Non-Sense Cricket Commentary

It was the usual lazy sunday Morning and I was getting my Sunday dose of "The Times of India". Surfing through the Times, I turned to the sports page and as with if us Indians, checked for the Cricket News. And Surprise Surprise .India had virtually decimated the Bangladesh team with a mamooth total and was poised to win the Cricket Test match. Although not a cricket aficinado , it was really long time( ok long is relative here.That is why it is said that the general Public memory is short) since India was in a position to win a test match. ( ok I am sounding a bit like a Die hard Cricket fan now .Afterall India was winning against the so called Minnows of Cricket World Bangladesh. )

Anyway since I did not have any plans for the day, I thought lemme catch up with some India-Bangla Cricket Action and watch India Win . So I switch the TV on and start Channel surfing for the Cricket Match. And Bingo, there was Dhoni playing his usual self hitting a sixer :). But what was this noise from the TV .. Dhoni ata Pata. bhoom rang.. bum bhuoooos sixer !!!!!!....Ai what happened to the Ravi Shastri Commentary I was expecting ?? It did not take much time for me to realize that the live commentary was in Tamil.Yes you read that right. Tamil.Here I am sitting in Bangalore watching an India-Bangladesh Cricket Match with Tamil Commentary!!!(Bengali would have made better sense) . One look at the Channel logo and the pieces start making sense .The Channel is RAJ TV ( the channel now famously patroned by M Karunanidhi, the DMK King and TamilNadu CM) and it is indeed telecasting the match live. But where is Neo Sports Channel which had bought Cricket rights after making much noise in the courts and news ?

Turns out Neo Sports exclusively sold the feedshare to RAJ TV for the Telugu/Tamil Audience. Well we all know the Linguistic inclinations of the Tamil Nadu( no offences here). But why the heck is the feed being telecast in Namma Kannada Naadu Bengalooru ??? Forget about Bengalooru, why is this being broadcast even in Cities like New Delhi, Calcutta ?? Got to Blame it squarely on the Neo Sports and the Cablewallas.

Neo Sports got the exclusive rights for the matches but does not have Feed Share agreements with TAtaSky/DishTV for the Flagship Channel . Also for some reason NEO is blacked out by Cablewallahs. Hence we have the feed of Raj TV(free to Air Channel) instead of the Neo sports .But my dear Cablewallah/DishTV/Tatasky this was just a test match, that too between India-Bangladesh and even worse broadcast at a time when interest in Cricket in India is abysmally low. So you easily got away with this one . But you better STOP this non-sense commentary( atleast for the majority of the people ) before the next "serious" India cricket match else atleast Bengalooru will be witness to yet another Cauvery Riot like scenario. Good for me ( I get an off from Office) but bad for the country and the people . So please STOP this non-Sense. Period.

The Global Talent Crunch

You are the manager of a Global organization and are seeing a huge traction in new business opportunities for your organization as a whole . The proactive person you are, you want hire the best people in the business and build the team and the processes so that when the time comes, you are ready to grab the largest share of the opportunity pie. So you hand out a job description to the company HR manager/Recruiter asking him to hire the "best" available talent in the market.

The recruiter puts out the job postings in the local and national Newpapers(the conventional way), searches for profiles matching the requirement in jobsites like Monster.com, Naukri , Time jobs(Web 1.0 way) and finally even conducts a Virtual job fair on Secondlife.com (the web 2.0 way). And the end of it, you are handed out a set of resumes which more or less matches what you need. You interview a few of them, junk a few and finally put out an offer for a select few with joining Date :DD-MON-YYYY.

Come DD-MON-YYYY, out of the P number of people you offered the job to, only one of them joins the organization with the remaining P-1 being what is called as "no-shows". You as the manager had planned out the on boarding for P people ( Hell even the lunch table for P people was booked ) and are frustrated that P-1 people did not join your team . You reprimand the HR manager for not doing his job well and set him a deadline of having the P-1 people on-board by end of this week !!!. The poor HR manager panics and in turn takes his recruiting team to task for not having followed up with the potential new hires.

Finally what does the helpless Recruiter do ? Damned as he is,he starts contacting the remaining P-1 people and threatens them with Dire consequences like blacklisting,abuses thems and talks to them in a very unprofessional way while coaxing them to join the organization at the earliest. Do you think the any of the p-1 people will ever join your global company ? Not in their life !!. The recruiter is the one point contact for the new hires to understand the work culture and environment of the company and any sane job seeker would not like to join an organization which has a rude and unempathetic HR team.

So my dear Recruiter and the HR team, while I do understand your frustration, I believe you need to come to terms with the fact that good talent in today's booming times indeed scarce and this game of "no-shows" is going to continue for sometime to come . The Reality today is that we have a set of customers who are expecting innovations in product development and service delivery every single day, but unfortunately we do not have the set of people with the skillsets to deliver these innovations to the customers !!. So you have companies poaching people from each other and offering big carrots for hiring the "right" people. But what do you do if the "right" people are not available ? Afterall you have critical Client deadlines to meet.

Well the need of the hour is Re-training the existing human capital to suit the new world business innovations while at the same time hiring people who may not have the skills you require but have the smarts to learn the business skills you need and deliver the required Customer focussed solution. Easier said than done but it is always better than threatening potential new employees at Knifepoint.

PS : This threaten/abuse incident is true story and happened with one of the Big Four Audit Consulting Firms(Take a guess ,which one) recently when my cousin was looking for a job-switch. Do you think you and me ever join this organization ?

Liberalise Education ...

A world reowned Finance Educational Institute whose degree/qualification is recognized worldwide raises objection to another Institution using it's trademarked Degree Name . The Latter institute as a survival tactic claims that the world venerated institute is illegally offering the course in the Country and obtains a Court Order restricting the International Institute from offering the course.Where e Well I am talking of the CFA charter which initially raised objection to ICFAI using the CFA trademark name. So ICFAI turned the table on CFA and asked AICTE( which regulates the Technical education standards in India) to ban CFA from conducting the charter's Examination till further notice as the CFA charter does not have the AICTE approval. AICTE agrees with ICFAI although it is not sure if the CFA degree comes under it's purview and imposes a ban leaving about 2000 students in lurch.

How Sad !! . The CFA is one of the world's largest Financial Chartered body and it's degree is recognized everywhere in the world. In fact the top honchos in many of the Investment Banks and Equity Research firms in India and world are CFAs.And given that India today is opening all the sectors for Foreign Direct Investments and is allowing domestic companies to invest in Hitherto non existent sectors like organized Retail, Micro Finance etc., I wonder why education is being left out.

I am not saying that the government has not done anything but we still have a long way to go. Take for example the Rai University. It is a Private autonomous University which offers all kind of courses. While I can't vouch for Rai's Quality, I know for sure that it will not have many takers in the market . The reason? It is not recognized by UGC ( the Archiac University Grant's Commission) implying that a Undergraduate from Rai University cannot do a Post graduation in any other University in India. ( I heard that Eventually Rai got an Affilation with other Indian university but never a Full university Status)

While I am not vouching for a Free for all pass to create universities, I would like to see something like TRAI(Telecom REgulatory Authority of India) rule over the University System in India and allow other private universities to operate. Remember what liberal educations policy has done to the Singapore ? Today it has become an educational hub of Asia with likes of Insead, France and University of Chicago(Graduate School of Business) having Asia campuses in Singapore . Wouldn't you as an Indian not like to have Stanford University to open it's Asia Campus in Bangalore, India ?

That would be wonderful and will surely give the likes of ISB,IIMs competition on one hand while providing the Indians the opporunity to get world class management Education without having to cross the Atlantic ocean. Hope the day comes pretty soon. Amen.

Finally BSNL Wakes up !!

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd(BSNL) is the 3rd largest Cellular operator and the largest Telephone operator in India. Of course the public sector monopoly over the first 40 years of Independence helped in bringing in these numbers. But a company of this size normally has a substantial ad spend and makes itself the highly visible in the marketplace ( Remember the AR Rahman composed Airtel tune ? It is the de facto No 1 mobile tune at one time in India). That BSNL achieved this scale in mobile operations despite very minimal ad spend is a testimony to how price senstive the Indian Consumer is.

BSNL entered the Mobile Telephony space only in the year 2000 ( nearly 5 years after Bharti Airtel and other started) , but still using it's pricing power made in roads into the Indian hands especially in the Semi urban and Rural Areas. So having garnered so much of marketshare and having attracted it's consumers so easily , what has made BSNL finally bring in the Pretty Printy Zinta as the brand ambassador ? And why is it showing these ads in Channels like CNBC?

Well, of the many reasons, one of them surely is Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Controlled Reliance Communications . Reliance is fighting tooth and nail with BSNL in the very markets where BSNL had so far enjoyed undisputed numero uno position. It is hitting BSNL at the place where it hurts the most , the Rural Areas and the lower Strata of the Mobile telephony markets - The consumers whose ARPU does not cross Rs.300pm(USD 6$ per month) by launching phones for as cheap as Rs 777/-( USD 15$)- Also notable is fact that many of the loyal BSNL Fixed line customers are returning them to pick up Reliances' technologically advanced Fixed Service WLL phones . These market forces are compelling BSNL to revamp itself and Preety Zinta has answered there call(Literally at that).

So an elephant has woken up.. Will it Shatter the Earth beneath ? Well, will have to wait and watch.

First Impressions: Movie : Life In a Metro

Movies like PAGE3, JOGGERS PARK, BLACK FRIDAY have set the ball rolling for the new Age Bollywood Multiplex centric cinema and Anurag Basu's the Life in a METRO continues the trend by exploring the fast paced rat race which the City dwellers in India are leading. Helped by some brillant performances by actors like KK menon, Irfan Khan, Konkana Sen Sharma, Basu crafts the life in a metro weaving together the compromises today's metrosexual individuals make in order to make it big in Life.

Irfan Khan(Monty) as a 35 year old still searching for the love of his life (using the internet Marriage site Shaadi.com) stands out and you love to hate his character of a no nonsense guy who does not mind talking of Figures( both salary and Women's) in the Same light ( and sentence). Sharman Joshi(Rahul), as call centre worker typifies the India's IT generation with a Rs 15000/- per month salary dreaming of a 15 Crore business and is ready to go any lengths to achieve his dreams. Then you have Rahul's boss Ranjit ( KK Menon in yet another subdued performance), who is having affair with Neha( Kangana RAunaut) . Neha in turn is the roommate of Ranjit's Sister in Law (aka Saali) and also the secretly courted by Rahul.Ranjit's Sister in Law is a played by Konkana Sen Sharma , a 30 year old who is still searching for the ideal match in life ( Tall, dark, handsome, good sense of Humour, sensitive guy)

Sounds complicated enough already ? Well there is more ,with Ranjit's wife(Shilpa Shetty) having a small affair with Shiny Ahuja(Akash), a struggling Theatre Artist. Also Dharamendra as Amol unites with his College Life Love played by NAfisa Ali and acts as a catalyst for other characters in the movie to redefine their respective Life's priorities. How these characters try to bring in a Sembalance to the RAT race in life forms the crux of the plot .

BottomLine: An intense but entertaining movie which can be watched on a weekend.

Getting Duped and Infosys

Now don't be surprised !! I am indeed talking of arguably most ethical company in India Inc - Bangalore HeadQuartered Infosys Technologies Ltd- And you read the word Dupe also rightly. So how come I am using the word "dupe" and swanky clean imaged Infosys in the same sentence or phrase. Well, blame it on the marketing team of the Infosys, which has created a cult brand among Indians so much so that to the Common lay man "Software"/IT" is synonmous with Infosys.

And so whenever layman( read the non IT related guys like the Autowallahs, Thieves,robbers ) wants to have anything to do with Software, what does he do ? He uses the Infosys brand name. Not convinced ?? Read on...... Yesterday one of Colleague's apartment in HSR Layout ( a decently posh locality with lots of IT guys especially from Infosys/Wipro) had two strange visitors. Two guys wearing Tie and formal trousers( aka Infy employee uniform on Monday/tuesday) knocked on his door. They had a Piece of paper with them. The paper apparently was a Xerox copy of an Infosys Id card. They asked my Colleague if anybody of the name as in the Id card stays at his place/apartment complex.

Now my colleague busy with other chores simply says no the two people and inadvertently forgets to close the door leaving it half open. Half an hour later, my friend is frantically searching for his Mobile phone and watch. Any guesses on where his mobile/watch went ??? Turns out the two white Shirt/Black Tie guys visited 8 houses in the entire Apartment complex but got lucky with my colleague.

If this story does not convince you about Infosys, here is another one, this one in Chennai's Adyar( Another IT locality much like HSR, Koramangala in Bangalore) . A man stops an Infosys employee who has just alighted from the Infy bus and is headed home. The man tells the infosys guy that he is an Infosys Employee ( mind you plain rock solid English) and that he has just been transferred from Bangalore to Chennai . But apparently someone has stolen his baggage ( Of course the Infosys ID is in the Baggage he claims) and that he has lost his wallet/money/everything. The man demands money from Infy person and says he will return it once he joins Chennai Office the next day. He even gives his mobile number and Extn of his reporting manager( fake of course ) in Chennai Office Any guesses if the gullible Infy guy got his money back ?

So seems like the thugs can't leave even anyone including the icon of India's economic progress alone and want to use it's name to cheat the poor gullible people.
Afterall, all is not fair in the big bad world !!