A nation shocked!

The country is shocked today, not only because a celebrity has been sentenced. Sanjay Dutt has been no ordinary star in India. He was born in the limelight, as the only son of Sunil Dutt and Nargis. He lost his mother early, and just when his career began to blossom, he was caught trying to dispose off an AK56. He went to jail briefly, but the last 14 years have been an ordeal. Regular visits to the court, with no judgement in sight. Every new hearing meant that he would have to put his personal life on hold. He was holding onto a hope, and the country was watching the story unfold. He lost his father, and went on record about how important his father was to him. His sister took his place, and now again, there was a family fighting for the right to freedom. Everytime he appeared on television, he put up a brave face. But one look into his hollow eyes was enough to tell a story: a story of a fine human being who had made a mistake in life. His life was never the same again after this event. While he looked into the cameras after every hearing, his eyes prayed for freedom.

In 2005, he became Munnabhai, India's most loved comic character. Maybe Munnabhai succeeded because of the story, excellent timing and a wonderful script. But there was something in those eyes again: eyes that cried of the horrors of a past, while making the country laugh. It was very much like India in 2005. We were a country waking up to happiness, and Munnabhai was a microcosm of this.

Finally, today, when Sanjay Dutt is convicted, the country is shocked. Everyone knows that he had made one mistake in life, and that he was paying a price for a folly 14 years ago. Some of the arguments being professed are as follows: There are many more criminals in the guise of politicians and bureaucrats who are walking free. Why should Sanjay be sentenced? Of course, this argument makes no sense.

But in the heart of all this, is the statement of Justice Kode, while handing out the sentence:

'If you want to protect your family, you can take a lawful step. But an unlawful step for the purpose cannot be considered noble,' the judge said, responding to Dutt's plea that the weapons were for self-defence and to protect his family.

'He not only committed a crime himself but also made others commit a crime by asking them to destroy the weapon,' Kode added.

And just like that, Sanjay Dutt lost six years of his life.

Televisions are playing scenes of the whole country expressing extreme sentiments towards the judgement. Judge Kode was wrong, they say.

The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 defines a contempt of court as "any act that lowers or tends to lower the authority of the court". Is the whole of India held in contempt today?

Of dignity of labor

NCERT has decided to include an Amitabh Bachchan scene from the movie "Deewar" to explain the dignity of labor to young minds. In my days, although NCERT was not this creative, I do believe I learnt a lot from Amitabh and his movies. This scene is truly praise-worthy.



You can watch, as Amitabh decides not to accept money from a customer after polishing his boots. He argues that he is not begging, and hence deserves to know.

When South-Indians or foreigners come into Delhi / Gurgaon, they are often shocked by the manual rickshaw pullers, an oddity in cities like Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore. A man sweating it out in the summer sun, in order to transport someone else from source to destination, can be an unnerving experience for many. For example, when they see the man panting or sweating, or sometimes getting down from the rickshaw to pull it through a gradient, people often get off, pay the entire amount, and walk the distance.

I have not been able to understand this behavior. Prabu, in "Shantaram", makes the most important point of the movie, when Lin narrates to him that the hot water he takes bath with everyday is actually collected by people who run up stairs with buckets and fill the overhead tank. Lin regrets that he has often taken bath over six times a day, while people were physically running up with buckets for him to do so. Prabu describes it as a "people's job". He talks about the pride of the workers, because their family ate food of dignity. They were working for a living, not on charity or begging. Everytime Lin was taking a bath, he was feeding a poor family in Bombay. It was a struggle for survival, and the people were earning their living honestly and with dignity.

Rickshaw-pullers are doing the same thing. He knows that he does not have much money, and he is just earning for that particular day. But he has a wife at home, and many children who wait for him eagerly to get home, and when they eat the food he brings home, a family sleeps in peace. They know not what they would eat the next day. It does not even matter. They just know they are together, they have honor, and they will work for the next meal. And it is this dignity which is at the core of their existence. Take it away, and I don't think you have much of a life for them.

And everytime you and I travel in those cycle-rickshaws, we are doing something very unique to the India experience. We are giving people their food. There should be nothing more satisfying than that. And surely, nothing to feel guilty about.

Zendagi Migzara...

...is Afghan for "Life goes on".

In 2006, when I passed out of campus, I found that work-life was going to be an interesting journey. This was it. This was the real thing. This is what we had been trained for for two decades. All those courses, starting from civics to economics to geography to business school, everything was to come of use now. One year down the line, as I type out these lines, I am faced with certain realities: Work-life has kept me sheltered in more ways than one. I have never tasted non-bottled water, or non-three star food for the past one year. I always had seniors with me, ready to shelter me when the need arose. I have had great and extraordinary colleagues who were so talented, that often a crazy commitment to a client could still be delivered. I have had a beautiful guest-house to live in, with a staff that nursed me like family when I had a broken leg and was rendered immobile for weeks. I have had a fantastic client who accepted when I could deliver, and gave me a second chance when I couldn't.

As I type these lines, once again, I realise the need to do it all over, very differently this time. As IBM gets ready to recover the laptop and ID card it presented me last year, I know that it is time to do something else with life. As I finalize my last date and walk out of IBM in the next three weeks, awkward questions come to mind, regarding what exactly I want to do in life. I wish I had answers. Life would be so much simpler if we could look backward, rather than forward. If I knew what I wanted, maybe I wouldn't have wanted to move on in the first place. Maybe it is the thrill of not knowing where the next paycheck is going to come from, which is driving me towards this shift. But I do know this: if I could make money for someone else, I know I can make it for myself as well. I believe the time is right, and I believe I can work for myself from now on. I might know very soon what that might be, when I work on my short-list of crazy business ideas. I might make a fraction of what I made earlier, but I have always been a simple guy with simple tastes and small ambitions: I just want to change the world.

There is a god

Dr. Mohammad Haneef has been acquitted of all charges of terrorism. Whether it has been public outcry in Australia, or the conscience of the Magistrate, it is great to see that an innocent muslim man did not get convicted just because of his proximity to terror.

I believe that the John Howard should tender an unconditional apology, both for the ugly trial and accusations,and also for all the racist incidents against Indian doctors that followed the incident. I believe Dr. Haneef's wife should forgive the country.

IIMS

IIMS is the new baby to join the ranks of the IIMs. The Indian Institute of Management will be established in Shillong. As in all Congress Government initiatives, the institute will be called Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management, Shillong.

This news has been in the offing for many months now, and has been evoking a strong response from different stakeholders. Alumni of IIMs understand that the location can often be a determinent of a school's (business or technology) performance. Stanford has set the trend by in developing the silicon valley eco-system by consistently providing a strong input of skilled and intelligent entrepreneurs. To this day, IIM Ahmedabad and Bangalore retain their place of price on top of the IIM list, for very specific reasons.

Ahmedabad has always been an industrial hub, and this environment and proximity to Bombay works well for IIMA. Bangalore is the IT capital of the country and it has helped in centers like the NSRaghavan entrepreneurship cell, and a post-graduate course on managing IT systems. Calcutta has always been an intellectual heaven, and most of the finance professors at IIM Calcutta are still considered gods.

As an Alumni, it is not the best of things to happen, if an IIM is opened in Shillong. I know from experience, that many professors have left Lucknow because they could not find good schools for their children, or a comparable peer group, as with the other IIMs. It becomes very important for a professor, to get support for his personal life, as he matures into a better professor. Lucknow was awkwardly positioned from Delhi, not too near, yet not too far. It was often difficult to bring in industry speakers, because there was only one flight from Delhi, in the late evening. Most speakers would like to do a morning-evening to any destination, and be back home for dinner. This also became very difficult. It was quite difficult in Lucknow, and I have heard similar stories from IIM Indore and IIM Kozhikode. On that note, locating an IIM in Kozhikode, the communist heartland of the country, could not have been a very well-thought-out decision.

IIM Shillong is a commendable initiative, because the government now want to put Shillong on the global business map, by associating it with a strong brand like the IIM. But whether it can be executed, purely for logistical reasons, remaisn to be seen.

Crying

I'm watching a re-run of "Awaarapan" on screen. Emraan Hashmi is crying on Sneha's grave.

Its so difficult for a full grown man to cry, Close to impossible. Or even pretend to cry and make it real.

I don't think I appreciate our hindi movie actors as much as I should be.

Headlines today

What do we do, when the headlines at CNN-IBN tonight is in this order:

1. A ten year girl is eve-teased in Chembur, Mumbai, and is chased by a jeep-ful of guys, who then drive over her arm and drag her across the street.

2. 20 female foetuses found in a drain in Nayagarh, Orissa

This is followed by news about Dr. Haneef and the Indo-US nuclear deal. YS Rajashekhara Reddy abuses Chandrababu naidu on the floor of the house saying, in telugu, "You will regret coming out of the womb of your mother. I will wipe you on the house of the floor. I will cut you to pieces. I will kill you."

Two such intensely shocking incidents of cruelty to the female child in the same day. Why?

I am not, for one moment, trying to undermine the importance of the problem we are facing. But I am wondering this: There has got to be some metrics by which a news-team defines what should be the top headline, and what is not. For example, as a business management graduate, this is what I would do: I would rate every news item on four parameters:

1. Social importance
2. Recall value
3. Channel importance: If CNN-IBN was breaking this particular news first, they would want to highlight this by putting it on the highlights. Like a sting operation, for example
4. Interesting importance: if a news is so interesting that it just seems like fun to put on stage

Now, I am beginning to note that most channels are showing more and more shocking stories, and are condemning them in the worst manner. This could be parameter 1, when they believe that they are changing the world by condemning such behavior in the worst possible manner.

And I think that's wonderful.

McKinsey taken for a ride

A very interesting article in Business Standard today: McKinsey is sueing RIL and RComm for non-payment of dues.

This is very interesting to me, because McKinsey never discusses its clients, its work, and its pay. RIL and RComm now owe McKinsey over 27 crores, because McKinsey adviced them on their launch strategy in 2001. So, for 27 crores, they decided to go to court, when it is their policy for decades that they would never talk about their work, and their clients would speak for them.

What I also found fascinating is this: According to the agreement with RIL, when the turnover of RComm (Reliance India Mobile) crossedd 10,000 crores per annum, they would pay an extra incremental amount to McKinsey! This is absolutely stunning: Performance linked pay is quite normal in the services industry, because IT consulting organizations (like IBM) often agree on a pay which is linked to their performance. But a management consulting firm's role is primarily to draw out a roadmap, and to come up with an implementation strategy. In fact, I do not particularly believe RIL made the perfect entry with Reliance India Mobile. Their platform itself might have been flawed (CDMA, as against GSM). Their operations were a mess for years. They had no idea about how they would handle billing, until months after release. When they succeeded, however, it seemed like pure bania common-sense over McKinsey consulting's advice. They threw handsets at customers, hoping that a percentage of them would use it. However, all this could be pure conjecture. There is no evidence of what the deliverable could have been.

Porn changes the world, again!

24 years ago, two competing technologies were fighting for world domination. Betamax and VHS were competing technologies which were eyeing for mindshare. Matsushita tried licensing out VHS players to the whole world, and VHS became a standard much faster than Betamax. Now, research has also found another reason why VHS players became so popular: they allowed porn videos to be viewed in their format, while Sony, being a conservative organization, did not permit pornographic videos through Betamax. Porn had worked its first magic in increasing communications.

In the late 90's, in the midst of a new internet boom, Web 1.0 in hindsight, people started acquiring computers. Internet was heating up, ICQ was the messaging standard, and email was the new mantra. But it was still not enough. Then, visionary US pornstars understood that the internet was the future of pornography. All videos across the world began to be demonstrated on the internet. In fact, towards the middle of 1999, 90% of the internet was porn sites! Pornography had helped in creating a new medium of communication.

Now, communications had made the transition from ARPANET to the first world, and then from the first world to the third. Today, the internet faces its third giant leap, when it needs to move from the developed third world, to that ugly courtyard where people don't have enough money to buy food for themselves. The internet paradox comes into play: Internet can help connect these places to the world, improve literacy, enhance the supply chain of most commodities, and incraese the standard of living. But in this pursuit, it needed a device that could access the internet, while being comfortable on the wallet. Many devices came up to solve this problem, but arguably the most important of these initiatives is the One-Laptop-Per-Child (OLPC) program. The OLPC program talks about giving laptops in the range of $100 to the viewers. But here was the problem: How would the chasm be crossed, when critical mass was required to make OLPC the new device of connectivity?

Pornography seems to provide the answer, yet again. Reuters reports that Nigerian pupils browse porn on donated laptops from the OLPC program.

ABUJA, July 19 (Reuters Life!) - Nigerian schoolchildren who received laptops from a U.S. aid organisation have used them to explore pornographic sites on the Internet, the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Thursday.

NAN said its reporter had seen pornographic images stored on several of the children's laptops.

"Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have gone awry as the pupils freely browse adult sites with explicit sexual materials," NAN said.

While pornography could affect the sensibilities of these "laptop-donors" in many ways, it has proven that they can provide the critical mass to make a package lift off. Maybe the content is inappropriate considering the age-group we are talking about, but this does offer a valuable lesson to marketers in such regions.

Will this work?

Facebook revenues

If you haven't heard of facebook yet, you need to get a e-life.

After their new definition of a social network as a social utility, and their construction of a platform where developers could create applications for Facebook, they are being hailed as the successor to Google. Valleywag says that Mark Zuckerberg is the new generation Steve Jobs, and his Adidas flip-flops are the natural heir to the Steve-ian turtleneck.

But the question everyone wants the answer to is, How will facebook make any money? Agreed, that they are trying to define everyone's connections digitally. They are trying to convert every relationship into a digital relationship. But where is the money?

Apart from a statement released by Jim Breyer, Accel Partners, that facebook revenues of this year would cross $100 million dollars, how can a social network monetise its connections?

Since no-one is buying the online advertising story anymore, we should be able to safely rule that out. A campaign on facebook drew a 0.04% click-through rate, and no-one wants to touch facebook to advertise anymore.

Enhanced collaboration? One way to go is to offer custom applications that cost money, like LinkedIn would: To offer enhanced collaboration when the customer offers to pay money.

Facebook bazaar (like Facebook marketplace, but monetized)? Could users set up facebook stores, sell stuff on facebook, and make money out of it? Facebook would keep a margin of every sale, ala e-bay.

Voting? Could you organize online polls and surveys through facebook, and make money out of it for users and facebook?

Or is all of this already tried someplace?

What do you do when you are so successful and so unique, but you can't make ends meet? Much like what Jimmy Wales might be thinking.

Artificial God

In a wonderful speech, Douglas Adams talks about the concept of an "Artificial God", one created by the people who worship "it". The speech was delivered in 1998. This paragraph is exceptional, and beautifully and simple, at the same time being very illustrative:

Now imagine an early man surveying his surroundings at the end of a happy day's tool making. He looks around and he sees a world which pleases him mightily: behind him are mountains with caves in - mountains are great because you can go and hide in the caves and you are out of the rain and the bears can't get you; in front of him there's the forest - it's got nuts and berries and delicious food; there's a stream going by, which is full of water - water's delicious to drink, you can float your boats in it and do all sorts of stuff with it; here's cousin Ug and he's caught a mammoth - mammoth's are great, you can eat them, you can wear their coats, you can use their bones to create weapons to catch other mammoths. I mean this is a great world, it's fantastic. But our early man has a moment to reflect and he thinks to himself, 'well, this is an interesting world that I find myself in' and then he asks himself a very treacherous question, a question which is totally meaningless and fallacious, but only comes about because of the nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks at his world and says 'So who made this then?' Who made this? - you can see why it's a treacherous question. Early man thinks, 'Well, because there's only one sort of being I know about who makes things, whoever made all this must therefore be a much bigger, much more powerful and necessarily invisible, one of me and because I tend to be the strong one who does all the stuff, he's probably male'. And so we have the idea of a god. Then, because when we make things we do it with the intention of doing something with them, early man asks himself , 'If he made it, what did he make it for?' Now the real trap springs, because early man is thinking, 'This world fits me very well. Here are all these things that support me and feed me and look after me; yes, this world fits me nicely' and he reaches the inescapable conclusion that whoever made it, made it for him.

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

Marriage

Was marriage invented:

1. as a visionary approach thousands of years ago to combat sexually transmitted diseases?

2. as a method to keep people contented with mediocre careers and work-life?

Otherwise, how does one explain the origin of the concept of marriage?

In love, why must one possess?

Localization: iShare

The first evidence: iShare ties up with Zee TV's Sa Re Ga Ma Pa to show their content on iShare. Read more here:

And to mark its launch, the IT platform announced a deal wherein those who failed to make it to the Hero Honda Sa Re Ga Ma Pa musical talent show on Zee TV can post their videos or audios on iShare and stand the chance of getting chosen to perform in the finals.


Zee TV marketing head Tarun Mehra said one of the five short-listed entries will be selected to become the ‘Voice of Rediff’ and get to perform in the finals.

He said that the show was the world’s first Indian music contest (‘Sangeet ka pratham vishwa-yudh’) and a platform like iShare would help aspirants from all continents to take part and be part of the contest.

Earlier, Rediff.com CEO Ajit Balakrishnan told a press meet here that the principal aim of iShare was to link the 53 million Indians worldwide outside India with those within the country.

Rediff.com vice president marketing Manish Agarwal said the multimedia social content sharing platform will allow users to share videos, music, pictures on a single platform.

iShare: Localization

iShare is the new photo / video sharing tool by Ajit Balakrishnan of Rediff.

For many years now, Rediff has been following a strategy that has been very interesting to watch unfold. Rediffmail was a pathbreaking service, because it promised lightning quick email at a time when internet in India was only through dial-up. It promised a 1 GB inbox, and hotmail and yahoo could only follow. But at the heart of it all, I have always wondered why a local web entity would want to be around the people who have really figured out the technology of the internet. Why would I choose rediffmail over yahoo or gmail as my inbox? Can I, Ajit Balakrishnan, ever hope to compete with Gmail on the technology that drives their email? What is it that drives such a service, and successfully at that?

For one, Rediffmail succeeded because it was advertised extensively in India, a country which heard rediffmail first and email next. It was a great ploy, to introduce email as being synonymous with your product. Yet, as time passed, email became a basket product, and web-services began to be bundled by companies. The line between email, Instant messaging, file-transfer, blogs and social-networking began to blur. This is when people began to move to more sophisticated and evolved email products like gmail and yahoo. They knew that an email was an address for life, and gmail was not about to go anywhere.

Secondly, Many countries have tried to exploit the localization model on the internet, but very few have succeeded. Content can be localized, but technology cannot. It would probably be possible to create a Digg in India, because that content can be localized and served to a local community. Also, when you are trying to gain market-share in a new web-utility market, it becomes easier to do it in a geography, because it is easier to advertise in a limited area. That's why the valley buzz often makes or breaks a web-utility. India has lots of potential, because the internet is still in a nascent stage of understanding. Many social networks have tried to exploit this space: Yaari, Minglebox, Desimartini, and so on. But most social networks have been found looking for an answer when it comes to a basic question: How can a social network be localized? By using local slang? By customizing an offering to the Indian user? By advertising extensively and building market-share?

I think Kishore Biyani offers some great lessons on localization in his experience with Big Bazaar. Big Bazaar is now a completely Indianized Walmart, and the users now identify with the product. I think localization begins with sound market research. How many Indian Web 2.0 entrepreneurs have tried sitting beside a 16 year old girl, and watched her surf the internet for 4 hours? I think therein lies the answer to all the questions on localization.

Coming back, iShare is a new offering that lets you share multimedia content. This sounds like an interesting proposition, because the pages are crisply built, the UI is neat, and the pages load fast. The featured videos and photos are localized content, and they would consistently have page views from people who connect with the content they are showing. The Rediff brand ensures that people can post freely, communicate and create communities on iShare. Will the Rediff magic work again?

Do you "know"?

The "Know Pratibha Patil campaign" is one of the silliest online campaigns in recent times. Of course, just after the online petition to "vote Abdul Kalam" back into power. Not like the president of India has any power, you know.

Pratibha Patil is the hot favorite to win the presidential election. She has the support of the Congress and the Left parties, and she is in the good books of a certain Mrs. Gandhi. Does that qualify a full grown human-being to transform into a rubber stamp? Of course it does.

BJP and the NDA would, of course, would hear nothing of it. So they hire an expert team of 6-year old retards headed by Arun Shourie and start the "Know Pratibha Patil" campaign. First, Arun Shourie writes incensed articles in newspapers about Pratibha and her credentials. Of course, never mind the fact that she is being pitted against Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, a respected BJP leader and an ex-policeman, suspended in the late 40's, and hoping to be the first president of India who is over 150 years old.

In the meanwhile the "Know Pratibha Patil" campaign has started a web-campaign to spread a pack of inconsequential and irrelevant cooked-up facts about her family members accepting favors when she was the chairman of a cooperative bank. I find all of this amusing for many reasons:

1. The BJP strongly believes that the people of the country would be voting for the president of India. They fail to realise that the electoral college would be voting for the president, and most of them would be only too pleased to vote for Pratibha, who does not have a single extortion case, murder or poll-booth rigging case against her.

2. The Congress wants to go on record trying to defend their presidential candidate, believing that it actually makes a difference to her prospects. Pratibha, meanwhile, patiently waits and watches in her kennel at 10, Janpath, while the two opposing groups are fighting with each other.

3. The Know Pratibha campaign is landmark for many reasons: For one, it is the first time a website has been recognized as a campaign vehicle. Second, it is the first time a website has been recognized as a campaign vehicle for a totally inconsequential campaign. Thirdly, they seem to be quoting extensively from blogs who write equally irrelevent facts about Pratibha: another first. Finally, the most shocking aspect of the know pratibha website is this, a paragraph at the bottom of the front page:

KNOW PRATIBHA PATIL Campaign expresses its heartfelt condolences over the demise of Shri Chandrashekhar, former Prime Minister of India, and a front-ranking leader of the anti-Emergency movement in 1975-77.

His last statement, issued just a few weeks before his passing away, was an appeal in support of Shri Bhairon Singh Shekhawat in the Presidential election.

Why did they have to invoke a dead man in their campaign? How low have our politicians actually fallen?

Karan Thapar has been a voice of sanity in this madness. In two consecutive weeks, he interviews Bardhan and Rajnath Singh, and questions them about their presidential choices. Neither of them have answers, when Karan fires his volley of facts, reports and data at them. On National television, our leaders do not have the understanding of facts that a journalist does. In these two weeks, Karan Thapar has exposed every presidential candidate, and every point of view in this poll. Little now remains to be said.

The President of India does not have a large role to play in our polity. However, the president reflects the constitution, the one pure entity that still exists in the world of Indian politics. The President of India would uphold the constitution, when all else fails. India has long decided that coalition politics is the way to go. When the people of India cannot decide, the president is asked to. And when India goes into the polls in 2009, the President could be the decider. Is this process going to ensure that the most constitutional and rational decision can be delivered?

I do not believe so.

Review:Awaarapan

Awaarapan is not a good movie. In fact, I thought it was very poorly made. The dialogues were out of 80s gangster movies, and I can't think of a single self respecting criminal who would say "yeh jhoot hai, yeh fareb hai!"

I loved the movie. I have always watched movies wondering why each movie should have a message. Why can't people just move on with their lives, with no particular purpose or meaning? Why must every Indian movie be made with a direction? Why must actions have a meaning and a purpose?

The movie is really good, because it just drifts along peacefully, like a boat in placid waters. The movie starts with a gangster who is watching over a woman, the mistress of his boss, Malik sahab. He dreams about a time in his life, when he met a girl, and she lived every day in freedom, and died looking for that freedom. She haunts him, because he can't believe in freedom. He was feared, but had to work within the limitations of what his boss asks him to do. Questions were not respected in his line of work.

When the mistress tries to run, he realises what freedom really meant to the world. He knows that this is his one opportunity in life when he gets to set someone free. And in setting someone else free, he was setting himself free. And he runs, and he kills, and he destroys and finally he dies, trying to set her free. When he does, he knows it is time to die. He dies, with the memory that he had set someone free as his only act of mercy.

He confronts his boss, Malik sahab, who has but one question. Why? Why is he trying to set her free, at the cost of his loyalty, at the cost of his profession, and at the cost of his life?

And that's the best part about Awaarapan. That question did not need an answer. It reminded me of all the times in life I did something, because I knew it had to be done. I could not talk myself into it, I could not justify it to myself or anyone else, but it was there, and it needed to be done. And that's all that mattered.

Green manufacturing

In a very articulate piece on BBC, Stephaan Simons talks about the environment, and how the right chemistry might be the solution to the issue of carbon emissions and the greenhouse issue.

In the piece, he talks about a fundamental paradigmatic shift between measuring CO2 emissions and putting it on "the plate", so to say. I was particularly refreshed with his thoughts on how carbon trading would incentivise green technologies, but would not do enough in the long term. It also stems from a theory that the manufacturers would be able to "buy off their guilt" by planting a few trees.

The world of carbon emissions can be modified only if manufacturers find a suitable and credible option of replacing the chemicals in their business with more environment-friendly materials. Unless this can also be made commercially viable, the model would never succeed. The concept of carbon capture is also an option. During manufacture, often carbon is a necessary by-product. Instead of looking to bypass this, could it be possible to create carbon by-product and store it somewhere, like in a geological formation, the ocean bed, or some similar place? The concept of carbon capture has been shown to be highly energy intensive, often increasing the power requirement of a plant by about 50% or so. But if this carbon can be captured and stored, it could save upto 90% of emissions. And this is a large number.

A country like India finds newer and more complex challenges. It is no secret that the lowest price is often the differentiator between two or more products. The lowest price could often result in unfriendly mechanisms for manufacture. There are many ways this can be prevented.

Foremost among this is that the government of India impose stricter environment measures for chemical manufacture and usage. I think 60 years of independence has proven that the Indian government possesses no such competency. Branding is an important mechanism for green manufacturing. If a customer would not buy a product that uses polluting processes, it would change the situation. Then again, in India, only the lowest price sells and the best quality sells. Mumbai is probably India's most cosmopolitan and rich city, paying over 90% of the country's corporate taxes. Yet they are not able to impose a ban polythene bags. This vital link needs to be made, if green manufacturing can be made large scale.

To that extent, while Stephaan argues that carbon trading might not work in more developed markets, it could just be the solution that India is waiting for.