Reflections

Raghuram G Rajan is the only economist who had predicted the global crash of 2007 - the subprime crisis - before it happened; At an event where the focus was on Alan Greenspan ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan ) Mr Rajan forecasted the crash - and was roundly criticized for this. In his paper "Has Financial Development Made The World Riskier?" the author pointed out skewed incentives in the financial sector, credit default swaps, and the increasing risk profile of banks and warned that the "interbank market could freeze up, and we could well have a full-blown financial crisis" (Readers' can find any number of blogs and articles that analyse the contents of this book - all of them by qualified economists. I am not one; so my approach is to summarise the achievements of the author; the achievements garnered by the book; and lastly to give readers like me- sales / marketing professionals, students a reason to read the book with the objecti...

I received my first online shipment yesterday - a book titled "The Monster" by Michael W Hudson. Score one for online model, you would think? Not quite - I spotted the book in a bookstore, but purchased online for a price advantage. Therefore, the flipkart site could not have realised this sale without the support of the brick-and-mortar shop. It is the regular shop that sold the book to me by virtue of its display and the facility it provides for leafing through the pages. Without this, chances are I would not have purchased this book at all!  Further, I had occasion to visit crossroads book store, where I spotted 3 lovely books - The Scam, The 2G Spectrum Scam and Building Brand India. In the first 2 titles, I get a 10-20% saving over the traditional model. In fact, on browsing a little more, I noticed price-offs upto 35% in quite a large number of titles. If you look at this transaction, yet again the initial sale has been created by the traditional model - and it...

April 9th to April 11th... 3 days without milk, kirana...  1 day even without medicines. For 3 days, not a single shop (not of any relevance, at any rate) opened. Only irrelevant immaterial shops opened - apparel etc. That taught me a lesson - if food is not available, then nothing else matters! Seriously, it did cause me to pause and wonder - all the shops that were open with all their customary splendor were not able to attract me, as my eyes searched for the elusive samosa... Samosa to chhodo, even a cut chai or a paani-puri would have done admirably well. I was 17 kilometers from my residence - and not a single thhelaa gaadi in sight anywhere, let alone shops. And believe me guys, for those 3 days there was not a single thhelaa gaadi on the roads vending samosa-pohaa-chai etc. Most disconcerting, let me tell you. My mind went to the bachelors and students who are dependent on these thhelaas and bhojanalyas for their sustenance... and, with even More, Big Bazaar, Reliance ...

Harsh V Pant: Soldier, state and society - the ever-growing imbalance : 'via Blog this' Harsh is making a solid point in the article above... "A state makes a sacred contract with its soldiers: that while they will lay down their lives when called upon to do so, the nation will take good care of their and their families’ needs to the extent its resources would permit. This contract underpins the very survival of a nation, as when its territorial integrity and political independence are under threat, the nation looks upon the only instrument that can protect it — its armed forces. While all governments have to look for a considered bargain between their commitments and power and between power and resources, a responsible government will always be aware of the serious implications of not spending adequate resources on defence." It is very painful for me to state this, especially since both my Dad and my Granddad were Army Officers, but the fact of the m...

The Plot Dragon Island is a Russian Outpost in the Arctic Sea region housing one of the most diabolical advanced weapon laboratories devised by mankind. Unfortunately, Dragon Island is also the home of one of the deadliest weapons ever devised. And even more unfortunately Dragon Island has been captured by a renegade group of thugs calling themselves the Army Of Thieves. Their Agenda: World Destruction, which the thugs prefer to call the revenge of the disenfranchised and the downtrodden. The weapon is set to destroy everything in a matter of five hours – and the good guys have 5 hours to save the world. A small matter of travelling several thousand miles in 5 hours, overcoming the “gentlemen” and disarming the weapon. Enter Scarecrow – the hero. Scarecrow is Captain Shane Scofield, a battle hardened marine who is ideally placed a few hours away from the target. With him is a motley collection of people – a few soldiers and a few civilians. The rest of the book deals with how...

Circa 1998... I am in my first job - and get a call from the Director-Marketing's cabin. I reach the cabin with all sorts of good, bad and ridiculous thoughts racing in my mind... Mr Khardekar says - "Come in, Vishal. Meet your brother!!!!" Great. Except for one tiny detail. I had never even seen the guy in my life - this brother of mine! (Sorry, Atul Dada) We got to know each other that day, then met quite a few times till we drifted apart again in due course of time. What has this got to do with Facebook? Plenty - Have patience!  Well, time passed - and then, one fine day, I receive a friend request from Atul Kale on facebook. He had since shifted to England, and we rarely - in fact, never spoke to each other. But then, thanks to technology and facebook, we got in touch again. Score one for facebook! I myself am a late convert to this platform... rejected many, many requests - till one day, in an idle moment, I decided to see what it is all about. A...

The Genre The self-help category has, for some reason never attracted me... it always seemed to me that such books would be holier-than-thou, full of lots of advise that may or may not be very practical. In other words, I thought they were, well, pretty well useless. And when it came to books on my core profession - I always looked down upon them with condescension. Even if I thought there was some good to be had, the very thought of reading a book on my profession would fill me with dread... I relaxed by reading, and the reading of a self-development book never crossed my mind. My constant refrain: I stay updated with all industry trends, business magazines and newspapers, internet and blogs, and classmates and colleagues - all of which serve to keep me in touch with the latest trends, while my friends and especially colleagues would update me on my development areas. Further, since I actively sought and gave tips among my close colleagues, wherein we would regularly share...