Amazing Verdict

Finally the public verdict is out and the results are beyond everyone’s expectations. It is a clear Jai Ho for the incumbent prime minister to take over at the center for five more years. I am glad the Indian voters have given one tight slap on the face of all irrational small party prime ministerial aspirants. The regional parties have been stripped of their unreasonable bargaining power. They will be rushing to center to offer unconditional support with whatever little strength they have … reason being no one other than UPA has even a slightest chance to have a go at setting up the government. Other main features of this verdict have been voter has rejected hate based and religion based political parties. And most importantly Left has been decimated even in Kerala and Bengal pushing them into some serious introspection mode. Finally congratulations to Dr. Manmohan for being first PM after Pandit Nehru to take over the charges for a second five year term. Sorry that Mr. Advani’s dream of occupying the PM’s chair will remain a dream for ever – this is the last time he would be contesting in election.

With political stability investors on D-Street would be euphoric and we could see a Mega Monday or Magic Monday where markets could hit circuit breaker for a different reason this time atleast in NIFTY if not BSE. Yeah, media would be disappointed for not having a chance to cover all the horse trading and other political speculations as a result of this clear mandate. Now with IPL getting into the last week the focus shifts there. There have been many close matches in the last few weeks and the teams are still jumping all across the table. Except for Delhi no one seems to be safe zone and five teams leaving Kolkata and Mumbai are contesting closely for the semi final spot – it looks like it’s likely to go down to the wire and final positions would be clear only after the final league match between the last year’s rock bottom teams and yeah they are very much in contention for the semifinal berths.

Musical Chairs and One India

With fewdays to go for the public verdict for the 15th time after Independence, we have atleast two dozen aspirants from various parties for the coveted prime ministerial post. If the scene continues so we might see a different PM each month as part of their power sharing program. Scary ..isn't it? During this period of economic insecurity, political instability is the last thing we would want to have. I wish people become prudent and vote for one of the two biggies or their pre poll alliance partners .. in short UPA or NDA and put an end to the dreams of the selfish small party captains - They are anyways not in a position to provide a stable government. As some one said Third front is just a parking lot before the elections every one joins it and leaves it to choose their partners after the poll verdict.

Meanwhile this elections made sure that Lalit Modi had tough time MODIfying the IPL schedule to make it feasible and finally the summer cricket bonanza is moving to South Africa. And the publicity of the mega event is in full swing. If last years ad showed IPL as mano, ranjan ka baap... this time it says that it is possible to see one billion people doing the same thing at a given point of time i.e, watching IPL. Nice Concept, however the ad has few glitches, for example - it shows that all Indians are reacting similarly after a runout dismissal ... a Mumbaikar would feel low after Sachin's dismissal where as a Bengali would rejoice on the same and hence it is not true that one billion people will react similarly - Remember people take sides and only then they can enjoy this shorter version cricket festival.

Hmmm with both the elections heat and IPL fever catching up media must be licking its lips to cover these events and increase TRPs!

Rock On !! Spot on!!!

I always liked the albums that tells a short story in 4-5 minutes with a cool music or song in the background and often wondered why it gets over so soon. Today, I came across a 140 min album with a nice story of four friends who felt they could create magic with music - but as usual the good things are always delayed and this one was no exception and it had to wait for 10 years - the story is all about why and how, with a touchy feel.
Great music - Shankar Ehsaan Loy trio rocked as usual , crisp story telling and smart casting were highlights of this musical magic. The makers got everything spot on in making this Rock On!!! For me it had an interesting quote which will stay with me for ever -

Rock On!! Zindagi milegi naa dubaaraaa

Discounting Toss

India won their first bilateral ODI series in Srilanka, it is heartening that this was achieved with an incomplete team - no Sachin and Sehwag. But if we look at the tour - what we actually did was won the toss 4 times in a row. Nothing to take away from excellent performance of Zaheer, Dhoni and company. But the results were rather sealed as soon as the toss happened- this should be agreed atleast for Premadasa.

This reminded me of some of other grounds where you more or less know whats going to happen as soon as the toss is done - atleast the match is not unbiassed anymore. Let us look at results of day-night matches from some of the grounds during various timeframes in the last decade and a half.

Ground	Time Period	Matches Played	Won batting first	Won batting second
Newlands, Capetown	1992-08	24	19	5
Premadasa, Colombo	2000-08	40	26	11
Kingsmead, Durban	2003-08	14	6	3
PCA,Mohali	1996-07	14	9	5
Gaddafi, Lahore	2007-08	8	8	0
Eden Gardens	1993-03	9	7	2

These results are mainly affected by dew that either helps the bowlers get some swing under the lights and trouble the batsmen. When we have the data to support the argument that the toss plays a very important role in deciding the result of the match is it fair to still play under these conditions.

Of course there are some grounds where the results are just reverse as the weather is relatively dry and dew only results in spin bowlers not being able to find the grip of the ball under lights and the batsmen makes the most out of it

Ground	Time Period	Matches Played	Won batting first	Won batting second
Motera,Ahmedabad	2003-08	7	2	5
SMS, Jaipur	2006-08	7	2	5

A couple of options come to my mind at this point which I think would make these games competitive.

Option1: Each team would play 50 0vers in two splits such that each split is at least for 15 overs. Also there is at least one power play of 5 overs in each split. A vs B goes some thing like this -

The team winning the toss would decide what they want to do and the team batting first say A would declare when they want to split, then team B bats and declares when they want to split so that the team A can continue their innings and complete it following which team B would chase the target.

Option 2: This one flows from the huge success of 20 cricket. A couple of innings of 20/25 overs each where the team winning toss would either choose to bat or bowl in the first innings and team losing toss would decide what they want to do in second innings.

The options sounds crazy is it - but let us wait and watch!!!

Bouncing thoughts

This is the title of the mail that I received last week from one of my colleague and mentor at Wilco. The summary of the mail is to explore an option of developing low cost applications (may be at INR 1000) for SME's and use of rural IT talent to develop these simple tools using simple mySQL and VB. This mail definitely sounded very interesting and wanted to put in some efforts to have a closer look into this.

The rural entrepreneurs are enthusiastic to embrace the IT products if they are convinced about the benefits and of course ROI. Now who will help them out in creating such a solution - a new venture? Quick economics shows that it would take not less than INR6000 to create such a product- and how many takers are there for such kind of products at that price? It is very difficult for such a venture to sustain in long run and at the same time these applications needs to be priced lower so that the enthusiasm is converted into business . This is the reason to invite big Indian IT houses to cross subsidize these products and empower the rural entrepreneur with technology.

Typically the kind of applications needed by SMEs are simple work flow applications and may be some billing and inventory monitoring solutions. These can be comfortably designed by any software engineer with 2-3 year experience and these can be developed by any software literate with basic guidance. There is huge talent that is being wasted on bench in all the big IT firms and it would be a good idea for them to use this bench strength to tap this opportunity. Even if not there are engineering graduates and students in every nook and corner of the peninsula (True at least in case of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) - the companies could use them to develop these applications after giving appropriate training - which in turn would also make them employable in future.

In the wake of weakening dollar IT companies are facing severe pressure to maintain the margins. The US Economy and the turmoil in the financial and banking sectors across the globe is only adding to the problem and would make it tough for the IT companies to find new outsourcing assignments. (Please note that BFSI sector forms 40% of the total IT-ITES exports) It is the time for Indian IT companies to check out the opportunities lying inside the nation in parallel. Agreed that they are not as lucrative as the existing ones in terms of margins but they are definitely challenging and moreover it would help them develop the nation overall. Promote the rural entrepreneur help him grow big and get a bigger business from them.

More over it makes sense for the companies to spend money on these kind of opportunities which would lead to an inclusive growth of the nation - if an entrepreneur becomes efficient the whole nation would be benefited, rather than just donating huge chunks to an unknown entity in the name of CSR where you don't even know where the money is reaching to. The government has provided the required conditions for the sector to grow over the last two decades, of course it was done in the larger interest of the nation - but this is time for the sector to pay back to the nation.

My Experience with Dreams

Dreams are known to be manifestations of the suppressed thoughts and ideas which are lying in the sub conscious mind. If you dream more does it mean that you are an introvert who does not speak out the thoughts? Well I cannot answer this but my gut feel says that it has nothing to do with whether it is an introvert or an extrovert as introvert might complete the thought process but just does not express them. Wait!!! This is not something I want you guys to read ... let us talk about the dreams.

My experience with dreams is that when ever a dream is good or happens to be something of my liking the sleep gets disturbed or alarm blows off or something else happens to make sure that the dream is not completed and even if I get back to the bed immediately within a few seconds - stopping the alarm - the dream does not continue and in a very short while I even forget what it was. Where as when a dream is bad or happens to be something which I don't like even if I forcibly break out of the sleep and try to sleep after a short break of a couple of minutes the dream tends to continue.

One such thing happened to me last night and I cannot recollect what it was? But I can recollect a couple of dreams where I could sense what was coming my way- one such instance that I can quote is - 10 days prior to CAT 2004 - I saw a paper in my dream with 123 questions with different marks for different questions. I told my friend about it - we laughed over the fact that CAT was taking a large toll out of us. And come the exam - we see exactly 123 questions in the paper with variable marking although not as random as I had seen in my dream but the number was a stunner and I was amazed for a couple of minutes during which I recollected Joseph Murphy's words that says - if you want something to happen let your subconscious mind know about it and it will make sure that you go through a path to achieve the goal. The stronger you think the greater the chances of occurring - I cannot tell you how much water can this argument hold but surely at that moment I wanted to read the book that had this argument - The power of Subconscious mind - which happens to be one of the my favorite books. It says a lot of things on how you could use your subconscious mind and Oops wait again is this what I want you guys to read ... Not at all... I think ... Let me take a break...

Best facing Best

Browsing through and found this interesting piece a couple of weeks back but then waited for this date to post so as to make it more relevant-

Exactly two years back it happened - leading run scorer in tests faced a delivery from leading run wicket taker in test at Adelaide - yes you guessed it right - Brain Lara was leading run scorer who went past Allan Border in the same Adelaide test and he faced Shane Warne who was the leading wicket taker then. I don't know when it happened before that day. Some one said it happened after about 100 years - I have no records about that. However, I can see it happening again in next July-Aug when India tours Srilanka - hope fully our master blaster Sachin who I hope would surpass Brain Lara and face the spin wizard Murali who is a leading wicket taker now.