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The brave new world
India My Land

The brave new world

Not so long ago, a woman who needed to be out at a late hour would use a recommended cab company, her employer’s car and driver, or most likely, the reliable neighbourhood taxi stand. If not, someone in the family would come and pick her up. Today, there is a swelling tide of women in the workforce, but their safety is as precarious as ever. The alleged Uber rape in Delhi reveals that now, in this new world of contract work and “aggregators”, no cab company is safe. You pay a premium not for guaranteed safety, but for efficiency and comfort and travel at your own risk. The BPO bus drivers are no better. Companies who hire security for their women are still offering unknown, unverified contract workers. A world of opportunity has opened up in the last 15 years. Rising education levels and the chance to earn more and […]

December 19, 2014 0 Comments
Retirement Plan
C'est La Vie

Retirement Plan

In which the householder decides to relinquish her family, the duties of daily life and retreat into the woods, if only for the little while I can’t wait to go into vanaprastha, that stage in life when you are entitled to say “what goes of your father” to household stuff and live in a zen world. Where you don’t have to do collective bargaining for all manner of decisions — what to eat, where to holiday, what colour to paint the walls, should the dog be allowed to sleep on the bed, should bedsheets be vibrantly patterned or in boring pastels and so on. In order to prepare for it, I have been taking a vacation all by myself, once a year, where I live untidily, wake up early to watch sitcoms and not worry about being slothful, and have cereal, toast and egg in the evening because quite simply, it […]

May 31, 2014 0 Comments
Policy Needs to Focus on Middle India
Policy Perspective

Policy Needs to Focus on Middle India

India’s economic policy has worked hard for the rich. A new approach is needed to serve the rest and must go beyond the wish list of India Inc. It’s time to think about the Indian economy not as some prize stud bull that has vital statistics we can all be proud of, but as an instrument of improving the lives of all Indians, steadily, year on year, and giving them the resilience to withstand the inevitable down cycles and shocks. Growing faster than others or breaching a GDP growth target number does not automatically achieve this. The test of a good economy is also not what heights the Sensex has scaled, especially when the gap between it and the real economy is so wide. Today, most Indians do not have a regular monthly-salary paying job. They have some form of self-employed livelihood on which they live — modestly in good […]

May 30, 2014 0 Comments
Taking Stock of the World of Young India
India My Land

Taking Stock of the World of Young India

Leadership is about how people behave and what values and tendencies drive such behaviour. All behaviour has psychological, social and cultural foundations; and anyone attempting to influence leadership behaviour of a cohort or understand it better needs to understand the social environment in which the cohort grew up and the challenges it faces in life at this point in time. Needless to say this is the “baggage” that they will bring into the workplace that HR professionals need to be cognizant. But first, a necessary caution that has to be heeded by anyone seeking to lead young India or prepare young India to become better leaders: Young India is not singular and homogeneous. It is very heterogeneous and the different segments of it are quite different from each other. Yes, all of them are a singular age cohort – liberalization children; born after 1991 and now entering the work force. But just as post […]

April 1, 2014 0 Comments
We Are Like That Only: Getting Inked
C'est La Vie

We Are Like That Only: Getting Inked

Market research shows that this constituency is very concerned about what impact it will have on the governance of the country, rather than the impact it will have on the Sensex. A family that votes together is bound to debate endlessly. Election stress hit our household too, despite us being south Bombay types who are supposed to be unconcerned with them. SUMMARY A family that votes together is bound to debate endlessly. Election stress hit our household too, despite us being south Bombay types who are supposed to be unconcerned with them. (My favourite from a list floating online titled 10 Reasons Why South Bombayites don’t vote is: “What? No valet parking?”). Actually, it isn’t true that they are unconcerned. My informal market research shows that this constituency is very concerned indeed, perhaps not about what impact it will have on the governance of the country, rather what impact it […]

May 11, 2014 0 Comments
New India, New Ideas
India My Land

New India, New Ideas

It is hard to see why preserving the idea of India should include preserving dynasty and feudalism. (Source: AP) The young care about achievement and opportunity, reject fear mongering. Mani Shankar Aiyar is right when he says that the idea of India is not “Hindudom” (‘The dying light of freedom’, IE, May 17). Each of us who loves our country (and there are multitudes outside the Congress, too) must rise up in arms and fight if it threatens to become so under Narendra Modi’s regime. Like most middle-of-the-road Indians who happen to be Hindu, I agree with him on the sacredness of the secular and inclusive idea of India. But I also know that Indira Gandhi’s wearing a rudraksha in her later years or Sonia Gandhi doing a puja before filing her nomination does not make either any more secular, and Modi’s forehead tika and Ganga aarti does not make him any more communal. However, Aiyar, like […]

May 19, 2014 0 Comments
Consumer India Opportunity India
Consumer Trends

Consumer India Opportunity India

SETTING NEW CONSUMER PARADIGMS Consumer India evolves and sophisticates into a segment that marketers the world over find worth serving. India is a large economy. In terms of world ranking, India’s GDP is in the top 10, but its GDP per capita is below 150. As much as 50-60 per cent of its GDP is accounted for by household consumption. However a less appreciated fact is that this consumption is made up of a lot of people, each earning and consuming a little bit, that adds up to a lot – unlike many other markets whose structure of consumption is a few people earning and consuming a lot that adds up to a lot. This is the lens through which the Indian consumer market opportunity needs to be evaluated and businesses designed. An even less appreciated fact is that a modest-income consumer in India is relatively less well-to-do but not […]

January 1, 2014 0 Comments
Despite boom, Indian consumers are totally under-served. Here’s why
Consumer Trends

Despite boom, Indian consumers are totally under-served. Here’s why

Rama Bijapurkar in an exclusive article says, “We eat 1 trillion chapattis each year but still don’t have a ‘just heat and eat’ brand of acceptable tasting wheat chapattis that doesn’t burn a hole in our pocket.”  We have been gloating over our consumption numbers and how they stack up compared to the other markets; and how dizzily they have grown in the past two decades. But at the end of researching my new book, A Never-Before World, I came to the conclusion that Consumer India is totally under served and that India has a long way to go in becoming a real consumption driven economy. This is notwithstanding the percentage of GDP contributed to household consumption or the rate at which Consumer India has been shaping up TV sets, mobile phones, musical ring tones, automobiles, shampoo, bottled water, eating out, and lots of other things. The hallmark of a […]

January 3, 2014 0 Comments
The future of Indian consumer markets
Consumer Trends

The future of Indian consumer markets

Consumption kept the Indian economy going long after investment slowed, but over the past year, even this narrative has started to fray at the edges Will consumer spending in India shake off its sluggishness and go back to growing at a fast clip and in turn drive economic growth? The short-term answer of the next two years is that (1) the richer parts of it will step up spending in the next year and be the vanguard of growth, and since they account for at least 40% of all spending and over half of income, this is good news, and (2) however, we must be careful not to fall into our oft-repeated trap—assuming that the yo-yo upward growth that we are about to see as a result of release in pent-up demand is the right growth number to project for the future. The medium-term answer of the next five years […]

December 25, 2013 0 Comments
Of Course We Have, and Here’s to Much More
India My Land

Of Course We Have, and Here’s to Much More

At least on Independence day, we can give ourselves the liberty of thinking about the past decade. And give ourselves a break from the flagellation to look at some of the useful things that got done in India. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, started in 2000-01, has been a success. Now, 90% of children have access to a school close to home, literacy rates in rural India have risen by 10% in the last decade and the literacy gap between urban and rural has narrowed. When you get cynical, drive into the interiors of most states and see droves of children chattering and laughing and on their way to school. The right to education has birth defects but it moves the agenda from mere access to a right to free education. The right to information is a noncaste-based liberal move, whose impact is widespread, and goes all the way to the […]

August 15, 2013 0 Comments
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