Before questioning Mallya should we also ask why not also question Air India.

This is probably the best time for the aviation industry not only in India but the world over. Almost all well managed Aircraft operators have been making profits thanks to the low crude prices for the last couple of years and the story is no different in India however there is one exception to this and the company that has not been able to become profitable in such benign conditions is the state carrier Air India. It is well known fact that Air India has been a sucker for public funds for many years and every other government has only diverted money into Air India from other key social projects just to keep the Airline floating or rather flying.

What we have witnessed in the last few months in terms of the banks going after Mallya who owes banks a sum of 9000 crs is a welcome step but going by the same logic the banks should have also gone after Air India whose combined debt runs into more than 40000 crs. Why arent the public sector banks taking this step , why arent they held accountable for the huge debt that Air India is sitting on. The close nexus between politics and the Babudom exposes this truth.

Old private air carriers like Jet and even the relatively new ones like Indigo or even Spice jet have figured out what needs to be done to remain profitable but Air India inspite of being present for decades hasnt still got the right mix . Even if Air India is closed down it will not impact the Airline industry in any way as the market share of Air India is only about 15% which can be made good by the private players.A bloated organization like Air India will continue to extract money as we have seen in the past and all the half hearted attempts to make it professional have gone down the drain.Unpaid vendors , pending bills from the Government , improper route planning are ailing problems that have now become legacy problems with the Airline.

In in current form with its networth being wiped off years back no investor will want to touch the company, the only way forward is to write off all the debt and start of on a clean state and make it favorable for private operators to invest in the company. The airline has been around for a while now and has a huge fleet with experienced staff, alliance partners across major routes and also all necessary permissions at major international airports. It is up to the Government on how they will want to capitalize on this while inviting bids from private players. It is high time Government gets out of the business of running airlines if for any strategic reason they might want to still hold a stake it should be limited to about 15-20% and the rest should be offloaded to public or private investors.

The Narendra Modi Government's recent election victories have given it a thumping majority to push forward such reforms and it is time they bite the bullet .

Made in Detroit to Make in Silicon Valley ....

To stay relevant in business means to Innovate and to Innovate means getting the right talent who can envision the future and create it. The iconic Ford Motor company yesterday announced a new CEO even before the current CEO Mark Fields could finish his term. Industry experts see this as a sign of desperation by Ford . The current CEO failed to communicate the strategy for the future and it was time the board decided to look for a change and get in someone who could deliver results sooner.

The automobile industry is going through a big phase of experimentation and a massive churn is likely to happen in the coming few years. The likes of Google, Uber and Tesla have been investing into self driving cars and electric cars. The shift would mean that the current crop of car makers like Ford or the GM, Chrysler can no longer sit back and not worry about the future of their businesses. While it is true that Ford and its likes have started investing into the self driving or electric cars the point that really needs attention is if it is enough? Do they have the right talent to drive these initiatives. On the other hand the current generation of companies who are driving these changes be it Google or Uber or Tesla or the self driving software makers have to an extent succeeded but that does not mean they will find find it easy in the future.It is still early days.

Marketplace is very dynamic and we have seen enough examples of how companies who were giants in their fields were thrown out of business in a few years by much smaller but innovative competitors. We have seen how Kodak was replaced by the digital camera and how the Walkman gave way to the I Pod or how CDs were replaced by the USB drives. All these changes happened in a span of few years. Having said that making cars is not a joke , the sheer no of components that go into making a car and the supply chain that is needed to make it fully functional is something that the traditional car companies have learnt and mastered over the years. Do their nimble footed competitors have what it takes to build factories and assembly lines of the size that a Ford or a General Motors have done throughout the world.

Only time will tell who will be the ultimate winner....

India's vision for mobility - Can India replicate the Telecom revolution for its electric cars.

The NITI Aayog's recommendation to have a deadline of 2032 for all cars to be only electric is surely a welcome sign. On the face of it I am sure it will make most of the people who work in the area of sustainable living give this a thumbs up. The recommendations to the government 

 include lower tax and interest rates on loans to buy these cars. This step will mark a key shift in a market which is the second fastest growing passenger car market for conventional cars in the world.

A similar scenario has happened in India almost a decade and half back when land line phone were still penetrating households in India and tele density was in its growth phase and the mobile revolution took over India. With the opening up of the telecommunications sector and private sector investment pouring in the sector grew phenomenally over the next decade.Call rates fell dramatically and at the end almost every other Indian had a mobile phone connection. The shift from landline phones to mobile phones was a quantum leap. Even before people could own a landline phone the mobile telecom industry was in place to ensure that every citizen could now afford a mobile phone.

Can we expect the same in the case of cars, can the shift from conventional cars to electric cars be replicated in the same way as the telecom revolution,can we avoid the mistake that developed markets in the west made of going through the entire cycle of owing conventional cars and then shifting to Hybrids before finally moving to Electric vehicles? The answer is yes but it comes with its own caveats. There are many steps that should happen for this vision to become a reality in the coming decade. Most important addressable issue is on the cost part of the battery and the charging infrastructure around it. The government must subsidize battery manufacturers to bring the cost of cars on par with regular cars. Enough charging points , standardized batteries for all cars is also something that the NITI Aayog has recommended. Incentivizing electric cars used as Taxi's with lower per kilometer charges is also another welcome step.

The commission had also planned to have a restriction by way of a lottery on the sale of conventional cars, however this does not make sense at this stage in a nascent market like India and will have a negative impact on the entire ecosystem. With limited and pathetic public transport this will be shooting oneself in the foot.

Currently India has only one electric vehicle maker which is the Mahindra group the makers of Reva. Ever since Mahindra has taken over Reva they have consistently been investing in technology to make the car better on all aspects. There has been talks of Tesla the American EV giant also wanting to enter India, the company in its latest press release denied that they will not want to enter India anytime soon as there were some restrictions in terms of percentage of local components sourcing. Any such conditions should be sorted out on a case to case basis and competition should be encouraged to come and invest in India. This will not just ensure that the consumer gets the latest technology but also competition ensures that the best practices in the industry are shared by all manufacturers. In an industry which is still get its feet on the ground this is the need of the hour.

The target to go fully electric by 2032 is a bold one but surely not one that cannot be achieved !!

A genius called George....

Maradona Good...Pele Better....but George Best

For most kids of the 70s and 80s growing up watching football our heroes were the two Latino giants, Pele and Maradona and I was no different. It was only a few years back that I accidentally while changing channels on TV came across this program on a player named George Best. It was for about half an hour and the documentary was about the life what they described as probably the greatest footballer ever and that made me curious to start reading and watching videos about George Best and over a the next few weeks I was also of the same opinion that George was easily one of the best the football world ever saw.

Best was an Irish Born footballer who played professional football for Northern Ireland and made his debut for Manchester United at the age of 17. It is said that the a talent scout when he spotted George at the young age of 15 immediately sent a telegram to the Manchester United coach Matt Busby saying " I think I've found you a genius " and he was right. Pele called him the greatest player in the world. Maradona said that both of them were very much alike when it came to creating magic on the field. Much before the Ronaldos and the Beckhams , George was the first superstar in the world of football.

His remarkable ball control and dribbling skills left the opposition spell bound.When he turned up to play for Manchester United the entire stadium would be on their feet chanting the name of George. Best was also part of the United Trinity at Old Trafford comprising of George Best, Dennis Law and Bobby Charlton. The same United trinity who helped ManU win the first European cup in the year 1968. A statue of the three has been erected outside the Old Trafford to honour them.

George had everything going for him at such an young age he had fame , money and anything else that he wanted. Women and fast cars were now his constant companions of the field. Addicted to drinking almost everyday , the high life of work hard party hard had now started to take a toll on this phenomenally talented youngster from Belfast. George could neither give up football nor the late night drinking and partying.The long hair like the hippies, the side burns made women droll over him and at some stage George was as popular as any of the Rockstars of those days the Beatles or the Rolling Stone. His prime came at a time when youngsters were still hoping to play for their country or a club like ManU and his decline also came at time when other youngsters in the club were hitting their prime. Unable to manage all this and work with the new players who came into the team George quit ManU at a age of 27 , he did play for 10 more years after that but was never the Best again. Success had become his biggest enemy , the same success that he could not handle had let him down.

Alcoholism took over his life and eventually he died due to liver complications in the year 2005.His life was glorious and his end was tragic. His final words from his hospital bed were:"Don't die like me." George will not be remembered for how he walked into oblivion and died but will be remembered for the way he played this beautiful game , at a time when football players were treated like any other players George attained the status of Football's first Superstar.

Journey from " Trespassers will be Recruited to Pink Slips " the story of Indian IT.

The last few days have seen IT services majors from India announcing major lay offs anywhere from a 1000 upto 10000 to be shown the pink slip in the coming few months. The major reason they attribute is restrictions on H1B visas in their biggest market the United States. Some of them even announced that would hire local staff from the United states which in many ways would align with what President Trump wanted to do to get back jobs to America. The IT services scene in India was anyway getting way too competitive with pressure from other low cost countries who could do the same job at a lower cost and now we have the H1B problem to live with. Was this expected ? I would say yes ,anyone who understands business cycles will agree that no country in the world will be able to maintain its competitive edge forever and in today's globalized world with constant pressure on corporations to cut cost these cycles tend to be even more shorter.

The IT boom which started in India somewhere in the mid 90S primarily grew as a cost arbitrage business model to provide IT services to the biggest corporations in the US. The TATAs were amongst the first to start this global delivery model which was also replicated by other IT biggies like Wipro, HCL, Infosys and many other mid tier companies. A shot in the arm came in the form of the Y2K problem and the industry did what it took to ensure that the majority of the work outsourced was done from India. Most companies used the Y2K boom to prove their worth and get a bigger slice of the IT services pie. A lot of investment was done to aquire staff, new demand for office space was growing briskly across all major IT hubs of Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Noida. NASSCOM had predicted a revenue of 50 billion by 2008 was pretty much on track. To add to it we also had the BPO and the call center industry contributing to job creation and in turn demand for other services created by these employees. Everything was on a roll, campus recruitment which was once limited to only the Tier 1 cities was business as usual in almost every engineering college across the country. It had reached a point where some people joked that IT companies that visited campuses with a tagline of " Trespassers will be recruited ".

Promotions, onsite opportunities,developer forums to attend were common jargon for most IT professionals. Would the party last forever was a question most people never asked or never bothered to reflect on. Youngsters just out of college with a job on hand were the envy of the outside world.The consumption boom that got created was very obvious in the unplanned way that cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurugram etc etc grew. This obviously put a lot of pressure on the physical infrastructure of these places.

While all of this was happening very few gave a thought on what next, am I really skilled enough to handle the uncertain ways of the job market. It was not as if Trump created this problem. In any industry that believes in the principles of free market it is common to expect jobs to move to places where it the cheapest with reasonable quality. Some of East European countries saw this as an opportunity and started competing with Indian firms and the market got a lot more competitive. The famed global delivery model was cracking and if anyone smart enough would have noticed it when we saw major India IT companies reporting lower margins and slower year on year growth. The writing was getting clear , pull up your socks now.

Is it the end of IT , I am certain that it is an overstatement but yes it may surely be the end of the cost arbitrage model that we were offering. There is still enough of opportunities to grow. Technology is such a dynamic changing phenomenon that it is impossible to say that it is the end . With never technologies coming in, the advent of social media, big data, mobile technology and huge domestic market to cater to Indian firms still have a lot of it going their way. Will the managements of these firms re-engineer their business model and cater to the new demands, will they motivate their employees to reskill themselves , will they position themselves to the corporations in west as partners who offer value rather than just vendors....if the answer is Yes then we have nothing to worry about till the turn of the next business cycle.

What next in the fight against black money

The fight against back money is a long drawn battle and each step will progressively help if not in totally eliminating black money but at least reducing the avenues that generate black money. By black money our definition in this case is money on which tax is not paid.

There are many steps taken so far like appointment of Special Investigation Team , Voluntary Disclosure of income scheme and the latest being demonetization. All of them may not have yielded the desired outcomes but have in a sense indicated the positive bias of the government to take decisions instead of leaving things as status quo. The next steps needed to further curb generation of black money should be more radical.

First and foremost the government must consider doing is to legalize betting. It is common knowledge that be it cricket betting or football betting or even betting on outcomes of certain events the amount of money that changes hands in cash runs into a few thousand crores. Countries like UK have legalized betting for a long time now and have established legal bookmakers who take bets on various sporting encounters , football being the most popular one. A similar system can be implemented here in India as well. Once betting is legalized it not only brings back a lot of this unaccounted cash into the system but also helps the government in collecting tax from betting operators. A case to support this horse race betting which is legal and is prevalent for a long time. If the numbers are to be noted the Karnataka government earns about 150-200 crores annually from the horse racing authorities in Bengaluru. With the popularity of cricket I am sure the money flowing into legal betting channels will be much more and so will the tax collected and all of this will not only add to the kitty of the government but will also remove the hassles for punters to bet with some shady unknown operators.

The second radical move to curb black money generation is to ensure that all agriculturists also start filling their returns. The NITI Ayog has suggested that they will want the government to start taxing all farmers but considering the current situation and the state of our farmers most of whom are marginal this does not seem to be a viable option. It should not come as a surprise that many people have misused this loophole of zero tax on farm income and hence have used to convert the money generated from other means into white money by showing it as farm income. It is a known problem and nothing has been done to stop this, a small but radical step to change this is to make it mandatory for all farmers to file their income tax returns. At least by this measure the tax authorities can question these so called farmers on their source of funds.

Will the government bite the bullet and take these radical steps is something only time can tell ....

What ails Indian Football

The headlines read that twiterratti celebrates Indian football teams FIFA ranking reaching a 21 year high of being in the top 100 among all FIFA nations. Something to cheer about? Yes, considering that at one point we were ranked somewhere below 130 and many times lower than countries which many of us wouldn't have even heard of.

What ails Indian football, why is that we are so lowly ranked in the world. We have some of the largest fan bases in the world. The English Premier League or the Bundesliga or the Copa America has probably more crazy fans in India than in their own home counties. I can see almost every pub or lounge bar on the weekend playing live matches of the EPL with crowds of youngsters throwing comments and strategies on what Paul Pogba should do next or why Vincent Kompany is the best Manchester City has had in a long while or why Jose Mourinho can never become the next Sir Alex Fergusson. The same exuberance is displayed once in four years when the FIFA world cup is held. All though India would have failed to qualify to the finals much before the elimination round the interest shown by Indian football fans in tracking the performances of other teams is simply amazing.

After all this one would certainly expect a country with such a vibrant football support base to be atleast highly ranked in Asia but is not the case. To add to it the Indian soccer league between teams named after regions and cities of India has bought a lot of interest to the game. But a point is what is that ails Indian football while we can claim glory in cricket even though not many countries play cricket as compared to football and we are quite successful when it comes to hockey why is our performance is below par in football. The answer could lie in the fact that how many of us actually play football, how many of us would encourage our children to take up this game on serious level. Professional football is a muscular sport requiring extreme levels of training and fitness coupled with a disciplined training regime, do we have enough staff to coach the new generation of players. Baring a few States like Kerala, Goa, West Bengal and North East India most of the other states hardly have any talent to showcase.

Probably the answer to the question 'What ails Indian Football?' is we just don't need a few players from handful of states to play the game, the game will grow when all of us get out of the house onto the field and start playing it in our own little way and not just watch it on television.

Who Took my Red Beacon Away

I recall reading an article a few years back of a politician who said that the biggest kick one gets by becoming an elected representative was the power that accompanies the post . The power to walk your way through a queue in a temple or bypass voters waiting in a queue on election day or having a separate entry at airports or having the top cops salute you as you get out of your car or just having a government car with  red beacon on top of it. Yes a read beacon which when switched on in traffic makes everyone on the road to move and give you way, a red beacon which ensures that the traffic cops shout at anyone on the road that obstructs your way and send a signal that a VIP is on his way.

The move my the union governments and a few state governments to have red beacons removed on all government vehicles is certainly a welcome step in the right direction. For decades many from the political and bureaucratic class had misused these privileges which we had unknowingly acknowledged as their right. A privilege which on many occasions was abused to a point which left a bad taste amongst the millions of honest tax payers of our country. In a hierarchical society like ours such rules are pretty common, these rules are not only discriminative but are outdated and should have removed long back. Except for the Prime Minister,President and the Chief Justice of India I feel no one should be given this privilege. Now that the order has been passed many from the political class who have been pampered for years will find it uncomfortable for a while and will resist this change giving the usual excuse of time wasted in traffic jams which in the process leads to loss of productive time forgetting that the  common man faces these issues on a daily basis. They will try to persuade and seek exemptions from the authorities on theirs should be treated as a special cases and they should be allowed to use the red beacon. They will seek workarounds and possibly ask for a convoy or some may even start using a green or blue beacon by suggesting that the law states only a red beacon is not allowed. 

It is up to the authorities to strictly resist any temptation and fearlessly do their duty as such small steps will slowly add up in changing the culture of politics in India. Such small steps will go a long way in sending the message that the common man is frustrated and angry with the abuse of power and privileges by the political and bureaucratic class that he has now lost his patience.

The main question however remains is who will blink first the implementing authorities or the Neta.

Book Review - Panama Fever

A thrilling tale of exploration, conquest, glory, money, politics and medicine.What amazed me most about the book is the amount of information the author has collected from multiple sources while putting together this epic story in the form of a book. The smallest of incidents that happened more than a century back are all well documented and archived in multiple sources. The book is about the epic story of building one of the greatest engineering marvels of the modern era the Panama canal. For centuries kings,business leaders and explorers were constantly looking at ways to connect this small passage across the Isthmus of Panama which in turn would connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific
and whoever controlled this canal would get enough power and influence over global trade and in turn a control on the fate of nations.The effort was literally back breaking and took almost 35 years before it was finally commissioned in the year 1914.

The French initially led the effort to build the Canal in the year 1881 and the man incharge was the Ferdinand De Lesseps the same genius who had build the Suez canal
a few years back. The ambitious project took America and Europe by storm and drew everyone's attention including engineers, drafstmen,diggers, machinists all
wanted to be a part of this project and take advantage of the high wages and in turn be amongst the men who were part of his high profile project. Politicians and businessmen from Europe and America were constantly involved in high stakes diplomacy and in deciding the path to be taken, the technology to be used, the funding plan and where to get cheap labor from. While most of the administrative and engineering jobs were led by the French the construction jobs were invariably from close by West Indian colony of Jamaica.

Unfortunately the French effort to build the canal didnt last for long and after about 14 years they had to give up due to many reasons the most important being cost overruns and thousands of deaths of workmen in the tropical climate of Panama due to Yellow fever , Malaria and Typhoid. Thousands of people lost their lives due to these diseases and many returned to their countries never to come back to work in these horrific condition.

After a decade or so the effort was again revived and this time the Americans took the lead and were backed by the US Government itself. Extremely committed and highly decorated Engineers were now sent to Panama to get the work back on track. In spite of poor living conditions in the humid tropical climate and racial discrimination against the West Indian black workforce the project managed to go on as per schedule. At the later part the US army was also involved in the construction work. Eventually after 10 year from the time the Americans started the work and more than 20000 people loosing their lives due to diseases and accidents in the site the canal was finally commissioned in the year 1914.

The story shows how a small strip of land in a small Central american country suddenly changed the world and made it smaller and launched the era of American Engineering dominance. The Americas were separated by the canal but the world of global trade just became one.