Two things have really bugged me over the week – the fact that the Mumbai airport also wants an Airport Development Fee (ADF) and that the Railways was allowed to go ahead and set up a diesel locomotive factory on its own despite getting a lower quote from a private sector firm. There’s no real link between them except that both make a mockery of the whole system of getting global bids, of transparency, and stuff like that.

Take the Railways case first. I’ve written about this earlier in my column “Getting PPP back on track”. Very briefly, the Railways wanted to set up two factories, one each for diesel and electric locomotives; the tenders moved from the extreme of being very favourable to the bidders to being extremely unfriendly, before they were fixed; there were no bids for the electric loco; there was one bid for the diesel one from General Electric of the US, a bid that was lower than what it would have cost the Railways if it were to build on its own, but the Cabinet allowed it to reject the bid and instead set up the loco factory on its own. In which case, you can expect the usual cost and time overruns that plague all PSU projects – a start has, of course, already been made since the Railway Minister has even decided where the plant is to be set up!

I met a very senior bureaucrat last night, and he put a totally different spin, one that’s even more worrying. He argued that turbines supplied by General Electric to the Dabhol power plant continue to malfunction, and GE is most reluctant to take responsibility for them. While the original Dabhol plant asked GE to give a performance guarantee, when the government entered into a renegotiation and restarted the plant after paying GE and Bechtel around $300 mn for their share of Dabhol’s equity, it did not insist upon a similar guarantee!

The government even brought this matter up with GE’s global chief, but clearly to no avail. So why aren’t we penalising GE, he argued, making it clear that it cannot expect more government business unless it takes responsibility? Why not indeed?

Relate this now to the agreement the US signed recently with Swiss bank UBS. The US has got UBS to agree to give it details of US citizens who’re dodging US taxes using UBS. Why doesn’t our government do something similar, given how Indians are supposed to have stashed away more than a trillion dollars (that’s India’s entire GDP by the way!) in Swiss banks. I mentioned this to another senior bureaucrat, from the finance ministry, at the same party. Since there were other guests around, he loftily told me that the government got all the details it wanted, only these were not publicised the way the US did! If that’s true, how come there’s been no sign of this wealth being taxed? Certainly the tax numbers don’t show this. Once again, a sign that the government just continues to pander to corporate interests.

The best, or worst, example of this of course is what’s happening on the Delhi airport and how this is now to be extended to other airports. The GMR Group won the bid for the Delhi airport by promising to share 49 per cent of topline revenue with the Airports Authority of India (AAI). It was obvious this was going to fail since you can’t share 49 per cent of your topline and still hope to make money, but anyway. Soon enough, GMR redefined what topline was, and came up with a proposal to take deposits which were not going to be shared with the government – to the government’s shame, it okayed this. As a result, the AAI share of revenues fell by 20-50 per cent, depending on what real estate values are. Anyway, given the real estate slump, GMR couldn’t raise enough deposits, so the government has allowed it to charge an Airport Development Fee by charging a few hundred rupees to everyone who flies.

Now other airports, like the one in Mumbai want to levy a similar fee.

Why bother to have agreements if you can just flout them in this manner? Indeed, it’s best to offer to share 99 per cent of revenue, win the contract, and then renegotiate it the way GMR has. After all, if the airport has to be completed, or a road has to be completed, the government will agree to anything.

By the way, this is not some fanciful stuff from the top of my head. In some cases, the Tariff Authority of Major Ports (TAMP) was actually allowing companies to charge their revenue shares as cost! So, let’s say a company’s costs were Rs 80 and if, say a 25 per cent return was to be allowed to it, it would need to earn Rs 100. So, 100 units of cargo were being despatched from the port, it would be allowed to charge Re 1 per unit. Now let’s say it promised to share half of its earning with the government – so, it has to give Rs 50. TAMP, in several cases, assumed the company’s costs were Rs 130, and so allowed it to charge Rs 1.3 per unit of cargo! The company, if it had wanted, could have offered to share 99 per cent of its revenue with government and still not have been out of pocket.

The story’s the same in all cases – the government appears to be run solely/largely by what corporate interests dictate.

Jai ho!

Dear Members of the Academy,

Many congratulations for putting up a brilliant show this past Sunday night. Isn’t Hugh Jackman superb? Wish you had at least nominated him for Australia, but never mind—his Oscar night performance is sure to fetch him some musicals, if not film roles.

I know how hard it is to be a judge, when one has to select from a range of such breathtakingly good fare. Unlike other critics, however, I think the Academy often redeems its wrong choices. No Oscar for Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption? Well, give one to Dave Boyle for Mystic River. Did we overlook Ennis del Mar, that stratospheric point in a young man’s career? Applause for the Joker please.

It is with high hopes, therefore, that I put forth my case. In spite of what Danny Boyle and the film’s PR machine would have you believe, I don’t think Slumdog is an authentic representation of India. For one, the plot twists are way unimaginable, and the editing uneven. My problem with Slumdog also has to do with the fact that a film made by a white man is being lauded as an accurate depiction of urban poverty in India.

I don’t know of any Indian director who has been able to show the US in a light that removes his/her gaze from the immigrant experience. Mira Nair made a widely panned representation of Vanity Fair, and now restricts herself to Indian themes. Why then should a Boyle come here and tell us and the world what India is all about? Isn’t this the worst manifestation of Orientalism?

To be sure, India does have some of the problems shown in Slumdog—poverty is rampant—but you do not take the worst elements of a society and make a film that, unfortunately, wins such great recognition. There are many great stories in India waiting to be told, and they do not have to include young children throwing themselves into piles of shit. Why not, for instance, make a movie on the problems faced by young Indian women as they juggle the demands of modernity and tradition?

There is a new movie out this week here, called Delhi 6, made by an Indian who spent his childhood in Chandni Chowk, an Old Delhi area where much of the movie is based. See the movie and you feel his love for the place drip in every scene. I did not feel such a high watching Slumdog. That movie just made me sad to be included with the vast humanity that was being represented.

Anyway, the one good outcome of Sunday night is the Oscar for Rehman. He is a truly deserving recipient. (Incidentally, he has also supplied the score for Delhi 6.)

So dear Members, since the Academy believes in correcting past wrongs with lavish encomiums, can it, conversely, be assumed that an undeserving Oscar will be followed by a long drought? Can I rest assured that Danny Boyle, no matter how great his next project, will not be reading the victor’s speech from a crumpled note?

In anticipation,

Vikram Johri

I met him once in mid-1998. Actually, I tagged along with my bureau chief B Krishnakumar (The Week).

In 1998, the stock market had again started misbehaving. In the first few months, it had shot up, only to crash within days. And some stocks, especially the ones whose promoters were advised by the big bull were doing exceptionally well.

We wanted to explore this line of investigation. On reaching his Maker Chamber office at 5 pm, we were made to wait for almost an hour – he was still being quizzed by CBI sleuths everyday.

My only memory about the office is that it had a rather glassy look about it, and there wasn’t a single sheet of paper, anywhere.

When Mehta came, he looked and sounded quite calm – a remarkable feat for someone, who was being grilled for six-eight hours a day. He told us about his new role as a corporate advisor (without naming the companies, of course) and offered us chai.

He also told us about the 24 criminal cases and over 300 civil cases against him. Later, I was told that he owed over Rs 11,000 crore to the tax authorities at one time.

After chatting with us till almost 7.30-8 pm, he offered to drop us back to our office. We travelled in his car. Was it the famous Lexus? I don’t remember, but it was quite an impressive one.

After he left, Krishna and me wondered about his source of income. (Remember, this was the time when his bank accounts had been frozen) But nothing suggested he was short of cash.

Three years later, Sebi banned Mehta from trading (yes, he had actually been given the trading licence back, even after the 1992 scam). Also, the three companies, whose shares were shored up by Mehta’s cartel, were banned from tapping the market for a few years.

Mehta died on 31 December, 2001.

A few weeks back (and 17 long years), when Mehta’s famous Worli house (Madhuli) attracted a mere Rs 20 crore, I was a bit surprised. His brother Ashwin urged the court to grant an extension as the price was too little for 8 flats.

After a week, there was another offer of slightly over Rs 32 crore – a whopping 60 per cent rise in just seven days. Despite this rise, the value was way below the going rate in the market.

For a man, who had spent most of his life shoring up share prices to unrealistic levels, the irony couldn’t be more obvious.

I haven’t watched Slumdog Millionaire as yet, but it’s got little to do with the growing feeling that the movie represents nothing but poverty porn. I must be in a hopeless minority as every other person you meet these days seems to have seen the film many times and is eager to give you a scene-by-scene description of the fairy tale that shows how the film’s young protagonist, Jamal, overcomes long odds to live happily ever after.
Courtesy the Slumdog watchers, I also know how in one of the early scenes, Jamal dives into a raw sewage under the outhouse where he is trapped, to get a movie star’s autograph.

It’s almost like those gold old Sholay days – everyone seemed to know the number of glass pieces that pierced Hema Malini’s feet when she was swaying to the song `main nachungi’.

The difference is Sholay had a dream run in movie halls for over five years, while Slumdog ran out of steam barely a week after its release. If so many Indians have watched the movie, why were multiplex owners complaining about unsold tickets even in the first weekend after the film’s commercial release in India? The truth is for all the attention in Hollywood, Slumdog has failed to set the box office alight in India.
The reason is quite obvious: Slumdog must be one of the most counterfeited movies of all times. You can see them everywhere: hooky CDs and DVDs of the movie are openly on sale for Rs 40-50 with a little bartering, prompting US-India Business Council President Ron Somers to say, “Imagine how many Slumdogs could be conceived, produced and premiered if only there were greater efforts to crack down on film piracy.
In fact, a study commissioned by USIBC as part of its Bollywood-Hollywood Initiative, found that India’s entertainment and media industry loses some 820,000 jobs and about Rs 20,000 crore to piracy each year.
It’s true that the grey market that had once decimated the music industry has always been there. But they were sold on the sly earlier; the veil seems to have been taken off now. I suspect no law can prevent this as no law can change people’s minds. If rich and educated people lecturing the world against piracy etc don’t mind enjoying the knock-off versions of the film, the law cannot be anything but a mute spectator. Somers, meanwhile, can keep on pleading.
Just the other day, a friend was recounting – quite gleefully – how he saved Rs 1,120 (the price of four multiplex tickets on a Sunday) by downloading the film from his relative’s pen drive. Isn’t this encouraging piracy?  India’s high & mighty and beautiful people couldn’t care less, it seems.    

As every other industry clamours for a stimulus (read bailout) package and intensifies its lobbying efforts with the powers that be (read government), the question that arises is whether there is a superior way to allocate scarce resources.

There is.

How about putting some money back in the individual tax payer’s pocket. Instead of the government collecting the money and choosing which industry to shower it upon, depending on the industry’s power to please, let the tax payer decide whether he wants more cars (an automatic stimulus for the automobile industry), more houses (stimulus for the real estate) or more consumer durables (stimulus for the consumer durables industry).

There is a case for lining the pockets of the buyer, rather than the  seller to stimulate the economy.

This is already being put in place by the United States. Barrack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package has two components –  tax cuts (36 per cent) and spending on social programmes (64 per cent) – which will ensure that Americans will have more money in their pockets as early as April.

It is a fact that tax cuts would be a challenging task for a fiscally constrained government. However, if such cuts manage to revive sagging demand, and, in turn, the economy, buoyancy would return to tax revenues.

If such a course were to be followed in a country like India, there would also be an efficiency dividend which comes to the fore with every reduction in the footprint of the government. This reduction was one of the reasons for the country’s high growth trajectory post 1991.

Let’s just do it!

Foreign institutional investments in Indian companies through primary and secondary markets doesn’t appear to be an accurate benchmark of the real FII inflows/outflows in Indian equities. Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi) daily trend in FII investments captures all activities undertaken by FIIs in the Indian securities market, including trades done in secondary market, primary market and activities such as right/bonus issues, private placement, mergers and acquisitions etc.

This means Sebi’s FII data is the buying and selling of securities in the primary and secondary capital market, and not the money that comes in or leaves the country as assumed by media and investors. If FII inflows/outflows are buys/sells on equity markets, then there is possibility that net inflows/outflows on a given day could be just a book entry.

The Sebi data on FII investments is in rupee terms and dollar value is only conversion of rupee/dollar rate of the day. Does it mean that inflows/outflows into India and out of India are not available? I tried to get an answer from Sebi through an e-mail almost a month ago, but I haven’t got a reply yet.

When I enquired with RBI about net foreign currency data on FII activities in Indian equity markets (primary and secondary markets, not FDI), RBI said FII inflows/outflows data is source from Sebi. However, as per Sebi’s definition, the FII data is just buy/sell on equity markets and not real flows.

Also, FIIs have been trading heavily in futures and options with their open interest positions varying 35-45 per cent. So they must be making or losing money on their trading in F&O. Where are these inflows and outflows accounted?

Is it that the profit made in the F&O segment gets diverted to buy shares in the secondary markets or shares from primary markets? Even their investment in preferential offers and qualified institutional placement (QIP) issues appears to be purchases through the Indian money recycled. For last one year, FIIs were net sellers on the cash as well as the F&O segment, indicating huge outflows. But nowhere this is getting reflected in term of outflows in foreign currency.

So, my gut feeling is that FIIs’ inflows/outflows may be very little in the last three years and most of the money they have made in F&O markets has been recycled in the cash market. The foreign fund data sourced from EPFR (Emerging Portfolio Fund Research) shows that India dedicated funds have seen outflow of $2 billion in 2008, and though it is not strictly comparable, Sebi’s outflow of $13 billion is still substantially lower.

We cannot imagine a day without our phones, right? We have observed that there is whole lot of mayhem when you drop your mobile (or better termed as your life line) into water. (Guess, it’s no big secret that we all take our phones to wash rooms, during work hours at least).  So, here are some useful tricks to help you bring back a ‘wet’ mobile phone to normalcy.

It works…I dropped a Nokia N81 in a water tub to prove my point (I know I’m mad). And it is in working condition as I write this post.

Disclaimer: Please don’t perform these stunts by your own unless you have a spare phone or a genuine wet phone. (more…)

“Bharat mein doodh kee nadiyan behtee hain (In India, milk gushes forth like streams)” This is the sort of stuff one read in schoolbooks, watched in Manoj Kumar’s films and I think I may have even sung some sort of anthem in school’s morning assembly sessions. Anyway, what I studied and watched and sang as a kid is what I believe — finally — today as an adult.

Oh yes, India is the land where milk is in abundance – I only buy tetra-pack stuff and even keep milk powder just in case my pet dog — or I — have midnight cravings for it. India is also the land where you’ll find the right stuff to mix in the milk too. No, not just coffee, there’ll be Maltova, Bournvita, Boost, Horlicks - for kids, growing kids and women too - besides others. Then there’s hot chocolate, cold coffee, ice-cream, dahi, probiotic milk, there’s everything.

Now, logically, I wish, I’d learnt that India was also the land where simple H20 too gushed from the zillions of streams. In Delhi’s Saket area, where I’ve been residing for the past one-and-a-half years, you’ll find everything, milk (okay, fine, I’m saying it the last time), Bisleri bottles (in 1- 2- 5- and 20-litre bottles respectively), Baskin Robbins, Häagen-Dazs, gelatos and what have you. And there’ll be healthy juices served at your doorstep from the neighbourhood grocery store.

But, but, but… there’s no water here. At least in the area where we live (where “kothis” cost over Rs 1 crore easily) there’s never any water. Ever.

Our area’s “water slot” is from 3-5 am and 3-5 pm respectively. Since we’re a working couple, the question of filling water (except on Sundays when there’s usually no electricity) in the afternoon doesn’t arise so what do we do? Wake up every other day and start our day at 4 am, fill water for an hour and then try and catch up on our sleep. I hate it and never before have I had this urge to turn housewife, just for the sake of ensuring there’s enough water in the house to last at least a week.

The domestic staff is already calling us a mad, water-obsessed couple. I’m beginning to see why I hate all those serials and films where the hero looks forlorn into the mirror while the water from the tap fills up the sink. (Mr Ramadoss, forget smoking, someone should ban this). I feel like putting buckets of water when rain sequences are shown on TV. I don’t feel like swimming in the Sports Complex pool (actually,I don’t know how to swim), instead, I want to bring buckets and fill water for my home. I get excited when I see coloured buckets, drums in shops and even dreamt some days ago that I was filling my semi-automatic washing machine with water. Oh, and I hate the growing pile of dirty clothes but there’s precious little that one can do, not when there isn’t enough water. I feel nervous inviting guests over, wondering how many times they’ll go to freshen up, how many times they would need to wash their hands, how often will their children beg to “please, can we splash water in the sink aunty”.

Yes, in my life, I plan - no, not the menu - for parties (if there are any) just how much water needs to be there when guests arrive. My home is a growing chaos of baltis and drums and chilumchees but then that’s too bad. Taking showers is a strict no-no. We only take baths with the good ‘ol balti – (not more than 10 magaas; that’s my count). Even when I need to check if water is flowing in the taps, I make sure to collect it in a mug and transfer it to another bucket. Shekhar Kapur wanted to make a film on the water crisis, I’d heard. Maybe he could pay my humble home a visit and start his research.

Oh, by the way, did I tell anyone that I’m now used to washing my face with mineral water?

The colour of my blood is green. I live in a rainbow.  My pet is an Anaconda. I am married to a cloned sheep. Porsche has launched a diesel car.
It is sad, but the last bit is true. Come March, Porsche, will take the covers off the diesel Cayenne – the first ever car from the stupendously successful sports car maker from Stuttgart to ruin its internal combustion innards with messy truck fuel.
Nothing, dear reader, is sacrosanct now. One should have guessed the way diesel motors were progressing – with common-rail fuel feed systems, enough torque to spin earth the other way around, enough mileage to mock bicycles and more green cred than Greenpeace means diesel fuel has arrived in life. But they could have spared Porsche.
May be they needn’t, and we should’ve been mentally ready for diesel Porsches and now be ready for even scarier stuff like diesel Lamborghinis and Ferraris after the phenomenal success Audi has had at 24 Hours of Le Mans with diesel power.
The 240 bhp V6 that goes under the bonnet (borrowed from VW?) can’t even take the massive Cayenne mother ship to 250 kph and it takes a rather shameful 8.3 seconds to do a 100 kph run (shameful in Porsche terms) but the press release talks about more important stuff, like fuel efficiency. How about 10.7 kpl from a Porsche? If not by that figure, you will be impressed when you know that you can drive 1000 km on a full tank of the smelly fuel. Welcome to the real world, where the world likes to have SUVs and even the super SUVs have no option to run on diesel.
Yeah I am looking out of my window and I can really see pigs flying.

It was a post on ‘The Board’, the blog of the New York Times editors, that first drew my attention to it. Dated July 1, 2008, it said The Orange County Register, in order to cut costs, was launching a pilot project to outsource copyediting and page design work to an Indian media company—let’s call it X. That the media industry in the US is passing through a serious downturn isn’t news anymore. Scores of newspapers have either wrapped up, or are laying off staff at a hitherto unprecedented pace. But outsourcing?

I was so intrigued by the story that I decided to investigate. X has its headquarters in Noida — a small office nestled on the third floor of a non-descript building. Since I had gone as a job applicant, the HR manager ushered me into the conference room, where I was administered a 60-minute test, comprising, as I expected, an overview of grammar and editing skills, plus basic GK about the US, and an essay.

When I emerged from the test, I sneaked a peek at the work area and was surprised to see no more than eight to ten people glued to their computer screens. I had expected at least 25. When I asked him about this, the HR manager, a stocky fellow, asked me to join him for coffee.

“Most people work nights here,” he explained as we sat with our coffees in the reception area. “Most of the work is at nights, given it’s morning there,” he said, pointing his head to the right, by which, I assumed, he meant America. I too would be required to work nights, he said, adding, “You would be picked up at ten in the evening, and dropped next day at seven am.”

“Is this a pilot, or are you looking at this long-term?” I asked.

“Oh, long-term. Very long-term,” he beamed. “We are in touch with top-notch media houses, including New York Times. An Indian subeditor is happy to take home an annual salary in the range $5,000-10,000, which is a third of what an average copyeditor in the US commands. Why the hell would they pay so much? Even if the industry wasn’t deteriorating the way it is, outsourcing makes eminent economic sense.”

But is this the whole story? While grammar and punctuation follow identical rules everywhere, copyediting is equally about place. How good a copyeditor can one be unless one is familiar with the area one is editing an article about?

Besides, any aspiring journalist enters the profession with a certain idealism. They want to change the world — or some part of it — and they feel compelled to put their passion to practice at an immediate level. The prospect of working for a company such as X, with its emphasis on unearthly hours and long-distance journalism, can’t but be detrimental to the profession.

I quickly finished my coffee and left.