Shashikant's tiny world

In Bihar, it might be kidnapping. High time, these kidnappers wake up and start living with dignity and get paid for doing exactly the same. They are known as "recovery agents". They are employed by corporate who just don't get tired of talking about how customer friendly they are. I bow to the creative genius who coined this euphemism for the street goondas.

Read the stories about Airtel ^[1] and Hutch ^[2]. I am sure there many such stories for every single private telecom operator.

But, sometimes, they are shown the door - of jail, in this case ^[3] - albeit using variation of their own methodology. Curious it may seem, this vociferous protest has hardly received any print/online media attention. So, the news has to clear one more criteria ^[4] before it makes it to the print - not being critical of your big benefactor i.e. your advertiser.

While I was reading the Airtel incident thread with my Gmail account, Google offered the following ad to me. (You need to see the large image. Following image is just a placeholder.)
Are they looking for more "recovery agents?"

Update:
Consumer court says, the recovery tactics by ICICI bank are "deplorable"^[5].

References:

[1] Airtel incident : Post from India-gii

[2] Hutch incident

[3] "ICICI employees land in jail after loan spat with lawyer" : Indian Express

[4] A little bit of narcissism - link to my own post

[5] ICICI Bank pulled up for 'goondaism': Rediff.com

... I put my hands together to applaud when the movie ended. Nagesh Kukunoor's Iqbal left me spell bound.

I don't follow cricket much. I know, in India, this is a blasphemous statement. And when last time I watched cricket in Lagaan, I came out of the movie hall with my IQ halved temporarily. But in case of Iqbal, I was happy to see cricket in its most non-gimmicky form - by today's standards. It has to be, as it runs through the veins of the movie. Kukunoor resists the temptation of sketching the nuances of cricket matches and leaves much to the imagination of the audience.

This movie charms with its sheer simplicity, a la-Shwaas, and leaves a lasting impact. When the audience is subjected to suffocation of Bollywood's gas, this movie provides the fresh breath of air. Though the "hero" of the movie is a person with hearing and speech disabilities, he commands respect, not sympathies. I wish, Sanjay Leela Bhansali had got this simple thing right in his Black. It also doesn't glorify the failures - a character played by Naseeruddin Shah. I sense a potential Oscars nominee in this movie.

This is, by far, the best movie by Kukunoor, who shows enormous maturity. He not only manages do justice to the stalwarts but also gets best out of the young actors. The show stealer is, obviously, Shreyas. He stands confidently when veterans like Naseeruddin Shah and Girish Karnad are around and delivers his performance with extreme sincerity.

This movie also underlines the fact that Subhash Ghai, in recent years, is lot better producer than director. I still feel the shivers across my spine when I recall his shoddy Kisna.

The story goes so beautifully that the background score might get unnoticed. Kay Kay's rendering of Aashaayen.. is refreshingly original and goes perfectly with the movie.

Actually, the movie deserved a standing ovation!

There are probably a thousand reasons for my unabated admiration for the movie. I will get those many occasions to tell you them. Here is one.

As the rift between Karisma Kapoor and her husband, Sanjay Kapur, widens with mudslinging taking ugly turns, I could just recall Shrek, in which Donkey says,

Huh, celebrity marriages. They never last, do they?

I am sure media will relish on this issue, the way they did on Ambani saga.

The Juvenile Court in Delhi agrees with the general opinion that media's appetite for sensationalizing news stories is obnoxious. Press Trust of India (PTI) reports,

NDTV, ZEE TV and The Times of India had contravened Section 21 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, which safeguards the delinquent's identity, privacy and confidentiality, by revealing minute details about the boy while reporting the case," Juvenile Justice Board Principal Magistrate Santosh Snehi Mann said in her 31-page order imposing a fine of Rs 1,000 each on them.

Terming the role of the press in reporting the incident as "very disappointing", the court felt the focus of the three organisations was less on raising a debate about the exposure and involvement of children in some unethical or illegal activities and the stress was more on creating a sensation by writing about the juvenile involved in the incident.

It said their reporting was in 'bad taste to increase circulation and viewership purely for commercial gains'.

Great! This is an extremely important judgement, which echoes the mass opinion. But lets see, if any ink or bytes are wasted on this news story. A quick search on news.google.co.in shows... hold your breath, blah blah..... FOUR results! These are published by Sify.com, Rediff.com, Televisionpoint.com and Chennaionline.com. All of them are purely internet news sites. That is without any print or TV network association.

This news does not appear on any of the sites from newspapers, thereby, I conclude that this news has not and will not find its way to print editions. Outlook, one the most popular weekly, publishes almost all news from PTI. But even this very vociferous source has decided to take shelter of silence (or is it cowardice?). I don't watch TV - I don't have one - but I am sure, this story has been buried under carpet, silently, by all the news channels.

I had never experienced such a vivid example of Hindi idiom Teri bhi chup meri bhi chup. Till now, I thought, we were getting only half-truths and lies. I am happy to learn that we are also getting truth, a little more than we want, but the truth has to first clear the agni-pariksha of not being self-critical and embarrassing.

Just 4 days back, Honourable Supreme Court has taken cognizance of media's sleaze reporting. A PIL, filed in the Court, raised an important question : Should daily newspapers with sexually explicit material be given an A rating for carrying content that in a film would see the Censor Board restrict it to adult viewing only? ^[2] The PIL said

With the advent of commercialism in the news industry and cut-throat competition among newspapers dailies now publish titillating material in the form of explicit photographs, articles on pornography, sex education (often more about sex than education) dirty SMS jokes and write-ups on soft-porn movies.

The apex court evidently concurred that it was a question that needed an expeditious answer.

Suggestions to Mr P Chidambaram for next budget (if, at all, he presents one). Impose entertainment tax all the print/electronic news sources.

References:

[1] The text of PTI report from Sify

[2] Deccan Herald news link about PIL.

"Chinese Cryptologists Get Invitations to a U.S. Conference, but No Visas", reports NYT^[1]. Of the nine Chinese researchers, only one was granted visa!

Three years back, Arthur Jaffe, President of the Clay Mathematical Institute (CMI), said following in the annual award ceremony ^[2]

When the Scientific Advisory Board of CMI decided to recommend that Agrawal receive the Research Award, I invited his students (now in the first few months of their graduate study, but already world-famous) to accompany Agrawal to this meeting. Unfortunately, about three weeks ago, the US State Department denied their visa application, stating that they gave insufficient proof that after their one-week visit to the United States, they would return to India! It is not clear that this is really the outcome best for the US!

Prof Agrawal and his two students, Kayal and Saxena, had published a landmark algorithm in number theory.

The stricter visa norms are also reflected by decline in international student intake in 2003-04.^[3]

References:

[1] NYT registration-free link.

[2] Remarks by Arthur Jaffe at the CMI Annual Meeting

[3] International students in USA

According to this ^[1] (and many more) story, Google plans to sell its 14.8 million shares worth USD 4 billion. This huge amount they plan to use for general corporate purposes, including working capital, capital expenditures and acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets. The two investment banks managing this sale will get USD 150 million! Isn't it the same Google which avoided the bankers on Wall Street and went ahead with Dutch auction for its IPO?

4 billion, actually, may not be big money if they plan to go Yahoo way. (Yahoo recently spent 1 billion to acquire stake in Chinese auction site.)

References:
[1] News from Bloomberg

Though a DreamWorks' movie, I was not really expecting a la-Shrek experience from
Madagascar. I was still to recover from Mangal Pandey shock. This cute animation movie made my week-end. A typical DreamWorks' animation movie which elders and kids can enjoy together, albeit different shades of it. Go with kids, if you can. Its fun to watch such movies with the kids. I was alone, but there were couple of hundred kids in the movie hall.

PS: The "==" sign in subject line is a dead give away on what I do for my roji-roti.

• Is it ok to have sex in car or are we just jealous? (Inside headline of the article is Jealous because I have sex in car and buy brands?)


• She's sexy, but does it matter in job?


• It's about body piercings, sex, film and popcorn.

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
-- Abraham Lincoln

Well, you can fool all the people for some time if you have right advertising budget, insanely aggressive marketing strategy and an iota of understanding of mob psyche. That small duration is good enough to make truckload of money! Aamir Khan's earlier movie Lagaan was supposedly part of B-school curriculum for leadership. His latest venture Mangal Pandey - The Rising should also be included for Marketing 101.

This week, I suppose, 75% of the shows in movie halls across all major cities screened Mangal Pandey. Yeah, Aamir is returning to screen after 4 years and there was lot of euphoria about it, and all that is fine. But the sheer megalomania associated with this movie was, IMHO, unworthy. In the recent past, the other event which hogged such media space was launch of Harry Potter book. My gut feel is, there will be more after-shocks of this marketing tremor with news items like how the movie stormed into chart-buster list of Timbktu.

I, per se, don't have any problem with such larger-than-life images of actors and movies. The Johar-Chopra clan do it regularly with Shah Rukh's mediocre movies. But, atleast, they are promising entertainment (yeah, all the emotional crap on relationship is entertainment), not art, like Devdas and, definitely not a crash course on freedom struggle of India.

The movie doesn't turn out to be disaster like Asoka, but surely, utterly unsubstantiated assertive statements like "Aazadi ka jo sapna Mangal Pandey ne dekha tha, woh 15 August 1947 ko such hua" are not something expected from a Aamir Khan's movie, arguably one of the most sensible contemporary actors who gets himself involved in every tiny aspect of the movie. Such movies do more harm to the society in general than Asoka, which are clearly differentiated as failures by an average Joe.

Till the movie was released, we Indians were taught in our ever changing history text-books, that India got its independence due to Mahatma Gandhi and Bhagat Singh. Their contribution to freedom struggle is not a topic of debate. Now, the coming generations will add Mangal Pandey to this list. We will continue to identify our freedom with only a few "celebrities" and be happy with ourselves carrying a impression, false one if I may add, that we know what it took for the air of freedom we breathe!

I read this^[1] article with amusement. It talks about how big IT companies, in India, are aggressive about hiring freshers.

Good salary can only be a part of the package used to lure them, but companies don't miss opportunities to show off their swank campuses and facilities.

Just 4 lines before, article says,

Insiders say many students have upto two offer letters besides a dream job offer to chose from besides the offers they could be getting from outside the campus.

If my limited experience is anything to go by, I would say most, if not all, of the freshers will ditch companies paying lower salary. Even when the difference is as low as 10%, which in absolute numbers translates to couple of thousands per month! All the swanky campuses are great, but most of the IT companies already have that. So, nobody gets brownie points for showing off their facilities. Unless you have something like THIS^[2]!

If the HR folks consider that sending Birthday Card is a cool idea, God help them. They are living in Alice's Wonderland. According to a friend, candidates take job offers as causal dating. You can leave it after initial chit-chat without any emotions, let alone guilt.

And the targets are massive.

The top two vendors, Infosys and TCS alone will hire 33,000 employees in the rest of the year.

If 33,000 is net addition, then total hiring number goes up again. Assuming a extra-conservative 10% attrition, total strength of both companies together at 90,000, this number shoots up to 42,000.

I distinctly remember, just a few years back Infosys' selection ratio was 1 in 100. With such number-driven hiring targets, who bothers about such out-dated ratios?


References:
[1] I'm Infosys 3rd year.

[2] Keyword: chefs

Few things definitely reflect that it is not true.

• Indian IT biggies making offers to third year students ^[1].
  Just 4 years back, they postponed joining dates of all freshers by 18 months or so.


• BSE Sensex near all time high. Its a fundamentals-driven rally, I read in all the news. When there is a sharp fall, the same people and media will say, valuations were stretched. BTW, why the heck they use the term "correction" for a fall. To me it sounds a stupid euphemism. How does it matter if you use nice jargon, when you lose your shirt?


• Google continues to trade near $300. Err... Wasn't the last crash led by tech sector?

I would like to get a trademark for "This time its different."

References.
[1] I'm Infosys 3rd year

PS: Yes, I am a hypocrite. After criticizing Economic Times for their sleazy headlines, which I will continue to do, I am posting the link to their article.