Neelkanth Ratnakar Dongre died last week. He was 64. No obituaries were written. Except for friends and family, nobody seems to have taken notice. But those who have followed the capital’s corporate scene closely will tell you that his life was an extraordinary journey of ups and downs. 

He started out in the 1960s at DCM – it was called Delhi Cloth Mills at that time and was a great training ground for executives. Quickly, he entered the good books of Lala Charat Ram, the youngest son of Lala Shri Ram. In the 1970s, when one of his factories in Kolkata as besieged by agitating workers, Dongre loaded all the papers in a truck, smashed a wall to make way and drove the truck all the way to Delhi. 

At his home in an up-market South Delhi neighborhood, Dongre kept a room full of medals and trophies he had won when he was young. I never like to lose, he would often say. 

Lala Charat Ram too relied explicitly on him. On overseas trips, Lala Charat Ram would quietly upgrade Dongre’s hotel room. So much so, he gave all powers in the group after it split in the late-1980s to Dongre and not to his two sons, Deepak and Sidhharth. Together, they formed what came to be known as the Charat Ram-Dongre group. The two were together in a number of businesses – hotels, real estate, automobile components, trading, furniture etc. 

In his autobiography, Lala Charat Ram sang fulsome praises of Dongre and had only harsh words to spare for his sons. It was an open secret that Dongre had become the bone of contention between the Lala Charat Ram and his sons. They saw him as a usurper who was trying to take what was rightfully theirs. 

Then things took another turn in the late-1990s. Charat Ram and his sons made up and Dongre overnight became a liability. After a bitter boardroom battle, he was evicted from most of the companies and consigned to the margins. The inevitable had happened – blood runs thicker than anything else. Lala Charat Ram died some time back. Now, Dongre too is gone. But the uncomfortable question remains: Can an executive ever replace family? 

Ever since the Satyam scandal broke out in early January, unsuspecting Indians have once again got to see the seamier side of India Inc. This is a big blow to Indian businessmen. Otherwise, they were role models for the youth. They bought assets all over the world, hobnobbed with global decision makers, rode in fancy cars and created wealth for all. They were unstoppable. 

The halo around them was akin to the one that surrounded our armed forces till late when the rot in defence deals got exposed. Even before that, leakage from the Canteen Stores Department to the market place was a well-oiled operation. But it was never talked about. 

Corruption in the armed forces could be the subject for another piece. What concerns us here is the rampant corruption in the private sector. It has been institutionalized so well that most of us never even get to know of it. Kickbacks on orders, commissions on contracts – it is all an accepted part of the country’s corporate culture. 

In good old days, the owner of a company would more often that not keep the “purchase” function with himself or a family aide. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. All household expense, extended foreign junkets were all billed to the company. Family members were placed at sensitive positions. 

Before it was dismantled in 1991 by the PV Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh combine, the” licence, permit and quota” Raj gave Indian businessmen a unique set of skills – environment management. A businessman was known best for the bureaucrats and ministers in his pocket than his business acumen. Business houses which claimed licences and sat on them to create shortages were exposed a number of times. 

Liberalization came to us 18 years ago, but nothing has changed. Satyam has shown us that. The all-powerful promoter can do what he likes. 

At the executive level too, things are equally bad. For instance, money often changes hands when advertising accounts are given out. If there is any laxity, crores are siphoned off in no time. 

Forensic experts will tell you that there is a deluge of cases involving senior-management fraud these days. Most of these revolve round cooking the company’s books. As their bonuses are linked to the company’s financial performance, they have been found to park expenses in subsidiaries, move stocks to the dealers, book fictitious income etc. 

This worm is really troubling Microsoft so much so that the software giant has announced a $250,000 (around Rs 1.25 crore) reward for information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet.

The company has also announced a partnership with technology industry leaders and academia to implement a coordinated, global response to the Conficker (aka Downadup) worm. Together with security researchers, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and operators within the Domain Name System, Microsoft coordinated a response designed to disable domains targeted by Conficker.

This is not the first time that the company is offering money to catch worms. In 2005, Microsoft paid out $250,000 to two individuals who helped identify the creator of the notorious Sasser worm. The author was arrested and sentenced by the German authorities. Rewards of $250,000 were offered over three other major computer worm threats known as Blaster, MyDoom and Sobig worms.

Millions of Windows-based personal computers worldwide, including thousands in China and India, have been affected by a family of network worms which goes by the name conficker (also called kido or downadup).

The problem has been compounded since the worm keeps on mutating with new variants and a large number of companies and small and medium businesses have not yet fixed their machines with an emergency patch-up (MS08-067) provided by Microsoft in October 2008 as well as this month.

Anti-virus company F-Secure estimates that 15 million machines have been infected till date, making it the worst outbreak of its kind since a worm called Slammer in 2003.

The worm, according to Microsoft, infects computers across a network by exploiting a vulnerable spot in the Windows server service (SVCHOST.EXE) which could allow remote code execution when file sharing is enabled. Depending on the specific variant (said to have numerous variants), it may also spread via removable drives (USB sticks for instance) and by exploiting weak passwords (password, 12345 and qwerty etc).

It disables several important system services (including email) and security products and downloads arbitrary files (making it difficult to detect).

Even the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team has cautioned that “…disabling AutoRun on Microsoft Windows systems can help prevent the spread of malicious code. However, Microsoft’s guidelines for disabling AutoRun are not fully effective, which could be considered vulnerability.”

You may read the full article here: http://business-standard.com/347182/

Director Anurag Kashyap walked up to director/actor/anchor/rock singer Farhan Akhtar and said, “Your sister has outshone you. She’s had a fabulous debut with Luck By Chance. She’s number one, you’re number two.” Farhan replies: “Yes, we decided to keep it in the family.”

I saw Luck By Chance and Dev.D recently and couldn’t stop wondering as to how incredible 2009 will be for “indie” films. I met an ad professional in Delhi’s messy Nehru Place and guess what, he was a producer too (for a Rs 5 crore film Jugaad. The film was destined to flop, it didn’t look right but the producer insisted that he had looked into the logistics and that he would recover the amount. But more importantly, he said, he wanted to tell a story (the film tells his own story, the producer had said to me). “It couldn’t have been possible in any other era. It’s only now that even I can thump my chest proudly and say, ‘Yeah, I’ve made this film.’” And he gives me glowing examples of many others like him; an IIT graduate, a mass communication instructor, a graduate, an LA-based software engineer; all individuals who want to produce or direct films. Forget, for a moment, the fate of these films at the BO. Isn’t it simply fascinating that we are living in an era where people like you and I can actually dream of writing scripts, directing and even funding movies? Why, I find it doable to actually sit with a bunch of like-minded friends for a get-together, work on an engaging script and chip in to even fund a film. What’s more, in today’s day and age, it just might work and who knows, we could even break even.

No wonder then that the “Indie” fest in India is a mini-industry in itself. You’ll have Abhay Deol working on films that he believes in, you’ll have Farhan Akhtar acting in films despite the fact that he doesn’t have the face of a “conventional” good-looking hero (if you know what I mean). Then there’ll be directors like Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Neeraj Pandey, Sriram Raghavan who’ll make films that are closest to their hearts, scripts that appeal to them. Talk to the makers of this kind of cinema and they’ll tell you that it’s way to early for the “indie” movement to take off (Deol even said that our industry is now at a stage where Hollywood was in the 70s). But most of them are happy that they’re experiencing celluloid at their own pace, in their own style. 

And to feel the charm of the celluloid spill over to individuals like you and me is even more fascinating. So if there’s a story in your head, take it seriously and translate it into a visual delight. Who knows, you could be toasting it in the next film festival in LA!

Revelations that Ramalinga Raju, Satyam’s disgraced founder, has properties in 63 countries put paid to the widely-held notion that South Indians are a “simple people”. I do not subscribe to such generalities, so the news — apart from the jaw-dropping details of the scam itself — did not take me by surprise. But there are those who cannot believe that he of the clan that sport tilaks on their foreheads and make a beeline to the IITs could stoop to collecting 321 pairs of shoes.

Why do we ascribe certain traits to a certain kind, even at the risk of being fooled, or worse, pained? A Bengali film buff colleague is an unabashed admirer of Akshay Kumar. Akshay Kumar! “You cannot survive on Satyajit Ray,” he says. Sit with him and he will regale you with moments of pleasure spent in the august company of Amar, Akbar and Anthony. Ouch!

Then, there is the shoddy refrain, harboured by a few, that Marathis are cowardly. But Hemant Karkare and Vijay Salaskar were Marathi.

Internationally too, stereotyping is alive and present. My maternal aunt cannot bear the fact that a cousin has moved in with a Jew. Had it not been for the lip service she is forced to pay to victims of the Holocaust, I assume she would be more vehement in her denunciation of Jews’ “tightfistedness” (her word). Isn’t that a mere stereotype? And let’s not even get started on blacks — Obama or not.

This brings to mind Ellen DeGeneres’ famous quote from Oscar night, 2007: “What a wonderful night, such diversity in the room, in a year when there’s been so many negative things said about people’s race, religion and sexual orientation. And I want to put this out there: If there weren’t blacks, Jews and gays, there would be no Oscars, or anyone named Oscar, when you think about that.”

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. I am yet to meet a Punjabi who does not wear his ostentation on his sleeve.

When the carts, cages, animals and crew of Apollo Circus came and camped on the outskirts of Saharsa, they woke it up like nothing else had done before. The sleepy little town in the north-eastern part of Bihar, where I spent a part of my childhood, is somewhere between R K Narayan’s Malgudi and Khushwant Singh’s Mano Majra. It was the same even then, some two decades ago when the circus came.

Saharsa was given a commissioner a long time ago, out of turn, only because it happened to be the constituency of Lalit Narayan Mishra, who used to be a powerful minister in Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet until he was killed in a bomb blast. But the arrival of bureaucrats failed to change the place. The power supply continues to be about 12 hours every day (serious, still!), the signs of urbanisation are restricted to the one pucca road that runs through the town, and the market is a patch of shops on either side on a small segment of this road.

This road ends about 400 metres behind our house, marking the end of Saharsa’s municipal boundary. Where the road ends, there is a large graveyard with roughly equal number of trees and graves. Some distance beyond this graveyard, Apollo Circus camped, and shook and stirred Saharsa.

I had just entered my teens and was on summer vacation from my boarding school. I had already been in boarding a few years and by this time had begun to imbibe some of the traits of bigger cities, including the unfortunate loss of child-like wonder that the people of Saharsa had. So I used to smile when I noticed that the only road of the town became a one-way street in the evening as nearly the entire population made its way towards the circus grounds, with little bubbles of dust rising from their chappals. There were a few motorised vehicles, too, of the handful of VIPs who were given passes by the circus company. Of the masses, some bought tickets and went in to watch the performances, while a large section just hung around the camps, watching the animals, and of course (a feeling I had only recently become aware of) the girls. For the month or so that Apollo Circus was there, Saharsa was transformed; it had an unfamiliar electricity running through its lanes.

I attributed it to the small-town mindset. The people, I thought, latched on to the one thing that broke their routine and added a new dimension to their life, which otherwise was the same round the year.

I was wrong. Saharsa is not alone in being excited by a circus, it is the same everywhere. The whole world loves a spectacle.

In October 2005, I was at the New Delhi airport, waiting to catch a flight to Patna, where I was going to cover the Assembly elections. The flight was delayed by three hours. Having quickly consumed all the newspapers and magazines on offer, I sat before the television, which (perhaps under some tie-up) was only showing a particular news channel. Very soon, many more people gathered around the television. The news anchor was breathlessly talking of a fortune teller in a mofussil town in Madhya Pradesh who had forecast that he would die that day at four in the evening. The live telecast showed a crowd at this fellow’s house, mostly of news television crew. A special puja was being conducted to save him. Anyway, the fellow turned out to be a bad fortune teller and did not die at the appointed hour. The news anchor looked furious with him for remaining alive and the crowds quickly disappeared. It was like a circus show had been called off midway.

Surely, this is no longer new or unique. A few weeks ago I caught the live telecast on another news channel of a python that had somehow managed to climb an electricity pole and got entangled with the wires. The anchor looked ready to explode with excitement, analyzing the consequences if either the snake got an electric shock or fell 30 feet to the ground.

These news channels are among the most watched, indicating our love for a spectacle. Unfortunately, this predilection is not limited to such relatively harmless spectacles – a fact that unsavoury but smart men have been quick to grasp and exploit.

That is why Shiv Sena attacked South Indians in Mumbai in the 1960s and in the 1990s attacked dating couples at Wimpy’s in New Delhi’s Connaught Place. This is what Praveen Togadia used to briefly make himself and his trishool national figures. And that is why Sri Ram Sene and Pramod Muthalik are up to their little tricks. They know our love of the circus.

If we do not want it, the solution is simple. If no one pays attention to the circus, it will stop. (The real circus is already on the run from television and Bollywood.) But Saharsa lives within all of us, making Muthalik/Togadia a compelling watch.

There is, however cause for optimism. Many would struggle to remember Togadia. And Apollo was gone from Saharsa in five weeks.

Public sector bankers are probably delighted that Montek Singh Ahluwalia is not a Lok Sabha member. For, it has saved them the trouble of repeatedly visiting a constituency and footing the bill to launch new products or open branches at mega events there.

Instead, many of them have been concentrating on Yojana Bhawan, which seems to have replaced Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu as the hotspot for public sector bank chiefs.

While this may be dismissed as hearsay, there is nothing better than an advertisement on the front page of many dailies last week which reflects the changing power equations. A bank, which was launching a new product, had Ahluwalia’s picture on top.

One really needs to go back and see if there was any other deputy chairman of the Planning Commission who received such prominent display.

Of course, Home Minister P Chidambaram, the Lok Sabha member from Sivaganga, continues to hog the limelight at events such as a branch launch or even the launch of operations of an insurance company promoted by some public sector banks. It may be attributed to a commitment made before Chidambaram moved from one end of North Block to another. Besides, a home minister is one of the key members of the Union Cabinet. But they are no longer in Sivaganga.

After Chidambaram’s exit from the finance ministry, it is the Planning Commission which provides major inputs in key government appointments and recommending extensions.
Ahluwalia is seen as the key player in the present economic set up and more importantly, the former finance secretary is said to be the man Prime Minister Manmohan Singh trusts the most.

Till recently, finance ministry officials would dismiss Planning Commission’s suggestion as something that sounded good in theory but was not practical.

So, a large number of spending proposals were trimmed. But that is no longer the case. Planning Commission’s suggestion to give the fiscal and revenue deficit targets a miss to focus on social sector spending may have been ignored for at least three years, but at a time when stimulus packages are fashionable — and necessary — Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act is very much on the backburner.

There was a time no so long ago when finance ministry officials took pains to explain that the Planning Commission’s suggestion to use India’s growing foreign exchange reserves to fund infrastructure was not legally tenable.

But all that has changed there is now growing acceptance of everything that comes out of Yojana Bhawan. It can also be gauged from the fact that finance ministry plays second fiddle to Planning Commission when pump priming is done to stay away from the effects of the sub-prime problems, affecting almost all economies.

Similarly, term finance institutions are no longer termed as things that are well past their expiry date. While ICICI, IDBI, IFCI and IIBI may be things of the past, there are new players such as India Infrastructure Finance Corporation, which issue government-guaranteed tax-free bonds — again said to be Planning Commission’s idea.

And, bankers usually do not miss out on emerging trends which explains why there is more focus on Yojana Bhawan than on Sivaganga.

TV Today, the owner of Hindi and English news channels such as Aaj Tak, Dilli Aaj Tak, Tez and Headlines Today had identified four to five regional languages in which it had planned to launch news channels. At least two news channels were supposed to have been launched by April–May this year. That’s history now. The company is staying away from any new projects. Likewise, the Network 18 group (of CNBC, Awaaz, CNN-IBN and IBN7 fame) had promised a host of regional news channels – the plans are now on the backburner. NDTV, too, launched its city-specific news and current affairs channel Metro Nation in Delhi one year ago in the hope of following it up with similar channels in Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Today, it is scouting around for a partner\investor to save its only metro channel from the brink of closure.
Broadcaster after broadcaster is shelving its expansion plans into the regional markets which seemed attractive for their higher TV viewership and advertising growth rate than national media. Television industry sources say that several news broadcasting companies have cancelled their “purchase orders” for equipment required to set up new channels.
But the dark clouds hovering over the recession-hit news television industry have a silver lining. Bringing cheer to the sector is the prospective launch of at least two major news channels aimed at the regional markets. After missing several deadlines, Sakshi TV is finally on its way to hit the airwaves in Andhra Pradesh on February 21.  To be launched by the Andhra CM’s son Y S Jagan Reddy who also started a newspaper last year under the same brand name, the channel will take on existing Telugu news channels like TV9 and Eenadu, among others.
An end-to-end High-definition TV channel, at 26, Sakshi will have the highest number of “OB” vans among all news channels – regional or national.  The Kotharis of Rajasthan Patrika In Jaipur are also giving finishing touches to the building being erected for their television venture. And if a television broadcasting consultant is to be believed, despite the economic slowdown and overcrowding of the news TV space, the interest in the sector hasn’t waned. He is still getting “serious” queries from industrialists in MP, Rajasthan and West Bengal keen to set up TV stations.
The reason is simple. The power and the influence that a news business is supposed to wield can now be bought – the small-scale, regional business model, that is — for as low as Rs 15 crore with a monthly operating cost of between Rs 55 lakh and Rs 75 lakh a month. To know if these projects took off or not, watch this space.

Without a firm principle of primogeniture, Delhi sultans weren’t very good at establishing dynasties. And many did not last long. Knowing this, one wise sultan took no chances: he kept his son and heir away from the court, made sure the boy was educated well under the supervision of a respected maulvi, and that he did not develop any of the usual bad habits. Then, this conscientious father died. His son became the sultan, instantly forgot his studies, fell greedily into all the vices from which he had been separated, and in short order found himself sick and paralysed by syphilis. Eventually, a usurper took courage, entered the royal chamber, rolled the helpless young man up in his rug, and tossed him out of the window into the river below.

I don’t know A S Murty; in fact, I must admit that I heard his name for the first time yesterday. I am sure there are many like me who know only one IT man blessed with that name, though spelt differently.
All of us know Mr Murty now. For, he is the man in the hottest seat that India Inc can offer at this point.  He has been described by his friends and well-wishers (their tribe seems to be increasing every second) as Always Smiling Murty; a people’s man; man for the moment; meticulous; hardworking; consensus man; focused on work etc.  Those who came in late and ran out of words are saying he is the right person for the job simply because he is a `gentleman’.
Some others say he knows the DNA of the company, though I am not too sure whether anyone is terribly impressed with Satyam’s DNA. For, I remember Ramalinga Raju once telling me during an interview that `corporate governance is in his genes’.   
At the moment, Mr Murty’s main qualification seems to be that he knows Satyam well as he has worked in the company for almost 15 years. It’s true in these times, Satyam needs an insider who can marshall his forces well. And that can only happen if the new CEO knows Satyamites for a considerable period of time.
Mr Murty, a workaholic (a media report stresses this point by saying he has no hobbies), will of course try hard to make a success of his job — that is guiding Satyam through the toughest time in its history.
So I wish him well. But I see three problems in my wish being fulfilled. The first is the nature of the job itself. He would possibly be the CEO with the shortest tenure as he would be the leader in transition. The company will be sold shortly and no one knows whether the new owners would like to keep him as the CEO. It’s doubtful whether it will be possible for him to establish any sort of confidence with either his employees or his clients. Already some entities with substantial stake in Satyam are resenting the fact that they were not consulted for the selection of the CEO. Also, it’s well known that no outsider, with any sort of track record, was willing to take up such a short-term job.
The second problem is the fact that he is perceived to be among Raju’s favourites. He was given a clean chit by the former Satyam chairman in his famous confessional letter to the board.  Mr Raju had said Mr Murty was among those who had no knowledge of the situation in which the company is placed. I admire the guts shown by the government-appointed Satyam board to appoint as CEO somebody who was given a character-certificate by Raju!
The third problem – and this is the most complicated one — is the disclosure that Mr Murty sold 40,000 shares in two transactions in December, 2008 – the last one being on December 16 just hours before Satyam announced its aborted bid to buy two Maytas firms.
It could be sheer coincidence, or a fantastic sense of timing on Mr Murty’s part to have sold a majority of the shares in his company just a day before the scrip slid over 30 per cent following investor outrage over the Maytas deal. Mr Murty gained Rs 90 lakh through the deals and the sale was done to meet some of his personal financial commitments.
To be fair, he was not part of the board and may not have been privy to any of the wrong-doings. But there is also another section of people who are saying that Mr Murty had sniffed the negative implications of the buyout scandal much before others did.
This may well be loose talk. But the point is it all boils down to perception at the end of the day. And as they say, Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.