News , Views and More

Fortune , magazine has dedicated portal for India with discussions and blogs from who’s who of businessmen and politicians all of them discussing the potential India offer as a market and as service industry and the challenges it faces for the growth . Not surprisingly all of them mentioned infrastructure as major bottleneck (some stats : India had spent 3.5% of GDP on infrastructure which is 21$ B vis-a-vis China which had spent 10.5% of GDP on infrastructure in 2003 which is 150$ B ) and surprisingly none of them mentioned any social issues like rich-poor divide , religious divide and terrorism as the challenges in fact none of these issues are mentioned at all in the portal . Looks like these issues are too small compared to lack of infrastructure to achieve our potential .

Looks like to reach our destiny all we need is connectivity aka infrastructure.

One can check the portal here.

Last weekend(28 Oct 2007), trafalgar square (London) hosted the Diwali celebration, organised by the Mayor of London and the Diwali in London Committee in association with Tilda.

Magical light displays, floating lanterns, and music & dance performances in truly Indian culture was witness by large number of Londoners and visitors braving the cold drizzle.

Music and dance covering all the major states of India - folk dance by people of all age group clearly depict the diversities of Indian culture. Some performance like vande mataram rocks the complete square.

Many stalls open from noon with tasty vegetarian food(purely Indian style), Diwali exhibition and craft-painting exhibition bring alive the historical Trafalgar square.

I am amazed by the beauty of celebration in foreign land and way people excepted it. Only complain is with the rain god

Happy Diwali to all!

Pakistan will play five one-dayers and three tests in India, starting with the first ODI at Guwahati on Monday(5 Nov).

Veteran batsman Rahul Dravid is left out for the first two matches in Guwahati and Mohali. He wasn’t able to impress selectors, after getting down from captaincy to concentrate batting and only manage meagre score in recent series with Australia.

Keeping in mind, amount of cricket ahead (Pakistan in India, India in Australia, tri-series with Sri Lanka, SA in India….uff) . This will give a good platform for new players (such as 21-year-old rookie all-rounder Praveen Kumar) to show their worth. Moreover, experience of great player can be extended for more longer test career. This will enchant good bench strength and urge to play in players with most experienced preserved for more sophisticated version of a game.

Schedule (courtesy - cricbuzz)
November 2007
Mon 05 India v Pakistan, 1st ODI Guwahati
Thu 08 India v Pakistan, 2nd ODI Mohali (D/N)
Sun 11 India v Pakistan, 3rd ODI Kanpur
Thu 15 India v Pakistan, 4th ODI Gwalior (D/N)
Sun 18 India v Pakistan, 5th ODI Jaipur (D/N)
Thu 22 - Mon 26 India v Pakistan, 1st Test Delhi
Fri 30 - Tue 04 India v Pakistan, 2nd Test Kolkata
December 2007
Sat 08 - Wed 12 India v Pakistan, 3rd Test Bangalore

So what do you think who will win the series ? Take a quick Poll >>

With Sensex and Economy rising it should all be well with the country but no !! 25000 landless people had to walk 340 Km to make there voice heard , it is really sad for the country and the government that people had to resort to such extent for there basic rights. On top of it in the end what had people got … assurance of a committee headed by PM to look into there grievances.

Opposition which should be raising voice on behalf of these people is all to occupied on N-Deal.

Update 01/Nov/2007 :

FT has also covered this here and fortune has covered this topic here

Sensex crossed 20000 and has become one of the few stock markets in the world to trade above 20K (cheers !!!!) , but the question is should retail investor enter the market at this point ? My reading is one can still get into good stocks as the market is till cheap compared to China , per TOI the market is trading at PE of 25 whereas china is trading at PE of 50 and developed market economy is getting stagnant so investors dont have much options to invest . Indian market is a long term story and economy can clock 9-10% growth next 5-6 years as per PM .

Having said that we need to be cautious and pick quality stocks , be long term player and be cautious till USA sub prime market woos settle down.

On Some of the egroup that I have subscribed to I keep hearing on how real estate developers have cheated , charged more , finally provided flats which were not upto the promise , increased the flat price before delivery , but unfortunately there are not many sites which can capture and provide the feedback about particular builder . Problem with posting on egroups are they are not search able on google and yahoo so the comments and feedback get buried . I had a blog on Sobha and Mantri Developer here and there are some reviews on mouthshut but there are far and few reviews about developers.

It would have been nice to see developers review like we see movie reviews so after a project is launched there should be reviews based on certain parameters.

For now be cautious while dealing with Confident Group which have some projects on Sarjapur road as they make lofty promises .

I stumbled on these slides , capturing how flickr , google , blogging is encroaching real world literally .

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I use to go to jagran for news in hindi , today when i went it redirected me here. Looks like Jagran hosting has been taken over by yahoo . I found the new layout quite refreshing . Font is good , layout is good and content is for everyone . Surprising part is Jagran site is different from yahoo hindi site which is also hosted at yahoo so we have two different content site on Yahoo India serving same set of users . This is anyway good for users like me .

With both the movie going for high pitch marketing battle , it is tempting to compare the marketing economics of both the movies ,so here are the stats (source economictimes) :

• Both have crossed 35 Crore each for marketing and there are still 2 weeks to go.
• Distribution right of OSO sold to EROS for 75 crore .
• OSO has merchandising deal with shopper stop worth 6-7 crore.
• Saawariya has merchandising deal with future group worth 10 crore.
• Saawariya has marked 25 crore for marketing .

With so much at stake for bollywood as Sharukh said “failure is not an option”.

So what do you think who will win the series ? Take a quick Poll >>

This weekend I saw Laaga Chunari Mai Daag and Bhool Bhulaiya and I think Laaga Chunari Mai Daag is worst movie I have seen in past few years. If Ram Gopal Verma has glorified the underworld then this movie has taken steps in glorifying prostitution . I was expecting a better show from Yash Raj Films then this waste of celluloid space .

On other side Bhool Bhulaiya is quite refreshing and is must watch , except for last 15 minute everything is great about the movie , it keeps you on the seat and is full “paisa vasool” . Akshay Kumar carried the film and was hilarious at times. This movie made my weekend.