The news shockers that have been arriving with alarming frequency would suggest that we have collectively made a U-turn on the road to civilization.
Closer home, this has taken the form of moral policing and caste capers.
Earlier this week, a bunch of activists belonging to a right-wing outfit known as the Shri Ram Sene entered a pub in Mangalore and assaulted some girls for "destroying Indian culture" by drinking and hanging out with their boyfriends.
Yesterday, the new chief minister of Rajasthan--who belongs to the Congress, the party at the other end of the political spectrum--announced that he will be closing down a lot of wine shops, limit the opening hours for bars, and reduce the number of malls. This will curtail the pub-and-mall culture, i.e. the "alien culture of drinking and boys and girls holding hands", he declared.
A grand convention of Brahmins from across the country, held in Pune last week, passed a resolution urging its members not to marry outside their caste so as "to preserve its purity"!
In the wider world, there are increasing instances of "might is right" displays by various governments, in a blatant throwback to the dark ages.
Even after the editorial written by Lasantha Wickramatunga--who had rightly anticipated that government-sponsored goons would kill him someday--was published posthumously, yet another Sri Lankan editor was stabbed in the face, once again by unidentified assailants. Both of them wrote about excesses perpetrated on defenceless civilians by President Mahinda Rajapakse's army, in its own war-on-terror against the LTTE.
In Russia, a human-rights lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, and 25-year-old intrepid journalist, Anastasia Baburova, were shot dead on January 19, in broad daylight and barely a mile away from the Kremlin. They had just finished telling newspersons at a press conference that Russian colonel Yuri Budanov--sentenced to 10 years for rape and murder of a 18-year-old Chechen girl in 2000--was released on parole on Jan 15 based on a false statement by the prosecution.
China, of course not the beacon of civilisation of human rights, has started clamping down on "suspected criminals" in Lhasa. Every potential trouble-maker is being rounded up so that a repeat of last March's protests does not happen. The fact that this March marks 50 years since the Tibetan rebellion that led to the Dalai Lama's escape, is playing on the minds of the Chinese oligarchy which has ordered the systematic crackdown.
All these remind me of Edmund Burke's ever-so-true statement: ""The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Recession in India : It's unofficial
You know the country is definitely in a downturn--if not a full-blown recession--when you see offers screaming 'buy a mattress, get a bed free', instead of the other way round. And these "unbelievable" deals are being offered by India's biggest retailer--the Future Group--which runs Big Bazaar, Home Town, Central and other such chains.
Another pointer, if at all you needed one, is a statement by India's biggest businessman, Mukesh Ambani, that "it is not just a regular recession, it is a reset" (meaning we have been set back by a few years) at an awards function.
Of course, he had a reason to say so: Reliance's profits fell by 57% this quarter and are likely to fall further. He is also rumoured to have lost anywhere between Rs. 10-15,000 crore (2-3 billion dollars) personally, betting on oil futures. Anything the Ambanis do is generally of that order of magnitude, so I am not surprised. Also, I will not be surprised if Mr. Ambani resorts to creative accounting to recoups this loss from the general public, via Reliance's books. He might even consult Satyam's ex-chairman Ramalinga Raju for tips on that.
Speaking of Satyam,however, I am surprised at the attention the company is attracting from potential acquirers--one suitor, L&T, has increased its existing stake in Satyam from 4 to 12%--even without knowing whether there is really a business left to buy. Those licking their lips at its mouth-watering valuations look less like smart businessmen and more like a bunch of old guys intending to woo a recently-abandoned woman they all had fancied during their college days.
Then there is news of similar financial misconduct in several Indian companies (technically, that cannot be called news since everyone knows that), which the Department of Company Affairs has started looking into. It is uncanny how the tremors of downturns or recessions shake the corporate cupboards, spilling their skeletons out into public view. Then again, the government chaps have their own incentives to "look into" such affairs. Looks like, boom or bust, bureaucrats, cops, doctors and bars always make money.
But this time, the bust seems to be real bad. One of the Hindi news channels was running a program yesterday on how the donwturn has hit even the underworld. The managements of "companies" here, such as D (of course you know the chairman of this one), CR (Chota Rajan, you probably know this one too), and HP (no, not the one you know, it's Hemant Pujari) have all started outsourcing their contracts to cheaper, more cost-efficient outfits, the report said.
Having been in the outsourcing business for the last several years, and being hard-up on new business these days, I was wondering if I could suggest to my bosses about looking at new offerings for these contracts that are up for grabs. However, having seen (in films) and heard about their execution of penalty clauses in case of default or breach of contract, I decided I will deal with the recession or downturn (or whatever the bloody hell it is) in my own way. I am neither a Raju nor an Ambani.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
David dead, Goliath hanged
On January 8, the editor of a Sri Lankan newspaper was gunned down by two motorcycle-borne assailants in one of Colombo's suburbs. They smashed his car window and shot him in the head at point-blank range. Three hours later, the brave editor, Lasantha Wickramatunga, paid the ultimate price for his continued rantings against the government's excesses in the name of war against the LTTE.
However, 3 days later, Lasantha was back to haunt Mahinda Rajapakse, accusing the country's president of having had him killed. On January 11, an editorial was published in The Sunday Leader, the newspaper that Lasantha used to publish, with the headline "And then they came for me".
The headline is from a poem that Lasantha quotes in the editorial, saying it was etched into his memory from the time he read it. The lines of the poem, by Martin Niemoller, a German who supported Hitler until he saw the horror of his doings, go:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
The editorial was probably written by Lasantha as he always had an intuition that his old-time friend Mahinda--in the naked pursuit of power--would one day turn on him and have his men come gunning for him (Lasantha). The editorial--published later in several journals worldwide, including the Indian Express--is so powerful that it finds the mighty Rajapakse guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. To quote from the editorial would be to dilute its effect. Please read it here:
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090111/editorial-.htm
However, 3 days later, Lasantha was back to haunt Mahinda Rajapakse, accusing the country's president of having had him killed. On January 11, an editorial was published in The Sunday Leader, the newspaper that Lasantha used to publish, with the headline "And then they came for me".
The headline is from a poem that Lasantha quotes in the editorial, saying it was etched into his memory from the time he read it. The lines of the poem, by Martin Niemoller, a German who supported Hitler until he saw the horror of his doings, go:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
The editorial was probably written by Lasantha as he always had an intuition that his old-time friend Mahinda--in the naked pursuit of power--would one day turn on him and have his men come gunning for him (Lasantha). The editorial--published later in several journals worldwide, including the Indian Express--is so powerful that it finds the mighty Rajapakse guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. To quote from the editorial would be to dilute its effect. Please read it here:
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090111/editorial-.htm
Monday, January 12, 2009
The Satyam Way
Ramalinga Raju, the disgraced promoter of Satyam--India's fourth largest IT services company--has shown us the true meaning of the phrase 'The Power of One'.
As Satyam's chairman, he single-handedly--and single-mindedly--fudged the company's books for seven years, generating about 1.5 billion dollars out of thin air (or siphoning that much money into his pockets). While creative accounting is de rigeur among Indian businessmen, the smartest of them are doffing their hats to Raju. The reason: for seven years, quarter after quarter, Raju managed to make asses out of the company's board of directors (which included luminaries such as Vinod Dham and Harvard professor Krishna Palepu), global top-tier auditing firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers, some of the smartest financial analysts worldwide and the self-proclaimed watchdogs of the world--the journalists.
It is a shame that he stumbled and fell on the last lap of the fraud marathon he set out to win. In an ingenious move to fill the empty coffers with the 1.5 bil (which the balance sheet said the company had), he got the Satyam board to approve acquisition of real-estate and infrastructure firm Maytas. The cash--supposedly on Satyam's books--would be paid to the Rajus, who also owned Maytas, to acquire their stake. So while actually the Rajus would get little or no money, the notional money would change hands and Satyam's books would be set right.
There was a little glitch in the masterstroke though : Maytas (Satyam spelled backwards) was a company promoted by his own sons. So while the board had approved the deal, Satyam's investors expressed outrage against this "all in the family" deal by hammering down its stock mercilessly. Inexplicably, Raju panicked and declared that Satyam would not go ahead with the deal. Big mistake. The cash holes under the balance sheet and inflated revenues still remained.
There was clamour to remove Rajus from the management (their 7%-odd stake had already been pledged to an institution which sold half of the shares when the stock crashed following the aborted deal, so their running the firm with such a small stake was not right, the investors said). An american firm was bought in to see if Satyam itself could be a good-value acquisition for another, bigger company.
From outside accounts, it looks like this american firm got wind of the fraud in Satyam's books. If they told the SEC (Satyam being listed on the Nasdaq), Raju would face the horrific prospect of doing time in a US jail. Probably to avoid this, he finally threw in the towel. He wrote a confession to the Satyam board and resigned. Later, he surrendered to the police and is now behind the bars of an Indian jail. As long as he stays there, the US government cannot take him away for prosecution in the US of A. And once the heat dies down, with his clout and connections, he can always be out on bail for 10-15 years while the case drags on in Indian courts--again a stroke of genius.
Raju has demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, that if you set your goals clearly and pursue them relentlessly with due diligence (Oops!), getting richer by a couple of billions while collecting awards such as "Businessman of the Year" along the way are easy-PC.
Of course, you need the right mental software to manage all the bugs you introduce into the financial systems of the company. Also, you need to test these systems with different inputs to find the seemingly innocuous flaws which, given the right conditions--can crash the whole system (which is what has happened to Satyam now). Maybe Raju should have spent some time with one of his juniormost software engineers and learnt this.
As Satyam's chairman, he single-handedly--and single-mindedly--fudged the company's books for seven years, generating about 1.5 billion dollars out of thin air (or siphoning that much money into his pockets). While creative accounting is de rigeur among Indian businessmen, the smartest of them are doffing their hats to Raju. The reason: for seven years, quarter after quarter, Raju managed to make asses out of the company's board of directors (which included luminaries such as Vinod Dham and Harvard professor Krishna Palepu), global top-tier auditing firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers, some of the smartest financial analysts worldwide and the self-proclaimed watchdogs of the world--the journalists.
It is a shame that he stumbled and fell on the last lap of the fraud marathon he set out to win. In an ingenious move to fill the empty coffers with the 1.5 bil (which the balance sheet said the company had), he got the Satyam board to approve acquisition of real-estate and infrastructure firm Maytas. The cash--supposedly on Satyam's books--would be paid to the Rajus, who also owned Maytas, to acquire their stake. So while actually the Rajus would get little or no money, the notional money would change hands and Satyam's books would be set right.
There was a little glitch in the masterstroke though : Maytas (Satyam spelled backwards) was a company promoted by his own sons. So while the board had approved the deal, Satyam's investors expressed outrage against this "all in the family" deal by hammering down its stock mercilessly. Inexplicably, Raju panicked and declared that Satyam would not go ahead with the deal. Big mistake. The cash holes under the balance sheet and inflated revenues still remained.
There was clamour to remove Rajus from the management (their 7%-odd stake had already been pledged to an institution which sold half of the shares when the stock crashed following the aborted deal, so their running the firm with such a small stake was not right, the investors said). An american firm was bought in to see if Satyam itself could be a good-value acquisition for another, bigger company.
From outside accounts, it looks like this american firm got wind of the fraud in Satyam's books. If they told the SEC (Satyam being listed on the Nasdaq), Raju would face the horrific prospect of doing time in a US jail. Probably to avoid this, he finally threw in the towel. He wrote a confession to the Satyam board and resigned. Later, he surrendered to the police and is now behind the bars of an Indian jail. As long as he stays there, the US government cannot take him away for prosecution in the US of A. And once the heat dies down, with his clout and connections, he can always be out on bail for 10-15 years while the case drags on in Indian courts--again a stroke of genius.
Raju has demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, that if you set your goals clearly and pursue them relentlessly with due diligence (Oops!), getting richer by a couple of billions while collecting awards such as "Businessman of the Year" along the way are easy-PC.
Of course, you need the right mental software to manage all the bugs you introduce into the financial systems of the company. Also, you need to test these systems with different inputs to find the seemingly innocuous flaws which, given the right conditions--can crash the whole system (which is what has happened to Satyam now). Maybe Raju should have spent some time with one of his juniormost software engineers and learnt this.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
All bark, no bite
"If you have to shoot, shoot - don't talk," says Eli Wallach in the unforgettable scene from The good, the bad and the ugly, after killing a guy who was pointing a gun at him and yapping away moments ago.
Recently, one Israeli was killed by a Hamas rocket from the Gaza strip. Within a week, more than 500 Palestinians are now dead--Israel made no statements before starting the pounding of Gaza from air--and by the time the Israelis are done with their ground invasion, every Hamas militant will have the fear of Moses drilled into him.
On the contrary, more than a month after the Mumbai massacres, Indian leaders continue barking about how the Mumbai terror attack was sponsored by a Pakistan-based group, how the Pak government needs to arrest those responsible and hand them over to India, or else...
And the Pak response has been predictable. Yes, we will look into it...no, we don't give a damn...don't you dare threaten us... The more India repeats its 'or else', the lesser its threat value seems. Exactly what Pakistan wants India to do and the gutless, spineless, shameless ruling coalition of this country continues to play into their hands (with an eye on the Muslim vote bank in India--its mainstay of support). They are further encouraged by a significant section of the pussilanimous and cowardly citizenry as well as politicians who state that "war is not really an option". God know what the hell is an option then.
The outrage of majority of the Indians--after millions of angry outbursts--is now best expressed by the irrepressible R. K. Laxman in today's Times of India. His cartoon shows a bureaucrat walking out of a meeting, telling Laxman's common man, "All the chief ministers and heads of various parties sat together and discussed for six hours and unanimously agreed that the terrorist activities should be condemned". Touche Laxman!
Recently, one Israeli was killed by a Hamas rocket from the Gaza strip. Within a week, more than 500 Palestinians are now dead--Israel made no statements before starting the pounding of Gaza from air--and by the time the Israelis are done with their ground invasion, every Hamas militant will have the fear of Moses drilled into him.
On the contrary, more than a month after the Mumbai massacres, Indian leaders continue barking about how the Mumbai terror attack was sponsored by a Pakistan-based group, how the Pak government needs to arrest those responsible and hand them over to India, or else...
And the Pak response has been predictable. Yes, we will look into it...no, we don't give a damn...don't you dare threaten us... The more India repeats its 'or else', the lesser its threat value seems. Exactly what Pakistan wants India to do and the gutless, spineless, shameless ruling coalition of this country continues to play into their hands (with an eye on the Muslim vote bank in India--its mainstay of support). They are further encouraged by a significant section of the pussilanimous and cowardly citizenry as well as politicians who state that "war is not really an option". God know what the hell is an option then.
The outrage of majority of the Indians--after millions of angry outbursts--is now best expressed by the irrepressible R. K. Laxman in today's Times of India. His cartoon shows a bureaucrat walking out of a meeting, telling Laxman's common man, "All the chief ministers and heads of various parties sat together and discussed for six hours and unanimously agreed that the terrorist activities should be condemned". Touche Laxman!
Thursday, January 1, 2009
No new year resolution, yet
Annus horribilis 2008 is over.....thank God.
2009 is here...hurray!
But several problems that the horrible year left behind remain unresolved. Here's a few of them:
1. World economy is in deep sh**...we all know that: it dragged us right in. No one knows when the nightmare will be over. Hope the gloom and doom turns to boom sometime this year.
2. Ten Paki bastards came to Mumbai and killed 200 Indians, including some top cops. The Indian netas, instead of hitting back, are yelling and screaming, complaining to anyone who will listen. Just like the hijras (eunuchs) on Indian roads, who seem to be well built, but yell and scream for help when they get slapped around by kids.
3. Car companies like GM, Chrysler and Ford are on the verge of going under. Will 2009 bail them out?
4. Did he or did he not? Sell the Illinois senator's seat? The truth about Gov Blageovich will probably come out this year sometime.
5. Will James Bond die another day? After the disaster that was Quantum of Solace, no one knows.
6. Obama has promised to get Osama...dead or alive. Yeah...but then Bush had done the same, and Clinton before him.
7. Is the IT story in India over? The way Raju tried to steal cash from his own company Satyam, you would think so. But, if you are working for Infy or TCS, you probably don't even want to think about it.
8. Above all, it seems J Lo might be headed towards being single again this year. But she has denied the reports.
2009 is here...hurray!
But several problems that the horrible year left behind remain unresolved. Here's a few of them:
1. World economy is in deep sh**...we all know that: it dragged us right in. No one knows when the nightmare will be over. Hope the gloom and doom turns to boom sometime this year.
2. Ten Paki bastards came to Mumbai and killed 200 Indians, including some top cops. The Indian netas, instead of hitting back, are yelling and screaming, complaining to anyone who will listen. Just like the hijras (eunuchs) on Indian roads, who seem to be well built, but yell and scream for help when they get slapped around by kids.
3. Car companies like GM, Chrysler and Ford are on the verge of going under. Will 2009 bail them out?
4. Did he or did he not? Sell the Illinois senator's seat? The truth about Gov Blageovich will probably come out this year sometime.
5. Will James Bond die another day? After the disaster that was Quantum of Solace, no one knows.
6. Obama has promised to get Osama...dead or alive. Yeah...but then Bush had done the same, and Clinton before him.
7. Is the IT story in India over? The way Raju tried to steal cash from his own company Satyam, you would think so. But, if you are working for Infy or TCS, you probably don't even want to think about it.
8. Above all, it seems J Lo might be headed towards being single again this year. But she has denied the reports.
Oh, you would like to add some more--important ones--to this list? Sure...shoot me an e-mail, I'll include them. Have a great 2009! Happy New Year!!
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