Seduction

A business which is involved in delivering to human cravings is a sure shot. I am not talking about a dollop of ice cream here; it’s the hard stuff like gambling, narcotics, liquor, tobacco and sex. These were prevalent from times yore. Soma, a concoction of Cannabis, Poppy and Ephedra, was mentioned in the Vedas as a drink much sought after. The Geishas have been satisfying Japanese perversions for centuries. Amsterdam even has a cannabis museum!!!

Ethical and legal issues aside, these segments have been amassing huge amounts of money. Let’s talk about Gambling for a while. Casinos are raking in money by the millions. At the start of the 20th century, Las Vegas was a desert town, where a passerby would not give a second look. Then the Mafia syndicate came in and changed it all. The illusions of making a quick buck and grandeur bought in people like bees to honey. Las Vegas became the city of sin, anything goes, if Satan had a home on earth, it would be there.

Countries seduced by the huge gains of having a Las Vegas of their own, have been seriously thinking of legalising gambling and helping investors to setup Super Casinos. England and Macau has one, Singapore is building one and if Dubai had its way, they would have the largest one in the world. Argument is that it brings in huge tourist inflows and revenues, on the other hand, some argue it would bring with it the lewdness associated with the industry.

Goa has legalised gambling but only on ships moored on the coast though. We are getting there. The seductive tones of the ‘gambling sirens’ are too much for us mere mortals.

The Nano

I always have an opinion on automobiles. If it’s not made out of passion or engineering ingenuity, I usually shun it as a by-product of modern capitalism. I find myself in a quandary as I cheer for the arrival of the Nano. Is it because I am witnessing the birth of something epochal such as the Volkswagen or the Mini or the 500 or the 2CV? Or maybe it’s the implications that the new car would throw up. To a car-owning city dweller, it should provide a good option for trips to areas short on parking space. To others, a lifestyle, environment friendly option. And to the vast majority, simply a chance to own a modern car.

I think India has finally arrived in the world motoring scene, however it did it with a whimper rather than a bang. Motoring gurus are eating their words as they had snickered at Ratan Tata’s dream. Major players are now scampering to introduce their own UCVs (Ultra low Cost Vehicles, yeah, it created its own new market segment too).

I am just waiting to see how it fares in the market and what kind of export responses it gets. Much would depend on how the Nano connects with the buyers.

Business Lesson: The most simple and robust products or ideas would always be the most profitable and the most remembered.

Elections

I really look forward to elections; it puts some fun into the otherwise mundane lives of us villagers. Everybody has their version of conspiracy theories which are debated in tea shops. Political celebrities come out of their cocoons and pose for awkward photographs with filthy looking children and mothers, cartoonists have a riot, scandals, TV shows filled with sketches, SUV sales increase, polls, exit polls, politicians changing allegiances every other day, repercussions of the change, polls on that, lazily worded, often grammatically wrong slogans, election songs - the horrible tunes, the publicity stunts, Laloo, few people getting beaten up by the police, politicians going and seeing them, cheap sentiments, stats, news channels, newspapers, the actual elections, the stubborn stain - which you try to remove even though you know that it is meant to stay, the awkward silence, the results, the winners rally, the looser retaliating with small skirmishes, changing of allegiances again, stats, news channels, newspapers, more discussions at the tea shop, finally somebody gets sworn in.

We then cross our fingers and hope that the idiots we elected to parliament would make our lives a little better. Take charge, vote for a better country. Jaago re!!!

Obama and the Merry Men

2008 proved to be the year of the underdog. Obama won, Slumdog won, Resul Pookutty won and so on. It’s all because the underdog got fucked real hard. It was retaliation by them just to affirm their real power. The middle class defines a country, they drive the economy, and they work like dogs so they can give their earnings to conglomerates (to make/create unnecessary products) and to governments (to spend it on wars and bailouts because somebody fucked up).

Obama, an African- American, at the helm of the most powerful country in the world, means there is some serious ‘change’ happening. His promise to bring the country and in turn the world around seems to be a bit lofty. His policies so far have been quite populist which went about flaying the rich and giving to the needy. CEOs of companies getting bailouts have their salaries capped at half a million a year. Companies outsourcing outside the country would not receive tax sops (bad luck India!). H1B visas limited, possibly even eliminated.

But would this all work. His plan of action (a budget) is to bring the country back to the position it was in before the downturn and not eliminate the root cause altogether (bad asset management and sub-prime lending). Don’t we learn from mistakes? My layman’s opinion would get beaten down by a ton of economic experts. I just hope he realizes that any decision he and his merry men make may cause a family somewhere in remote China to probably resort to poison.

One more thing, I went through this news article recently which stated that Obama is being considered for the Noble Peace Prize. Now what is that all about???