Came across this news today about how various airports in the Metros (BIAL, DIAL, Hyderabad Intl Airport) etc. are planning to hike the UDF (User Development Fee) for both domestic and international passengers.

The reason being stated for the proposed hikes is slower than expected traffic growth resulting in slower revenue growths from these consortium airports. And hence, to be able to continue maintaining the airports, steep hikes in UDF.

To me this is self defeating. UDF hikes will only add to ticket costs, which in turn has potential to impair traffic growth even further. And its all a downward spiral from there on – more slowdowns and more hikes and so on …

Where will this end? Shouldn’t the government being intervening here rather than not do anything about the hikes? The news seems to suggest the govt. cannot do much (its hands are tied?) Wonder why the taxes we pay cannot be put to use here ? Why can’t there be a minimum floor UDF which has to be borne by the end consumer and the remaining charge be borne by the govt?

It is sometimes said that the best intentions of mankind might do more bad than good for the society at large.

Given that its Diwali,  a relevant topic is whether we should burst crackers or not. Obviously, the initiative is in support of a go-green movement.  But, will this good intentioned movement, create more problems than solve any?

If you’ve read Shantaram (by Gregory David Roberts), you might understand what I am trying to say here. There is a passage in the novel, where he describes how he used to take hot water baths twice in the day. And for that there were labourers who would manually carry pots of hot water up several flights of stairs (this was somewhere in the 80’s). When Shantaram comes to know of it, he feels quite guilty about it and decides to stop his practice. But in doing so, as his friend Prabhakar explains, his good deed will only serve to imbalance the eco-system, by snatching away those labourers livelihood.

So as  I wondered about this “don’t burst crackers movement”, I was also thinking about the zillions of people who are engaged in this industry. If collectively we do happen to embrace this movement, what will happen to the people engaged in this industry? Someone might say – rehabilitate them…but most of us know that it is easier said than done.

Before the movement can gain any momentum, we will need to provide actionable plans to rehabilitate these people. Till then, enjoy burst crackers (but with restraint:)).

Happy Deepavali!

The Mumbai 26/11 attacks have left India scathed and seething.

This is not only an attack at the very heart of India’s economic prosperity, but more so an attack on people’s very freedom.

Look at the after-effects of the attack – Severely increased security checks at almost all imaginable places – offices, malls, airports etc; travel advisories emanating from various countries restraining or cautioning against travel to India;  advisories in organizations to limit conferences in hotels and other public meetings; events and festivals such as Bengaluru Habba getting canceled (no doubt, this is right in the spirit of mourning for the 26/11 attacks)  in view of dangers of such a large public gathering and the need to deploy police forces to man this event; and  so many more . . .

As a country we  face huge economic costs of terrorism (much more accentuated after 26/11)

- the travel / tourism and hospitality industry (and there are so many stakeholders here  from the airlines to the big hotels to the petty travel agents) is definitely going to feel the crunch in the days to come unless the government takes measures to alleviate the concerns;

- the billions of dollars which must have been lost in the wake of the shutdown of businesses in Mumbai and during occurence of every such terrorist attack;

- Sporting events getting affected – the england tour and now even the 2010 Commonweatlh games coming in for scrutiny;

- the costs of business deals which might have been lost due to the increased perception of an unsafe India;

- the increased expenditure on security measures at all vantage points in the country (The costs of increasing the security measures and enhancing the patrolling of our border and coasts are very well desirable; they are at least taxpayers money put to good use)

These attacks have struck fear into the hearts of the people and curbed their freedom, no doubt; as we await stringent and decisive actions from our policy makers, we can only hope that interim measures have been put in place to prevent any more of such bloodbaths . . .

We celebrated Sham’s ** (in the name of courtesy ) birthday, this 5th.

I was guilty of not making it on time – 5th, 12:00am – thanks to the air traffic congestion in Mumbai, leading to my late arrival in Bangalore. I reached home 30 mins late .

The gang – Adarsh, Garima, Prakash, Kajal, Sriram and Pranitha – was already there and waiting. Apparently, the songs had been sung and the cake cutting was postponed till my arrival. Though Sham and I had decided against a cake this birthday (having already cut 3 on my birthday), thanks to Pranitha, we were treated to an great chocolate truffle cake. After an awesome cake, some delicious doughnuts and an hours gossip, people decided to retire for the night.

The next day I had planned a quiet dinner for Sham and me. Being a working day, there was not much we could do during the day. I managed to keep our dinner destination secret pretty much until the last, when I had to get proper directions to the place:(. We dined at Rim Naam, a thai speciality restaurant in Oberoi. It had been on our cards for sometime to vist this place; what better day to do it.

The food was nice, the wine tasty and the cake (another choclate truffle) truly delicious. The ambience at the place was truly suitable – not too loud to piss you off, and nor too silent to put you to sleep. It was an enjoyable dinner and a b-night well spent!

The indian media’s obsession with mindless sensationalism continues. I personally think that Ganguly’s retirement from active cricket is unnecessarily getting blown out of proportion.

On the day he announced his retirement, they kept reporting the “BREAKING NEWS”! Ya right, there’s so much happening around the world and they have no better news to report on, ALL DAY LONG! And then sensation hungry media wakes up the next day speculating that Ganguly was forced into retirement, blah blah!

Ganguly is one of the greatest cricketers to have graced the Indian team, no doubt, but rather than bid him a graceful adieu, the media is only serving make his exit as maligned as the last few years in his career. I saw a very nice comment the other day on one of the tickers in TV : “Its better to quit when people ask why now, than when they ask why not now“. I am sure Ganguly must have thought this decision through well enough. He is too much of a fighter to not have a valuable reason to announce his retirement!

If he thinks its time, its time! Lets respect his decision and bid him a fabulous farewell, as glorious as his career has been!

I came across this article today. An very nice analysis of the contradictions between India’s economic growth dreams vs the underlying social realities, the roles of the government and judiciary in the same… thought it will be a good idea to share this . . . read on

Tata, bye-bye, and good riddance?

(source: http://infochangeindia.org)

So I am pretty sure that all of us get this anonymous forwards which will tell you to beware of something . . . I generally discard these forwards without a second look. But this one that I got today morning sounded extremely disturbing and something into which people can get conned easily if true . . . hence would like to share this….

“BEWARE GUYS…..If you have a car…..!!!!!! AND BE SAFE AS ALWAYS.!!!

Just last weekend on Friday night we parked in a public parking area. As we drove away I noticed a sticker on the rear window of the car. When I took it off after I got home, it was a receipt for gas. Luckily my friend told me not to stop as it could be someone waiting for me to get out of the car. Then we received this email yesterday:

‘WARNING FROM POLICE – BEWARE OF PAPER ON THE BACK WINDOW OF YOUR VEHICLE–NEW WAY TO DO CARJACKINGS (NOT A JOKE)‘ Heads up everyone! Please, keep this circulating. .. You walk across the parking lot, unlock your car and get inside. You start the engine and shift into Reverse. When you look into the rear-view mirror to back out of your parking space, you notice a piece of paper stuck to the middle of the rear window. So, you shift into Park, unlock your doors, and jump out of your car to remove that paper (or whatever it is) that is obstructing your view. When you reach the back of your car; that is when the carjackers appear out of nowhere, jump into your car and take off. They practically mow you down as they speed off in your car. And guess what, ladies? I bet your purse is still in the car. So now the carjacker has your car, your home address, your money, and your keys. Your home and your whole identity are now compromised!

BEWARE OF THIS NEW SCHEME THAT IS NOW BEING USED. If you see a piece of paper stuck to your back window, just drive away. Remove the paper later. And be thankful that you read this e-mail. I hope you will forward this to friends and family, especially to women. A purse contains all kinds of personal information and identification documents, and you certainly do NOT want this to fall into the wrong hands. Please keep this going

This might happen to you, to your friends colleagues and any one you know = take care!!!

So I bounced this off with a few of my friends and apparently there were reports of something like this in the newspapers a few days back.  There are no two pov’s here – this is downright disgusting

However, better safe than sorry . . . so just spread the word around if you want to . . .

Well, I celebrated my 29th birthday, this 27th! Another year passes by…another year punctuated by the peaks, troughs and the ordinary…another year closer to the so called wrong side of 30! Infact the 29th year has been really good for me; there’s been a lot of stuff that we can look back upon with cherished memories.

This year will really rank significant in terms of our travel stories. We added Goa and Himalyas to our list. Goa trip is special as it was our first road trip in India..Himalayas trip is really close to the heart as it was one trip which really pushed us to the limit…it did reveal to us that we had CHARACTER:). Taking adventure one level further, there was water rafting at bheemeshwari; then there was Somnathpur and Talakkad – our second road trip; The only luxury trip that we afforded was to Coorg… that lots of places for one year.

Professionally, I have managed to stick to the current company for another year – a rare feat amongst my MBA class; there was a phase when it looked like I might get my US breakthrough, but then that had to wait. Then there’s the promotion that I didn’t have to fight for – another first for me; there were some challenging projects at work; change of supervising managers; and yes there have been some people whom I have gotten to better than others – Shruti, Vikram and Vivek.

Early on in the year, I and Sham had to spend couple of months apart – never easy. I – we – have finally come around to following a regular fitness plan, something which I failed miserably in the last year.  We changed two houses (rented ones:() and came close to buying one; and ya, our Katha for our dear plot is almost coming through.  The conundrum of having babies is getting only more complicated with each passing year what with our parents breathing down our necks. Then there was my visit to Allahabad – first since Mar 2005. Nothing has changed there – the heat still kills you and the power cuts still choke life! Parents came down to see us twice – once in December and the other in Jun-Jul.

On the friends scene – Poddar got married; Dharma/Priyanka and DD/PR came down to see us all; it felt really good to see them after a long time. Sunil will go down in the RECTENS history as the first father; Prakash and Kajal are back from the US after their year’s stint . . . and they’ve brought with them rectens’ second 2nd generation member..

Shantaram, Kite Runner, Shawshank Redemeption, Into the Wild, Pay It Forward, TZP, Aamir, A Wednesday and Dark Night will go down as the literary and cinematic highlights for the year for me

So all in all a great year that’s passed by. Plenty achieved and plenty  planned for ahead. So, akin to the year passed by, we ushered my 30th year in with a big bash, courtesy Sham. She, along with Adarsh, put together a great party. The highlight being the Tirmamisu cake .. yummy! It was great get together with everyone turning up…and yups it been sometime since I cut three cakes on a birthday:)

There’s a lot to look forward to in the coming year…On the professional front, it would be PMP and . . . something which I am yet to decide upon. Entrepreneurship is also one important theme that we need to do something about. On the personal front, the key themes this year would be fitness, travel again (europe, maldives, andamans or another himalayan trek perhaps) and maybe babies – who knows.

Exciting times ahead . . . hopefully the 30th year will be even more to write home about!

Yesterday morning around 7:15 am I saw a truck all trashed up on the (Outer) Ring Road, around 200 meters ahead of the Agara junction (if you are coming from Silk Board)…

The truck was all banged up, taking along a tree and an electric pole with it….and looking at the mangled remains, it did not seem anyone would have survived either . . .

Well, the real objective is not go over the gory details – its been (more than) 24 hrs since this might have happened, and yet the twisted up truck, the uprooted tree and the uprooted pole, still lie at the same place… the glass strewn all over the road . . . and no one has bothered to come down yet and remove the remains …

How much time does it take to remove the remains ?? Are the municipality (BBMP etc etc) folks so indifferent to the kind of chaos its been causing since yesterday morning? I have been lucky to escape the chaos since I cross this point at non-peak traffic hours, but I am pretty sure (given my myriad experiences) it must be causing unending jams at peak traffic hours!

And we expect the government to save us from bomb blasts! they don’t even seem bothered to spare us this little misery . . .

Rarely do you get to see great ads, and though I am not a great expert on these, I thought the new Tata tea ad is extremely well made combining a strong message with it.

I have always loved ad’s which leave a strong social message. Be it HUL’s “community cleaning” ad or Tata tea’s earlier “jago re” ad to name a few. . .

And this time the social awakening call (aimed specifically at the youth) is even stronger  – if you are not voting on the day of the election, you are still sleeping! I am happy I did vote in the state elections this time!

Check out the ad below . . .