Did India Skip The 20th Century?

The title will seem an obvious exaggeration, but I am using it to drive home my point that the recent spectacular progress seen in India around the IT revolution has often times masked the core foundational development of any developing country. It is this core infrastructural development that many of the countries we see today in the developed world, painstakingly went through in the early part of the 20^th century. India it seems, is moving directly from the 19th century to the 21st century.

 

Post independence, and especially in the past two decades post liberalization, India has made some good progress. The Green Revolution, The Domestic Heavy Industry Development, The Dams & Irrigation Projects, The Space & Atomic Energy Programs, Setting up of Educational & Research Institutions, in the first four decades is worth highlighting. There have been some hiccups along the road, and the rate of progress has been slow. The 1990s saw India’s rise as an Information Technology powerhouse. Along with this, many of the advances of modern technology such as the mobile phone literally became all pervasive.

 

Go to a small remote village today, and chances are you would find no roads, no sanitation, no organized retail shops, no school or hospital; and in spite of all this, don’t be surprised to see farmers chatting on their ‘Indianized’ mobile phones.

 

This picture is often used to cherish the ‘progress’ India has made. Unfortunately, it clouds a huge reality. That mobile phone in the farmer’s hand is a great indication of how India has adopted the 21st century. However, just look around the village and you will find it time warped in the 19th (or even earlier) centuries. What’s wrong with this picture? To me, this is a classic case of moving from the 19th century to the 21st century while completely bypassing the 20th! Why worry about those mundane 20th century advances such as public education, town planning, sanitation, water supply, electricity, road transportation??

 

Now let us take an example at the other extreme in urban India. What better than that bastion of Indian technology education, IIT, in the commercial capital of India. Note I am focusing on IIT Bombay, since I happen to be an alumnus and can relate to the changes on the campus over the past couple of decades. But before getting to the core issue, I will make a small digression and relate a ‘thought experiment’.

 

IIT Hostels are famous for many things; amongst them include the late night ‘discussions’ in the hostel wings that can literally cover any topic under the sun. These can run for hours into the late night, and some wind down only around the arrival of the morning sun.

 

It was in such a discussion session that we discussed and debated the topic of ‘IIT 2010′. To set the appropriate context, this was in 1991. The topic for discussion was grand as usual! ‘Where will IIT be in future?’ To pick up a future point of reference, we arbitrarily picked 2010 (to roughly coincide with 50 years since establishment of IIT Bombay). Here are a couple of points we pondered and envisioned for IIT 2010.

 

1. Every hostel room will have a ‘computer’. This computer will be connected to the central library computer, as well as the department computers (sitting on the desks of every professor and each lab). Students can research material, submit assignments, and interact with one another, while sitting in their rooms and using their computer. Note – at that point of time, the PC we could relate to was an IBM 286/386 or equivalent, and the only computer ‘network’ we were familiar with was ‘LAN’. ‘Email’ was an alien concept for most of us.

 

2. The hostels would be centrally air-conditioned so that the ‘crème de la crème of the Indian students’ can get good environment to study, in the oppressive Mumbai weather. The rooms would be bigger and have some additional basic gadgets such as TVs, Small Refrigerators, Microwaves, etc. And yes, one more point – clean and well maintained bathrooms & corridors! (Note – the presence of consumer gadgets in each room obviously seemed farfetched at that time, but this was not a complete dream scenario. Many graduate dorms in US and Western Europe had these facilities in the early 1990s…).

 

Fast forward to today, and unless some incredible miracle happens in the next 12 months, we all know where we stand with respect to these predictions. Yes, the hostels did get ‘internet enabled’. If not in the room, the hostel common rooms did get internet and computers a while back. Many students today also have laptops, not only in IITs, but in many other colleges as well.

 

But what about the hostels? Last I visited an IIT hostel was about a year back. It was quite sad to see that the hostel ‘infrastructure’ was exactly how it was in the early 1990s. I know, some people might point to the brand new hostels that have been recently built. But the vast majority of the 10+ old hostels remain where they were (there have been a few repairs and upgrades carried out over the years, only to keep them from worsening further…). One gets the same picture in the various Engineering Departments as well. Large amounts of funds have been raised by IIT, resulting in some good new labs being setup with the latest equipment. However, many of the old Departments still lie in a (for a lack of a better word) ‘dilapidated’ state. Now I am not expecting central air-conditioning anywhere…but some basic infrastructure? I guess the definition of what constitutes ‘basic’ itself needs revision.

 

The roads to Powai from the Eastern Express Corridor or the Western Express Corridor are as bad today (probably worse) compared to how they were in the early 1990s.

 

I have discussed these two examples, but many others can be cited. I don’t want to pick specifically on the IIT campus – there are countless other such examples. In fact in retrospect, the IIT Bombay campus is amongst the better places in Mumbai!

 

India offers a classic example of 19th century coexisting with the 21st. We proudly talk about developments in the IT field – but completely forget the steps of a city development that we skipped!

 

We have great telecom networks, but no good roads or public transportation networks (another 20th century development) in most cities. We are the world leaders in Software Services and have the capability to execute extremely complex and large projects. Yet, we cannot implement the most basic ‘Town Planning’ strategies…something that the developed world started active pursuing at the turn of the 20^th century. We can guide customers and travelers halfway around the world through our call centers, and still cannot provide the most basic information to our citizens.

 

We often talk about the ‘contrasts’ in India. Commonly discussed ones highlight slums and five star hotels, situated side by side. However these examples focus more on the rich vs. poor divide – not that I am denying it. However, I also want to contrast the ‘19th vs. 21st’ century divide. It is not just an issue of wealth – it is an issue of the state of mind, an issue of priorities. It is an issue of focus, an issue of planning, an issue of foresight, and last but the not the least an issue of ‘attitude’. People in India are quick to blame the ‘system’ for all this, while many times not realizing that their own ‘attitude’ is also an inherent part of that ‘system’.

 

Don’t get me wrong – I admire the 21^st century achievements done here in India. We should however be cognizant of those who are quick to brush the limitations in India and by over hyping these advances. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to progress. Similar to a school program, India as a country, as a society, cannot skip an intermediate step of development!

 

 

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Television News, Coverage of Mumbai Terror Attacks: A Distorted Reality

I have written earlier about Television News in general and my strong belief, how they are driving the common man ‘dumb’ by feeding exaggerated, hyped, often erroneous and sensationalism filled news to the consuming public. Last month’s coverage of the Mumbai Terror Attacks just further validated the point. The fact that it took such a serious and sad occasion to bring many others to question this media in India is worth pondering by itself. But, better late than never, I guess!

 

Instead of enumerating what all things the Television Media got wrong, let’s focus on the simpler part – what they got right, if anything at all! For starters, we have to give them some credit for focusing and deploying enough resources on the ground…the caliber of which, we will discuss at a later point. But that’s about it…Everything else ranged from a farce to a tragedy…and from blatant errors, to actions that were jeopardizing the rescue mission itself.

 

I am not going to pick on any one channel; I think more or less all of them were in the same league. Before diving into some of the specifics, let’s take a look at the general theme of the presentation. Somehow, these channels think that this real world tragedy is a Hollywood/Bollywood thriller movie. There is a stark music score in the background. ‘Somber’?….it is definitely not. Certain images are repeated over and over for maximum impact; and the worse part – certain clips are played in slow motion, back to back – leading one to believe that the particular scene dragged on for a much longer time, than its actual duration. This ‘trick’ is repeated very often by the news media here.

 

Now let’s look at the presenter. These folks seem to be under the impression that they are the center of the attraction. I fully understand that covering live news; that too of a very serious and tragic situation is extremely difficult. But I sincerely disapprove of people who try to overcome this difficulty by ‘steamrolling’ ahead with whatever they know/they think they know. There was a journalist who kept repeating during the operations about how a Special Forces team was getting ready to fire a RPG. He kept repeating this fact over and over, when it was amply clear that his own camera was showing a sharp shooter, with a special sight rifle. Now, what does it take to differentiate a rifle from a RPG??

 

Enough has already been written about the ‘TRP’ ratings driven ultra competitiveness between these channels. Hence suffice to say, any piece that was covered in the days following the end of the crisis was always ‘Exclusive’. This same desire also got some of these channels to compromise on the mission secrecy of the Special Forces. There ‘blow by blow’ reporting of the Special Forces movement stopped only after a direct request/order from senior military leadership.

 

The other sad aspect of the Indian society – ‘Indiscipline’, which transcends into a TV Reporter’s behavior, was also on ample display during this coverage. (We also see this every time an important event is getting coverage…). Forget the gravity of the situation of a tense security operation; or the serious and solemn funeral of a slain police officer – these reporters will literally climb over each other, while leading with their microphones and hound the person they are trying to get to. There is not even a hint of basic human decency here. And everyone’s screaming their questions all at the same time! Even an out of order High School class would seem much better behaved in comparison. When these same reporters show up in a press conference room, the shouting persists, but a new element of musical cacophony in the form of mobile phones ringers is added to the mix. I guess someone forgot to tell them about the ‘Silent’ mode on their handsets.

 

The list can go on further, but I think you get the overall idea. I remember back in the early 1990s, how as a harsh critic of the state controlled ‘Doordarshan’ News Channel, I used to long for the day when privately operated News Channels could be operational in India . However, it’s extremely ironic that today I (and probably many others) would lean towards Doordarshan to get somewhat realistic and balanced news; even when its quality hasn’t shown much improvement in the past 2 decades! Frankly, the best (but the most difficult…) way of getting a true and realistic picture, is to rely on multiple media streams – TV, Published Media, Newspapers and Blogs. One then needs to discount the ‘hype’, correct & compensate for errors, compare & contrast to do a sanity & reality check, and maybe then…one has any hope of getting some what closer to the true picture! In other words, we would need every individual to take-over the job of a top notch editor!

 

 

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Demise Of The Big 3: How Detroit Icons Lost Their Way Over The Past 3 Decades

 A lot has been written about the Big 3 bailout. Majority of the articles published thus far talk about all the current problems that are faced by Detroit. Relatively few have discussed how they got here in the first place. I thought I will add my 2 cents to this angle.

 

“You bailed out the Financial Institutions to the tune of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars! All we are asking for is a fraction!” This seems to be general line of lobbying (pleading is probably a more appropriate word…) that the Big-3 automakers are taking to the Congress. This, coupled with the specter of 3 Million direct and indirect job losses, is creating an apparently ’strong’ case for them. Yet, I am glad to see that there is still some opposition left in the Congress. The opposition might still be a moot point though, since the White House looks all set to bail the Big 3 out in any case.

 

It is worth looking at the ‘If for them…then why not us!’ argument. The big financial institutions had catastrophic failures/near failures, primarily due to the housing bubble collapse and risky investments over the past few years. In some sense, this once in a hundred year event had its origin in fairly recent past. The housing bubble began at the turn of this decade. [For a more comprehensive discussion regarding the 2008 Financial Crisis, please take a look at my earlier articles on the same topic: US Financial Crisis: Who Is To Be Blamed? and US Financial Crisis: The Role Of The Consumer ]

 

Comparatively, the Big 3 automakers have been in their slow death spiral for decades. In fact one can trace the beginning of the end for them, at the 1974 oil shock. Until then, they had a dream scenario of virtually no competition and extremely cheap oil. Hence it didn’t matter what you built; there was demand for it. Engine efficiency was the farthest on anyone’s mind. Those massive 6 Liter V8 vehicles of the 60s and early 70s, often resembling a small aircraft (with those fins!), would make today’s Hummer look like a compact vehicle!

 

The oil shock was a big wake up call, and the Big 3 scrambled to make smaller and efficient cars. But somehow design and quality took a backseat. It took the large scale arrival of the Japanese imports in the1980s that shook up the market again. Initially, the Big 3 probably didn’t even notice those ’tiny’ Toyotas and Hondas. But soon as their loyal customers started to defect, due in no small part because of the persisting ‘defects’ in the American cars (no pun intended!), Detroit began to take serious notice.

 

Lean Production Systems, Total Quality Management seminars started filling up in the Midwest. Consultants started making money of these Japanese ‘best practices’. It was ironic that the person that the Japanese first learnt Total Quality Management Principles from in post WW II era, Edward Deming, was an American. Apparently in that time period, no American industry cared to listen to him.

 

As the Big-3 started improving their designs and efficiencies in the 1990s, they were perpetually in a catch-up mode. Japanese automakers had taken over a significant lead and they kept widening the gap. At this stage, it is worth mentioning that the legacy labor contracts of the Big 3 started becoming a drag on these companies, while they were trying to be agile and nimble. On a personal note, I can relate to this design gap through first hand experience. In 1994, as a new graduate student arriving in America, I had a chance to rent two different cars in the first couple of months. One was the General Motors Buick Skylark and the other one, the Toyota Corolla. The differences between the two completely startled me. 

 

Just when it seemed that Big 3 was narrowing the gap towards the end of the last decade; they made another short-sighted cardinal error! The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis drove oil to a low of near 10 Dollars. Suddenly, it seemed Detroit again got into fond memories of the 1960s and threw fuel efficiency out of the window. Instead of trying harder to close the gap on the automobile portfolio; they thought they had discovered a new winning strategy, to once and for all defeat the Japanese! The Big 3 always had a bigger portfolio in the light truck segment. These gas guzzlers were the mainstay of utility workers, farmers and other small business owners. With oil hitting new lows, the marketing geniuses of Detroit spun campaigns that made these trucks, an essential for a common white collar worker as well! Soccer moms were also in their target sight. By simply slapping on a mini-bus like body on top of the truck chassis, Detroit created something called a ‘SUV’. Soccer moms who till the mid 90s were confined to station wagons and ugly looking small minivans, now had a great option. Not sure, if the sheer size of these things made the white collar workers and the soccer moms more comfortable or safer?!

 

In the short run, these gas guzzling vehicles got handsome profits to the Big 3 and it appeared that they were finally back on track. Yet the foundation was extremely shaky. Japanese automakers also moved into this space in the late 1990s and once again showed Detroit how those same gas guzzlers could be made more reliable and comfortable. The final death sentence came when the oil prices began a steady rise this decade. SUVs and gas guzzlers were again out of favor and smaller, fuel efficient cars were back in vogue. And the Japanese were not sitting idle either with their R&D; even better fuel efficiency was now available from the newer revolutionary breakthroughs such as the Hybrid Technology. Detroit simply didn’t have any answer for this!

 

The 2008 financial crisis and resulting recession & downturn was the last straw. But, I think attributing this demise to this crisis is extremely short sighted. As described in this article, the demise was around the corner in any case. The present recession was just the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’!

 

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Random Thoughts – A New ‘Wall Street’ Trilogy?

Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’ made in 1987, starring Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen is one of my all time favorite movies. Who can forget the one and only ‘Gordon Gekko’?!

 

I was not following the financial markets back in 1987, and hence cannot relate first hand to that period. Still the way this movie captures the core human emotions; especially ‘Greed’ that transcends across generations, and multiple financial crises, is extremely revealing. And Michael Douglas is fantastic. I am surprised that a blockbuster sequel (or a set of sequels) has not been launched since.

 

Just think about it; this past decade has provided us with so many great real world plots and scenarios related to Wall Street turmoil! These should be a ‘Dream come true’ for fiction authors and script writers. They say, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’…nothing proves this dictum more than what is happening in the financial world today!

 

I am writing this short summary piece to capture my random thoughts around three somewhat distinct financial crises during this decade – with specific emphasis on representative players, events, characters, themes and people psyche, as we lived through these tumultuous periods. These three crises can together form a nice new trilogy! Maybe we can all extol the Hollywood Greats to make these into movies. (As if someone is really listening -J… I for one will definitely watch these movies and also buy their DVDs!)

 

 

1. Wall Street 1 ‘The Super Bowl Of Crazy Ads’ – The Dotcom Boom & Bust

 

Think about Super-Bowl 2000. Even though this was one of the best ever Super Bowl games, it will probably be remembered for something other than the Rams-Titans classic. Who can forget that crazy ETrade Monkey ad?! And Pets.Com? This clearly was an era of ostentatious and over the top advertising of businesses and concepts that hadn’t made a single dollar of profit!

 

The crazy atmosphere in the Silicon Valley…The BMWs as sign-on bonuses… Stock options resulting in instant multi-millionaires! The new ‘internet’ based model…The doomsday scenario for ‘Brick & Mortar’ businesses… Overnight words like ‘B2B’, ‘B2C’ entering our lexicon.

 

All this should provide a nice cocktail for a heady movie about this period. You have many rags-to-riches stories. You have Geeks; lots of them. You have teenage CEOs. You have small companies buying out industry icons! And then you have the downfall…the flawed business model, the layoffs, the lawsuits, thousands of these ‘paper millionaires’ seeing their net worth vanish as fast as it had appeared…and the tragic cases of folks who got hit by AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax)…Oh, and through all this period, those naïve average mom & pop investors who chased those ‘hot’ stocks and lost everything? Remember those days when NASDAQ had crossed 5000?! And how very quickly it was

under 2000?!

 

The media played a part too…the constant hyping about the ‘new revolution’. The ‘This time it is different…’ editorials…new magazines coming out every week…and then, as things got tough, those first references to a ‘Bubble’ with artful depictions on cover pages…Treating Allan Greenspan as a rock star…and then pulling him down into the dumps and accusing him of everything that went wrong! Those few months were just astounding!

 

 

2. Wall Street 2 ‘How The Mighty Have Fallen!’ – The Enron-WorldCom Saga

 

How the Mighty Have Fallen! This probably best captures the 2001-2002 period. First Enron, then WorldCom… From extremely complicated financial dealings and transactions to some fairly straight forward ‘creative accounting’. From shredding documents, to massive companies disappearing overnight…From backroom dealings, to whistle-blowers. The court-room dramas, the extended trials (Aren’t court-room dramas an important staple of movies in the ‘Drama’ genre?) The laid-off employees, the retirees who lost majority of their retirement savings…that small sub-segment of fired workers who posed for Playboy!

 

The sentencing, the handcuffed CEOs, the somewhat vindicated stockholders…and last but not the least, the massive overhauling of accounting standards, procedures by the regulators, including the congress, resulting in a ground-breaking legislation…this drama extends to Washington as well!

 

 

3.  Wall Street 3 ‘The Return of the Great Depression’ – The 2008 Financial Crisis

 

Well…this one, we are still living through it for the past 6 months…Critics are quick to point out that this is the worst crisis since the Great Depression! Maybe we haven’t even seen the end of the beginning! But then that shouldn’t stop moviemakers and fiction writers from creating something around it! (It didn’t stop them in previous major transformational events in history…)

 

In my view, ‘Utter Disbelief!’ is what can best describe what we are seeing around us. Who would have thought that legendary century old firms that have driven the course of not just American, but Global Capitalistic Economies and the Free Market System, should just collapse?! This was not supposed to happen in a hundred years! Even the Great Depression had spared these firms.

 

Pivotal incidents would be quite a few – Bear Stearns to Lehman…One bailout followed by the other. Freddie & Fannie, AIG, CitiGroup, the list goes on…The extremely complicated hierarchical CDOs that no one had any idea about…The absurd levels of leveraging…On one side you have these clueless CEOs, and the other side a rescue team led by a man who until recently was part of that same group! How everyone seems to act like those blind men in that ‘Blind men and the Elephant’ tale.

 

There are enough grass-roots level themes to talk about here as well…The typical suburban American family that is leading a very comfortable life by leveraging on everything from the house, cars and credit cards. The Chinese factory worker who is fulfilling the needs for the increasingly materialistic American way of life…The Indian IIT Engineer who is solving tough technology problems… (How can we forget ‘Asok’ from Dilbert?)…the stereotypical Indian call center worker… (1 or 2 Bollywood movies have already been made on this character…). There is that classic geo-political agent of brinksmanship here as well; ‘Oil’! And a presidential election to add to the mix. There are enough things here for some exciting story -J

 

 

What are your thoughts? Any good books that you have read/you can recommend about the first two crises?

 

 

 

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Is TV News Making Us Dumb?

How is the modern TV news affecting the consumer today?

 

In my previous article on “The Illiterate 21^st Century Consumer”, I have attributed some of the causes, to the role that media plays today. I thought of writing this article primarily targeted towards TV audiences in India. But as I started writing it, I realized that this is equally applicable to the US TV audiences as well. In fact, since US leads the world in media and entertainment, all the good and bad trends including the ones in Television News originate from here! Hence I modified my article a little so that it can address TV News audiences not only in India, but the US as well, and possibly many other countries.

 

 

“Breaking News”!!! Screams a TV channel. Worried, I try to focus my attention towards the TV, but somehow don’t comprehend what’s going on. I switch channels…but still the same. It takes me a few minutes to figure what’s going on. Apparently, a cat has fallen into a small ditch and is unable to get out…it is screaming loudly, and the vast armies of TV reporters with their uplink vans, with nothing better to cover in this otherwise mundane world, are zeroing in on the action! An anchor passionately discusses her love for cats, and how in such a great country of ours, we cannot get a cat out of her misery! Many bystanders have already dialed the emergency number…Soon the brave first responders show up on the screen and begin what apparently seems like a straight forward rescue; but what a channel dubs as ‘a grave and risky mission’. Success is achieved in a few minutes, and the apparently unperturbed feline creature is united with her overjoyed owner. The action over, the reporters fade away in search of their next big scoop. Some ‘analytical’ ones continue with the story and ask ‘tough’ questions – how the cat got there in the first place? Who is to be blamed?…and on and on.

 

Had enough of the story?! Me too! Unfortunately, this is not that far from reality! Moreover, this same story could have easily played out in the richest country in the world – USA, or the largest democracy in the world – India, or in many other countries.

 

All over the world, commercial media is out there to get into action for getting the viewers’ eyeballs. Ratings are everything. A new slogan of this brave new media world could go something like “Any news is good to cover, as long as it can grab your attention”. Forget things like veracity, priority, credibility, authenticity, journalistic standards, etc. Those are things of the past. When legendary newspapers have made the transition from being the most respected news sources for decades, to being the tabloids with the most circulations (readers in India will know which specific newspaper I am talking about), why should the TV channels fall behind? To their credit, they haven’t! They have caught up well in the past decade. Perfectly good (and thus boring) news channels have become the sensational sources of bits of ‘news’. And as if the news items themselves were not enough, they are using modern graphic technology to great effect – often rivaling MTV music videos. Dull and boring news anchors have given way to glamorous celebrities.

 

On a more serious note – I thought this was just one big sad joke until recently, when I realized the impact of all this. People (more appropriately, the ‘21^st century illiterates’) were actually believing this stuff! An ever increasing number were living in this cocoon of the new ‘news world’.

 

A sad case happened recently where incessant breaking news coverage about some apparent ‘doomsday’ event worried a teenager so much, he actually attempted a suicide. It is one thing to feed junk news to the consumer; but now it has gotten to the point of feeding blatantly wrong pieces of information!

 

Unlike in the past when newspapers were the primary news source, today more people (especially in developing countries like India, where internet coverage is still limited) are relying on TV for their daily information feed. Unlike a newspaper, a TV news channel is unfortunately a ‘single threaded’ source (to use a technical analogy!). A newspaper can devote large real estate to the top news, and yet the user can skip it and go to the following pages/sections if he wishes. With the news channel, you are stuck with the ‘story of the day’ however irrelevant it might be. Having multiple channels doesn’t help, since all get caught in the same web.

The story of day or the breaking news might end up occupying the better part of the news hour on many days. As a result, the viewer doesn’t get exposure to any of the real news. Worse, disproportionate importance is given to something that is utterly irrelevant in many cases. In this current financial crisis, where principles of capitalism itself are being questioned, may be someone should extend those same questions to journalism. Why is it today, that ‘boring’ news services such as India’s government run ‘Doordarshan’, UK’s BBC or NPR in USA are more dependable than other networks that have much higher budgets and reach? What is common amongst all these three networks? But then, that could be a topic of a separate article.

 

I have come to conclusion that TV News are actually making the viewers dumb. Not that this is any great finding! I am sure that some of you, who still have their ‘information sanity’ with them after facing the barrage of the current stuff, would have come to the same conclusion. But how do we get this message out? Clearly, the media won’t showcase the reality…it goes against their business interests. I guess someone should create a sensational news item around this…may be a very intelligent man (say a PhD in Quantum Physics!) who was forced to watch the modern TV news by his family, wakes up one day, and has great difficulty with 1^st grade mathematics! How did this happen?? Surely, this will be one exciting ‘Breaking News’ all over the TV channels!

 

[To Be Continued...]