SPEED Cast: Urmila Matondkar, Zayed Khan, Battered Cell Phone Direction: Vikram Bhatt Hell, cell’s bells. Broken, bruised, battered, a handset turns out to be quite a hutch/airtel/Vodafone ado about something. A lady in calf-leather boots, freshly kidnapped, yells, "How dare you! I’m a British, citizen." Unimpressed, the bozos bleat bah-bah. Aha, then, she pokes away at a few wires, a plastic spindle and a nimboo-green plate. Aloha, it’s never too late. See, the mobile’s alive, kicking and screaming again. Help! Vikram Bhatt’s Speed bhi Kabhi Cellular Thi may be swiftly edited and decently shot but sorry, it’s an exercise in vacuity and senselessness. Here the London streets can become Ballard Pier and coconut trees sprout in the Queen’s Palace. Alarmingly, too, the British countryside resembles the cheapest-to-hire location in Goregaon’s Film City. Tut tut. Indeed, serious matters are afoot. The Indian Prime Minister, a Gayatridevi Sinha is to be assassinated in London (never mind if the shoot’s in good ole Powai). Since she’s played by Suhasini Mulay, you’re not worried. She always survives. She keeps smiling like Mona Lisa gone wrong and addresses a public meeting attended only by 10 or maybe nine junior artistes. Best of all, she’s accompanied by the riotous Raj Zutshi, Indian cinema’s most underrated comedian yet. He just has to show up and there you go tee hee. Mirthfully, Zutshi meets bad guys in a London-cum-Powai toilet, and keeps cleaning his hands with a napkin as if were Lady Macbeth. He isn’t. Actually, everyone’s quite cuckoo. Take the Baida Fry Bawarchi (Sanjay Suri) who’s actually an MI5 spy (wazzat?). He behaves like Kiefer Sutherland in the TV series 36 Hours, which means he’s as perplexing as a crossword without clues. His wife (Urmila Matondkar) is the kidnapped one. And like Kim Bassinger, she’s networking seriously. “Gasp, puff, huff, pant, eeeeeh, grunt, ouch…aiyyya," is the only line of dialogue assigned to her. Heavens! Meanwhile, Zayed does a Run Khan Run all over Britain. Or Powai. And he unwraps an ugly teddy bear to gift to his angry girlfriend Tanushree Dutta. Understandably, she gets angrier. She also rolls rosogollas in her mouth inspired perhaps by Marlon Brando’s marbles-in-the-mouth in The Godfather. And so what else? Well, Amrita Rao… no no… Amrita Arora is killed after one antara (stanza) of a supposedly sex’ysong. Not surprisingly, you don’t miss her. More: Aftab Shivdasani in a Flapping Trenchcoat delivers a [...]
Archive for November, 2007
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SENSEX 20K: Will the sight blink?
November 29th, 2007 
Deepak SENSEX 20K: Will the sight blink? Politics, Macro- Economics, good earnings reports and a few positive corporate developments took the Indian stock market to yet another high. The Sensex was powered, especially by energy, metals and banking stocks, in its 639 points (3.47 per cent) climb to reach a record close of 19,058.67. Wire money online to India with Xoom.com for as low as $4.99. The Sensex has now gained 3,000 points in just over four weeks. Retail investors have been either on the sidelines or booking profits during the last 2,000-point rally even as foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continued to be net buyers, pouring in over $7 billion since September 18. Buy at whatever prices stocks are available, brokers are telling retail clients. But some brokers caution investors to develop a long-term focus. A research study released by ING Investment said most participants from the 13 Asia-Pacific countries where they conducted a survey believed the investment climate would continue to be positive, though they did not expect their return on investment to be as strong as the previous three months. But 83 per cent of the respondents in China and 75 per cent in India said return on investments in the next three months would be as strong as the previous three. The survey findings suggest a possible correlation between investors’ level of sophistication and their confidence in the market. While investors in more mature economies such as Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore are seen to be more conservative in their outlook; those in India and China, on the contrary, are extremely optimistic, possibly due to their short investing history. Brokerages reported some amount of profit booking by individuals but mutual fund houses said inflows there was no rush for redemptions. In this frenzied atmosphere stock recommendations and market outlook are flowing in through mobile text messages. While the Securities and Exchange Board of India might have come up with strict rules for investment advisors, there are several SMS messages people get from, to whom the former do not know. The rupee ended stronger at 39.30/31 a dollar on strong capital inflows into the equity market amid dollar buying by state-owned banks at the behest of the Reserve bank of India. In restricted activity at the Interbank Foreign Exchange market, the local currency was trapped in a small range of 39.29 and 39.37 after resuming steady at 39.34/36 [...]
Mangers
November 28th, 2007 Deepak Managers When Aesop (of the Fables) was being sold in the slave market, they asked him what could he do best. He said if anyone needed a master he was very good at that. Sixty years ago India became independent; Indians had a combination of a victim mentality resentful of the West and hungry for any mention of one of us achieving even a polite nod from the same source. Now like Aesop, Indians who were once slaves, are being hired for being managers of MNCS. Deutsche Bank has Anshu Jain and Vodafone has Arun Sarin and Pepsi has gone one better with Indra Nooyi. But, why is it that the turnaround has come now and so late? India was an industrializing country with manufacturing growth at 8.4 per cent per year between 1860 and 1900. Wire money online to India with Xoom.com for as low as $4.99. India was still the seventh largest industrial nation in 1947. But then we went on to repress and infantilize our private sector in the name of self-sufficiency and socialism. Forty years were wasted in the foolish experiment of socialism, but then the floodgates began opening in 1991. Even it took 10 more years for the private sector to really become free. Now India will not be stopped even by its own political system. Given the rich pool of talent India has, with a capacity to learn, amazing flexibility and habits of hard work and (let’s face it, politicians apart) integrity and honesty, there is no reason why by 2025 India should not be a world leader in multinational management.
WILL EVERY INDIAN HAVE ACCESS TO A PHONE?
November 27th, 2007 Deepak WILL EVERY INDIAN HAVE ACCESS TO A PHONE? A decade ago, only 13 in a 1,000 Indians had a telephone. Getting a phone connection was considered to be an achievement of sorts. It’s a tribute to our times that we are thinking about a phone for every Indian today. Will every Indian have access to a phone in ten years’ time? Yes, it is not only essential but also inevitable. Providing phone access to the entire population of India would be a vital step in making our country competitive. A phone for every Indian does not mean every Indian will have a phone, but that there will be universal access to a phone-a phone will be readily available at an affordable rate, to all who wish to use it. When more than a billion people get connected, everyone will be linked to the national economic bandwagon. Thanks to the mobile revolution, telephone penetration is moving up rapidly. Today, taking into account both mobile phones and landlines, India has more than 175 million lines. Though landline numbers are growing slowly, exponential mobile growth is compensating for that. The mobile subscriber base has crossed 130 million and we are adding over six million customers every month to become the fastest growing mobile market in the world. In future, telecom numbers in India will be driven by mobile growth. This rapid growth is being driven by afford ability. Indian tariffs are the lowest in the world. But given that about 25 per cent of a service operator’s revenue goes into the government kitty as taxes, a fine-tuning of these rates could help make the service more affordable. Prices of handsets, too, are going down rapidly. The price of entry-level sets has already fallen to the suh-$30 (Rs. 1,350) price band and is slated come down further. The industry is working towards shared access for people who cannot afford to own a handset. Geographical coverage is the biggest hurdle in a country of India’s size. Infrastructure sharing by service providers is going to be a big driver of penetration in future. This has already started in the big cities. When implemented in rural and semi-urban areas, this will help expand geographical coverage faster. Universal connectivity is an ambitious goal, particularly for a billion plus population with an average annual per capita income of $620 (Rs 27,900). But what makes me optimistic is the consistently [...]
WHERE ARE PRICES HEADED?
November 26th, 2007 Deepak WHERE ARE PRICES HEADED? Over the last decade, many products and services have seen a significant fall in prices. This trend has obviously made these products and services affordable to a larger number of people, resulting in massive increase in consumption. From interest rates on home loans, to computers, electronic appliances and air travel, Indian consumers now have access to things they could only dream of a couple of decades ago. Simple economics is at work here. The price of a commodity drops when either demand decreases or supply increases. Clearly, decreasing demand is not a contributor. Expanding supply has been the main driver of falling prices. In most cases, this has happened because new capacity has entered the market. For many products, this capacity increase is both because new factories have been built in India and because previously banned imports are now freely permitted. This is not just a matter of increasing numbers, however. As volumes increase, the cost of production itself declines. Processes become more efficient and inputs can be sourced more economically Competitive pressure contributes to a persistent drive amongst all producers to cut costs and prices, through the use of innovation on both processes and products. All of this ultimately leads to the widening of affordability that we have seen over the last decade. In short, the process will continue as long as this virtuous circle of expanding capacity, increasing imports, rising competitive intensity and increasing productivity continues. This is true of most products. Take the explosion in retail as an example. Even if the product being sold remains the same, organised retail represents a way of getting it to the consumer at lower cost. However, unrestricted increases in volumes are not possible in some critical areas. If trade across borders cannot take place, one major source of competitive pressure is lost. If availability is fixed by nature or constrained by regulatory impediments, the process described above will not work. In these instances of ever-increasing demand and constrained supply, prices will rise persistently. The most prominent example of this is land, the availability of which is truly fixed by nature (with the few exceptions of reclamation, such as in Mumbai or Dubai). Land prices will continue to increase; the pattern itself will be distorted by the differential quality of infrastructure available in different pockets. Investments in infrastructure will help in smoothening out these differences, but cannot [...]
A COMPLETELY LITERATE INDIA
November 25th, 2007 Deepak A COMPLETELY LITERATE INDIA India’s unique contribution to the growth of the knowledge industry has significantly transformed the global perception of Indian education and raised expectations within the country as well as abroad. Yet paradoxically, India continues to be at the bottom of the pile as far as the human development index is concerned, ranked as low as 126. UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report cautions that the country, along with its South-Asian neighbours and Sub-Saharan African countries, is at the grave risk of not meeting the global commitment to reach the goal of education for all by 2015. Providing education for all is also a national goal. Can India ensure universal adult literacy and basic education for all children by 2015? The question is doubly relevant as the country is drawing up its 11TH five year plan. Can the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) deliver? There is no option but to make it work. Unfortunately, while more money is being spent year after year, fatigue for action seems to be setting in at the field level, and no significant improvement is visible in the functioning of the public education system. If the SSA has to deliver, there will be a need for radically changing its course. First, let us move beyond the numbers to look at school functioning, and shift attention from enrolment to effective functioning of schools. As revealed by a recent national survey by Pratham – an NGO started by the UNICEF-30 per cent children do not attend school and learning levels are abysmally low. A recent international study on India found 25-30 per cent of the teachers missing from school. In the existing framework of the SSA, school and teacher grants are meant to focus on individual schools. Without careful monitoring and follow-up, the scheme is now a spending proposition with little to show for results. Global experience shows that overall improvement in education can be achieved if financial support to schools is linked to their management and performance and the implementation process is monitored by the local community. Such an approach could be effectively implemented in India by making use of the process of the Panchayati Raj institutions and grass root – level bodies. The second proposition is that the SSA – which is funded through Central plan resources, with a substantial component of international assistance-should invest selectively, that is, in states and on social groups that really [...]
DEAL OR NO DEAL
November 25th, 2007 Deepak DEAL OR NO DEAL To understand the future of the Indo- US nuclear deal you need to consider four critical facts. The analysis that follows is distilled from conversations with Left leaders, in particular the CPI’s A. B. Bardhan. First, the reason why the Left is adamant the government must not initiate formal talks with the IAEA is because this is the last point at which they can stop the deal. Once it sails or sneaks past the Agency there is not further intervention required by the Indian government. The Americans will pilot it through the NSG and the Bush administration will secure the final updown vote from Congress. The IAEA stage is the only point at which the left can obstruct its passage. The Left believes that IAEA’s clearance might only require 72 hours. It’s aware the government has done a lot of the spadework through informal contacts and non papers. Equally importantly, it acknowledges that despite the tricky nature of the fuel supplies assurance India wants, the rest of the safeguards are routine stuff. It doesn’t believe the IAEA will fall back on the 4 days clearance option. This reinforces the need to pull the plug as soon as the government approaches the IAEA. Second, when the Left withdraws support the government will enter what they call a grey area. This is the interregnum between the Left informing the President and any test on the floor of the House to prove the government is a minority. During this stage, there may be doubts about the legitimacy of the government but no certainty. Therefore the government can or at least, can claim to function normally. The question is, will the IAEA accept a government in this predicament as a credible representative of India? The Left hopes it won’t but isn’t sure. If the IAEA has doubts, it will balk at concluding a safeguards agreement. If no, the deal is through. Third, how late can the government leave the start of negotiations with the IAEA without endangering the schedule for all the other steps that must follow? This will determine how long the present UPA-Left confabulation continues. The government has shared the timeline with the left but neither side has made it public. A safe date would be the end of October but it could stretch to early December. If by then, the government hasn’t initiated talks with the [...]
Elections in Gujarat
November 24th, 2007 Deepak Elections in Gujarat: Congress all set to ‘Chak De’ The Congress is the latest to join the long list of those inspired by the recent Shahrukh Khan starrer "Chak De India". Adapting the title for the upcoming crucial Gujarat assembly elections, the party’s new slogan, "Chak De Congress" is set to resonate in its poll campaign to be launched by Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Vadodra on October 30. Colourful "Chak De Congress" posters were plastered on the two dozen Innovas which were handed over to the party district chiefs at a special function in Valsad as the Congress mobilises its workers to battle Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. The party is hoping the popularity of the film and the slogan will help it to connect with the people in what presently looks to be a neck-and-neck fight between BIP’s Modi and the Congress. The Congress believes several factors are working in its favour in this election. Although Modi continues to enjoy an "industry-friendly" image, its assessment is that the common man has got disillusioned with him. In an effort to cash in on Modi’s unpopularity among these sections, the party’s state unit’s campaign will focus on Modi’s poor track record as an administrator, the promises he failed to keep and his dictatorial style of functioning. The Central leaders will instead focus on how Modi failed to utilize the funds it received from New Delhi. The Congress is well aware that Modi will attempt to inject a communal colour to the campaign to polarize the polity as he had done in the last assembly elections, which followed shortly after the Godhra riots. However, the feedback from the state unit is that Modi is unlikely to succeed in this attempt as anti-incumbency has set in and more and more people are questioning his tall claims of providing a corruption-free administration. Besides this, the Congress is banking on the dissensions in the BJP ranks, a sharp contrast to the united show being put up by its Gujarat unit which is fighting single-handedly to defeat Modi. The 11 BJP MLAs and two MPs who have rebelled against their party have promised to assist the Congress in dethroning Modi. A still from Godhra Carnage The Congress is wary of inducting these rebels into the party fold given the strong resistance from its state unit and the proactive role played Goverdhan Zadaphia, former [...]
October: favourite month for bomb strikes in India?
November 23rd, 2007 Deepak October: favourite month for bomb strikes in India? Bombing has become the sole and most potent weapon of terrorist organisations; October has been their favourite strike month. Besides bombings that left Karachi and Pakistan bleeding last week, India too had its share of bomb blasts in Ajmer and Ludhiana this month, Some of the cities, including Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, have born major brunt of terrorist strikes as records put the number of lives lost in bombings since January, 2004 at 3700. Bombing, admit police officials, is the most economical and potent weapon used by terrorists who have of late discarded the use of other weaponry, including assault rifles. To send a message to the global community that they are still alive and kicking, rudiments of erstwhile terrorist groups and supported by new organisations from across the border on the either flank of the country bombing suits them the most. Bombing not only needs minimum of investment in terms of finance, planning and personnel, it also makes it impossible for police forces to detect the potential threats before they strike. Increased use of both ammonium nitrate based intensive explosive devices and RDX in crowded areas has proved a lethal success. Some of the better trained terrorist organisations have been using with professional acumen the remote controlled devices to trigger series of blasts as were witnessed in Mumbai and Delhi. Though the intelligence agencies besides the central agencies suspect direct or indirect involvement of ultra Muslim outfits and intelligence agencies of country’s immediate neighbours, they also do not rule out the podium being provided by the rudiments of virtually eliminated terrorist organisations. Interestingly, another revelation of study of bomb blasts in the past few years will reveal that both July and October continue to be favourite strike months for the terrorists. If one looks back, a series of blasts had rocked Delhi in October, 1997. Bombing terror returned to the capital again in October, 2005 in Sarojini Nagar, Pahar Ganj and Gobindpuri, leaving 59 dead and 160 others injured. In October, 2005, 12 policemen were killed in bombing by Maoist terrorists in Jharkhand. This year, October already had its share of blasts, both in India and neighbouring Pakistan. Chandigarh had witnessed October bloodbath some years ago when terrorists exploded bombs at a Ramleela in the city. In Mumbai, terrorists had struck in a big way in 2006, but in advance (September end) [...]
Tiding over Brain Drain
November 23rd, 2007 Neha Brain Drain – when the trained, talented individuals go and work in countries that partake of their knowledge. Many young individuals mainly from sectors like information technology, biotechnology & bio-informatics move out of India with a view to earn a sound income. Young brains migrate with a thought to pursue higher education. Do you think they will return to India after completing their courses? Not exactly… More than 90% will continue working there. The question arises – who finally pays for the loss to the country? India is not behind any country as the youth here are conscious enough about their future. Youngsters are insanely career-oriented, willing to work hard for long hours and serve their country with their best. We have with us many successful and hard-working candidates in almost every field. For over 30 years, some of our brightest youngsters have migrated to developed countries like the UK, Australia, Canada etc. Many foreign companies have also homed in on some developed cities in India, again a source of development only for these foreign countries. The main cause of Brain Drain can be traced to personal aims – of youngsters to earn money and fame. It’s quite obvious that a company offering us a handsome salary will be preferred. Another problem can be the ‘Problem of Governance’. This is an extremely a sad state of affairs that even at senior levels, low wages ate being paid. An economic advisor with the Finance Ministry is not getting more than Rs 20,000 pm, or so we are told. In addition to this, lack of opportunity, several conflicts on discrimination or corruption lead to the rise of brain drain in India. . Some ambitious youngsters after pursuing higher education from abroad return to India and work for their country. With the cooperation of the government and people, one can establish an enterprise. This can be possible for the one with high skills and knowledge. Entrepreneurship is the best way to develop and achieve success. So, the government should give opportunities to the highly-skilled, extremely intelligent and experienced workers to progress in their own country. Much higher skills are essential in order to build firms and markets that can complete the dream of global economy. The need of the hour is to set a goal to achieve 100% literacy rate as soon as possible. A fresh PhD has a global market and it [...]
