Wanderlust - nibbles of foreign culture

Travelling is not just abt enjoying different the sights and sounds of different places, but going through the trouble of reaching those places as well. The Japanese seem to have found a solution to the latter - bring the world to Japan, at least via a set of theme-parks. Anyone who has visited Las Vegas (the city, not some theme park) comes back with the feeling that the city itself is a collection of theme-parks. Each hotel is designed with a theme in mind - middle-ages England, Africa, Egypt, New York, etc. Notwithstanding, there is glitz in everything. The Japanese have gone one better in re-creating everything including climatic conditions, the shopping experience, landscape, etc. To the time-starved people of the country, this would replace those hectic trips that cover 8 European cities in 5 days! Obviously not the same as the real thing, but certainly enjoyable.

One question though - almost all of the themes mentioned in the article are European / Western. Does this show the continued fascination of the public with things European / American? In his book Pacific Rift, Michael Lewis of Liar's Poker fame wrote abt how one Japanese commanded another's respect - by buying a piece of American real estate! One can witness similar fascination with visiting the important tourist spots in Europe / US!

Even if the article does not interest you, take time to view the slideshow.

Walmart fails to invent a better Mausefalle

The news that Walmart has failed in Germany (and hence, Mausefalle or mousetrap) should not surprise too many. Looks like Walmart is good at wringing the last bit of productivity where the physical and legal infrastructure are strong - in other words, where current day capitalism is intact with the government providing the means to thrive and the private sector maximising the advantages therefrom. As we all know, "Old Europe" is not a great place to look for textbook capitalism. Germany is comparable perhaps only to France among developed countries in terms of archaic labour laws - mistaking organised labour as representing the entire labour force. This leads them to enact laws (often with the best of intentions) to help the former but retarding growth in unorganised sector jobs in the process. Anyone following developments in the Indian economy knows this.

Anyway, this meant that Walmart competed on someone else's terms, not its own as happens in the US. I am not too sure if Walmart has ever succeeded abroad, though it is supposed to be growing in China.

This is not necessarily good news, except to the traditional Walmart haters, such as misguided good-samaritans, the communists and the inefficient retail sector. If this leads Walmart to rethink its non-US strategy for countries such as India (the article indicates the contrary view in fact), the losers are really the poor in those countries. Under-developed countries desperately need investment in the retail sector to provide better prices to farmers (and others lower down the food chain) and cheaper goods to consumers.

a financial consultant becomes a full-time masseur

...and there are more such quaint job switches in contemporary metro India. One no longer needs to become an accountant, engineer or doctor (failing all that, an MBA) in the new India. Or so it seems from this article. Outlook might be repeating the old trick (or is it just a mistake that the mag keeps making?) of jumping to the general from a few specific instances. But it is certainly not imagining things. Some of these jobs are certainly out there (yes, as Raymond says in ELR, "out there") in the market. I know for instance that accent training is a booming business serving those aspiring to become call centre experts. One of the less appreciated aspects of life in a developed country is the fact that career choices are not limited. In other words, parents need not fix blinkers to kids' eyes fearing a lack of jobs. It is not a big deal if you do not top your class or enter a prestigious engineering or medical college (hahaha, sour grapes from yours truly).

If there is one positive repurcussion that I welcome, it is that there would be less emphasis on formal education going forward. Of course it is important to go to a good school, college or university, but there would be less pressure to "get it right" every time!

Denis Bergkamp retires

Denis who? Well, if you do not know who he is, you can skip this one. Unless you are a football fan who watches football on TV once every 4 years to discuss the World Cup at work. Most other football fans would know who he is. In 1994, many years after I actually started watching the game on TV, I still did not recognise the name on a t-shirt someone was wearing. But in a couple of years, Bergkamp had cemented my admiration for the Dutch national team and my favourite club, Arsenal.

If not for aviophobia (fear of flying), the world would have known more of this player who I place in the same class as Zidane (no head-butts, of course). I was lucky enough to watch him play in concert with the great Henry for Arsenal. And who can forget that great 1998 World Cup performance in France (he probably travelled by the Chunnel from England - thanks all you bondholders who funded this financially disastrous venture)!

All you folks who don't care, thanks for reading this note up to this stage. Might as well take the trouble to watch this YOUTUBE video and the BBC sport slideshow. Those who do care....ENJOY! Look out for the 1998 goal against Argentina (in those familiar blue stripes).

The McDonaldisation that never happened

Anybody who was in Bombay when the big M set up shop in 1996 would probably know someone or know someone who knows someone who queued up on Linking Road to buy crazily-priced burgers. It was the "in thing" to eat there and more importantly, to be seen to be eating there. A few years later, it was still the "in thing" to have lunch at McD. There was the usual cry of the "Americanisation" of India courtesy of McD, Reebok, etc. Well, there was a little bit of Americanisation of Linking Road, but that's about it. It looks more like McD in India has been Indianised much more than it has been Russianised in Russia or any other location!

Side-effect? Apparently, and I did not appreciate this point till I read this article, many customers are demanding that their favourite restaurants provide a cleaner set-up and better ambience. There is a price to pay for this, of course, but the newly affluent Indians do not seem to mind it.

The world's largest democracy introduces censorship!

If you are reading this, you are probably not in India (not physically at least). Post-July 11 India is a strange place with bloggers being accused of "anti-national activity" and spreading trouble. So, the government has banned some sites and blogs as a precautionary measure. And the Internet Service Providers react by banning entire blog services such as BLOGSPOT and TYPEPAD!

In the meanwhile, a former foreign minister has come out with pre-release publicity for his book in which he justifies releasing a bunch of terrorists! At the same time, there is no evidence of any hardening of India's attitude towards the actual terrorists. One blogger (well, his blog too is banned in India) called the attitude of Indians, esp Bombayites, "the silence of the lambs" for not reacting more harshly to the bomb blasts.

Would the ban on anti-national sites and blogs serve any purpose? I doubt it. In listing the sites that are banned, the government has probably invited attention to sites that no one knew about anyway. I mean I like my blog and all that, but why should the government or anyone outside my circle of friends take it very seriously? I wrote about this in Feb 2006 under "There is no sphere..." - the power of blogs is severely overestimated.

Superman as the ultimate illegal immigrant

I have to tell you about this interesting Letter to the Editor I read in the Financial Times (all copyrights acknowledged). Anyone following the illegal immigrant debate in the US knows the basic issues - entering the country without valid papers, continuing to live in the country without the legal right to do so, getting education and leading a normal life by staying "under the radar", getting a job by using probably faked papers or without the right documents, finally using "people power" to get the right to stay on! The writer of the mail (sorry sir, forgot your name) drew interesting parallels between the life of a typical immigrant and the life of Superman as we know it. And he goes on to point out that this time the immigrant's trip back has to be interplanetary and not just international.

For those, not worried about any of these issues, here is a link to Superman trivia. Remember, you take responsibility for how you spend your time!

Marketing the war on terror

Anyone reading US newspapers or even the international press might be tempted to believe that the middle east crisis is many times more important than the bomb blast in Bombay. The best coverage that the Bombay blasts could manage was some front page photos in a few newspapers and a few editorials here and there (with the honourable exception of WSJ which keeps focusing on the issue). On the other hand, the kidnapping of 2 (yes 2 compared to the killing of 200 in Bombay) Israeli soldiers was viewed as the event of the week - at least the terror event of the week.

I don't grudge other victims of terror the support they get. The lessons that the Indians have to learn is one of PR - the terror in Bombay is in no way less serious. It has equal worldwide import. But the media is in the business of providing people what they want to read and it looks like people would rather learn what is happening in the middle east.

The reasons are easy to guess - religion, region and oil. There is more money at stake in the middle east than in India. So, the fact that Bombay was up and running (the BSE sensex actually went up, prompting the comment that it reacts to bottomlines not headlines) in a day is, in a perverse way, counterproductive. If there is no day to day impact on the rest of the world, there is much less worldwide coverage (easy to reduce all of India's problems to the Kashmir issue) and hence, less worldwide support.

Therein lies the lesson to all of us. The amazing efforts of ordinary Indians to lead a normal life over the last two decades of terrorism has to be marketed well as a frontline fight on behalf of the rest of the world. Note that even to counter the usual anti-India marketing - terrorists are actually misguided youth that the Indian system has antagonised (choose any prefix to system - caste, religion, poverty, etc.) - we need to market the Indian war on terror much better.

Terrorists or militants?

I have used two of the five Bombay stations bombed by terrorists quite a lot. So the bombings left me more than a little dazed. Imagine my surprise when a NY morning paper (the Metro) called the terrorists as "terrorists" within quotes. Needles of suspicion pointed to the more respectable "militants", not terrorists. One blog reported that the NY Times encouraged Indians to be patient. Sure, given that only Indian lives were lost, it is India's duty to be patient. But then, India stayed patient after the national Parliament was bombed in Dec 2003 (note that the photo caption in BBC article on the Parliament attack calls the terrorist attack a "terrorist" attack). However, the Wall Street Journal editorial today called a spade just that - terrorist attacks - and asked India to join hands with the US and Israel to fight world terror. Now, the problem is that WSJ strongly supports the US invasion of Iraq - a very unpopular war in India, among most sections of society. In any case, Indians suspect the US of not pressurising Pakistan enough. So, the call for India to side with the US and Israel is not going to be successful. When the story of our times is recorded, surely a balanced account of Ronald Reagan's contribution to world history must include his Afghan strategy of encouraging terrorists to attack the Soviets (with India bearing the collateral damage of attacks by unemployed, trained terrorists when the Soviets withdrew).

Finally, I read in blogs and newspapers about the Mumbaikar's (Bombayite) spirit and can attest to that from personal experience.

Why we travel

Why do ordinary people like you and me travel? To be fascinated? To be away from our daily lives? To be overwhelmed by history? The reason I find this slideshow very interesting is that there are insights from "regular" people. I particularly like the waterfall scene from Laos. Click on the multimedia presentation WHY WE TRAVEL once you open this NYTIMES link. In a few days' time, this could be premium content. So enjoy this asap. How many of these spots do you wish to travel to? How many of these spots do you think you are already too old to visit?

"The spiritual advantages of famine and cholera"

I know I repeat myself with this topic, but here is one more on the conversion industry. Famine and Cholera were seen as sources of miracles, hospitals are "ready made congregations" from which "starving little tots fly in masses to heaven". The ends are "honourable", with proselytisers arrogating to themselves a "divine mandate". As usual, all this would be funny if not for the screaming tragedy that lies underneath.

In his own intellectual way, V.S.Naipaul talks about the "neurosis of the converted" by which neo-converts exhibit conspicuous hosility towards their old faith in order to prove themselves more faithful to the new faith.

With many specific, frightening (sickening, too) examples from everyday life, this article provides a snapshot of how this industry could one day affect you and your family too if you are not on guard!

acknowledgement - i got the link above from Rajeev Srinivasan's blog.

The "big trends" in football and cricket

Going unnoticed in all the hoopla abt World Cup football is the fact that India beat the West Indies in an away cricket test series for the first time in 35 years. Of course, Indian newspapers make it appear like India has won the cricket World Cup, even as the rest of the world remains unimpressed. If you, like me, have less interest in test cricket and even less interest in Indian games with has-beens like the West Indies (no matter that India managed to lose the one-day series to WI), you can be pardoned for not taking notice.

T.N.Ninan, in his inimitably direct style, manages to delineate the "big trend" in Indian cricket using basic statistics about batting and bowling averages. His verdict - there is a vacuum looming for India in both areas of the game. In trying to create a good One-day team, we seem to have built an average Test team. My question - should we regret that? Would a cricket fan lose much if test cricket simply fades away? Read the article in any case, just for the simplicity with which Ninan has conveyed his msg.

An unrelated article on football cautions against the habit of looking for "trends" every time there is a World Cup. As with any other World Cup, the football World Cup is the most important event in the game, but it does not determine or even showcase the "trend". The 32 teams (having such a large number of teams is itself questionable, but as a columnist in the Financial Times said, no FIFA president comes to power promising to reduce the number of WC participants) in the WC are not necessarily the 32 best teams in the world - a quirk caused by the selection procedure and the geographical quota system. Read at least the first part of the article for popular past myths abt the future of the game!

Equal Pay for Equal Play?

There are broadly two "fair" models of wage compensation - equal pay for equal work and equal pay for equal results (of course there are other models - equal pay for equal skin colour, unequal pay for unequal gender, etc. - which we shall condemn ab initio as unacceptable and counterproductive). The first one applies more in the production context - workers on the shop floor should be paid equally if they produce the same results, independent of which product actually sells better in the market. The "fairness" of this system lies in the fact that factory workers normally do not have much control over the marketing and revenue generation aspects of the business. Their job is to produce and produce with quality / without wastage.

The second model applies more in the service industry context - those who generate comparable client profitability should be paid on par. Consultants, investment bankers and others are often compensated based on actual results and much less on the number of powerpoint slides they created. Their job is to generate revenue and profits while keeping rules and regulations in mind.

Which model applies to professional sportsmen? This Bloomberg article uses the Tennis example to say that equal work should generate equal pay. If you play 5 sets, you should be paid more. I find this argument ridiculous, because I favour model two above for professional sportsmen. If you generate higher spectator interest resulting in higher match audience, television viewers, etc., you shd be paid more. There was once a time (late 80s, early 90s) when women's tennis was often more interesting to watch because Ivan Lendl and Mats Wilander were the leading players in the men's circuit! In such a case, the women should be paid more than the men are. Most early round women's matches are much, much less interesting than early round men's matches. Shouldn't men be paid more to play those early rounds?