A wonderful ‘Civilization’ called India

Been a while I have posted anything. Lack of time is the excuse I would peddle but the truth is the writer’s block

But a few things happening around me and I felt that I think I should express my views.

And it so happens that tomorrow is 26th January so makes this post rather apt.

So the video link did not work for Rushdie to read out a few more verses. Why is everyone so surprised or aghast over it. Obviously the link would not have worked. In this country, the technology also works the way political system does. Of course, I am unable to understand all this controversy.

I don’t think we should have banned or stopped Rushdie from visiting India on account of religious sentiments. We should have stopped him from coming because the event in Jaipur is a Literature Fest and he doesn’t belong there. His writing is pretentious and cure for insomnia.

It’s the western world which considers him a writer. I think he is full of ….

But nope this secular country which has this fundamental right about freedom of speech stops him from coming over because there are elections happening in a few crucial states and it is very important to listen to the views of a very critical ingredient in the electoral mix

Elsewhere, this secular country wants to push its ‘oh so secular views’ in other countries. Jay Leno must be thinking up of some more funny and interesting stuff to talk about this controversy on what he said or showed. Imagine, the one person who should have been really upset over his comments should have been Romney but we don’t know what his reaction was. I think US firmly put us in our place by telling us that free speech (in spirit and action) exists in their country and we should shut up.

Just the way we should have shut up when there was a court case about Bhagwad Gita happening somewhere deep in the frozen environments of some gulag in Siberia. Who are we to get all charged up about what happens in another country.

And we should not have be commenting on what the talk show host says in New Zealand about someone in India.

In fact, we should not be saying anything about anything about who says what in any country.

Aren’t we supposed to be one of the oldest civilization? And supposedly about tolerance?

But I guess as country, a mix of various religions and run by a political alliance, we are supposed to make all the right noises to appease everyone.

Also we should not let anyone say anything about political leaders even within the country. All the shit that has happened about banning a Facebook or Google.

We are also the moral police because we don’t want sex to be one of the most searched word coming out of this country. How dare anyone search for sex!! it is such a taboo word.

Enough of ranting. Hopefully I will have something nice to say in the next post.

Till then, life goes on in this wonderful civilization..

 

Related articles

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• India must chose to defend Right to Speech (kractivist.wordpress.com)
• Muslim activists scuttle Rushdie video link (thehimalayantimes.com)

So yet another in a series of communication by liquor brands trying hard to connect with the

audience by saying something thought-provoking and profond (supposedly). And seriously, do the liquor brands really believe that this surrogate crap will make the people feel that the brand is not about drinking yourself silly, but about a social consciousness or whatever.

Johnny Walker – Keep Walking

Seagram’s Royal Stag – Make it Large
and Now Smirnoff  - I Choose to be a Hero

the underlying message to all the communication is consume me and I will consume you.

You can make it Large if you have Royal Stag. And a sports person endorsed the brand?? And the Indian Cricket team Captain also endorses another liquor brand. And now this –  I choose to be a hero by having Smirnoff.

Surrogate is fine if it stays in the fun area or something ridiculous as mineral water or glasses and stuff. But I do not think they have any business propagating any kind of philosophy… specially to the young (as all communication seems to reflect, except perhaps Johnny Walker).

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Inventors vs Innovators vs Consumers – Why India can never be an economic super power

Might be a controversial post but it is the truth.

We have the population… so does China… lot more than us actually… But numbers do not convert into turning the nation into super power.

I have started reading “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” by Tim Wu (part of must read by Seth Godin). The first 50 pages into the book and I arrived at this conclusion.

US became the economic power house because majority of the inventions in the 20th century happened over there. it was a country which realized what technology can do. And this awareness, coupled with the freedom, individuals and groups invested time and effort in doing new things… discovering… experimenting… developing…  The results are all there for us to see.  Any new technology that emerges and becomes a rage, the origin is in US. Of course with freedom and the power to dictate terms to the entire world, comes arrogance. And this arrogance has led to the state of affairs that exist in US . But this post is not about that.

The point is that countries that invent… are the ones which take leadership position and make the other countries gravitate towards them

Then there is the next level… which also takes the super power status. These are the countries where they innovate… take the basic invention and take it through a series of innovations to make them better… thereby appropriating to themselves economic leadership. Germany for automobiles, Japan & Korea in consumer electronics and of course China which takes all of it and produces it at half the cost and seeks domination.

So where does that leave India? or where has it left in India after 64 years of Independence and warped political policies and the brain drain from 1960′s till perhaps 2000. NOWHERE is the answer.

We are the consumers for now. This rise of the middle class in last couple of decades and the urbanization, we are hungry to consume all that the world of technology has to offer. Whether it is the iPhone from US, LCD TV from Japan or Korea, Cars from Japan or Germany… we will take them all. We have the numbers and the world realizes that. So the markets are full of these innovative products. We can get everything we want and we can pay for. Our consumerism has for the moment numbed our innovative thinking and of course these countries would not want us to innovate so they keep giving us object of desires and do not want us to bother about inventing. If we start with that process, who will buy their technology?

Another way of keeping us busy is the whole BPO and KPO and various kinds of business processing that we are involved in. Infosys is huge and admired but eh.. what is it they do? Sabeer Bhatia made hotmail famous… what did it do for India? The various nobel laureates from India… did their invention or innovation make this country big? We gave the world zero and got nothing in return because nobody did anything after that. Now we only talk about it.

Unless we become inventors or innovators (and on a technological breakthrough scale), we can never become the power that everyone keeps saying we have the potential for… specially the politicians and commentators who can’t look beyond the population numbers and the prestige of our tech education institutions.

And it is a collective effort that is needed… politicians, corporates, people, media, policies, mindset and a willingness to invest.

Related articles

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• Is It Time For India To Try On Its Super Power Shoes & Start Being One? (themoderatevoice.com)
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Automobile Communication – It is all so easy and so shallow

So youth is the new consumer for every possible category including the automobiles. All the new compact cars that are being launched are supposedly addressing this new consumer.

Toyota Liva TVC had ticked all the boxes as far as communication to the youth is concerned. Of course the communication left many confused – was it a commercial for a car or for a mobile phone with a host of apps.

And the latest from Hyundai Eon. Must have been one very complicated brief and then even more complicated creative thinking to come up with the big idea to address youth – We got to have a song with kickass lyrics which address the mindset of youth (I want it now). Then take the car for a spin and have people admire it (traditional stuff when it comes to automobile or bikes communication – seen it so many times in past couple of decades… Hero Honda or rather Hero Motocorp was a master at it). Now comes the most crucial piece.. which would have been laboured over by the planning, servicing and the client – The “kind” of people and situations to connote youth. And we have an award-winning commercial which so connects with the youth.

Seriously?

Somehow all the brands… whether it is Hyundai Eon or Toyota Live (I wont include Honda Brio in this because I could not understand the commercial) or Nokia think that the youth of today is extremely shallow. In my past posts I have written enough about it  but still when i see commercials like the one under discussion… it gets me here again..

I have a very young team working with me whose average age is probably 23/24. I look at them and then I look at all these TVCs and it makes me wonder… is this bunch of young an exception or all the brands are getting it wrong. This young crowd is materialistic.. sure.. but the fact is that they are working and are very committed at what they do (probably lot more than me at their age). It is the money that they earn by working hard and smart is the money that is then spent on gadgets and all the accessories. And they want the best.. because they can afford the best and the communication under discussion is sheer wall paper for them.

The breath of fresh air is the commercial for BPTP ( a real estate company in Delhi/NCR). Unfortunately (and they missed a trick here) it is not available on youtube so I can’t give the link. But readers who live in Delhi/NCR would have seen it playing in mulitplexes. Will briefly describe it.

A working girl comes home for holiday. Her grandmother exhorts her to settle down (In India it means get married) because she is 26 now. The girl takes out her phone and tells her granny she has settled and should she show the photographs. There is a shocked look on granny’s face… her parents too (that she got married and didn’t even tell them). But what she shows are the interiors of a house that she has bought! The granny.. not to be outdone.. says that she meant marriage and the girl turns around and says “For security? Oh there is a watchmen for the complex!”

To my mind they have completely done it! broken so many stereotypes in one communication – 26-year-old buying a house and that too a girl (age and gender). Where typically most real estate communication does not address either. And then to top it all… the age-old notion that is set for girls in this country about marriage.

Tackily executed (sure looks very low-budget handy cam kind of commercial) but great on idea.

There is another one and I cant remember if it is Chevrolet Beat or Spark but it is on air currently about a woman doctor who suddenly realizes that it is Raksha Bandhan and drives over to tie rakhi to her brother… again breaks the stereotype of automobile advertising – car driving around for no reason at all (mostly by guys).

I think most brands need to go back to the drawing board and let go of shallow thinking if they really want to communicate and be part of young people’s lives.

Some links to view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgAFK95qlm4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTH01RVAfy0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xih8sVbI9ww

Margin Call – A must watch movie

Over the weekend I watched this movie and I highly recommend it to everyone. In India, it will probably never get released because it is not a huge Hollywood spectacle. So download… get your friend to send across a DVD or whatever… but watch it…

It is about greed… greed that made the world economy collapse. Kind of gives the impression what must have happened the day before financial institutions told the world that they have gone bankrupt. And how the financial institutions were probably the only one who made money while they let the man on the street lose everything he had…

Occupy Wall Street activists should put up huge screens and show this movie to all the suits who walk past them everyday to their office to make money and kill aspirations of the masses….

Link to the trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DqFRsPrns&ob=av3e

 

 

Ra.one Rocks!

So I think I am in a minority which believes that the movie was awesome. There are some who said *faints*… there are some who said “I don’t know you anymore”… but I don’t think I am going to bother about these comments.

Shahrukh Khan has taken the production values of Bollywood to a completely different level. He has given us a visual treat in hindi cinema that matches up to the big budget Hollywood productions at 1/3rd the investment.

I completely fail to understand people who went looking for a ‘story’ in the movie. They are the people who pan Ra.one and yet gush over the other superhero movies dished out by Hollywood. Every single Spiderman movie sucked and Superman movies too… Those who say that there was too much of emotional shit in Ra.one didn’t bat an eyelid at the maudlin content of Spiderman or even Batman. Of course Batman is completely different after Christopher Nolan took over and Heath Ledger turned being evil into an art form.

Even Avatar which had people talking about it.. had no story.. or if there was one, I missed it because I got bored and left half way. Movies like Ra.one are not about story… they are about making the two hours in the dark auditorium a spectacle unfolding on the large screen. And Ra.one does that.

I have read reviews about people saying how SRK has not been able to beat Salman Khan‘s Bodyguard and other Salman movies…. I think they are talking up a whole lot of crap. Salman Khan movies are made for the lowest common denominator (and I got nothing against that) but Ra.one is a different genre (and no I will not compare it with Robot either.. which was liked only by the Rajnikanth fanatics)…

I thoroughly enjoyed Ra.one… so did my son.. and my daughter…. Sure he has borrowed from various Hollywood movies… so what… if there is technology available and it can be used… why not.. why not use it to create your own visual treat… why intellectualize the crap out of reviews.

People like Rajiv Masand need to chill and not sound profound. Most reviewers I think anyways get paid to write good reviews and often have their own ax to grind against certain actors…

Take my word (someone who is not exactly enthralled by Bollywood productions)… go watch the movie. Don’t go looking for intense meaning… don’t go looking for acting… go.. just to watch a great superhero movie.. And if you really want to look for meaning…. check out the relationship between the kid and SRK… it is a treat…

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Win two tickets to Formula 1 Airtel Grandprix of India*

So let me also join the brandwagon and offer tickets to F1. It would need you to read all the posts on my blog (proof would be comment on each post). Then write a catch slogan about how good reading my blog was and then buy subscription to my blog and win tickets to F1. Of course needless to say… *T&C apply. Will pen them down when I can figure what they are.

Seriously, every one wants to offer tickets to F1. It is like people are gonna fall over themselves to be there and will buy, write and take part in everything. From five star hotels to pubs.. from durable to service operators, they would want you believe that if you not at F1, you are a loser.

Now I am also a big fan of F1… but am I gonna spend money to see the cars wizz past so fast that you don’t even know whose car was it? Nah… I would rather watch the race at Monte Carlo (which will be lot more exciting and fun)… instead of the nightmare it would be watching it in India.. the dust, the grime, the wannabe crowds, the noise, the heat… wow.. so much of the negatives… for an event which is actually made for TV (to be watched on TV)

So guess what I am gonna do.. will get a couple of beers.. will sprawl on my bean bag (I do it for every race) and watch it in the cool comfort of my living room… while people who go there would be more busy tweeting and updating their Facebook status and generally missing out on all the action and curse inwardly for all the tardy facilities that would be available at the venue. I believe beer will be served too over there. So get ready to read about all the beer brawls in the next day’s newspapers. Everyone knows how thirsty we Indians are for liquor at sports events and how we cant hold our liquor and the false sense of bravado it brings about….

ICICI – most trusted private sector bank… seriously??

So there is an ad in today’s papers. ICICI bank congratulating itself on keeping “Khyal aapka” and being the most trusted Private Sector bank. If you see the ad, it would sound like a great big achievement.

Wonder why the management took almost two weeks to announce this fact.

Could it be that the agency could not get the right copy for the ad?

Or could it be that the management kept wondering if they should really bring out the ad…. considering that they have actually slipped three places from 7 to 10 in the ranking as the most trusted service brand?? and HDFC Bank has moved from 16 to 14.

I think as a banking institution, which expects people to put their faith and money into their vaults, a slip of even one rank should be a cause for major concern. There obviously is a majority of people who have started feeling that “Khyaal Aapka” is just a tag line and it does not reflect in the way bank interacts with their consumers.

Instead of releasing an ad which doesn’t really tell the truth, the bank needs to analyse its functioning. Try and understand why its ranking has fallen. Why is it that consumers are losing faith in the bank.

Ms. Chanda Kochar needs to realise that conservative lending (there actually is nothing wrong in being conservative) and tactical cost cutting (we all know what that means) may make the books look good but in the long run, she is probably going to undo all that Mr. Kamath had done to take the bank to such great heights in the past. It is good to be conservative (after all I would not want my bank to be profligate) but it is not so good when a bank stops caring.

HDFC for instance, gives a very secure comfortable feeling. Their initiatives give a sense that the bank understands the customers and is doing various things to reach out and be a solution.

With the economy being the way it is and a global crisis round the corner, it is for the banks to choose the path they want to take… What is happening in US by way of  ”Occupy Wall Street” movement, could happen in India too and all the brands that stand for money and financial services… could be in trouble. After all, the 1% rich don’t get rich by investing their own money. It is the money that they borrow from the banks and use it for fattening their pockets… is what makes them rich.

Digital Disconnect

Watch the link… says it all… about how we have become slaves to the big thing about digital connect.

The ad is about mother but it is really about how we have lost touch with reality. (you can also read one of my older posts – Life in the blue nowhere)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBL8C6N1xSI

Is the tide turning?

I don’t know how many of you have read about the Occupy Wall Street campaign that has been going on in US. Or for that matter even know about it… But it is happening… And what makes it very surprising is that it is happening in one of the so-called free economies of the world – The United States of America.

Gordon Gecko would have been lynched by the mob on the streets for even uttering the G of  ”Greed is good“.

After the crash of 2008, while many would have made statements about recovery, the US economy probably had not recovered. Well economy might have on papers but the man on the street… when the entire life’s saving has disappeared… to recover, would need another lifetime.

The 1% that the protesters are talking about… they are the insulated lot. Insulated, because they have amassed wealth which would last for a few of their generations. But the common man… the common man who let these people get all this wealth by buying their products, spending money on conspicuous consumption because corporates and banks made it easy.

But finally I think there is an awakening. And people have taken to the streets. They are done with a very few making all the money while they suffer day in and day out. Of course, there would be many in the US who would term these protests as meaningless because they have not felt the pinch… yet. But they surely will.

I think this is a protest that needs to go global. The global economy is in doldrums and yet the Governments peddle out statistics (creativity at it’s best). The collapse of Greece would not have happened if everyone was aware of where the economy is truly headed.

And while I am not sure.. the protest in US is a mass movement. They do not have a politician or a person with an ax to grind heading it. It is akin to a flash mob… but flash mob with a purpose.

I think many of you would bring Anna Hazare into discussion. The perception being that he has also started the movement in India. But I think that movement has lost sight. The way they are going about in the current election in the constituency of Hissar… it seems like they are anti-congress. Whereas the movement has to be against the entire political elite. I am sure that none of the candidates in that election are corruption free.

People who had supposedly taken to the street (as I had said in one of the earlier posts too) were there because it was hip… not because they strongly believed in the cause of anti-corruption and would do anything to stop it.

More importantly… the Anna Hazare movement is barking up the wrong tree. Instead of chasing the bucket that gets filled up with the corrupt money.. shut off the taps from where the money flows. Protest in front of the corporates that have been involved in various scams. Stop that car guy who is paying money to the traffic cop. Put up protest tents in front of the the various govt agencies where all the wheeling and dealing is done by the power brokers. Make a website which lists such people.

True awakening will happen when every where you turn.. you see a sign that says “SAY NO TO CORRUPTION“. A sign that says “Is this all your life is worth? Is this only about money and all the stuff that it can buy?”

I am not a socialist… nor a communist… nor are the protesters of the Occupy Wall Street campaign. We are the “common man”

I think the time has come for people to break out of the Matrix that has been constructed by the 1% that actually rules the world and control the governments.

Sign Language from socially_awkwrd on Vimeo.

 

 

 

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