The Economic Times - August 2004
A new year of nationhood. What should the national resolution for the year be? I think that this should be the year when we try very hard to make the Great Implementation Leap. There is awareness, knowledge and discussion, steeped in every pore of this country, on what needs to be done to solve our several problems, and make us totally proud to be Indian, not just proud in parts. Fix infrastructure, ensure that visitors from abroad, especially potential investors, have a great experience at least for the first 72 hours, till they get over their culture shock and biases! Make civic bodies accountable. Get more children to stay in school. Repeal antiquated legislation that was created for a non market driven paradigm. Improve delivery to the end beneficiary of so many existing relief schemes, etc. etc. There are sound and innovative ideas on what to do for each. But […]
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The Economic Times - May 2004
Ever since election results were out, there has been an avalanche of comment by politicians, political watchers, journalists, pollsters, intellectuals, advertising and marketing experts and more, analysing the who – what – why of the results. But conspicuous in its absence has been the voice of the voter. “What”, some might say in horror. “This whole thing is about the voice of the voter”. But as I said in as earlier article “Let’s have real vox pop please”, in a business we would insist that market share and sales data numbers, especially when unexpected, be explained through the lens of individual customer attitude and behaviour i.e. what customers did, and what they thought, which made them do what they did. The election result is like market share and sales data. Real explanations are what we are yet to get – too few facts straight from the horses mouth i.e. from […]
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The Economic Times - January 2004
I certainly don’t want to be a party pooper but I do feel uneasy reading the results of the Census of India and assorted Development reports side by side with the India Shining campaign and the English newspapers talking about the ‘feel good’ factor. I know both are true, and I know which one I want to believe as the larger truth that the good macro economic numbers translate into. But I can’t help thinking that there are human beings that all these macro statistics represent and that we haven’t really heard what they have to say. In a business, we would insist that sales data be backed up with data from the customer level on performance, both behavioural and attitudinal – percentage usership, repeat purchase rates, brand perceptions and loyalty, customer satisfaction levels, etcetera. What makes me uneasy is the impression I have that we haven’t heard the voice […]
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The Economic Times - 18 - August-2003
I am writing this especially for my age cohort and culture class, ‘privileged midnight’s children’, and articulating what many of us already feel.*(An Age Cohort comprises a group of people born at roughly the same time in the same place or country, and consequently experiencing the same major economic, political and social upheavals at about the same stage in their lives; their lives are punctuated by the same crises, they share the same nation-memories and they encounter every new decade, each with its own particular challenges, at similar stages in their lives). Born in the first 15 years after independence, the first generation of independent India, we have seen the pain of misguided socialism, the horrors of the emergency, and the humiliation of being dismissed as second class citizens by the first world. We are now more confident of our own identity and talent, and can transact as equals, with […]
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The Economic Times - 17 June 2002
Everyone I discussed this piece with was of the opinion that it was not the thing to write about. In addition to being politically incorrect, it was not really my business, and what good would it do to pontificate from an armchair? However fools rush in where angels fear to tread and I have taken courage from Arun Maira’s earlier piece on this page, asking “is the business of business only business”? I would like to write to all of us in business and say, can we figure out what we can do, individually and collectively, to improve the way we communicate about our country to the outside world and take charge of the way events relating to us get positioned in the outside world? I don’t think we deserve to be painted as the next Gaza strip, where no one in their right minds should want to locate a […]
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