Kuttanad

Driving along the windswept unruly highway,
On an impulse unknown we broke,
Along a cheeky, grumpy path, on the right
We drove into the fields of Kuttanad, along the highway near Ambalapuzha

The whiff of wet fertile earth, hit our nostrils
Like childhood lost, like our first tadpole in the beaker glass
Along the cheeky path, away from our destination
We drove into the fields of Kuttanad

In the afternoon gloom of the monsoon sky,
We saw it on both sides - the blanket of green
Spread magnificent, amidst swaying palms
We took in the fields of Kuttanad

We sat on the side of the trail, together,
Looking into the expanse and beyond,
Letting the clouds open up, lash us, wet us, elevate us
That lump in our throats, unsettled, in the fields of Kuttanad

And just as the sun went down, we spoke to each other
Not so much in words, but in feelings beyond
So then....there onwards to our destination!
Our bare feet just numbed, by the fields of Kuttanad

An unspoken resolve took root that day
That when the highway lies daunting, grimy and cold
We will take that short cheeky break on the right
Into the fields of Kuttanad, along the highway near Amabalapuzha

India Poised......for me??

I am baffled. At work, I articulate and represent an India that is taking leadership positions in the technology world. Indeed, I run that spiel with my clients everyday. Innovation hub, highly qualified engineering talent, strong legal and institutional and social framework and a supporting political establishment. The message to the “client” is, that this is a growth story that will go on….and on and on.

I come back home and switch on NDTV and I see gruesome black bags of bones surgically separated from 3-12 year old bodies by an ex-Stephanian and his servant. The police and the NGO’s did a fig about reported violations from the accused. Then I read about the killing of a person who stole a hammer from a scrap shop. The man was desperate to save his one kidneyed daughters life. After beating him up in a gruesome manner, the scrap shop dealer and his colleagues raped the mans wife brutally, came back and killed him. I switch to other channels and they are still showing those plastic bags, another set of bones were found. Then there are struggles related to massive farm land acquisition under the guise of SEZs. Industry making inroads into rural India? Or is India Inc. up for sale?

Why do I have this sinking feeling in my heart despite all the “India Poised” sloganeering. One would ask, what have these isolated crime incidents got to do with the India growth story? Dig deeper and you will find that rural India is paying a heavy price for sustaining our in-equitable foreign investments and billings funded growth story. The so called India urban growth story has built a whole unorganized cartel of service providers who need to build up the growth story, to assure the urban consumers that all is well and will continue to be well into the future. Builders turned property Don’s, Industrialists turned Retail chain shahenshah's, Power Brokers turned Politicians and vice versa and right at the bottom of the food chain is the hapless urban consumer, whose only job is to spend, spend and spend, to sustain this ecosystem. And as long as the dollar billings happen, youngsters will get jobs, they would want to buy homes, they would want to party well and eat well. Where does this ecosystem encroach upon, then? The great rural landscape of India. The rural India that is already crumbling at the impact of urban transformation. The young men in villages have long migrated to cities. Agricultural yields are on a down ward spiral. Debt’s are heavy, leading to suicides that invariably leave families with kids and women to bear the burden of survival for the rest of their lives. To this environment walks in our cartel, armed with ready made growth plans, projects, FII's and a promise of eternal prosperity. State Government conveniently looks the other way, as it lets the farmer negotiate with the corporate, the sale of his agricultural land. That is be some equitable negotiation, isn't it? The average farmer does not know mutual funds, not does he have a financial consultant to advice him how to spend his new found fortune. He takes up the modest way to the local toddy shop and drowns his troubles there. When the money is over, he hits the cities, doing odd jobs, or simply ends his life. This could be an illusory account, but as we all know, not far from truth.

Yes, India is poised, for me, because i can get impossible salaries simply because others are getting it (hope my employer is not reading this post). India is poised for me because I can buy a new apartment every 10 years and change my car every 5 years. India is poised for me, because I can take my family for a vacation abroad. India is poised for me because I have the liberty to ideate, think about the future and keep this blog updated (sic!). But guess what, the “India Poised” story does not just end with me.

Parents from Nithari Village who have lost their children, wife of the scrap worker, the nameless debt ridden farmer who is contemplating the noose in Nagpur, the clueless land owner who is negotiating his SEZ designated land holding with a snazzy corporate babu, the tsunami effected family where the woman has to sell off her kidney to keep the home fires burning. India is all but “poised” for them after all; the only difference is that they do not have wings to fly, and they have to take the leap with me.

Guru - Movie Review

Good movies are generally categorized as "Paisa Vasool" types or "fundoo" types. If we set the right expectations, we can sit back and enjoy the flick and not be disappointed. Then there are films like "Guru", where you walk into the cinema expecting to see an equivalent of "A Beautiful Mind" or "Cindrella Man". Not for nothing. The plot is a Movie Director's delight, lifting, inspirational, dark and redeeming by turns. All shades of a great growth story epitomised by real life examples. There is no stereotypical black and white here. Every character has a different shade of grey. To top it the director is the finest story teller in the Indian film industry. How does he treat it?

In the earlier part of the movie he spends some time building GuruKant's character. Impressive start. Everything else is fast forward, except the songs that takes up gruelling 30 minutes of story telling time. When you are treating a subject as real life as this, we don't expect Aishwarya's character to do an introductory jig and then back it up with another one when she has just delivered twin girls. To accommodate all the dancing and merriment, imagine what we missed. The blow by blow account, ostensibly inspired by the wealth creator of our times, who used the system for what ever it was worth and created a business model in itself. Like i said, inspirational, redeeming, dark and vainglorious. Mani Ratnam has sacrificed good film making for 30 minutes of Jhatka Matkas. Which brings me to the question. Why do Indian Film makers think that rooted stories told as is, will not register with the masses? If Bollywood makes a movie on Gandhi, will we still have Mohandas sing songs with Ba? Our film industry trivializes the most appealing of stories and makes it nothing more than Tamasha. The movie can be summarized thus,

Young Gurukant, goes to turkey, shows promise (better part of the movie)
-----Song-------
Aishwarya Rai Intro
-----Song-----
Marriage with Aishwarya, opens factory
-----Song-----
Kids, goes public
-----Song-----
Tussle with his mentor (Mithun - based on RPG??), Guru's struggle period
---Song----
Paralysis & Trial by commission
---Song---
The come back (we are not shown how this happens)

THE END.

From Mani Ratnam, we had not expected this.

Positives: Watch the movie for Abhishek Bachchan. I never thought he had anything going for him other than his father. But hold it, this guy can deliver and deliver with panache. The mannerisms he uses, the accent and the intensity with which he plays the character is amazing. Mithun is competent. Aishwarya is wasted. Maddy and Vidya do not have much to do anyway.

Music: The villain of the piece. Used in-appropriately. A typical AR Rahman dish-out. But wait, there is one exceptional song "Barso Re". "Yammo Yammo" is catchy. Why did Abhishek have to lip sync to AR Rahman's voice in "Dam mast"? Some questions will remain unanswered in Bollywood.

Moral: Slick Editing, pretty faces and 6 songs does not a good film make.

VC Investments in India: Catching the Silicon Valley Flu

Is the much touted transformation finally happening?

The Ernst and Young VC Insights Report 2006 ranked India at number 5 amongst the top destinations of Venture Capital. India has attracted VC investments worth $ 1.1 bn in 2005 and have just followed up with another very successful 2006. Most of the very successful technology VC’s like Sequoia, NEA and USVP have already raised or are planning to raise India based funds. Organizations like the TiE are providing adequate platforms for the young entrepreneurs to network with VC’s and snag big ticket investments. There are signs of success already doing the rounds mostly in the hot Web 2.0 space. Are we looking at a base transformation here?

Before I start putting together this paean, let us do a reality check. The fact is that bulk of the $ 1.1 bn figure was utilized for buy-outs and mid-stage funding of IT Services firms. This is the low hanging fruit. The IT services market has matured and despite persistent threats of the market over-heating and bubbling over, the players have been able to stay ahead of the curve. Some of them, like GlobalLogic and Symphony have established themselves in their own niches (offshore product development services) and have grown dramatically in the past. Still others, have re-invented themselves, got acquired or have pursued strategic acquisitions in foreign stores. As dynamic as this sector may appear, the VC community don’t seem too excited. The reason being that consolidation is already overdue in the industry with mature players looking to either grow through acquisitions or simply capitalize. The critical “Exit Strategy” that most VC funds seek seems to be absent with most players in the segment. We are not going to see a large number of players rushing to NASDAQ for a listing in the short while. Nor are we likely to see a bright and “green in the head” start-up grow and get acquired in the next 5-6 years. The fact is that the VC community was not a very pro-active participant in funding the IT Services off shoring boom, and at this stage, when the industry is pretty much on its own feet, it is not likely to meddle too much with the dynamics of the sector. Examples like Global Logic, Virtusa, Symphony Services, Persistent Systems will abound, where VC’s have opened their purse strings to do aggressive funding, but these set of companies really belong to another planet, the OPD planet.

The story on OPD started, when VC’s stated asking their portfolio companies to look offshore for specialized product development services. In most of the cases the firms needed the required run-way in the seed stage, when burn-rate of cash was high. So they start talking to this “peculiar” breed of service providers who apparently started with the motto of serving ISV’s. I use the word “peculiar’ because, some of these companies were talking about taking complete ownership of product development. Symphony for one, had the courage to tell the ISV’s in America, “Product IP and Marketing are core, Product Engineering, Innovation support and sustenance is context”. IT services had never seen such an interpretation of offshoring. The Implications of this pitch rang heavy in terms of the sheer scale of delivery and specialization in that the client expected out of OPD partnerships. Buoyed by this trend, VC’s started asking their portfolio companies to seek partners in India, then, as if to get a “double-bang” for the buck, they also started adding these OPD firms to their portfolio. Most of the funding that happened in the OPD space was early to mid-stage. The players in this segment already had ISV clients and had longer term contracts that provided them with flexibility on what they could do with the freshly induced funding rounds. So you had, VC’s prompting their portfolio technology companies to partner with OPD firms within their portfolio. This was not a very obvious trend at first, but is increasingly evident as time goes by.

Now, the Million Dollar question? If one can develop products in India for one’s own portfolio companies, what should stop the VC’s from catching a flight evaluating proposals of home grown firms having a global product delivery plan? The success of the OPD firms was significant in the sense that, the industry understood that contextual IT services is not the only thing you could outsource to India. One could actually have products developed from white-board to market in India. Expatriate techies out of the Silicon Valley who had worked in Networking, Storage and Telecommunications space took up the mantle first. They approached VC’s with seed funding proposals based on an idea, 100% of the execution go which would be driven from India. Pune is dotted with such firms that have extremely successful products out in the market today. Much in the model that Israel grew as a destination for Storage and High tech funding, I will not be surprised if product innovation and leadership in certain niche high tech segments is lead by India, fuelled by the new investment interest from the Silicon valley in particular.

The Web 2.0 boom did not leave India untouched. Norvest, Kleiner Perkins and a few others have got their exalted hands wet in the India Web.2.0 race. Leading the pack are travel portals like Cleartrip.com, Travelguru.com, Naukri.com and the real estate portal 99acres.com. There are others who are catching up as I write. Suddenly the leading VC firms are getting enamored with 38.5 million internet penetration number and the broadband adoption that has been growing steadily over the past couple of years. My feeling is that, one cannot go wrong with the investments that have thus far happened. The only worry is, as usual, of overdoing it. Although the buzz thus far is that most of the investments are happening because of the lack of more qualified “mainstream” opportunities, purely from the risk/returns perspective the investments made till now are on the right track.

So, with all the new product development for global markets and the investment in the indigenous Web.2.0 space, is India finally likely to break the mould of a back-office destination for the US? Time will tell.

Assam: The economic discrimination argument that we use....

I have seen posts after posts condemning the exploitation of resources in Assam by outsiders, namely North Indians. A number of articles both online and print, have attributed this phenomenon as reason for the deep rooted alienation of people of Assam from the mainstream. This has been the simmering point of discussion on all forums such as this. My take is that, this argument goes against the basic principles of global economics. Let me give you some background:

Which is the country in the world that has the greatest trade deficit (i.e; amount of goods sold is lesser than amount of goods consumed). United States of America. Everything from Jeans, Cars, Computers, Undergarments, Pet food to Software is manufactured/developed/produced outside the US. The textile, automotive industry all but disappeared from the face of North Carolina and Detroit in the 80’s. They saw this coming, and instead of raising the protectionism bandwagon, looked the problem in the eye and re-invented themselves. That’s what makes a great country and a great community. One can continue to blame problems on the others that we ourselves create and wallow in the self-assurance that we are trying to change the system by raising the so-called burning issues, by taking up arms and asking for a separate identity. The malaise runs deeper. Why is it preposterous to think today that China is exploiting the US, despite the huge Chinese- US trade deficit? The reason is, that US has created these huge corporations that control the channels through which Chinese industry gets its share of business. This means, that while china dominates through manufacturing efficiency, US dominates through sheer enterprise and innovation. There is a lesson for us here.

To say that we are being exploited is like pointing a finger at others, because when you do that, three fingers are pointing towards your own self. You cannot be exploited until and unless you allow yourselves to be exploited. The question to ask is, how many Dhirubhai’s has Assam produced, despite the rich vendor and forward integration opportunities that petrol producing regions offer. From the refinery in Bongaigaon, there are so many process by-products coming out. Which freshly minted bright mind has taken a project plan to this refinery to build on such by-products, a Naphtha unit, a cracker plant…. the possibilities are endless. Why do you have to wait for Central or state government dole? What did Gujarat have at the time of independence? Oil had not been discovered yet when independence happened. But how come they have since become such a thriving petroleum by-product processing hub in the country? That’s the entrepreneurship story within.

We all know that the emotion of enterprise has no borders. I touched upon this fact in the first paragraph. So what prevented people like Bajaj, Birla and the Ambani’s from investing big time in Assam? Since the 1970’s the region has been on boil. Every time an investment proposal came, it got lost in the virulence of the political situation. So Assam ended up having a large number of warehouses and distribution companies for other Indian manufacturers of FMCG, Consumer Goods and Industrial Machinery. This is typically, the lowest and the most obvious end of the enterprise food chain. In-short, Assam became a “consumer economy”. Unlike the US though, the enterprise ecosystem in Assam could not leverage the power of the consumer, because there was no critical mass within. So you bought and bought and bought, cribbed and cribbed and cribbed, while the growth initiative was lost in the war cries that was raised by extremist outfits and their equally blind opponents in the state and centre.We became the people who demanded, the center and the state became the people who very selectively and conditionally dispensed. No one wants to take from a power who is considered to be domineering, so even as we took what we got, the feeling of alienation never left our hearts and the vortex got deeper and deeper.

Now let us pursue the argument that things would be different if Assam was given the right to Self-determination. You could “run” the refineries, the petrochemical plants, the team gardens, the mines etc etc. “RUN” is the operational word here. Very easy to just say, but as any experienced energy or operations professional will tell you, not so easy to execute. Where will you get the experts, machinery, specialized manpower, R&D competence from? To run such businesses you need all of this. Assam has a good ecosystem of such experts, but one would still need outside help. Let us see, not India of-course, the former colonialists, China? Russia? or the US? What makes you so sure that they will not extract their pound of flesh? China today runs a good %age of oil basins in Africa for their Governments. They have the required expertise. Even if you produce and refine, you will have to find export markets, the pipelines to feed the export markets and last but not the least, deliver this at a cost that is competitive with say what the GCC countries produce and deliver at. Why am I making this complicated argument? To prove the point that the “pound of flesh” will have to be given, to make Oil or any other natural resources the money spinner everyone thinks it is. Colonial India might have extracted its own “pound of flesh” through its PSU’s that are operating in Assam, but make no mistake the way it operates is very moderate when compared with how the Oil economy works globally. Find out what Shell did to Nigeria and its West African neighbors, and you will know. Saddam Hussein, and the invasion of Iraq, what was the motivator? The PSU’s have been libertine evangelists when compared to other refinery partners independent Assam might consider, to make Oil a commodity worth making money out of. So the whole exploitation argument does not make economic sense, since it is an emotive issue, it is easy for disruptive forces to latch on and paint it in their own color.

Snapshot, the Punjab of 1985: Terrorism both state driven and Khalistan sponsored. Custodial Killings, Army Operations, Rape, Terrorists killing innocents, exodus by non-Punjabi traders etc etc. Rationale for Khalistan: Step Motherly treatment, Self-determination.

Snapshot, the Assam of 1990: Terrorism both state driven and ULFA sponsored. Custodial Killings, Army Operations, Rape, Terrorists killing innocents, exodus by non-Assamese traders etc etc. Rationale for Assam State: Step Motherly treatment, Self-determination.

Snapshot Punjab in 2007: SEZ, IT Hub, Record Wheat production, Hosiery and Textile center, Spare parts cottage industry. Top 5 in human growth indices


Snapshot Assam in 2007: Still the same as 1990

Albert Camus said “Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better”.

Where will be snatch this freedom from, through the barrel of a gun, though political jingoism or through sheer enterprise and innovation. I will leave it for the “rais” to answer.