished by popular novels set in locales we know is not because they aren’t written, but because they aren’t translated.

I am reasonably aware of the pulp fiction scenario in Tamil Nadu. Popular weekly magazines provided a fertile ground for the pulp fiction writers. Fiction was serialised through these magazines. Once the serials were completed, they were published as books, but never sold in large numbers. Most avid readers will tear the pages from the magazines and bind them together. Such bound volumes were even circulated by the lending libraries.

In the late 1980s when computer aided typesetting and offset printing flourished, several pulp writers found new avenues for publishing. They started writing full-length "novels" - which were mostly 80-90 page, 20,000 word stories, as opposed to weekly serials. Thrillers, murder mysteries, sex crimes, problems faced by a young married woman in her husband's house, mother-in-law vs daughter-in-law, people possessed by demons, tantriks and witches and what not - these were the themes. A new crop of publishers came up to publish these novels in the form of monthly magazines. They acquired single print run rights from the authors. These magazines contained other features too, in addition to the novel. There were one or two page short stories, a few (badly written) verses, some jokes etc. Exclusive monthly magazines were started to publish novels from a single author, month after month.

The authors had the right to take the same novels to other publishers, after 5-6 months, for long-term print rights.

In the magazine format, the novels cost Rs. 5 to start with and then moved up with the inflation to Rs. 10. Even now, this format is alive and typically they cost between Rs. 8 to Rs. 20 and sometimes even Rs. 25. They were and are printed in fairly low quality newsprint paper, badly edited and poorly packaged with lurid, brightly coloured wrapper. After the single print run, the same novel was made available normally at around Rs. 50 or so in a slightly better quality maplitho paper with a cardboard wrapper, perfect bound.

In the magazine format, in their heydays, these novels sold as many as 50,000 copies in a single print run - in some cases even more, within a period of 10 days. As is the case with India, these books were read by multiple readers, so the readership could be as much as 200,000 or more. Then they were sold in the seconds market, and resold till the newsprint crumbled. Even after that, it was sold as packaging material for grocery shops!

In the mid-1990s, cable television started spreading fast across India. Their soaps and serials captured the imagination of people. This impacted the pulp market substantially. The space for serialised stories in weekly magazines started coming down and now in 2008, the space has shrunk to zero. Short stories were also killed over this period. Pulp writers as a breed started vanishing. Several have become old and write little or nothing. New pulp writers have not come up or have not become popular enough for want of space.

Even now, a few monthly magazines publishing pulp continue their business. The best print runs are around 10,000. Only Ramani Chandran continues to get 20,000-25,000 print runs.

Blaft's anthology consists of stars from yesteryears. Rajesh Kumar doesn't write much any more. Pattukottai Prabhakar and Subha don't put out many. Indira Soundarrajan has found writing screenplay and dialogues for television serials more lucrative.

Pulp fiction is an important genre. It creates more readers for the more serious literature.

In Malayalam, the dominant book publisher DC Books also publishes pulp fiction under an imprint 'Janapriya Sahitya'. It is time, serious Tamil publishers too focus on publishing pulp and create good pulp writers.

If good pulp is available in the Indian languages, they will get translated into English and Anglophone Indians like Mukul Kesavan can have their fill too!

Business Standard article on Publishing in India

2008-06-23T13:35:00.004+05:30

This is a general story with no major insights in Business Standard. Claims that the story attempts to "[make] sense of change in the Indian publishing industry, by meeting the people at the forefront" but falls well short of that. I can't see any obvious "change" happening in the Indian publishing industry, particularly the English language industry. There are excellent growth opportunities, but existing players are merely doing what they have been doing all along and nothing innovative or new is happening there to my knowledge.

IMPAC award to Rawi Hage, Lebanon born Canadian

2008-06-13T19:25:00.002+05:30

It is amazing that a novel (De Niro's Game) written in his third language (English) and a debut novel at that has given Rawi Hage, an International award.

Congratulations.

News

Behavioural targeting of Internet ads

2008-06-09T09:07:00.003+05:30

The Economist has an article on behavioural Internet ad targeting being tested by couple of companies.

The ultimate way to work out what someone is interested in would be to intercept his web-browsing traffic and search it for keywords. And that is exactly what companies such as Phorm and NebuAd enable internet-service providers (ISPs) to do (see Technology Quarterly). Equipment in the ISP's network scans passing web pages for keywords that are then used to target ads. The ISP then gets a cut when someone clicks on an ad, which is why ISPs are so keen on the technology.

Until now, Internet ads involved a content site partnering an ad serving technology company. They planted a cookie in a customer's computer and delivered ads to the user depending on the country/state/town of the customer, day of the week, hour of the day etc.

Ad technology companies like Doubleclick (Now owned by Google) provide services to several content sites. In a way, this allows Doubleclick to track the web usage behaviour of the clients, albeit, only partially.

Now, the new proposal tries to target a user's behaviour completely, by bringing in the ISPs. Until now, the ISPs made no money from the Internet advertising. The money stayed with the content sites and the ad serving companies. ISPs will certainly like the proposal from Phorm and NebuAd.

Personally, I don't feel this is a major violation of customer's privacy data. Customers have agreed to view ads in content pages. How these ads are customised shouldn't get them worked up too much.

As for myself, I use Adblock in Firefox and filter out all the ads from the sites that I visit regularly.

Netcore to launch "Blackberry" like service

2008-06-08T12:13:00.004+05:30

Business Standard reports a cheaper, home-made Blackberry like service to be launched by Netcore Solutions, a venture run by Rajesh Jain. The proposed service will cover all kinds of handsets unlike Blackberry.

[Rajesh Jain is an investor in our current venture, New Horizon Media Pvt. Ltd.]

Hachette Livre UK's tiff with Amazon UK

2008-06-08T12:06:00.003+05:30

Hachette Livre, a top four book publisher is accusing Amazon UK of pulling out several of its titles from the e-commerce platform, demanding higher sales discount, reports Sunday Herald.

The ugly Amazon - from International Herald Tribune

Hachette claims that it is already offering more than 50% of the MRP as sales commission to Amazon, but that Amazon wants even more.

In India, the bane of English publishing is the distribution discount demanded by the distributors. You have to pay anywhere between 50-60%, and wait for 5-6 months to get the money. And it is on sale or return basis. With what is left, the publisher is expected to pay the royalty, advances, printing/paper/binding and the editorial overheads. This forces the publisher to hike the price of the books artificially, which forces the bookseller to offer discounts to the customer.

The whole think is sinister. Instead, if the booksellers and distributors agree to a decent margin structure, the pricing can be kept reasonable and the customers need not be offered any discount.

Thankfully, the Indian language publishing market is not polluted in this manner.

E-reader: Cybook Bookeen

2008-06-07T16:42:00.003+05:30

I had not read about this before. Another, along the lines of iLiad, but considerably cheaper and lighter, called Cybook Gen3. Read about this in this article on iLiad from The Telegraph.

Cybook or Bookeen - both sound horrible as brand names. I hope the product is better. Will look towards buying this during the Frankfurt Book fair.

Testing

2008-06-07T12:59:00.001+05:30

Trying to post from Opera mini in a Nokia E51 through a slow GPRS connection.

Bezos' effect on The Economist

2008-06-06T11:07:00.003+05:30

Jeff Bezos has made everyone comment seriously on the e-book initiative. The Economist has a neat article this week. This article covers both e-books and e-readers as well as print-on-demand.

Between POD and the Kindle, Mr Bezos thinks he can sell “any book ever printed in any language”. But printers and distributors, like booksellers before them, fear the oncoming Amazon juggernaut.

Amazon, with its size, can certainly do a good job of English books in USA. In terms of selling “any book ever printed in any language”, Bezos will have to wait much longer. On POD, this is what The Economist says:

Although e-books may one day transform the industry, another new technology that is less visible to readers is already making itself felt. Print on Demand (POD), which allows books to be printed and bound to order, is making millions of books available even if they appeal to only a narrow readership. Here, too, academia leads the way.

We at NHM make judicious use of POD. It is a great piece of technology which will make a big difference to the publishers in India too.

POD will be the real innovation for the next few years. E-readers will have to wait, in my opinion. But E-books will make larger impact in the long run.

Paul Krugman on E-books

2008-06-06T10:05:00.003+05:30

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes on E-books:

[Amazon's Kindle is] a good enough package that my guess is that digital readers will soon become common, perhaps even the usual way we read books.

How will this affect the publishing business? Right now, publishers make as much from a Kindle download as they do from the sale of a physical book. But the experience of the music industry suggests that this won’t last: once digital downloads of books become standard, it will be hard for publishers to keep charging traditional prices.

Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors’ other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it’s good enough for me.

In the recent Book Expo America, Amazon's Jeff Bezos showcased Kindle. This has captured the attention of several people.

A lot of the authors are against digital books because of the lack of copyright protection and the ease with which the book can be copied. Several publishers are gingerly approaching e-books. However, the idea should be to embrace the idea and not resist it. We need to put together sufficient safeguards, but not more which will make it difficult for the consumers.

As with other ideas, USA will lead this space. Those of us in India will look carefully at what is happening there.

E-book readers, present and future

2008-06-05T21:37:00.003+05:30

CNN has a detailed story on Amazon's Kindle, its e-book reader device and service, and then also talks about other devices and what is the future likely to be.

I have tested a Sony PRS and also an iLiad. I have seen a Kindle. Living in India, Kindle is not of much use right now. Nor is it likely to be for quite a while.

I have ported some of our Tamil and Malayalam books into PDFs customised for Sony reader and iLiad resolutions. These PDFs can be read well in these devices. iLiad has a better screen size, though expensive.

I will be looking forward to a better and more robust iLiad versions. Compared to the proprietary Sony and Kindle, iLiad uses Linux OS. The current hardware is a little clunky and needs resetting quite often as it freezes up.

iLiad cost us in all Rs. 35,000, including online ordering, shipping and customs duty. We do not see yet, a major market for these devices in India. But if the price falls down to Rs. 7,500, the market can flare up. However, more than the Indian language content, it is the English books that will be of huge demand. Unfortunately, none of the leading English language publisher in India takes any leadership in trying to promote e-book as a category in India. Which is sad.

HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide has a new CEO

2008-06-05T21:12:00.003+05:30

HarperCollins - Murdoch owned publishing venture has a new CEO. Jane Friedman is leaving and is being replaced by Brian Murray.

NYTimes story

Vodafone Crossword Book Award 2007 shortlist

2008-06-03T15:43:00.001+05:30

Two of our Tamil->English translations figure in the short list for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award 2007, under the 'Indian Language Fiction Translation' category.

For the entire list across all the categories, check here.

The two 'Indian Writing' titles are:

Star Crossed by Ashokamitran
The Ghosts of Arasur by Era Murukan

IPL: A confession

2008-05-16T13:54:00.000+05:30

I have started watching the IPL matches. I watch more matches than I thought I will. Travelling and staying in hotels could be a reason, as you get to do nothing otherwise. As a consequence, my reading has come down drastically. I do fervently hope the matches will be over quickly, so I can get back to my routine life.

Though I have watched a lot of IPL matches, it is the bowler-friendly matches that have grabbed my attention. Watching Shoaib Akhtar steaming in to bowl those three overs in which he destroyed Sehwag, Gambhir and AB de Villiers was amazing. I am waiting to watch, what he is going to do to Tendulkar, Jayasuriya and Uthappa today. Akhtar is a pest. Most difficult person to manage. Full of ego. But what a bowler!

Jayasuriya made Chennai bowlers look like little kids. They had no clue whatsoever. And he kept going on and on, with sixes all over the place. Tendulkar looks totally out of sorts. He will be ruthlessly exposed by good bowlers, and probably even by average bowlers.

I thought the semi-final line-up will be straightforward. Rajasthan, Delhi, Chennai and Punjab. Now, Kolkata and Mumbai too have a chance of squeezing in. Bangalore and Hyderabad are the only total losers. Chennai looks weaker by the day while Rajasthan, surprisingly strong.

There are a few things I hate about the telecast. Wiring of players in particular and the commentators attempting to make some kind of a conversation. I quickly reach for the remote and press the mute button. Commentators are by and large boring. The cricketers have adapted themselves to this form of cricket. The commentators are yet to do that. Whenever they gush at Lalit Modi, I cringe. No great insights from Gavaskar or Shastri. Tony Cozier is the best of the lot. Ian Bishop next. When even Greg Chappel offers nothing insightful, one can pardon Arun Lal and others.

In general commentators suck up needlessly to the sponsors. We are suddenly told, "it is a Citi moment of success". It is nothing of that kind, simply a possible twist to the match. "DLF maximum sixes" is easy to understand while "Kingfisher fair play award" seems difficult to follow.

Red cap for a top scoring batsman and pink cap for the highest wicket taker are great, but poor Gambhir most of the times bats with a helmet on. I saw him wearing the cap only for a short duration. By the way, do they use the same cap and pass it on to the next player? Won't it stink of sweat? :-) I have not seen any one wearing a pink cap yet, though Ian Bishop kept praising Lalit Modi. Now, we need a Blue cap for maximum catches, a Green cap for maximum dismissals for a wicket keeper and an Yellow cap for fantastic fielding saving more runs in the outfield. And also a Black cap for most muffed chances?

There should also be a special cap awarded to Dr. Vijay Mallya.

New Horizon Media raises second round of investment

2008-05-06T19:12:00.001+05:30

Indian language book publisher, New Horizon Media, raises second round of investment

To put out more titles and fund expansion and growth across multiple Indian languages

Chennai, India, May 06, 2008:

New Horizon Media (NHM), a Chennai based multi-language, multi-format book publisher announced that it has received a minority investment from Beacon India Private Equity Fund as part of its second round of funding. This round also saw investments from existing promoters as well as Emergic Venture Capital, which had invested earlier in NHM in 2006 in the first round.

New Horizon Media currently publishes general books across genres as well as audio books in Tamil, English and Malayalam and plans to expand its publishing programme to all the important Indian languages over time. With four Tamil imprints, New Horizon Media is now the leading Tamil publisher both in terms of number of new titles published as well as sales.

“Our rapid growth in Tamil publishing has been driven by innovative titles, high quality packaging and production, affordable pricing and effective distribution. The titles are a hit with readers. We intend to expand into various other Indian languages across the rest of India,” said Badri Seshadri, Managing Director.

This round of funding will help New Horizon Media put out more titles in Tamil, Malayalam and English, strengthen sales and distribution in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and grow its distribution network across India for its English titles.

Added K. Satyanarayan, Director, New Horizon Media, “This investment by Beacon India Private Equity Fund is the first venture capital investment in the Indian book publishing industry. It points to the tremendous growth opportunities for the book publishing in India, with the infusion of capital into the industry.”

"We are extremely excited about the opportunity in Indian language content in India and the strong leadership of the NHM team. In a short span of time, they have been able to publish innovative titles that are in tune with readers' interests, and drive sales and marketing efforts," said Deepak Shahdadpuri, Managing Director, Beacon India, who joins the NHM board.
About New Horizon Media

New Horizon Media (NHM) is a Chennai, India-based publishing house promoted in 2004 by Badri Seshadri, K. Satyanarayan and R. Ananthkumar. NHM is a multi-language, multi-format publisher of both fiction and non-fiction through printed books, audio books, DVDs, the Internet and mobile platforms. NHM currently publishes in Tamil, English and Malayalam. NHM is headquartered in Chennai and has editorial offices in Chennai and Trivandrum.

Badri Seshadri and K. Satyanarayan were both educated at IIT Madras and Cornell University, USA. Both of them were earlier part of the team of co-founders of Cricinfo.com, the world’s leading cricket website, which was sold to the UK-based Wisden Group in 2003. R. Ananthkumar is a software engineer based in Texas, USA.

New Horizon Media’s imprints (For more information visit www.nhm.in)

About Beacon India Private Equity Fund

The Beacon India Private Equity Fund is a $200 million private equity fund sponsored by Baer Capital Partners. Beacon looks to invest in growth companies across sectors with bias for consumer, infrastructure and businesses benefiting from India’s competitive edge. This is the Fund’s fifth investment. Past investments include art auction business Saffronart, real estate developer Vatika Ltd, power EPC company A2Z Maintenance & Engineering and food services business Impresario Holdings.

For further information please visit our web site (www.nhm.in) or contact:

K. Satyanarayan
New Horizon Media, 33/15, Eldams Road, Alwarpet ,Chennai 600 018, INDIA
Tel: +91-44-4200-9601/03/04; Mob: +91-98840-65630, Email: satya@nhm.in

Sainath's ACJ convocation address

2008-05-04T07:21:00.001+05:30

I recorded this talk, but my new recording device screwed up. It is not publishable quality, so here is a brief summary.

Asian College of Journalism is a Chennai based educational institution which provides a one year diploma course. It is run by Media Development Foundation, a trust currently driven by N.Ram and Sashi Kumar. Sashi Kumar is the head of the institution.

Sainath also teaches at ACJ a course on 'Covering Deprivation'. Here, his topic was 'The Moral Universe of the Media', a title which, he says, was inspired by Prabhat Patnaik ("an economist and a good human being, though usually the two do not go together!").

George Bush and Condolezza Rice had set the talk up nicely for Sainath. As I had predicted earlier, Sainath started with this and quickly jumped to his statistics that in the last 10 years, the average consumption of Indians has gone down by around 80 gms per day, per capita. Which means an average Indian family is consuming 100 kg less food per year.

Sainath's focus was that the media has a disconnect. It does not cover issues of major ramifications and instead focuses on frivolous issues. Agriculture coverage is going down. Sports is going up. Politics is going down, fashion and crime going up. He backed up his theory with numbers. In the height of agrarian crisis in Vidharba, when there were around 6 journalists to cover, more than 512 accredited journalists covered Lakme India Fashion Show, an hour of flight away.

He criticised Times of India without naming the paper and kept using the names of Mukesh Ambani and Lakshmi Mittal and CII as corporate villains. ToI came for some real sharp criticism for its owner doing private deals with companies whereby Bennett and Coleman will take a stake in the company in return for assured good coverage in the paper. The comment by Sainath's ex-boss that "journalism is a business" came for criticism. Sainath contended that Newspaper is a business, Journalism is a calling. One can run newspapers without journalism - as one very successful paper is already demonstrating!

Sainath's talk was witty, but mostly a rehash of topics that he has been covering in the recent days. Nothing new. Indian journalists do not cover deprivation. Indian journalists and news media are not interested in 70-80% of the people. They are not interested in important issues. They are only interested in what is good for the big businesses, celebrities etc. Gandhi and Mark Twain were outstanding journalists.

Besides the agrarian crisis, Sainath touched upon internal migration as another major issue that no one has covered.

Gandhi, just before his death gave this talisman (so quoted Sainath): "I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away."

Sainath said he used to give this advice to all his journalism students. But then it is time to change this. Then he made an ulta of the above quote, brought in big business and Mukesh Ambani and Lakshmi Mittal and ended his talk with the comment that, "In the last 10 years, journalists have failed in covering real India and real issues. Perhaps, the new breed of journalists can do better."

The wittiest portion for me was when he recounted his ex-students calling him about their newsroom bosses.

Ex-student: "I want to kill my boss. He is rude, he is crude, he is obnoxious."
Sainath: "Don't rush. Just answer one question. What will you do with the body? How will you dispose it off? If you know the answer to this question, go ahead, and be my guest."

[Last year, in a function to felicitate Sainath, he gave a lecture on 'When rising inequalities threaten Democracy'. The audio of this talk is available here.]

Bush and Rice are not to be criticised

2008-05-03T15:16:00.000+05:30

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a few days back, talked about the growing nutrition in India and China as one of the reasons for increased food prices. US President George Bush has also said something similar.

The Indian news media have used headlines such as "Now Bush Blames India for Food Shortage". Neither Bush nor Rice has blamed India, if one sees the transcripts carefully. They have only tried to explain why prices are going up.

Indians need not be touchy about this. Indian consumption has gone up, on an average. Later today Sainath will be making a convocation address in Chennai Music Academy. He is bound to talk about the poor people in India getting poorer and not getting enough to eat while the rich in India and the middle class are eating (wasting) more food.

Whether Indian Government can curb the food consumption of the rich or not, it must provide more food to the poor. The nutrition levels required for rural, poor children are considerably more than the current levels. The rich will simply not stop their profligate ways overnight (or for ever). This would mean, India will need more food and therefore will have to grow more food. This will require massive changes in the agricultural sector.

Indian farming is heavily fragmented. There is very little new investment in this space. Most small farmers are heavily indebted, despite the occasional debt write offs by the state and the central governments. The scientific approach required in growing food crops and preserving and marketing the same cannot be managed by the current farmers. Nor can a country depend solely on debt funding in this sector. Corporations should be allowed in to farming sector urgently. Venture capital should be allowed. Foreign investment should also be seriously considered.

All of this may sound horribly neocon!

I can't see any alternative though. If we keep dithering, we may not have enough food in the next 5 years and there will be riots in the streets. Annual growth rate of 8%+ will not mean a thing, then.

Flipper On A Flat Track: IPL team loyalties

2008-05-01T15:59:00.003+05:30

Talking of team loyalties in IPL, this Outlook article quotes me as follows:

Badri Seshadri, founder of cricinfo.com, is convinced that more money won't equal more loyalty. "Loyalties are always built on firm values, and I'm not sure on what basis loyalties will be built in T20 cricket," he told Outlook. "It's funny to see Shahrukh Khan get so excited about Calcutta...he doesn't even belong to the place!"

I do not believe, team loyalties can be built in the way the IPL franchises are built up. When countries play cricket, loyalties are mostly driven by nationalism. If you are an Indian Muslim and you happen to like the Pakistani team, you are branded a traitor. I know of several people who I grew up with, who loved the West Indies team. They won almost every match they played then. They also played their matches with a swagger crystallised by Viv Richards.

Today, a lot of young boys I talk to are fans of the Australians. At this age, they do not understand what nationalism is. But they understand what winning is. They do want India to win, but they see the Australians winning.

In the case of IPL too, the winning teams will pick up some loyal followers. I can't see many Bangaloreans making any noise about their team. Chennaiites are... now. Next year, no one knows what will happen.

For most average Indian cricket fans, IPL games are quite interesting. You get to see a 4 or a 6 almost every over. Wickets fall at regular intervals too. In around 3 hours, someone wins. Someone loses. So far, there have been no rain interruptions.

But, for the serious fans, we can't see any strategy, game plan or anything that makes these games interesting. Several days, I just go to sleep without waiting for the matches to get over. The next day newspapers will anyway show the result.

Someone asked me whether I will be going to these matches. I normally watch every Test match played at Chepauk. I try to make it to the ODIs. At this stage, I am unlikely to go to the IPL games even if I get free tickets.

Book Retail entrepreneur Hemu Ramaiah

2008-05-01T13:47:00.002+05:30

Book retail in India is in a poor shape. We do not have enough book shops for a country of one billion people. With retail space getting too expensive in cities, grocery and other high value retail occupy more space. Books are not essential commodities yet for the Indians, and hence per sq. ft. yield of books will always be low. Books are not FMCG.

There have been a few entrepreneurs who have focused on book retailing. Crossword emerged from India Book House, and through entrepreneurs who used to work for Landmark. Now the chain is owned by Shoppers' Stop and it is not clear what their growth model is. Corner Bookstore, once partly owned by DC Books of Kerala, now seems to be languishing.

Hemu Ramaiah built up Landmark as a single location bookstore in Chennai. The first shop was in Nungambakkam High Road, Apex Plaza, over a 5,500 sq.ft. space. It quickly became the destination for book lovers in Chennai. Access to capital must have been very difficult in the 1990s. It was only in 2001, a second shop was opened in Chennai Spencer Plaza. But by then, Landmark was more than books. All kinds of other accessories came in. In particular, the Spencer Plaza shop even had furnitures!

Forays into other towns and cities gave them mixed results. Kolkata was a joint venture with Emami group. Bangalore Landmark did well. A shop opened in Coimbatore didn't and was closed down.

Landmark created a joint venture with East West, a book distributor and a smalltime publisher based in Chennai, called Westland books - both for book distribution and for reprint publishing.

In 2005, Tata's Trent acquired 76% stake in Landmark, valuing the company at around Rs. 138 crores. Landmark used the money effectively to grow across the country with large book+other retails shops. Landmark also acquired majority stake in East West, and launched full-fledged publishing operation (East West, Westland and Tranquebar).

Yesterday, Hemu Ramaiah announced that she has sold her residual equity stake in Landmark to Trent.

Hemu says she has started a company that will provide retail consultancy and solution.

***

There is considerable space in the book retail still unexploited in India. Pantaloon has its Depot shops in around 30 places. Oxford bookstore is slowly expanding. Odyssey chain is sadly not growing as fast as I expected. As mentioned earlier in this post, Crossword and Corner aren't growing as much. Reliance Timeout is expected to open shops all over.

All of the above cater to English books in key metros and large cities. The real space is in regional languages and in smaller towns. Low cost retailing is possible, over a 200-500 sq. ft. chain shops, with excellent information systems, point-of-sale systems, logistics support, aggressive marketing, brand building etc. However, this calls for reasonable Indian investments.

Where are the entrepreneurs?

Why there should be more IITs

2008-04-28T12:59:00.002+05:30

After the recent Supreme Court verdict approving OBC reservations to (Central Govt. controlled) higher educational institutions, Prof. PV Indiresan in particular has focused on what it will mean to the quality of IITs.

Once upon a time (till the early 1990s), IITs guranteed a trip to USA, to pursue higher studies, find a job, get a green card and eventually get a US citizenship. During the late 1990s software professionals without an IIT education could easily accomplish all this (except pursuing higher education). Also during the same period, increasing numbers of non-IITians managed to get into US universities. Today, it is not necessary for one to go to an IIT to find a place in a good US university for higher studies. Top students from any of the NITs and reputed Engineering colleges can get full assistantships in several US colleges.

A substantial number of IITians walked into IIMs and then eventually into FMCG and marketing companies. This prompted a few of my professors to contemptuously mention 'soap selling' in connection with the career choices of my co-students. One doesn't have to get into an IIT to crack CAT and get into an IIM.

Most people looked at getting into IITs as it guaranteed them (a) a trip to US or (b) a chance to get into an IIM; failing both (c) at least a guaranteed job in an Engineering company. This meant a lot in the 1970s and 1980s when well paying jobs were difficult to get.

That is not the situation today. Any smart young man or woman each can find hundred possible jobs. Even if one is not smart enough, one can land up a job with a basic education and some soft skills.

Should we then really worry about whether to increase the number of IITs or not? I think we should. IITs, when they were started, were expected to fulfill one key role. To help build engineers who will help build the country. Several IIT engineers have helped in this process. However, more than 60% or probably 70% ended up abroad, or sold soaps and fresh atta. I myself never did anything useful in engineering. I sold cricket and am now selling books.

IITs are however wonderful institutions. They get good funding. They have decent teachers - far better than several other institutions. They have great laboratories and computer facilities. They have integrated and compulsory hostels. It is in the hostels that students pick up substantial soft skills. The ambience is wonderful. IITians are successful primarily because of the environment in which they grow. It is not the quality of education in the classrooms, as most people think. I know of several of my classmates who never ever attended the classes but are doing quite well in their lives.

Such an environment is possible only because of the liberal funding, autonomy and a student selection process. The selection process can be made more inclusive than what it currently is. Reservation for OBCs will help in a long way. Reservation for women will help too.

In our country, private players cannot build good educational institutions today. Mostly, only scoundrels get into building engineering colleges. In and around Chennai, that is what I see. There may be an odd good one, but mostly the institutions are controlled by uneducated rascals, who are part of this or that political party, who have amassed wealth through illegal means and use the colleges to further this ill-gotten money. They have hoodwinked the entire system to get Deemed University status and are now going by the name of X University or Y University. They have spanking new buildings but nothing else worth underneath. The quality of the faculty is shocking. The students are left to rot by themselves. I can't see a single one of them becoming a world class teaching and research institution in the field of engineering in the years to come.

So, the onus of building great higher education institutions is in the hands of the central and the state governments. The central government has an excellent idea in the form of IITs. There are several trained administrators, Directors, Registrars and Deans of IITs. If we open up another 20 IITs, they can be headed by these Deans. Finding good quality teachers is a problem, but in my opinion, it is a problem which can be solved. Several students who receive PhDs in IITs and IISc can be employed in these new IITs. Several faculty members in US universities can be persuaded to come to India. We should look at setting up one IIT in every state capital.

In addition, the state governments should look at setting up 3-4 engineering institutes modelled on IITs. They should get staff from IITs on deputation to build these institutions. They should fill these institutions exclusively from those students who write JEE. So in effect, we should have around 100 IITs and IIT like state colleges. All of them should have an average funding of Rs. 80-100 crores an year. 25% of these institutions will be funded by the central government and administered by them. Remaining 75% will be funded by various states and administered by them.

This will increase the intake to around 25,000 students every year from the IITs. Just imagine what kind of progress this will take us to.

Instead, if we restrict the IITs to only 7 or 10, or go up in small increments, we will have around 2,500 to 3,000 undergraduates coming out per year from the IITs.

The IIT brand is primarily created by the students and not by the faculty. I believe the top 25,000 to 50,000 ranks from JEE are good enough to maintain this brand, provided the funding and infrastructure are available to the institutions.

***

Several people worry about more money going to higher education while the primary education is in shambles. But this is a poor argument for couple of reasons.

You should not promote one or the other, but should try to apportion money to both, within reason. If we invested heavily only in primary education, what will all those kids do after they cross the 5th standard? You need to simultaneously invest in secondary education, higher education and professional education.

Primary education is relatively an easy area. Private funding can be tapped wherever possible. Licenses can be given to people to run primary schools, because all you require is minimal infrastructure. Educational voucher schemes can be introduced in several places. Microfinance institutions like SKS Microfinance are looking at high quality village schools funded by micro-loans.

However, institutes of higher learning are not easy to build. Our current regulations do not allow foreign universities to build and operate educational institutions in India. For profit companies are not allowed to provide education in India. While we need to battle with such laws, at the moment, only the Government is capable of building higher education institutions of world class. Therefore, they must be encouraged to do so.

Most problems cannot be solved by just pushing more money in one specific area alone. Primary education will remain a problem for a long time to come, because it requires more people and more infrastructure. To put every child into a primary school, we need millions of new schools and new teachers in far flung areas. Even if we have all the money in hand, we won't be able to accomplish this overnight. We cannot wait for this task to be completed before we can take up the problem of higher education.

Our tax income is growing considerably year on year. If money can be found for NREGA, it can be obtained for education - both primary education and higher education. I see all the state governments projecting low revenue estimates for the subsequent years. If I look at the Tamil Nadu budget, the revenue estimates are considerably lower than the actual revenue realised by them. Because they start with lower revenue projections, they allocate lower resources for education. Then, when they actually make more money, it gets spent on politically expedient areas.

With better revenue projections, the allocation for education can be substantially enhanced by every state. The central government can also increase the outlay for education substantially. Cutting defence spending will help a long way too!

References:
P.V. Indiresan's bad arguments against creating new IITs
IIT and the obsession with exclusivity

cricket.com - Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

2008-04-20T23:21:00.003+05:30

I had a long association with Cricinfo - from around 1993 end to 2005. I have heard a lot about cricket.com during tihs period. So when I found out that a company called Live Current Media has done a deal with BCCI to develop BCCI's cricket web site and IPL web site and also the domain name cricket.com, I was intrigued.

I went through my old emails to look at the history of cricket.com.

In the days when domain names were seen as the 'be all and end all', all sorts of domain names were acquired by Internet pirates and hawkers in the hope that some sad git will buy them for millions of dollars later on. Cricket.com, they thought will outsmart rivals such as Cricinfo.com. At that time, Cricinfo.com already had huge user base, while Cricket.com had to still build the content.

In 1999, Cricket.com announced that it will develop a world-beating cricket site. They were to partner another site called cricketline.com. Nothing came of it.

A company called Communicate.com owned this domain name cricket.com. They also owned india.com etc. They were working towards building each domain name into a portal with appropriate partner and then make big bucks. However things were not so simple. The company built around india.com went bust later on.

Communicate.com tried finding partners (not buyers) for cricket.com. They wanted someone to pay money, become a JV partner and then develop the site. They wanted offers from Cricinfo.com in the year 2000. Cricinfo did not respond positively. Then, in early 2001, a rather shady entity called Cricmania.com (which was mostly ripping off content from Cricinfo through automatic bots), acquired/partnered Communicate.com to develop Cricket.com. Under the terms of the deal, Cricmania would pay Communicate.com USD 1 million, and Communicate and Cricmania will hold stakes in Cricket.com.

When Cricmania found that making money from Cricket.com was impossible, they thought of turning it into a betting/gambling site. Even that didn't work out. Probably US/Canada laws prevented this from happening.

By the end of 2001, however, the deal between Cricmania and Communicate.com broke down. The domain was back with Communicate.com in early 2002 and they had no cricket content there either. The site has been dormant with no cricket content whatsoever since then.

Live Current Media is the successor to Communicate.com. They are planning to rename the company in 2008. They are hoping to convert their domain names into wonderful businesses. In April 2008, they announced their deal with BCCI.

I do not expect anything useful to come from some domain name hoarders with no experience whatsoever in content management, much less cricket content at that.

BCCI have never understood the web. They are proving that they will never understand it.

Aviation Entrepreneur Gopinath

2008-04-20T20:08:00.001+05:30

I have great admiration for Gopinath who started Air Deccan, India's first low-cost airlines. He is now out of the merged Kingfisher-Deccan, and is moving on to a new Air Cargo venture.

When I was in Cricinfo, I once received an email from him. At that time, he was running a charter aircraft company. He had asked if any of the TV production companies such as TWI, Worldtel etc. will require chartering of flights to lug their equipment and personnel across India. BCCI is notorious for the most ridiculous cricket scheduling. I can't now remember what I replied, but I did give him some contact at TWI.

In the first wave of privatisation of Airlines in the 1990s, only two out of 7-8 players survived. One was jet Airways, the other Sahara. The rest completely crashed. Sahara just hung on. Jet, on the other hand, thrived and went on to become number 1 player in India, and went on to buy out Sahara. In the second wave of liberalisation, unquestionably, it was Gopinath who was the real hero. He had the vision for the low cost carrier. Others simply followed him. His biggest handicap must have been the money. Other players in the second wave were all rich and well backed with money from other ventures they were running. But it was Gopinath who showed what could be done to the Airlines business.

Air Deccan had its detractors. The service was average, the delays horrendous. But, it did serve people who could never think of flying. Gopinath democratised air travel in India. He connected places that no one thought would come on the air traffic map. He offered tickets at prices no one thought was possible in India. He was bolder than anyone else.

His success, as he says in this article, also resulted in an unsustainable growth. The losses were huge and PE players wouldn't support him fully. He had to sell out to someone like Vijay Mallya, brimming with money. It was clear to me that Gopinath wouldn't last long in the merged entity. Their styles are so different.

In a way, it is good that Gopinath is leaving. We do not have serial entrepreneurs in India, who after successful building, move on to create more challenging new ventures. Promoters should not hang on to their ventures for too long. They should just move along.

I wish Gopinath success in his new Air Cargo venture.

TheOnion type desi website

2008-04-04T13:07:00.003+05:30

I came across The Career Pigeon, (via gilli) which is almost exactly like The Onion, but on desi topics.

From what I have read already, it is not bad at all! It would be great if these guys don't copy the features from The Onion, but rather, improvise and innovate.

Tamil Nadu: 101 Entrepreneurs

2008-04-04T07:23:00.004+05:30

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) launched a coffee table book on the history of entrepreneurship in Tamil Nadu last week. The book had featured narratives on 101 Tamil Nadu entrepreneurs, and the list of entrepreneurs was selected by a CII taskforce.

My company was involved in interviewing and writing the stories on these 101 interesting men and women and then making the book.

No such list can be exhaustive. The people chosen were all first generation entrepreneurs.

As one can guess, most of them built their businesses in the 1990s, thanks to liberalisation and the opportunities created by this process.

However, a majority of them are not geared to take the next step by raising substantial funding through private equity or IPO, to become a pan-indian company, and then from there to become a global company. Excluding the listed companies mentioned, only one entrepreneur mentioned wanting to go IPO and he is in the healthcare sector. Another person indicated that he wouldn't even raise any form of equity/debt funding for growth and would depend entirely on internal accruals! His company creates software for managing securities and he has developed software for NSE!

The book, titled 'Star Trek' may not be available in the book shops. However, one can contact the CII Chennai office to find out if copies can be bought from them.

Shoaib Akhtar ban

2008-04-04T07:17:00.002+05:30

It is good that Shoaib Akhtar has been banned for five years from playing cricket for Pakistan, though for not so serious an offense. He has done less on the ground and has talked more off the ground. I can see that he is an extremely divisive force in the dressing room.

Can this ban be contested in a court of law? My view is that such a ban is unenforceable in any country where the laws are decent. It is quite possible that Pakistan courts will 'unban' Shoaib.

What PCB will have to do is, to quietly inform the selectors never to select Shoaib for Test matches and probably also the one-day matches. He can play in the IPL, shoot his mouth off, collect his fat paycheque and enjoy life as a playboy. Test cricket is far too serious to have a Shoaib hanging out in your dressing room.

IPL franchise deals

2008-01-28T01:50:00.001+05:30

The kind of money coming into IPL is shocking.

First, the telecast rights. Sony Entertainment Television (SET) and World Sports Group (WSG) have come together to acquire the rights from IPL. Sony, at one time wanted to acquire a lot of cricket rights and held ICC world cup telecast rights for India. Later, Sony decided to quit cricket by not bidding for world cup rights in the subsequent years. World Sports Group was the entity (at that time, backed by Murdoch's News Corp), which had picked up the ICC rights and onsold the Indian rights to Sony then, through their vehicle Global Cricket Corporation (GCC). Subsequently Murdoch bought out GCC fully when there were financial troubles for WSG.

Now, WSG and Aony have come together again to acquire the IPL telecast rights at roughly $1 billion for 10 years. (Why are we still talking in dollar terms? US Dollar is going to keep falling, and surely it is in the interests of BCCI to peg the bid in INR?) Around $108 million will be spent on marketing and promotion (probably not including home ads shown in Sony network) and $908 million will be paid to IPL (BCCI).

This television money ($908 million) is not going to entirely go to BCCI. Instead, a substantial portion is going to be given to the team franchises.

That brings us to the franchise bids. Several wealthy businessmen and bollywood characters have bid large sums for owning city teams. Mukesh Ambani has picked up Mumbai. India Cements has picked up Chennai. (India Cements boss Srinivasan is also the treasurer of BCCI and this has made some people talk about conflict of interests. Given that his company has won the bid in a transparent manner, I think it is fair.) In all, eight city teams have been sold out for US$ 723.59 million. There are four more city franchises available, and no one has bought them so far - no one was willing to put up the reserve price of US$ 50 million.

Suppose the franchises get 80% of the television revenue for the first 3 years. The next 7 years, they will get around 60% of the television revenues. (I am not sure about the exact formula, but this is the best guess I can make out.) This would mean, on an average, each franchise will get back USD 6 million per year for the first 3 years and $4.5 million per year for the next 7 years. Thus, they will claw back US$ 50 million over the ten year period. I am assuming that each of the franchises will get equal television money. Instead, it could be through a more complicated formula.

The franchises will have to spend money hiring the players as well. There could be transfer rules like it exists in the US, UK professional leagues.

***

ICL - the rival league set up by Subash Chandra, in the meantime has had a few games but has not had major success in capturing the fan interest. The games should have been on a free to air television to really get more people interested. Instead it was on their pay channel in the metros. I didn't watch them.

ICL needs a very different idea to compete with IPL, which has support from the boards around the world as well as the ICC.

And to add to this, IPL has far more money and solid support from franchise owners, which ICL will have to struggle to get over the coming years.

PanIIT Mentoring Programme

2008-01-28T01:23:00.000+05:30

I participated in the PanIIT Mentoring Programme held yesterday (Republic day) at IIT-Madras. This was an event conducted across 16 centres, with the intention of mentoring at least 1,000 prospective entrepreneurs.

I had the opportunity to interact with five people. Some had just started new ventures. Rest were in the process of quitting their regular jobs to start new ventures. I was glad I could offer them some directions based on my experience.

I think more such informal meetings should be organized.

At the end of the programme, ex-President Abdul Kalam addressed the gathering through a webcast link, from Hyderabad. He talked glowingly about Periyar PURA, one of the instances of his pet project. The Q&A at the end was a bit boring, though.

ICL & IPL. Can BCCI blacklist Zee/Ten from bidding?

2007-10-25T11:28:00.000+05:30

There is a report in The Economic Times that says BCCI is likely to blacklist Zee Group and Ten Sports from bidding for its cricket telecast rights.

Naturally BCCI is pissed off at Zee Group for starting Indian Cricket League - ICL. However, can that be grounds enough to blacklist Zee from bidding for rights? BCCI claims this has to do with Zee pulling out of overseas crickets telecast rights. Zee claims it has initiated arbitration proceedings.

Ten Sports is only partly owned (majority stake though) by Zee. Can BCCI also blacklist Ten Sports?

My view is that BCCI's blacklisting will not be sustainable in the court of law. Zee is certain to contest such blacklisting, if it happens.

However if the rights in question relate to IPL, BCCI may have a point whereby it can claim that Zee may not promote IPL properly, since it also owns ICL - supposing Zee wins the bid to telecast IPL. Courts may agree to this point. The same however cannot be said if the rights are for One-day internationals or Tests.

Cricinfo to picth for other sports

2007-10-25T11:02:00.001+05:30

After ESPN has acquired Cricinfo, here are some bytes indicating what is in store for the future. [ET article]

Cricinfo like operations to be created for other sports.
Cricinfo journalists will now be seen on camera on Sportscenter shows in Australia and South Africa. [Not India?]
ESPN will promote Cricinfo through TV commercials around the world.

Frankfurt Book Fair 2007

2007-10-08T09:19:00.000+05:30

Our company, New Horizon Media Pvt. Ltd. will be participating in Frankfurt Book Fair. This is our second trip to Frankfurt.

Last year, India was the guest of honour at the Frankfurt fair. National Book Trust had set up a special pavilion. Several Indian publishers had used this opportunity to come to Frankfurt. But this year, very few are attending.

Our stall is at 6.0 E 904.

UP move on large-format retail store

2007-08-30T10:08:00.000+05:30

Following an attack on a few Reliance Fresh and Spencer Daily stores in Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has ordered a closure of all large-format retail stores.

The hooliganism was organized by a sitting Rajya Sabha MP Banwari Lal Kanchal of the rival Samajwadi Party and his organization UP Udyog Vyapar Mandal.

There has been a lot of anger against large-format retail chains across several states. Some states have resorted to violence - most notably Ranchi in Jharkhand, near Kolkata in West Bengal, Indore in Madhya Pradesh. There have been several demonstrations in Tamil Nadu.

In West Bengal, the ruling partner AIFB has promised not to let Reliance Fresh in and has said it will demonstrate (and perhaps also indulge in violence) in front of Reliance Fresh stores.

For a while, I was under the impression that it is not possible for state governments to control who sets up what kind of shop and what can be sold there. I was wrong. An archaic and bad law in the form of Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Act exists in all the states. This seems to be a state subject and hence you have roughly 30 variations of this act, state to state.

This act has primarily been used till now to determine to whom farmers can sell foodgrains. Vegtables, fruits and such have been left to open market purchase and resale. However, I fear this law can be (mis)used by left leaning governments to impact organized retail from selling agricultural produce.

This will affect shops like Reliance Retail from selling vegetables, fruits and may probably even be extended to cover milk. Such a retail shop then will be forced to only sell groceries and FMCG products.

The state variation in such a law can also determine where agricultural produce selling shops can be opened, the size of the shops, licenses for such shops etc. This will be an extremely retrograde step.

It may be worthwhile for the central government to enact a law which at best controls only foodgrains (even that should be avoided, if at all) and release the rest of the agricultural produce from the state list and abolish Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Act across the states once and for all.

The need for Indian Cricket League

2007-08-14T19:39:00.000+05:30

The BCCI - Board of Control for Cricket in India - has been a monopoly, controlling professional cricket played in India. Similar organizations do the same in other cricket playing countries, but in countries like Australia and England, the cricket boards are professional bodies.

In India, on the other hand, BCCI is filled with all the undesirable elements in the society - led by the politicians. BCCI's aim is supposedly to promote and manage cricket. They fail miserably in this aspect. Cricket promotion in the country happens on its own, through corporate involvement and television coverage. BCCI merely extracts its annual income from television rights and sponsorship of matches. They pay a portion of this to the players, but rarely explain what they do with the rest of the money.

BCCI office bearers are supposed to be honorary, elected members. So they cannot draw huge salaries. But, they also deal with more than a billion dollars each year. Huge presidential suites, massive expense bills, and financial mishandling is the norm. BCCI top honchos also act as bullies when they deal with television companies and their own players.

You cannot find a single good thing they have done in the last 10 years. No new statium anywhere to speak off, no pension to past cricketers - though there were fancy statements thrown around, but nothing concrete has happened, no cricket scholarships for under-16, under-19 kids. Nothing. They have increased the salaries to players playing in International matches, and also the domestic matches. But that is nothing compared to their earnings.

They have fought paying taxes. They put enormous strain on the cities that hold cricket matches and do not adequately compensate the city administrations and police force during that period.

The stadia owned by the constituent state cricket associations where International matches are held are extremely poor. They are concrete blocks with very poor civic amenities such as toilets. Food served is invariably poor. Crowd control is horrible - the policemen whack spectators with lathis. Ticket sales is pathetically organized. You will have to stand in long queues for days and may still not get a ticket, while bulk of the tickets are siphoned off and given for free to politicians and other VIPs. Tour schedules are poorly organized. As a comparison, tour schedules in Australia and England for the next year is made available well in advance and tickets can be bought over the Internet.

BCCI do not publish annual reports. They do not have a vision statement, or a list of their accomplishments. Heck, they don't even have a web site in this age! They do not issue press releases. They do not explain any of their actions to the people of India.

Every year they conduct elections. Horsetrading abounds, making Goa legislative assembly a sweet place. The current President is a Minister in the Union Cabinet, handling an important portfolio - Agriculture. He had to be brought in to check the growing clout of the previous incumbent, who was considered extremely autocratic. BCCI has never been democratic.

In all, it is amazing that despite BCCI, the national team wins a few matches.

It looks next to impossible to clean the system from within.

It has to be done from outside.

While I have no special sympathies for Zee's Subash Chandra, the Indian Cricket League (ICL) floated by him could very well shake the board to change its ways.

ICL seems to be quite motivated and willing to spend money.

Whether they succeed financially or not, if they help in achieving a sensible administration and a change of constitution in BCCI, it will go a long way in reforming the game in India.

(Strangely, ICL's website is also down now! So can't link them.)

Titanium Di-oxide mess

2007-08-14T12:54:00.000+05:30

Every move by the Government in Tamil Nadu is extremely politicised. The weakening of the ruling party DMK has caused this.

In particular, the Government faces vocal and mostly meaningless criticism from its partners and supporters - PMK and the communists.

The job of these two parties is not offering constructive solutions. They merely instigate local people, issue statements condemning the government move, and eventually force the government to backtrack on such projects. The (Chennai) satellite township project and the (Chennai) airport expansion project both have been killed because of such intransigent behaviour on their part.

The latest in this series is Tata's attempt at setting up a Titanium Di-oxide plant in southern Tamil Nadu, in Sathankulam in Tuticorin (Thuththukkudi) district.

Titanium Di-oxide is used as a pigment in paints and coatings to provide the white colour. It is used in antimicrobial coatings because of its disinfectant characterestics. Being a light and strong metal its alloys can be used in various engineering constructions and biomechanics.

Large titanium deposits are available in Sathankulam in the form of its ore ilmenite. It has not however been exploited so far. No company has put forward a sensible proposal to mine the ore and convert it into a value added product. Some limited mining rights have been given to few companies and they are known to be exporting the ore.

During the last AIADMK regime, Tata Steel with their mining and processing expertise asked for the license to set up a mining cum processing operation. Nothing came of it. The current DMK regime signed an MoU last month with the Tatas allowing them to set up a mining and processing operation.

AIADMK protested. But then, PMK and the communists also protested. Vijayakanth of DMDK protested. Sarath Kumar, another actor turned politician protested.

The government have stated that land will be acquired at market rates. The government will not invoke a Singur like operation and acquire land and turn it over to Tatas.

Tatas want 16,000 acres of land, to ensure they will have a solid supply of the titanium ore for a reasonable time to come. The government is suggesting that only 315 acres out of this is likely to be fertile land. The communists and PMK disagree with this.

The other concerns are that
(a) Tatas are asking for too much land.
(b) The mining operation will result in sucking the water completely from the nearby regions and convert the place into barren lands.
(c) Tatas cannot provide employment to all those who will be surrendering (read: selling) their lands.
(d) Pollution will adversely impact the local ecosystem.

The government announced that it will send a fact-finding team and ask the local people about their opinion. Each opposing political party said they will also send a fact-finding mission of their own. So yesterday (Monday), there were as many as three fact-finding missions talking to people. Each mission will deliver an entirely different version.

Any industrial activity of the type envisaged will result in some pollution. It is fair on the part of the Pollution Control Board to ask what measures Tatas will undertake to deal with the pollution caused and how to minimise the same without affecting the people, flora and fauna nearby. Water issue should also be dealt with. Tatas should come up with their views on how the nearby areas will be affected and what they intend to do.

Being a coastal land, Tatas can be told not to use the ground water, but to set up a desalination plant for all their water requirements. They can also be asked to ensure that water table not be tampered with, so that far away agricultural lands are not affected.

What could be the benefits of setting up such a plant? The southern Tamil Nadu is poorly developed. There are not many jobs for educated youth. Agriculture is an unsustainable job creator. The Rs. 2500 crore investment from Tatas can help in kickstarting the manufacturing sector in south Tamil Nadu. Provided the livelihood issues affecting the nearby people are taken care of, this project should be welcomed by all.

However, the short sighted political parties are making the life very difficult for the ruling party and the government.

A sudden suggestion has come from CPI that instead of getting a private company, the Union Government should be asked to set up the Titanium plant. If that is done, somehow the pollution and land acquisition problems will go away. This exposes the communists' double standards about what they want in West Bengal and what they will settle for in other states. (Shouldn't the Union Government be asked to set up an automobile factory in Singur instead of Tatas?)

The Union Government is in no position to set up new industries. When was the last time, they undertook industrial projects to the tune of Rs. 2500 crore?

Tamil Nadu has achieved significant manufacturing growth in the last decade because of automobile and auxillary manufacturing units near Chennai. Something similar has to be done in the south and west Tamil Nadu. Will our politicians make this happen?

TN Government to offer cable TV connections

2007-08-12T09:15:00.000+05:30

In a recent interview, the 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate and Economist Mohammad Yunus said "business should not be the business of government. Business should be in the hands of the private sector."

But there are times, when one has to welcome a government initiative in starting a business - that too in the service sector.

The Tamil Nadu State Government has decided to set up a business venture to offer cable television connections to homes. This may look quite strange to people living in other states who have not been following the affairs of Tamil Nadu carefully.

Here is a quick recap.

The DMK lead by M.Karunanidhi won the state elections in 2006. One of the campaign promises was distribution of free colour TVs to every household. Yes, every household, provided they had a ration card. There was no other condition attached to the offer. You could already have a TV. You could be rich. If you had a valid ration card, you were eligible for the TV. You could of course, bribe the local DMK functionary and ensure that your name got on to the list of beneficiaries ahead of genuinely poor people.

The government actually fulfilled this promise - to a substantial degree. Colour 14 inch TVs have been procured and delivered to the households. Some of these TVs have also found their way to consumer electronic shops for reselling, though.

Nevertheless, the DMK government felt that the TV media was very important. The dominant Tamil television channel is Sun TV, run by Karunanidhi's nephews - Kalanidhi Maran and (then) Union Minister Dayanidhi Maran. The Marans also controlled cable television networking (SCV) in several parts of Tamil Nadu and had also gotten a license to operate DTH services.

The idea was to supply colour TVs to all the poor people in the state who could not afford to buy one and even offer them free electricity to run the TVs (along with the electricty subsidy already being given to them for normal light bulbs). There were allegations that this will result in Marans making a killing through the cable TV charges each month.

Then, the Marans fell out with Karunanidhi's son M.K.Azhagiri. A poorly timed opinion poll in Dinakaran daily, owned by the Marans showed M.K.Stalin (Karunanidhi's another son, and currently a minister in Karunanidhi's cabinet) as a leading contender after Karunanidhi and pushed Azhagiri and Kanimozhi (Karunanidhi's daughter) to nowhere and suggested Dayanidhi Maran as number 2. Azhagiri's rowdy follwers went berserk in Madurai, Azhagiri's backyard, burnt Dinakaran's office there and killed three staff working there. The police watched the entire show from a distance.

Rather than being angry at his son's follwers, the Chief Minister Karunanidhi was apprently mad at Marans and decided to punish them. Dayanidhi Maran was asked to be dropped from the Union Cabinet. Dayanidhi Maran resigned.

The relationship soured further and reached a stage of no-return.

Suddenly Karunanidhi's DMK was left without a TV media, while 14 inch colour TVs were being delivered all over the state. So an announcement came that 'Kalainjar TV', a private channel with the blessings of the Chief Minister will be launched shortly.

It is not enough if you launch a TV channel, to reach the people. You need a strong distribution. Marans control the distribution in most key cities. It is alleged that Marans monopoly distribution of cable was mostly due to DMK's tacit support whenever the party was in power in the last two decades. Now, DMK had to do something to gain the television power.

The last AIADMK regime had wanted to clip the power of Marans' television distribution in the state. AIADMK also has a television channel - Jaya TV - a distant second to Sun TV. Peeved at the position Sun TV and SCV had, Jayalalitha decided to take over all the cable distribution in the state under the government wing, and passed an ordinance. DMK rushed to the Governer to protest against the palpably partisan and illegal attempt. Good sense prevailed and the Governer did not sign the ordinance. AIADMK was shortly defeated in the elections.

Now, Karunanidhi could not attempt to do the same that Jayalalitha tried. So he decided to launch a Government controlled cable television distribution network. This is fairly legal and no one can protest against this move. All licensing conditions will be quickly worked out, as DMK controls the corresponding ministry at the centre. Given that Kalainjar TV is to be launched in September, the distribution company will be launched well before. The Tamil Nadu Cabinet approved the move yesterday (11th August 2007).

Is this move good for the people of the state?

The answer is yes. Though the entire move is driven by political compulsions, it is bound to do good for the people in the medium term. In the long term though, the company floated by the government will lose money, will be corrupt to the core and will eventually be shutdown. But yet, this is required now.

Even in the days of DTH, cable distribution is required because of the inexpensive service offered by them. DTH operators demand up front payment of Rs. 3,000-5,000 for the set top boxes. Cable TV distribution was in the hands of several small time players during the unregulated period and thus not enough investments were made in the infrastructure. When organized players including SCV came in, they came with the political muscle rather than the capitalistic efficiency. Thus, cutomer service was completely ignored and thugs ruled.

Hathway, another cable distributor was banished from Tamil Nadu using the political muscle. Since then, no other organized player has come to Tamil Nadu to offer cable distribution business. SCV has also not increased its footprint because they have no competition and hence no need to expand at a fast clip.

Now, the government entity will be driven to set up distribution business across the state. This will result in a more efficient service offering from SCV, and a more responsible customer service. The prices will be cut, as the government has promised to offer low prices. The growth will immediately prompt players like Zee and others to jump in and offer competing services. In the end, the government service will fail, but would have paved the road for three to four new players who will be fighting in a level playing field.

Customers will certainly benefit from this.

Podcast: Arun Shourie and Cho Ramaswamy on Pratibha Patil

2007-07-13T21:32:00.000+05:30

The Indian Liberal Group, Chennai, had organized a meeting on 13 July 2007, where Arun Shourie and Cho Ramaswamy participated and talked about the Congress Presidential nominee Mrs. Pratibha Patil.

To listen:

Arun Shourie (English, 32.16 min)

Cho Ramaswamy (20.55 min, English and Tamil)

To download: Arun Shourie | Cho Ramaswamy

ESPN acquires Cricinfo

2007-06-11T22:12:00.000+05:30

ESPN International has acquired Cricinfo website. Note that the acquisition is by ESPN International and not ESPN-Star Sports the Disney-Murdoch joint venture. ESPN Star Sports has its own sports site www.espnstar.com, but that doesn't have the same fan base as Cricinfo. So there will be some tension between ESPN-Star and ESPN International on how Cricinfo is treated.

Disney's long term gameplan is not clear. However, looking at Soccernet, I am not very confident that great things may happen with cricinfo.espn.go.com (as the site will be renamed soon).

Current Cricinfo earnings are too small to merit enough focus here from ESPN bigwigs.

A few things, well funded Cricinfo can do (but may not do):

Video scorecards of every Test and One-day match - at least the wickets and fours/sixes clips linked to every match scorecard.
Additional key moments like centuries, fifties, controversial (non-)dismissals etc.
These clips to be linked to the statsguru database.
A good mobile interface to statsguru, as well as the above video database
Allowing for embedding (ad supported and delivered by Cricinfo) video clips into third party blogs, when fans want to build up an argument and support the argument with video.
Archived full highlights of video of classic past matches for pay-per-view streaming.
Live audio streaming (legal I suppose. Off tube may not work with Disney) of all Test and One-day matches online (paid + ad supported).
Video profiles/biographies (30 mins) of important Test cricketers (both online and offline in the form of DVDs)
Better coverage of domestic cricket in all Test playing countries, including live scorecards of first-class games

Cricket: When you are too greedy...

2007-05-30T19:48:00.000+05:30

BCCI is an example of how you will suffer when you are too greedy. Also, when your approach is not to build partnerships but opportunistic deal making and screwing the 'opponent'.

Jagmohan Dalmiya was a deal maker. He will care the least about the telecast partner or sponsor. He will not work out the nitty gritties. He will talk in terms of the larger number and leave the rest to sponsors and telecasters, who invariably suffer in the end.

Lalit Modi, who replaced Dalmiya as the main negotiator for BCCI is just as arrogant. As long as Dalmiya was in BCCI - irrespective of whether he is the Secretary or President or Treasurer or whatever - he will discuss all the commercial deals. Modi is the equivalent. He is one of the several vice-presidents of BCCI and is entrusted with the television negotiations.

His dealing was downright harsh and Zee (after winning the overseas bid) even complained against Modi's behaviour.

With India's showing in World Cup downright pathetic and Indian Government's legislation on sharing TV feeds with Doordarshan on top, all of BCCI's partners are in trouble - which means BCCI is in trouble.

Nimbus has been renegotiating with BCCI and there seems to be some agreement with them on reducing their $612 million, 4-year rights deal. Zee, in the meantime, desperate for cricket, had talked about a separate professional league. Now, Zee has announced that it is cancelling a deal with BCCI for telecasting overseas cricket matches organized by BCCI.

When cricket is played in any of the full member countries, the host controls the television rights. If International cricket has to be played in any of the associate or affiliate member countries, the respective cricket association in that country has to stage the matches and will, in turn, own the telecast and other rights.

IMG/TWI exploited this later concept and organized matches in Toronto. Canadian Cricket Association was the organizer namesake. IMG/TWI did everything and pocketed a neat profit and paid small monies to Canadian Cricket Association. Sharjah (UAE Cricket Association) was WorldTel's property, but later became Bukhatir's Taj Television's.

BCCI hit upon this wonderful idea of cutting out the middlemen, and become the event organizer abroad to maximise its revenues. Alas, the team's poor performance, greedy and mindless deal have all come together to roost now.

BCCI can survive only by hiring sensible corporate managers who are also kind and decent and build a sustainable business and not be corporate thugs, who bully bidders into submission. Because, when you fall - as in cricket you always fall - you won't have any friends left. Like it is now for BCCI.

ESPN-Star renegotiating ICC cricket deal?

2007-04-20T11:51:00.000+05:30

There is a news item in The Economic Times that says ESPN-Star is looking at renegotiating the ICC cricket rights, which was pegged at around $1.2 billion.

The reasons quoted by the paper are:

India's performance is poor, and the value of Indian rights is more than 70% of the global value.
2015 World Cup in Australia is non- prime time.
Advertisers are looking for safety clauses in contracts (if favourite teams flop, if rain impacts the tournament etc.)
Indian super stars will have retired by then (Sachin, Rahul, Saurav, Virender etc.)
DD-Nimbus encryption problems.

I think this is complete garbage. Firstly, team performance is mostly cyclic. Australian matches, if day-night, will get into reasonable prime-time. Maybe, they can hold more matches in Perth than anywhere else:-) Current super stars will be replaced by future super stars.

I think, the real issue is that the price quoted is anyway high, irrespective of all the above reasons. ESPN should not have bid $1.2 billion.

The main problem I see is the Indian government legislation on sharing the feed with Doordarshan. That lowers the value of World Cup rights and other cricket rights. India cannot enforce such legislation on matches played outside Indian territory. So, it is upto ICC and other cricket boards to join the broadcasters and fight the Government legislation in the Indian courts.

Cricket World Cups and Cricinfo

2007-04-15T17:01:00.000+05:30

The first World Cup after the advent of Internet was in 1992, in Australia and New Zealand. K.Robert Elz, known as 'kre' who was a fairly senior officer in the Australian Internet Setup would write a brief match report and the scorecard as on that point and will mail that to the newsgroup rec.sport.cricket. The same was broadcast across two email mailing lists maintained by Prof. Sankara Rao at North Dakota State University.

After this, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was used to provide ball-by-ball text commentary. Cricket was perfectly suited for this. Cricinfo followed soon, in 1993, developed initially as an IRC bot by Simon King and then moved into Gopher and then the World Wide Web.

In time for the World Cup 1996, which was to be played in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, Prof. Sankara Rao was very keen to have live ball-by-ball upto-the-minute scorecards on Cricinfo. He approached Jagmohan Dalmiya, then heading PILCOM, the body that was staging the World Cup, and obtained the necessary permission. Dalmiya, with his usual bluster, said all arrangements have been made to collect scorecards from every venue through a complex network, set up by Puncom (A Govt. of Punjab undertaking), pushing the content to a media center in Kolkata (then Calcutta). And that, this can be taken to the Internet, but Cricinfo would have to make its own arrangements for the same.

The first match went on, but no connectivity could be established and in any case, when I looked at the scorecards that came from the wonderful network, it was in complete shambles. Names spelt a million different ways. No cricket statistician would look at those scorecards and accept them.

Cricinfo had a reputation to stick to. A South African, Jacques de Villiers, (perhaps along with a few friends) had developed a cricket scoring software called 'Dougie'. It was a Unix term based program. To record a ball event (either a run, or a wicket, or an extra), you just need to enter a few characters. That was it. The program updated the scorecard, changed the batsman facing the bowler now etc. The scorecard in the original version went to a Unix finger file. 'Fingering' was the mechanism by which one could follow the score.

After the PILCOM fiasco, Sankara Rao suggested that 'dougie' be resurrected and used for scoring the games. A cricket crazy Dutchman, Louis van Dompselaar, took the program, modified it and made it working well in time for the second match. The matches were available on satellite in US via KBS (later merged with Echostar). A chap (the name Ravi comes to mind, but now i cannot remember the name fully) convinced a motel owner in Louisiana who was getting the feed, got an Internet connection installed in the motel, and used dougie to score the matches. I pitched in, operating the software most of the time by taking the data from him through IRC. We had excellent scorecards in Cricinfo. It was an extremely popular site during that period.

Immediately after this World Cup, Cricinfo was incorporated as a private limited company in UK, with Simon and I as its directors.

Just before 1999 World Cup in UK, Cricinfo received commercial funding. A sports portal called sportal.com (then called Pangolin) brought in some money in early 1999, into Cricinfo. Dougie had improved substantially thanks to several others but most notably Travis Basevi (who still works for Cricinfo). Travis, an Australian, was flown to Chennai, and form there he provided running text commentary and scoring for most of the matches. Cricinfo took on the official site, run by the ECB and won hands down. By now, Cricinfo was quite commercial and was soon to receive couple of major fundings. First to invest was Michael Watt, a New Zealander, who had founded CSI - a television production company, which was later sold to Octagon. Then, in early 2000, SIFY, an Internet Service Provider in India bought out Watt's stake, and invested more moneies into Cricinfo.

2003 World Cup, played in South Africa (and Zimbabwe/Kenya) was another turning point in Cricinfo's history. Between 1999 and 2003 Cricinfo had gone through a cash crunch and a heart-aching restructuring. Wisden Group acquired a majority stake in Cricinfo and soon took 100% control of the portal. The deal happened right in the middle of the World Cup.

Since 1996, Cricinfo's World Cup coverage has been the best out there. No other entity has scaled up to providing a better cricket coverage. That apart, as I have detailed above, every World Cup has been a momentous occasion for Cricinfo - as a venture/company.

Now, 2007 World Cup is being played in West Indies. Who knows... there may be an interesting deal in progress.

Cricinfo
ICC's Cricket World Cup Official Site

[PS: I am not associated with Cricinfo anymore. I left the company in April 2005.]

Private FM players may be allowed to broadcast Cricket commentary

2007-03-08T10:03:00.000+05:30

An article in Business Standard suggests that the government may allow private FM channels to broadcast cricket commentary. As of now, FM stations are not allowed to broadcast news. Cricket is certainly entertainment and not news, but for some reason since their inception radio stations were not allowed to broadcast cricket. It would be great if the government notification happens before the World Cup next week.

Nothing outstanding may happen for the current World Cup. We may only get the standard Hindi/English commentary. But in future, city based stations can offer cricket commentary in respective languages. This will generate more listeners and hence more revenues for the stations, and consequently more revenues to the rights holders and the BCCI.

Tamil channels coming on air in Bangalore

2007-03-08T09:16:00.000+05:30

Indiatelevision.com reports that slowly some Tamil channels have been let in the cable networks. One cable operator commented:

"Even now, we don't want to antagonize the Kannada activists by starting all the Tamil channels at one go," said a cable operator, who did want to be named. "We will do it slowly, and maybe meet in a few days to take a decision on the matter, because the entire process of notification may take a long time. Why should entertainment be mixed up with politics?" he asked.

Cricket world cup internet deal

2007-02-27T09:43:00.000+05:30

Indiantelevision.com reports that Maruti has taken up a sponsorship deal on ICC Cricket World Cup official website amounting to $1 million.

This is a huge deal as far as Internet advertising in India goes. There might have been larger year-long deals in the near past, but nothing probably comes close to this deal - $1 million for a little over a month, to a site which is unlikely to be as popular as well known cricket Internet destinations such as Cricinfo.

Ban on Tamil channels in Karnataka

2007-02-27T09:18:00.000+05:30

Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are locked in a conflict in sharing Cauvery river water. A tribunal was set up in 1990 which gave an interim award in 1991. This resulted in anti-Tamil riots in Bangalore, some people were killed and several driven homeless.

The tribunal has come up with its final verdict this month (5th February 2007). Unlike in 1991, there have not been any riots or murders. But there is still a lingering problem where Tamil television channels have been off air since the announcement of the verdict.

India Television News

I consider this a very disturbing news. India has moved forward substantially from the tribal mindset in the pre-1990 era. Economic growth (though quite lopsided), has brought considerable plurality and appreciation for opposing viewpoints and cultural sensibilities.

Problems between states in a federal set up should not result in linguistic minorities being tortured in one way or the other. A band of Kannada extremists are holding cable TV companies to ransom and are enforcing this 'ban', and an elected government is unable to revoke the ban in a liberal democratic country.

Karnataka people have every reason to be angry at the tribunal's verdict and they should take up all legal measures to push their case ahead. But if the state, intelligentsia and Kannada speaking people allow the Kannada extremist organization to dictate terms on how to treat the linguistic minorities in their state, Karnataka state will remain in dark ages forever.

Cricket rights, BCCI and Neo Sports

2007-02-24T13:25:00.000+05:30

Indian cricket allows for brash and innovative deal making. There is a lot of money riding on Indian cricket and poor management at all levels makes it very difficult to decide exactly what the size of the potential is. This results in heavy speculation.

No sports anywhere in the world has seen television rights value multiplying like the way Indian cricket has. A quick update of history here for your consumption. Before Jagmohan Dalmiya and IS Bindra started managing BCCI, Indian cricket matches were broadcast by state owned Doordarshan. Doordarshan made all the money (or none at all) and never thought of actually paying BCCI. Doordarshan probably thought it was its divine right to produce and broadcast cricket (and other sports) staged in the country. On its part, BCCI also did not know that it can ask the telecaster for a rights fee.

In 1993, BCCI for the first time tried getting a private broadcaster to produce matches (Hero Cup) and sell the broadcast to a private channel. This resulted in Doordarshan blocking the coverage by unfair means. Indian Customs was used to block the cameras from being taken inside the country. VSNL (at that time owned by the government), an uplinking company, was forced to not uplink the television signals. This resulted in a court battle, at the end of which it was established firmly that BCCI could sell cricket telecast rights.

India had started on a liberalisation process and private TV channels were coming to India, transmitting through satellite. Large dish antennae and cables strung over lamp posts were used to transmit the signals to homes. ESPN was in India, and so was Star Sports. Both these channels started looking at cricket as a big growth engine and started fighting amongst themselves and jacked up the rights fees.

Then, the two channels merged to create ESPN-Star Sports.

TWI negotiated a deal to bring Indian cricket on cable and satellite (C&S) television ESPN from 1995-1999. The five year deal was valued at approximately USD 5 million. This was also the period that saw Harsha Bhogle fronting cricket commentary for ESPN and technological innovation started coming into Indian cricket production.

ESPN-Star Sports also brought overseas cricket to India, matches involving India as well as matches between other teams.

This was the golden period for Jagmohan Dalmiya as he consolidated his position in BCCI. In between, 1996 World Cup happened, jointly organized by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka (PILCOM) which was produced by Worldtel of Mark Mascarenhas. (Today Dalmiya is accused of embezzlement during that World Cup and has been stripped off his posts and memberships and is facing criminal prosecution.)

In the meantime, Dalmiya had squeezed himself into a powerful position in ICC as its President and set out his goal of generating money for ICC. Thus, he defined specific events for which ICC will hold rights and created the concept of ICC Championship Trophy (also called mini world cup). The 1999 World Cup held in England did not generate any income for ICC, but the subsequent Wills Knockout in Bangladesh did. Since then ICC events have been generating massive revenue. (The latest ICC global rights have been sold for around $1 billion to ESPN-Star Sports.)

When the Indian cricket rights were up for renewal in 1999, Prasar Bharati emerged as a surprise winner. The state-owned broadcaster agreed to pay the cricket board $54 million (Rs 227 crores) for five years (from Sep 1999 to Apr 2004). ESPN-Star Sports and other private players were beaten, and the rights fee jumped ten fold from $5 to $54 million!

Now Prasar Bharati set out to maximise its revenues. It ran the first series - India vs New Zealand - shoddily. Then, under Rajiv Ratna Shah, set out to generate massive income for the remaining 4.5 years of rights. It broke the rights into two parts - overseas distribution and India airtime rights, for the telecast in Doordarshan channels.

The airtime sales rights were picked up by an associate company of Zee Telefilms called Buddha Films, which bid a massive $120 million (Rs. 450 crores) for the same. Other bidders were TWI-Stracon and Nimbus.

TWI-Stracon, however won the overseas distribution contract by bidding $43.75 million.

Thus, within six months, Prasar Bharati turned the $54 million contract around for more than $160 million.

TWI, for its part, wrote into the contract just about everything it could, and created a funny thing called "multimedia rights" which was so poorly defined. Prasar Bharati thought it still had the "Internet rights" which it could sell further.

Prasar Bharati decided to offer non-exclusive Internet rights for all comers at "an annual license fee of Rs. 25 lakh" which included "scoreboard, analysis, graphics, stills (up to 30 frames per minute from the live signal) and interviews with players (this may include pitch report, weather report, interview on the captains, players and experts)." But it added, "if the license-holder, however, desires to have live and delayed streaming audio and video after obtaining the Internet rights from Prasar Bharati, it will have to approach Stracon-TWI who hold the multimedia rights.

In the end, none of the Internet portals bought the Internet rights from Prasar Bharati. But TWI found a sucker in PCCW's now.com and sold a bunch of things to them including live video streaming, some kind of extended highlights for their TV operation etc. for something amounting well over $26 million.

Then, when PCCW sort of collapsed, TWI brokered a deal selling the rights held by Now.com to ESPN-Star Sports. This resulted in ESPN-Star Sports running extended highlights for India matches (which ran for well over 3 hours for each day!). This resulted in Prasar Bharati suing them, and getting an injunction in the courts preventing ESPN-Star Sports from broadcasting these extended highlights.

TWI also ensured that PCCW's streaming rights (outside of whatever Prasar Bharati thought) were exploited properly, by teaming up with Wisden.com to offer serious commercial cricket streaming.

It was clear that when this set of rights came to an end, BCCI will look at getting even more from its rights and the fight for the rights will be acrimonious.

That is what happened, and a period of chaos ensued.

Dalmiya still had control over the BCCI. He was in charge of rights negotiations. ESPN-Star Sports was the front runner. Prasar Bharati was not going to get involved in the bidding game in a big way as it was pushing the government to come up with a legislation for any winning bidder to share the terrestrial rights with Prasar Bharati on a revenue-sharing basis. Sony Entertainment Television had acquired ICC rights during this period for a whopping sum. Zee was aggressively looking at expanding into DTH space. Both were going to bid. Ten Sports, another sports channel was also in the fray.

The BCCI bid document was quite harsh as it demanded substantial experience in showing International cricket in its channels for two years. In the end, Zee bid $260 million (Rs 1200 crores) for four years. ESPN had bid $230 million, Sony TV at $140 million and Ten Sports at $115 million. But the story did not end there. BCCI disqualified Zee's bid on technical grounds and invited ESPN for further negotiations.

This resulted in Zee going to court against ESPN and BCCI. Nothing happened for the next year or so. The courts ruled that till the cases were disposed off, Prasar Bharati will show the matches in Doordarshan and will keep an account of the money.

In between, a further rebid happened, further lawsuits, further chaos.

Then, a palace coup happened and Dalmiya was removed from BCCI, Sharad Pawar, a Union Minister won, and took control of BCCI. This resulted all earlier bids being withdrawn and a new bidding process put in place. Various cases were withdrawn.

In the meantime, the government had come up with broadcast regulation rules which stated that any private channel having telecast rights to any cricket event (whether staged within India or outside) must share the clean feed with Prasar Bharati for terrestrial broadcast on a revenue-sharing basis. Ten Sports contested this in courts and kept winning. Still, everyone thought the BCCI rights values will be lower because of government rules.

However, Nimbus came from nowhere to bid a massive $612 million for the next four years (March 1, 2006 to March 31, 2010) during which time there was a guarantee of 22 Tests and 55 ODIs to be played.

Thus, in three successive terms, the rights fee has jumped from $5 million (5 years) to $54 million (5 years) to $612 million (4 years).

Nimbus has taken a massive punt in bidding so high. The first series was shown on Sahara TV, a free-to-air channel. Subsequently, Nimbus launched its own channel called Neo Sports (and Neo Sports Plus), and showed the next two series there.

In the meantime, the government came up with an ordinance forcing private broadcasters to share the matches with Doordarshan. Nimbus refused and offered only a time-delayed (7 minutes) feed to Doordarshan. This prompted the government to issue a show-cause notice to Nimbus. On the other hand, TRAI - the broadcasting regulator attacked Nimbus' pricing policies. Four metro cities were being moved into CAS (Conditional Access System), where TRAI had mandated that each channel must be priced only at Rs. 5 (whether it is a sports channel or a movie channel or a nothing channel!), and in non-CAS areas, the pricing must be discussed with TRAI first and only with the approval of TRAI, the pricing can be enforced.

Nimbus had, in the meantime, done a deal with Star distribution to distribute its channels, and Star had promised a minimum guarantee of approximately Rs. 600 crores to Nimbus for the four-year period. The two channels were priced at Rs. 58.50 but TRAI hads slashed them to Rs 37.25 for non-CAS areas and Rs. 5 each for CAS areas. This is going to seriously impact Star and Nimbus' revenues. Another thing that will impact Nimbus' advertising revenues will be whether the government's ordinance can withstand judicial review.

The government is also trying to talk to BCCI and the channels in sorting out the sports broadcast ordinance. But BCCI will mostly side with Nimbus and sports channels on this one. A lot will depend on the judiciary now.

BCCI has, in the meantime, also created a new set of overseas rights, where it will conduct matches in neutral venues like Malaysia, USA, Dubai and so on. Telecast rights for such matches have been sold off to Zee for $ 219.15 million for five years (April 1, 2006 to Mar 31, 2011), during which time at least25 matches will be conducted.

BCCI and ICC have made a lot of money from Indian television channels. It is not clear whether the numbers can be justified in the long run though.

Vodafone's Hutch purchase

2007-02-23T10:02:00.000+05:30

Vodafone has come out as a winner in acquiring the stake in Hutch held by HTIL, Hong Kong. HTIL is a publicly listed company which invests in various telecom companies across the world. Main shareholder of HTIL is Hutchison Whampoa group of Li-Ka Shing.

HTIL and Essar group of India have 67% and 33% respectively in Hutchison Essar Ltd. which runs mobile phone services across India under the brand Hutch. Hutch is one of the leading mobile phone companies in India, at the fourth position in terms of subscriber numbers after Bharti, Reliance and govt. owned BSNL.

About three months back, HTIL surprisingly decided to pull out of the venture and put up its stake for sale. The Indian operation amounts to a significant part of HTIL. Apparently HTIL felt that the telecom investments were turning out to be quite high in the competitive Indian environment. I think the main reason is HTIL's relationship with Essar which was going nowhere.

Hutchison Essar was supposed to go to the stock markets but that didn't happen because of internal fight between HTIL and Essar. The required investment for further growth could have easily come from the stock markets. The enterprise value at which Vodafone has acquired the stakes is about 18 billion USD or about Rs. 81,000 crores. A dilution of around 15% would have resulted in well over 10,000 crores from the markets for further investment. (This is the kind of number Vodafone is indicating it will spend. Bharti too will be spending only of this order.)

Essar is a difficult company to understand. Suddenly it seems to be flush with cash. It is into shipping, steel, telecom and what not. Essar even suggested that it will buy the 67% from HTIL. It still seems to claim it has matching rights to the stake held by HTIL, and if Vodafone doesn't agree to certain terms for the new shareholder agreement, Essar may invoke the matching rights clause or fight a legal battle. HTIL claims there is no matching rights clause in the shareholder agreement!

Vodafone may find dealing with Essar a difficult proposition. Essar does not seem to have a clear telecom strategy or the money and capability to execute on plans. If at all possible, Vodafone should try to buy out Essar completely, find some financial investors in India, and go IPO in Indian stock markets (since there is a limit of foreign holding in telecom companies in India).

Besides Bharti and Reliance Infocomm which are listed, Idea (of Aditya Birla group) has just now listed. Spice Telecom (operating in Karnataka and Punjab) has filed a draft red herring prospectus. BSNL, after a merger with MTNL, may also list.

Vodafone's purchase would also mean a complete rebranding. Hutch as a brand will go completely out of the country and Vodafone will enter India (and in my handset too!).

The battle for free newspapers

2006-09-05T16:10:00.000+05:30

N. introduces free paper - International Herald Tribune

We in Chennai are used to free neighbourhood newspapers like Mylapore Times, Mambalam Times, Anna Nagar Times, Adyar Times and so on. They are usually weeklies, about 8-16 pages, tabloid, usually short of news, mostly advertisements and some odd columns here and there. The useful things they have are local event diary and local advertisements.

However, in London, particularly around tube stations, a full-fledged daily newspaper called Metro is available, entirely free. When I explained this to my wife, she was quite surprised as to how such a thing was even possible.

In UK, the cost of a newspaper, in local currency is about 50p at most. For that, you will get as many as 30-40 tabloid pages. The cost of the raw material can easily be covered by the cover price, but in most cases, the effort made in collecting the money will be huge. If one can get decent advertisement revenue, then one can look at foregoing the cover price. Metro did precisely that.

Metro's content is not unique or out of the world. It is just newswire stories and photos, rehashed and neatly packaged. A team of 3-4 editorial staff can easily put that together. Metro probably does not have its own reporters to visit the scene and report directly. It does not have any exclusive columnists. The advertisement and distribution teams are probably larger than the editorial team.

But, as a newspaper, Metro is doing an adequate job, and it is free to boot.

Now, Associated Newspapers is launching an evening newspaper - also free - called London Lite. This will also be available near tube stations in London.

Simultaneously, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is also launching a free evening paper called Thelondonpaper, and will also distribute the same near the tube stations. Now, people have a choice. Which one they will subscribe to, we will have to wait and watch.

The cost of the paper in the Indian Rupee term is quite high. Even though Deccan Chronicle in Chennai and The Times of India or Hindustan Times elsewhere have tried Rs. 1 per day, they have quickly upped the price. The Hindu charges more than Rs. 3 each day. Even at Rs. 10, one can't cover the cost of the paper.

However, I can't see anyone trying out a free newspaper here. It may be possible to look at a high quality weekly magazine on a free basis, supported purely by advertisements.

Hutch - Essar spat

2006-08-11T15:29:00.000+05:30

Essar calling off the sale of BPL Mumbai circle operation to Hutch does not make much sense. Hutch has contested the decision and the Mumbai High Court has asked them to go for arbitration. So something amicable may be worked out here.

Essar is, after all, a partner of Hutch in the joint venture. Essar's attempts therefore looks more like an attempt by a peeved partner to cause serious hurt to Hutch, rather than well measured business decision.

In the mobile space in India, Bharti and Reliance have zoomed ahead. Bharti has had the least of problems. Reliance had trouble when Mukesh and Anil Ambani fought amongst themselves. Now that there is some degree of resolution there, Reliance is forging ahead.

If Hutch had worked out an aggressive strategy it could have reached number two position. Instead, now, it is in a distant fourth position (with BSNL/MTNL combo at number 3), and Idea, Tata Telecom both hot on its heels behind. Others including Maxis owned Aircel will be aggressively snapping up the new users in the 'C' circles.

Essar who has substantial stakes in Hutch Essar JV should realise that a stronger Hutch Essar, when it goes IPO will offer higher premium per share in the stock markets. You don't get a premium when you are number 4. Both number 1 & 2 are listed entities. Idea and Tata Telecom are well funded, but not strong enough brands compared to Hutch. But if Essar continues to harm the JV, Hutch will be left behind, thereby robbing Essar of valuble wealth.

Economic Times on banks lending to rural folks via moneylenders

2006-08-07T15:40:00.000+05:30

Today's The Economic Times has an article titled Banks eye money lenders to give cheaper credit to farmers.

The article suggests that Banks cannot easily lend to the rural people because they do not reach the rural folks. What was unstated was also that Banks are afraid of lack of securitisation. So they are looking at village moneylenders, whose combined reach is great. So the banks are looking at somehow regulating them. Apparently a group has been constitued comprising of "six senior RBI officials and a senior bureaucrat each from of Bihar, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh" to take a look into using the moneylenders as conduits for reaching money to the needy farmers.

But then moneylenders are known to charge atrocious interest. "However, the money lenders have to be regulated so that they do not overcharge farmers" says one member of the group, according to ET.

I do not know whether this is a good method. Indian central bankers need not have to look at this solution at all. Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has already demonstrated over two decades, what can be achieved by direct micro and mini credit without any mortgage or security whatsoever. Grameen Bank is reaching millions of people - more than 90% are women. Grameen Bank has been successful in cutting out the local moneylenders who are basically exploitative.

How can regulation help change the moneylenders' behaviour overnight? Why should the moneylenders take money from banks and offer the same at low interest to the farmers (and others) when such a business will be entirely against their existing business where they are making substantial income, by charging 10% or more interest per month?

India has not bothered to copy a successful model such as Grameen. Instead we are offering a pale imitation in the form of Self Help Groups (SHGs) where the group is forced to save money first and then borrow from within that group fund so collected. There may be minimal topping-up over the savings at best. The banks do not care much about the SHGs. That job is left to various NGOs. The state governments step in and pay some compensation to the NGOs for starting up new groups.

From what little I have learnt about the SHGs in India, they are in no way comparable to the Grameen experiment.

I would suggest that what India needs is three or four banks in the mould of Grameen Bank, operating in various parts of the country. One each for each zone - perhaps. The Banks can simply be identical copies of Grameen Bank. Like in the case of the Grameen Bank, it is advisable to keep the Government out of the Bank so that Government does not get into one of its debt write-offs every once in a while for the sake of votes. Government, at best, should have only 20-25% equity in such a bank. The rest of the equity should be with the participating women, and other funders. There is also enough of an opportunity for private banks to start this kind of a venture.

It would be better to stay away from using the moneylenders.

Lok Sabha question on sporting telecast rights to Doordarshan

2006-08-06T07:35:00.000+05:30

Minister of I&B Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, while answering a written question in Lok Sabha has said as below:

The Government has no proposal to set up a Regulatory Authority to monitor and regulate the earnings through telecasting of sporting events. However, the Government is contemplating the establishment of an autonomous authority to regulate Broadcasting sector.

Also there is no proposal to give Doordarshan the sole right of telecasting the sports events organised in the country. However, the Government has issued an order on 5th April, 2006 vide which live feeds of a number of specified sporting events of national importance held in India or abroad are required to be shared with Prasar Bharati with immediate effect by sports channels/sports management companies having television broadcasting rights for broadcast on their terrestrial and DTH networks. In case of cricket events, these shall include all matches featuring India and the finals and semi finals of international events.

It is however surprising that the Minister did not inform the members of the Parliament that Doordarshan and Ministry of I&B have been taken to the judiciary a few times and the judiciary has found no reason to uphold the Government Order of 5th April 2006.

It is also surprising that there were no follow-up questions on why such an executive order was sent out rather than contemplating a proper legislation, what the Ministry is proposing to do about the Ten Sports issue, whether the GO is fair or not, what have the International sporting bodies - in particular the ICC - conveyed to the Ministry of I&B etc.

This is the quality of debate in Lok Sabha. This is the quality of our representatives in the Parliament.

Ten Sports continues to defy the Indian Government

2006-08-05T21:59:00.000+05:30

Ten Sports has been the only channel consistently taking on the Government of India and Prasar Bharati, the Govt. controlled television channel, when it comes to sharing of sporting telecast rights.

In November 2005, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued a policy guideline for Cable operators and Television Channels operating in India that certain notified sports events must be shared with the Govt. owned Doordarshan, only on a revenue sharing basis. Worse, the guidelines were applicable to several events for which the telecast rights were acquired long back.

This was done primarily because Doordarshan was losing out on the lucrative cricket rights. While Doordarshan knows it can make a lot of money from cricket, it doesn't have the ability and money to compete fair and squarely in the rights market. So it used a backdoor method.

This infringes heavily on the rights of private Telecasters and their ability to make money. However other channels did not care much. ESPN - Star Sports, Zee Sports and various other rights holders including Nimbus did not take the Govt. head on.

Only Ten Sports did. Ten Sports owns cricket broadcast rights to events happening in Pakistan, West Indies and Sri Lanka. Ten Sports consistently challenged the Ministry and Prasar Bharati. In the case of Indian tour of Pakistan in early 2006, Doordarshan backed out of Tests but the ODIs were telecast across both the channels after Doordarshan was forced by the Courts to pay a fixed fee for showing the 'dirty feed' (namely the Ten Sports feed with all the Ten Sports advertisements and logo) without any alterations whatsoever.

Basically the Courts called Doordarshan's bluff on 'public service'. Doordarshan kept claiming that its intentions were noble and not money, and that it wanted maximum number of people to receive the broadcasts. So the Courts ruled that Doordarshan shall show the Ten Sports feed without any alteration and not make money out of any advertisements. Doordarshan also tried showing a pre-match, post-match show, which was also stopped by Ten Sports by going to Courts.

Thus, badly mauled by the legal set-up in India, Doordarshan stayed away during the Indian tour of West Indies. Public service did not come in to the picture, since the matches were in the middle of night.

Now that matches are being held in Sri Lanka in broad daylight and prime time, Doordarshan has dusted and brought back to life 'public service'. Ten Sports, as usual, went to Supreme Court, where the bench is finding Ten Sports' claims perfectly valid.

The impugned guidelines from Ministry of I&B are so pathetic, the Courts are repeatedly smashing them. It has become so much of an embarassment for the Government. The Govt. has avoided bringing a legislation and has used the Ministerial guidelines to impose something as major as controlling the event telecast rights and curtailing the freedom of operation of private enterprises. Even if they try a legislation, there may not be a sensible debate on this issue. Majority in the Parliament will be used to force a 'bad law', forcing the private enterprises to fight in the Courts again.

But, there are ways by which a legislation in Parliament can control events held in India, and forcing the event organizers to sell or offer virtually for free, terrestrial rights to Doordarshan. For events held outside the country, no such thing is possible. It does not happen in UK, or Australia, but in both these countries Terrestrial channels must be offered rights for certain events held in the country. India can look at building such a legislation than coming up with patently unfair policy guidelines.

PS Krishnan on Social Justice and Reservation

2006-08-04T12:00:00.001+05:30

PS Krishnan, Retd. IAS, is a former secretary to the Government of India and former member secretary of the National Commission for Backward Classes. He was the Secretary in-charge during VP Singh's time resurrecting the Mandal Commission Report.

He was recently in Chennai to give a lecture on "Social Justice and Reservation" organized by the Chennai based Indian School of Social Sciences.

I have recorded the lecture and the subsequent Q&A session and am making it available here. This is a mildly edited version. I have removed one mindless question unconnected with the reservation issue (in the Q&A section), a few word repetitions, coughs, cellphone rings and other such noises.

[Links changed, 1st May 2008]

1. Sashi Kumar of Asian College of Journalism introduces PS Krishnan, followed by Krishnan's lecture on Social Justice and Reservation., 58.43 min, 26.8 MB, 64kbps MP3 file

2. Questions and answers that followed the lecture, 42.37 min, 19.5 MB, MP3 file

Quite a bit of what PS Krishnan said in the lecture appears in an article he wrote in Frontline, Apr. 22 - May 05, 2006.

Deemed Universities can start courses without getting UGC permission

2006-07-19T09:49:00.000+05:30

The Hindu News

In a clarification sent out couple of days back, UGC has said that Deemed Universities can start any course they want (such as B.A., B.Sc., M.A., M.Sc. or M.Com.) without prior approval from UGC.

This is exactly the opposite of what they supposedly wrote to the Deemed Universities a few days back - wherein they had said Deemed Universities must give an "undertaking that no course will be started without its nod."

So let us recount what has happened over the last 10 days:

All Technical Institutions are under the control of AICTE.
But wait... once the Technical Institution becomes a Deemed University, that institution is not exactly under the control of AICTE, but rather under UGC.
So what can be done if the DU is found to be violating the AICTE norms? AICTE cannot take unilateral action. They can inspect DU's premises... but not on their own. They need UGC persons to accompany them. AICTE can find out what is wrong with the DU, but cannot act on their own. Must pass on the info to UGC and UGC will act on them.
UGC sends a letter to all DUs asking them to follow AICTE norms, and that they give an undertaking that they will not start any course on their own without getting UGC permission first.
Then very soon UGC sends another letter that supercedes all the earlier letters, allowing DUs to start whatever course (but non-technical) they want without getting UGC's permission.

Does it mean DUs can start whatever technical course they want without getting AICTE/UGC approval? No clarity.

What is the current status regarding the technical courses started by DUs without AICTE approval? No answer. In fact this was the major issue on which the students fought pitched street battles in a few DUs in Tamil Nadu.

How soon will AICTE and UGC undertake joint inspections of DUs as per the Chennai High Court Order? What will their action be if they find flagrant violation as in the case of Vinayaka Mission institutions? No clarity.

Why is UGC so pathetic? Can't they think clearly and then send out letters once and for all? Are they being pressured by DU lobby to let them off hook?

If Private Universities were considered an aberration and a whole bunch of them abolished by a Supreme Court order couple of years back, why are DUs, which for all practical purposes are Private Universities, being allowed to run unchecked?

All through this muddle Human Resource Development Ministry keeps mum.

How can we expect India to produce better engineers tomorrow?

UGC wakes up to Deemed Universities' abuses

2006-07-16T10:24:00.000+05:30

After Chennai High Court order asking AICTE and UGC to undertake joint inspection of Deemed Universities' precincts, UGC has written a letter to all the DUs asking for an "undertaking that no course will be started without its [UGC's] nod".

I think, the wording has to be stricter than this. DUs should be threatened with dire action if any violation is found - such as immediate revoking of DU status and relegation to a mere college status under respective local Universities.

In 2005, UGC had sent out a similar letter to DUs, but out of 103 DUs, only 40 or so seem to have written back to UGC. DUs will continue to flout the norms, unless some are punished severely and others are told to behave.

The Hindu News

AICTE cannot take direct action against deemed varsities

2006-07-15T12:06:00.000+05:30

In what can only be termed as a victory of sorts to the erring Deemed Universitites, Chennai High Court has ruled that AICTE cannot act directly against the erring DUs, but can only bring the errors to the notice of UGC.

The Hindu News

AICTE cannot also inspect the DU's premises on its own. It needs to include a representative from the UGC.

If this is what the Court thinks, why do we need AICTE? It can as well be disbanded and the money allocated to UGC to build its own expertise to inspect and regulate the Deemed Universities and Engineering Colleges.

Actually, the problems lies with the Central Government. They should regularise the roles of AICTE, UGC, MCI and so on through proper unambiguous legislation. The executives are once again relagating their powers and allowing the judiciary to control various aspects of the administration.

Local Loop Unbundling in UK

2006-06-07T09:50:00.000+05:30

Free broadband. That is the wave sweeping UK right now.

A few years back, people were offered free dialup Internet connection in UK. But you paid for the phone calls. Why would the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer Internet for free? What was there in it for them?

This could work because the ISPs bought bulk telephone time from British Telecom (BT), and asked BT to bill the customers using the Internet connection on the normal billing mode for those minutes which they used for connecting to Internet with that particular ISP.

Sounds confusing? This is how it works.

Freeserve was the first company in UK which offered this service. Until this company was set up in 1998, Internet access in UK was metered. One had to pay the costs of both the telephone calling time plus the ISP's charges per minute - something similar to what it is now in India. All that Freeserve did was to do a deal with BT and promised that its customers will call Freeserve's numbers at least one million minutes every month (say), and negotiated a price for the same (say 10p a minute), and guarantee this payment to BT whether or not Freeserve's customers utilised these many minutes or not each month. What BT will guarantee in turn is that it will charge its customers calling Freeserve's numbers the normal rate (say 25p per minute) and will pay that amount to Freeserve. Thus, the differential 25p - 10p = 15p per minute was what Freeserve was getting for providing its services.

Thus BT banked on Freeserve's marketing ability and innovative service it was offering its customers to make money. Freeserve was making its money by banking on the increasing demand for Internet dialup connectivity.

But this did not last long. More and more companies jumped in the fray making similar offers. The per minute call rate kept falling in UK, thus squeezing the differential. Some competitors offered flat rate deals for unlimited time.

Then BT started offering DSL services and that almost completed wiped out the above business model. DSL is of course an excellent model. It doesn't clog up the local loop allowing one to make a phone call as well as an Internet data transfer simultaneously. But BT had an undue advantage. Only BT owned bulk of the local loop across the country. BT could take its own sweet time to offer DSL to specific areas. If someone had to challenge BT, they had to start laying their own lines, copper lines or fibre optic lines or coaxial cable or something else.

Then, the telecom regulator in UK (Ofcom) started looking at unbundling the local loop. This proposal - despite resistance from BT - was accepted by the Government and the roll-out process is going on now.

Thus we now have the rush from innovative companies looking at offering free Broadband connectivity. Pure mobile phone operators as well as Cable and/or DTH Television players have also decided to offer a free broadband deal for their existing customers.

The convergence game in UK is far more interesting than anywhere else in the world. UK, for long, had a virtual mobile service model in place. Virgin Mobile (which is merging with NTL - cable TV operator who is also offering telecom services) was one such. It was using T-Mobile's platform to offer its branded services. The 'Freeserve' type model emerged only in UK. The ground situation in USA is very different that some of these models could not have developed in USA.

Now, let us take a look at the situation in India.

The landline in India is still dominated by government owned BSNL and MTNL. These companies have not looked at selling bulk minutes to any third party operator so far. Thus, Freeserve like model has not emerged in India. We have jumped straight to the DSL revolution. But BSNL and MTNL resist local loop unbundling, though the Indian regulator TRAI suggested this. BSNL and MTNL have strong Government backing. The Department of Telecommunication and the Minister for Telecom Dayanidhi Maran have strongly defended not unbundling the local loop. We will never get to see local loop unbundling in the next 5 years or so.

The mobile phone sector in India is booming. Thus no mobile phone operator has bothered to look at interesting models such as virtual mobile service. BPL talked about it at some point in time, but has since been taken over by Hutch.

India is probably looking towards a Wi-Max driven revolution to unshackle the broadband market and Internet connectivity.

The connectivity costs have come down. Airtel offers a Rs. 600 a month, unlimited download, but a restricted 128 kbps DSL connection. Certain other deals from Airtel offer connectivity at about Rs. 200 a month. BSNL offers similar services. None of the operators will be interested in offering higher bandwidth, higher quality of service for a while anyway. The TV distribution platforms have not shown any initiative in offering high speed Internet connection. Reliance has talked a lot, but is far from delivering an integrated triple-play or quadruple-play solution.

At times, a booming market by itself turns out to be bad for the customers. The service providers have little time to think of innovative and interesting solutions. They keep working hard, just to handle the massive demand for the basic services!

Chennai - Healthcare Capital of India?

2006-06-01T14:58:00.000+05:30

I do not have any data. This is based on my personal observation over the last 4 months - during which time I visited Ramachandra Medical College Hospital, Apollo Hospitals, MV Diabetes Centre and Shankara Nethralaya in Chennai.

In each of these hospitals, I noticed a huge crowd, but what was interesting was the presence of patients who spoke Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali and a few other assorted North Indian languages. In each Hospital, the staff were equipped to deal with the patients who could only speak in the above languages. The staff were all - or almost all - Tamilians but they spoke perfect Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu and what not besides Tamil and English.

In Apollo where my father underwent a heart bypass surgery, I found NRIs from Malaysia and USA. I also found a few Africans and Caucasians (not sure of their nationalities). In and around Apollo Hospitals in Greams Lane, I found plenty of Malayali and Bengali patients staying in temporary accomodations.

I thought that the facilities for something as complex as heart bypass surgery are perhaps not widespread and perhaps Chennai has over the years built up sufficient number of private hospitals that specialise in heart surgery. But when I went to Shankara Nethralaya, I found several people who seem to have clearly come from North India and from Bengal for something as simple as an eye checkup and proper prescription of glasses. This is difficult for me to understand. Surely there should be enough eye hospitals around the country? It was strange to see the staff at Shankara Nethralaya talking to the patients in perfectly acceptable Bengali and Hindi. Unless the stream of visitors is large, the staff wouldn't have taken the effort to learn these languages.

So what is actually happening? Does anyone know?

As an aside, I wonder if people in North India will take the effort of learning Tamil or Telugu to talk to their customers.