Mahant!

Talk to anybody on the street and no matter how horrible the things are currently they are sure to say India will grow into a super power sometime in future. And the core basis of all these dreams is the rick solid demographics. First off, these demographics are just awesome! There are about 2.5 Crore new Indians added to population every year. There are 10 crore new voters in this general elections. The huge percentage of our population is below 25 years of age. And more than 50% of the population is below the age of 35. In short, we have a demographic boom. Or a great, awesome, variety. Very soon we will have more people working for India, than anytime in past. There will be more working hands added to workforce than the count of people retiring, and therefore the pension liabilities etc can easily be paid out. India can take more risks and take more debt, if it needs to, because the population is supportive of such a measure. However, I am not so sanguine about these demographics. L...

Lots of things have been said but very rarely do I see someone target the root cause and explain it. Here MJ Akbar says what I have been saying for a long time now. Excerpts from his article: When Modi talks of building a hundred new cities, they can see jobs and opportunity rise with every floor of a new township. One significant indicator of the public anger lies in a statistic: employment has grown, on an average, at only 2% in the past decade. If the rate was higher in the first five years of UPA, when the economy was faring better, then one assumes it must have sunk to less than 2% in the second UPA term. A nation that was soaring on achievement and hope has sunk into depression. We need a national recovery mission. Only someone who has delivered can offer a credible promise of leading such a critical mission. For those on the wrong side of 30 or 40, five years is just another passage in life. For those who are 20, five years is the difference between aspiration and despair. If a...

Sometimes you have to contort in ridiculous ways to explain simple things, sometimes it happens in epiphanic moments. Here is a beautiful snippet that is self explanatory.

Mamta Banerjee is becoming a bit of puzzle to me. Or if I am reading it right, she has some goals but is totally under-resourced to be able to achieve it. TMC being a regional party obviously needs allies, however that is not the biggest weakness. Actually, you can see this weakness across the board, be it Jayalalitha, Nitish or Naveen. I guess the problem is simple. India from now is going to be dictated by States and not by the Center. That rubicon we crossed sometime in past few years when regional parties became the key 'king makers.' But playing a national game in a diversified country like India, with hundreds of cultural, traditional, educational, situational, aspirational, geographical and resource differences, is an extremely difficult task. The problems with regional leaders like Mamta or Jayalalitha or Nitish is their reach is grossly limited by their brand, as well as the content/ ideology and reach. A good example of how hard it is, Mayawati has been trying for yea...

Over past two years I have been writing on politics as I see it. Astonishingly, for a apolitical guy like me the observations and the strategies have played out perfectly to the tune! Only thing I probably failed, and failed bitterly, is in having any hope of the 'honest' Prime Minster will be concerned enough to do something. I also failed in the fact that I expected BJP to rise above its feebleness and get some energy behind its attack on Congress led UPA. Unfortunately, these two flaws in our politics - a feeble Prime Minister and a weak Oppositions - were great combination for running the country into ground. Here are the past Politics related articles from archives. I believe these developments matter to the elections and how it will shape up. About BJP A simple reason why BJP will fail.   BJP's biggest problem and its great need for moderation   Power is BJP's to Win, If They Play It Right. BJP is a "fiscally responsible" party  Congress Its a Season of ...

A compilation of all the rants :-P There are many parties which have plans on feeding off the carcasses of Congress in 2014 elections. But I don't think, the Congress' decimation is going to so total as in Andhra Pradesh, or the erstwhile AP. The main contenders are the TRS, Jagan's YSR and Naidu's TDP. But the smartest move for me is that of Pavan Kalyan!  Pavan Kalyan announced the formation of the party but a party which will not contest the elections and will align itself with BJP (which is most likely to form a new government). Now, in a state where the crossover from tinsel town to politics is the second nature to most movie stars, the laudable aspect of Pavan's move is the timing. By moving ahead and forming the party on the anti-Congress mood, and utilizing the "Telugu" sentiment while also aligning itself with the powerful national forces with negligible local presence; he smartly brings to the table the newness, the power in the center, the un co...

Well, this is just too cute to be passed off. Posting it for its cuteness-factor :) 

One of the constant bickering I have about Kejirwal is his "referendum" style of democracy. It has somehow dawned on him that asking people what they want is the best form of democracy. Therefore, for everything from whether to form the government or to fight an election or where to fight etc, everything seems to be formed on the show of hands or sent SMSes.  Kejriwal's this style of referendum, in my opinion, is not based on genuine concerns of people or their views on the subject but to give fig leaf for Kejriwal should he fail to succeed. If somebody asked him why he formed a government with his staunchest enemy Congress' support, he can conveniently say it was people\s choice. If you ask him why he cut the electricity prices or gave free water he can say it is peoples' wish. Or (like he is going to) be defeated by Modi at Varanasi (if at all he has gumption to contest) then he can conveniently blame it on external parties - the people. Kejriwal's this kind...

Saw a curious piece of information today. India buys 10% of Italian defense equipment exports and first thing that came to my mind was Agusta Westland scams.  India is the highest defense importer in the world, and spends about $46 billion a year. With this kind of spending you may think we have one of the best defense equipment in the world. In other words at least our borders are being guarded well.  I also read today, in connection with #MH370, India does not have any air surveillance radar at Car Nicobar, with the only radar being ruined post Tsunami (in 2006!) Somehow all these multi-billion expends every year was not enough to buy a radar for a critical sea lane's surveillance. Funnily, it seems a mobile radar is operated at Car Nicobar, and that radar is non-operational at night. Excellent information for the enemies to fix an appointment there. Just a note: A generous sum of Rs500 crores was allocated for the One-Rank-One-Pension scheme for defense officers, after year...

The core problem with analyses is that we consistently tend to underestimate the possibilities. We are usually faced with so much of uncertain factors that it is impossible to estimate, let alone predict, the possible scenarios. Yet we, especially the market analysts, have this tendency to get ahead of ourselves and visualize the possible future scenarios. The problem is, any one of the fluid factors could drastically change scenario. Unfortunately, the probabilities of such occurrence are very high, yet we err.  Best way to tackle these is to have constant stream of data while cancelling out all the additional data / factors that try and affect us. By concentrating on few representative data sets we have much better chance of finding success than trying to utilize all the factors. In short, the solution is to focus on few factors that will give us results majority of times. Trying to be right all the time will only lead us to be wrong most of the times.

Transformational Leadership are a myth. Well, in most cases. Leadership situations of most cases rarely lend its to transformational possibilities. But some definitely do, and such a leadership is expected in such a situation. The present situation India finds itself in, most notably after a decade of weak and feeble leadership, is the hour of transformational leadership. The need is due to genuine demographic concerns and loss of prestige and place among global peers. Most important of all is to be able to utilize a great opportunity to rise hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and better the general standard of living. You can routinely find such situations in corporate world but even there the percentage of successes with transformational leadership style is very low, but not unheard of. The point is, if India has to succeed with a transformational leader, Modi or no Modi - India has to be lucky.

Some times we come across something that is so simple, stark and to the point, on very complex issues, that we have to slow down and take notice. It is not surprising that most of such wisdom happens cocooned in proverbs or quotes attributed to some legendary thinkers and philosophers. Today I came across one such, and here it is. I tried explaining in few previous posts why Kejriwal's strategy was so badly thought out and gamble committed in such hurry that it is sure to fail. To reiterate the point: Kejriwal won the elections (very surprisingly); went on to form the ministry, tried to grab the headlines and be seen to do things (how will it get executed, he least bothers) and now is on the way to Lok Sabha. The following quote will give him much needed wisdom and put the sense of proportion in to rest of us. “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”   - Bertrand Russell

In December when Aam Admi Party swept the Delhi's polls, it was a tectonic shift. A new party, made of political rookies sweeping deeply entrenched parties was a credible job. What was the reason a new party was so successful? This subject has been beaten to death post that win, however there is one aspect which I have not seen people have tackled much. That's possible because most of the news channels seem to concentrate on the present and few are rarely concerned about history.  Well, for the history. AAP has its origins in the Anna Hazare's movement against corruption. The timing of the corruption and its subsequent ability to grip the masses' imagination was spectacular. The key is - this was in 2011-12.  In effect, Aam Admi Party has been campaigning against the establishment - Congress and BJP, since at least 3 years. With the movement led by Anna Hazare and supported by almost all sections of society across the country, and also supported by celebrities, led to s...

AAP confounds me. It doesn't confound because of its stupid bland unhygienically regurgitated theatrics in sole blinders-on aim to gain some credible new bytes before it hits the jackpot just a few weeks away. It does, certainly, but not as much as its firm believers believe in this alien philosophy of nonsense with no roots of politics, economics, sociology or common sense, believe with so firm a mind that an evangelical priest knows where to pitch his tent next. The reason why these so called politely named AAP-tards (I would actually prefer AAP-turds) are so sadly in need for approval and a flag post to hoist their hopes and dreams that they would hitch onto any weird ideology which sounds good, irrespective of the value, benefits and realism this salesman holds out for them. I remember the mass waves of hysteria of good old days when Ganeshji was said to drink milk. I really loved it because I saw the most sane of the people, the professors and commissioners et al, diligently t...

Idea is running series of "Ullu mat banao" ads. The fundamental essence of these ads are that the information of internet will help you make good desicions. Now, ordinarily these are good, for instance, where the lady digs up photos from Facebook to contradict the claims. And also like using the GPS to understand the routes. However, in most other cases, like especially the "Taj Mahal" snip where historical information is dug out from internet, its just not a good idea. Prima facie this is not a big problem. But that is assuming the information provided on the web is factually correct, unbiased and untainted. Internet, where almost all the information is layman user generated information, cannot be factually correct in all instances. We have to assume, for our own good, that most of the information found of web is tainted and factually incorrect or incomplete.  We have to understand that internet is a very good source of quick information but we must also be cogniza...

It is very exciting when something foreseen works out exactly as predicted. We had mentioned that Jayalalitha's strategy of joining the Third Front was an eyewash. ( Link here )  Its easy to see Jayalalitha is the 'leader' in the current 'Third Front' but she clearly does not belong there. I expect her not to make any overt moves in support of Modi, and hold the "PM" card in "third front" for as long as needed. Jayalalitha's first signs of breaking off with the key Thrid Front member is no chance. This opens up two possibilities, either a explicit alliance with BJP (post poll) or a member of Mamta+Naveen+Jaya combine. The latter of course does not make any sense for serious aspirer like Jayalalitha.  And regarding her rebuttal of CPI and CPI(M) by offering just 2 seats combined, we had hinted something like this could be in works. Here is what we said: These moves effectively occupies the strategic positions before any of the rivals could eve...