News , Views and More

Last few days in Mumbai has shown what is happening in major cities in India be it B’lore , Chennai , Delhi an Insider vs Outsider debate . Part of some issues raised are true that there is so much influx that resources in these cities are getting constraints but who is to be blamed ?

Here is my story I was born and brought up in MP did all of my schooling engineering there and then moved to B’lore for my master a place some 2000+ KM away from my home town , why did I moved because there were not much job opportunity in MP and only 1-2 good MTech program compared to what I was offered in B’lore. Now if an engineer has to move that much then one can understand the plight of majority of people who hardly had chance to complete there primary education.

Same is happening everywhere we have some cities like Mumbai , B’lore , Chennai , Delhi , Hyderabad which are growing and offering way better prospects , inviting people and in the process crumbling , so what is the solution ?

Goverment should develop more cities , give incentives to businesses for setting shops in small cities like Mysore , Nagpur . Give incentives to farmers so that they stay put in there villages otherwise what is happening in Mumbai might happen in all metros

I just returned couple of days back from 1 year complete  stay at London, UK. On the very first visit, any Indian(esp Delhite) will note the brilliant work by GMR in renovating the Delhi Internation - IGI airport. Although it still lack the lustre of ‘INTENATIONAL AIRPORT’ but dont forget its just start and things are not yet finished.

As soon as you came out and start your way back to city, broader roads, flyovers, underpass will take your attention. Unfortunately, traffic is still as bad as it was an year back. Another surprising factor was the presence of Nissan and Renault on Indian road alng with n number of new models of existing car manufacturer like Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai etc. This shows the depth in Indian Market which is compelling big players to come to India. Next few days visit to malls and Delhi Metro clearly depicting Delhi hence India growth story.

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There are sequence of blast in Lucknow , Faizabad and Varanasi. Terrorist are attacking at will in India and for me situation looks worst than Iraq . With all the talks of Economic Power , IT super Power ground reality is we are worst then Iraq when comparing the number of blast that have happened in the last year . I don’t remember when was the last month when there was no blast in the country .

Again there will be estimates given by the administration , cry of cross border terrorism , talk of foreign hand , talk of maintaining the harmony in the country by Shiv Raj Patil et. al. Government wont learn any lesson and things will eventually calm down before the next calamity happens. Questions comes to my mind is this the softest government we have seen in the history of India ? and I thing answer is yes otherwise it cant happen that terrorist can strike at will anywhere in the country. I don’t know What are our opposition parties doing ? Why Sitaram Yachuri and Prakash Karat don’t raise slogans and fight tooth and nail for the most basic of civil right ? Why BJP dont take government to task and bring no confidence motion at least to put there point firmly ? Internal security is the most important thing , if people cant step out feeling that they are secure then what is the point of having government ? It is like having a jungle raj .

Time has come to spend more on internal security then on any other thing beef our internal intelligence agency , beef the sagging morale of the police force (since most of them earns less then 10K god knows what is there in there mind , running family or focus on the job) . Government should stop giving assurances and do some positive things and dismantle the terrorist network and if things don’t slow down then take some assertive actions by crossing the border to dismantle the network.

T20 in India and now IPL. Cricket is getting to new stages in India.  Someone/Something (may be ICL) has galvanised the long complacent Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) into action and they launched the Indian Premier League (IPL), severely denting the ambitious plans of the rival Indian Cricket League. 44-days long T20 and all the major players worldwide, differences to few months ago T20 world cup event are geographical location and competing team then countries.

Although this approach is new to cricket, but this concept is not new to the world of sports, its a famous phenomenon for football. English premier league and Primera Liga are best examples. If IPL can stand on expectations , it will be a win-win situation for all - be it players, new comers, sponsors, spectators, board or GAME as a whole. New comer will get a platform to come and show their talent, bringing the best for talent. Board will get more funds to raise the standard of game. Existing players can get really heavy cheques, spectators can enjoy better game and better standards with improved facilities and sponsors can reap real big money.

World is aware of importance and criticality of event to game hence so many people like business tycoon Vijay Mallaya, Anil Ambani, Hollywood actor Russel Crowe, Bollywood actor Sharukh Khan, cousin of former New Zealand cricket captain Martin Crowe, England-based Lord Swaraj Paul are among prominent bidders (courtesy - NDTV).

Concerns are whether event can generate same competitive edge as say a Test or a one-day match between two countries.  Can it generate same excitement as Pak-India series or ashes series? Can it stand to a expectations and deliver it?

It will be more of wait and watch. But hoping to see some good franchises coming up.

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.

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.

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 P-Notes (what are p-notes ?) being surely going to be stopped , there seems no stopping sensex going downward. With the kind of crazy high we have seen in the last month with so much money being pumped in by FII’s (roughly 80b$ of which around 50% is through p-notes) so now there seems to be rush of taking money out and hence the fall seems to be no stopping.

Really speaking it was expected because as FM said he was not comfortable with the rise of the rupee and sensex not reflecting the state of the economy , whereby sensex seems overheated but economy was cool.

What does future hold for investors like me ? One thing is for sure Indian economy outlook is great for the long term as it is expected to grow by 8-10% so if you are for long term then spend in quality stock and hold on and make informative decisions.

With Left and Congress fighting on nuclear issue and giving there own versions of the agreement , first question that come to my mind was why don’t they go inside a room with a copy of the document and just sought out the issue , that’s what happen in any set up. Congress can clarify all the issues point by point to left . Yesterday there was a debate on NDTV and one of the Left leader was saying that USA wont allow us to do this and that , with congress leader replying by saying whatever implied by the left is wrong and he can bring the copy of the text on whichever day Left leader want and go over point by point.
Well a simple google search can point to the agreement available here for Left’s understanding if they want to read it by removing there blinkered USA vision.