Why Shoot the Messenger !

"No one loves the messenger who brings bad news" -Sophocles in Antigone

When the PM said lets revive the animal spirit of the Indian economy media let loose its dogs of war. Because last time the suave economist did it in early nineties there was an explosive growth of economy resulting in corresponding increase in the earnings/salaries of the working class. The two decade long growth gave birth to new middle class India which demands better control over their lives & freedom. 

Slowdown in global economy have made the capitalist class unsure of handsome returns on their money so they look forward to governments to make available tranches of cash to bail them out of the mess. How could the crony capitalist media let the wages grow further making it difficult for the corporate to ‘control’ the rising independent middle class? Media editorial line is dictated by the Board not he editorial head.

Spectacular success of China is visible worldwide. It has lifted a staggering part of its population out of grinding poverty & made their lives worth living. China achieved all this without taking over other economies by force to rip them of their wealth. China quietly worked hard and served the consumerism in the developed world. Quietly is the key to Chinese success. Though China held Olympics but it has managed to stay off the publicity radar globally.

China leveraged local wisdom mixed with global technology to earn a respectable place on the high table of world’s leading nations. The Great Wall of China remains the enduring metaphor of its wisdom & success. China didn't join internet revolution without tweaking it to suit its national needs. India on the other hand jumped onto the internet wagon lock stock & barrel without a second thought as to where it will take it.

India remained under foreign rule for centuries so in the middle class India feels exuberant & can't resist the temptation to have an opinion on all subjects under the Sun without regard to any exposure to the topic. Like other 'unsuccessful' people, India has also similar self defense mechanism. People suffering from inferiority complex are very touchy about criticism. Moment you point out an aberration they reject your argument by citing two unrelated facts. Truth is gold in India actually, its very expensive.

Privately run media in India represent view of powerful corporate lobby and particular cultural supremacist  group. Media like Bollywood film industry prefer to divorce truth & reality for pursuit of greed. Instead of challenging the ancient traditions for sake of a modern and more just society. Indian media contributes to perpetuation of  an ancient way of life without regard to the fact that the very same culture caused immense pain to majority of the Indians for thousand years. India has a home grown slave tradition based on work profile of individuals duly sanctioned by religion and Dharma- the caste system of sage Manu. Media subscribes & works to perpetuate the ancient order.

Chairman of Press council of India Justice M Katju has held a mirror to media lately which has forced media to close its ranks & attack the illustrious gentleman with vengeance. I see the class struggle in India getting out of hand due to size of the population. Brahmins, the upper caste group, has been attacked several times by Dalit movements successfully, second ranked caste Kashtriyas have also been targeted in Naxal movements of 70s but the third ranked & actually financially most powerful caste group of Vaishyas have never faced any direct challenge. Opening up of retail to FDI is single most critical challenge to this caste group. Trade & Industry is dominated by this caste group only in India. This is the main reason for anti government stance of the private media in India.      

Media holds a mirror to society and challenges status-quo of all shades rather than  the political establishment. Indian media has completely failed to challenge the prevalent socio-religious order which has led to sudden increase in crimes of greed & rapes. Any sociologist would infer that spurt in crimes is directly related to psychology & culture promoted by media. Its time the visionary leadership in India wakes up and allows global media into India to give India a fair & free media. India should open up news media & education to foreign players so that India could join the new world order. 

Selling to Your Sales Team !

India is the land of Micro Small & medium enterprises [MSME] and such firms face unique functional challenges to succeed in the domestic & global market. Particularly the task of organizing a powerful sales & marketing team is tremendous. Although several SME players would insist that finding cheap credit & trained workforce are far more serious than getting new orders. Well entrepreneurship is a challenge in itself and majority of SMEs are generally young firms that don’t have long experience & critical knowledge of the market garnered through years of operations I the market. However some firms fail to scale up with time due to many factors despite their efforts and vision. And majority of the times such firms show a distinct common strand of not having a powerful Sales & Marketing team to propel it to grow faster than the competition & demand in the market.

Many SMEs that have regional & national sales operations are straddled with teams that were relevant 20 years ago. Majority of such sales & marketing teams are full of people who have no formal business education and also have not been trained regularly on the job. Such teams function in a bureaucratic manner and lack creativity essential for real success in the market. You would be surprised to know that many sales professionals lack knowledge about size of market, nature of competition & consumer profile despite years of reasonably satisfactory performance. Well in a rapidly growing market it possible to sell with little or no effort but mature markets can only be dominated by a strategic approach.  

Few years ago I was hired by an established SME to rejuvenate & reengineer their sales team. The said company has been led by a technocrat engaged in manufacturing of capital equipment for high speed packaging machines catering to the need of other firms. The capital equipment they make were generally sourced from abroad at a premium & only limited domestic competition was there for them to take on. Therefore there was a ready market of export substitution at an Indian cost to the entrepreneurs.

Their commission based sales & service team had national presence and it recently had become the major bottleneck in achieving higher sales numbers to help the firm acquire critical size in the market. The promoters also enjoyed close relationship at top level in customer organizations. Business selling is a team sport and the seller has to satisfy large team at the customer firm consisting of cost & finance guys to operators. Another company engaged in manufacture of faucets, showers & bath fittings had virtually no control over the sales agent responsible for half the market. In India majority of firms involved b2b segment lack direct control over distribution network or the customers.

Several SMEs are in awe of the power & hold of their sales people on the market. Many firms are held hostage by the Sales & Marketing teams which lead to negative impact on the top line & strategic growth of such firms. There is need to create & train the sales teams to face the challenges of the contemporary market scenario in India. SMEs need to audit their sales team periodically and organize them based on their objectives such as nature of the competition, product handled, type of market and demand structure in the market.

The top management must keep two paces ahead of their sales force to get the desired results. Technical sales team must have trained sales professionals so that quality cold calling result in communicating the brand of selling firm. Sales professionals, like leaders, are made not born and regular training & nurture keep them in fighting fit condition. Sales training must be factored in the plan and be taken as ongoing activity rather than periodic break from selling routine. Healthy sales & marketing team attract customers, credit and effective team mates for other functions too as they are the external & internal ambassadors of the firm. 

Hugh Hefner & Pope Benedict XVI : two Octogenarians !

The Head-priest of Roman Catholics Pope Benedict XVI has decided to lay down his office by end of February 2013. So what happens to future of Hope Industry? Will the NAV of the well listed commodities like Hope, Courage, Mind & Body and Persistence would be hammered severely in the short run? Will the experts continue to pontificate about the value of staying invested for a long term for better returns?

Body & Mind

Hugh Hefner renewed his contract with life by taking on new responsibility by expanding his relationship sphere to include a 24 year girl recently. Pope Benedict XVI has decided retire due to ill health. Many in Motivation industry insist that good thoughts improve the physical health. In India a Hindu preacher has built huge empire by promoting a breathing exercise to millions worldwide.  Such professionals make money by preaching about enormous benefits of ‘Dhayan’ and meditation. Such preachers argue that stress is bad & should be removed by altering breathing pattern. On the contrary Yoga exponents insist on physical exercise to achieve & maintain better mental health. In a way both promise to improve mind & body health.  The Pope would have known much more than Hugh Hefner about the benefits of maintaining healthy mind & body.

Courage

Never give up. We all have read, heard & taught stories of the seminal virtue of never giving up in the line of duty. Stephen Hawking is a living example of the power of human will. You can’t give up. Most religions exhort the believers to lay down life happily in the battle for human dignity but suicide is forbidden.  In everyday office situation many executives face the dilemma of resign or continue in the job.  At home too many challenges come up. Is it possible to be courageous most of the times and face the challenges? Or would it be wiser to exit from a stressful situation? In both scenarios the line between expected & unexpected may not be as clear. Can giving up a stressful job or relationship be considered smart strategy in real world? When can you throw in the towel in the game of life? It certainly isn’t one-dimensional.  Is there more fun in being Felix Baumgartner?

Love Life

Religion tells us to love life. In history whenever mankind faced terrible tragedies it took shelter in religious teachings for courage & fortitude. Love has been given status equal to the God himself. Love for work, nature & humanity forms the cornerstone of all religions. But love is hard to define. The atheists & believers may not agree on the existence of God but they don’t spar on the value of love for living a meaningful life. The debate on what is love may never end like the search for God. Hugh Hefner definition of love may not find sanction of religious leaders. 

Question is did Pope XVI give up? Will it jolt the Hope industry and affect business of Motivation peddlers like Deepak Chopras, Shiv Kheras & Stephen Coveys ? 

Republic of Animals !

Animals and humans share this universe but humans alone make fun of animals. Scorn, I would say, ridicule too. Have you ever seen any animal laughing at a human? Will that be behaving like us? Humans find it difficult to share things easily with its own species & almost impossible with others depending upon degree of unfamiliarity. Most animal species happily share most of the available bounty with their ilk and others. We humans extensively use animal metaphors to describe our fellow humans. The most common animal metaphor used is perhaps that of dog, cat & lion. Most of us think of themselves as a Lion and others as dogs? Let's see what's popular animal metaphors are there from the animal kingdom. Let me warn you that since its humans who run the show of civilization & creation of languages concepts etc therefore animals are still said to have been living in a kingdom and not in a republic with adult franchise.

Most countries want to become a world power more in military sense than economic. And therefore military has remained a major national asset of the nationalist people. Honey Badger reminds me of the elitist navy seals of USA or other professional killing machines part of military worldwide. Who won’t like the sweet badge of honour for killing in cold blood for enlightened-self-interest? 

Donkey has long been symbol of poor hard working classes who could never get out of the rut of feeding, sleeping, breeding revolving on the axis of relentless back braking hard labor. India is home to world’s largest population of poor people. Large numbers of people are willing to work on assurance of food alone without nay wages. You won’t be surprised that our Hindu nationalist politicians have long discovered that India is shining. The ‘secular’ politicians find India as incredible. Well India surely is an incredible country where vast majority conducts their life according to movement of planets in Sky.

Monkey is generally portrayed as an animal that resemble human race a lot depending upon its various species which is endowed with ability to learn or copy human behavior. You may have herd of folk tale of ‘Monkey & Cap Seller’ in which the trader uses Monkey’s behavior to get back his stolen merchandise from him. Well moral of the story is that those who copy for living would not win the game. A nation that discourages original thinking and promotes conformity by imitating, reengineering, technology, processes and concepts from others cannot become a world leader. It’s illogical to except that a blind follower to become leader, who will he follow?  Regimented society based on group dynamics than individual recognition has no future. It would soon be dead as a dodo.

Dogs are domesticated for their unconditional loyalty. Horse is said to be most loyal among all the animals. Can you recall a famous person who is known as Dog of X-country? Not pejoratively of course. Many people are called Lion of so & so place. Punjab my homeland has a fetish for the sobriquet of Lion of Punjab. CM of Gujarat also is called Lion of Gujarat.  United Kingdom is well known for having cats as pets. Cats are add charm to life by their presence but are not known for their loyalty.

Modern corporate media is like cats, it has no value except to add some color to the business of life & governance in a country. Media no longer resent any editorial control direct or indirect as long as it has healthy bottomline like that of a feline. Gone are the days when a book or story in media could affect amendments to constitution or force parliaments to enact new laws. These days’ cats keep playing around the house without disturbing anyone except those who are looking at them. 

2013 would be a better year than the previous!

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love – John Donne

Well I am no astrologer but New Year has to be better than the previous or India could have its very own Indian Spring. Population growth of India is running far ahead of the GDP numbers. The unprecedented growth phase stretched roughly from 90s to 2010 has ended leaving far more people clueless about their future. The Hindu Right-Wing political groups represented by RSS clones like BJP are fast losing their patience to get another bite into power at Delhi. Never before youthful India fed & brought up on large doses of glamorous dreams through a lifestyle of entertainment want money for acquiring gadgets that it can’t seem to live without. The soup is further spiked by large number of youths from the destitute class struggling to live like their friends in the upper echelons as they too have access to same media as the consuming class.

The Elections in a democracy is like a game season. Politicians would be readying for 2014 which would put the affairs of the country on back burner. Political class disconnected from majority of population seeks to segment people on the basis of caste/religion than economic or regional factors. This results in obfuscation of economic issues and emergence of identity politics to garner the votes.  Political class in India is not media savvy so the fall into trap of Bollywood style image building depicting them as super humans capable of solving ALL problems facing the region and country. Religion in India is very entrenched in everyday life so use of religion in politics is customary in an election year.

Although India has time & again refused to elect leaders who present themselves as strong & powerful but politicians continue to project them as most powerful lords. I am sure no person with basic knowledge of marketing would believe that N. Modi’s victory in Gujarat elections has anything to do with his projection as the only ‘strong & able’ person alive in India. Modi victory is assertion of Hindu pride than his personal appeal. Such phenomena are prevalent in Punjab, J&K & many other states formed on culture identity of the people.

The 2012 could well be called as the year of Media-Manipulations rather than organic civil protests. It’s customary for media to go where the news is but in India media has demonstrated its ugly power of creating news where it wasn’t.  Taking a cue from Cyrus Barocha show 2012 was ‘the- year- that- wasn’t’ from the news media perspective. People would never have known Anna or Ramdev unless media provided them relentless coverage. Media funded by vested interests & need for sensationalism went on to organize many people protests on Dehi roads. The opposition parties also leveraged their right to oppose the govt by distract the ruling coalition from task of economic development. Therefore Indian audience had to face the double whammy of useless news & economic slowdown. The media & politicians played havoc with happiness & economic health of average Indians in 2012. Current year being closer to elections would not be any better though we pray to these monsters to let us leave alone. The UPA government didn’t allow full FDI in Newsmedia and attempted to control it which is not possible due to nature of the beast. So let’s hope that India may have a quieter 2013 so that people could get to live their life away from these monsters.

Is Masala Journalism Bad Business?

“When ice freezes, all the excrement rises to the surface. And so, when the dialectic was frozen, all the sacred excrement of the dialectic came to the surface. When the future is deep-frozen – and, indeed, even the present – we shall see all the excrement come up from the past.” (Baudrillard 1994, p.26)

2012 is sliding into history in the land of Curry Munchers, India. Although the year has been pretty ordinary from economic, political & social angles but it has brought to forefront a sort of journalism which had been confined to sectarian-vernacular ghettoes of the media. I call it Masala [Spices] journalism in TV news-media. Most characteristic feature of masala- journalism style is preeminence of the style over substance. It does not matter how insignificant is the event the anchor would make it point to adulterate the facts with overdose of shrill high pitch voice, background sound effects & graphics of the screen to grab your attention.  Channels honchos believe that since majority of Indian watch Bollywood movies full of unrealism so they would seamlessly connect with shouting screaming anchors.

Mothers do give attention to crying babies but if a baby keeps crying for hours better take it to a doctor. The Masala journalism is not an isolated phenomenon but a prevalent malady afflicting the entire TV News-media in India in 2012. The English language print media for almost fifty years maintained a distinction between national & vernacular press. That boundary has been obliterated now with rise of Hindi journalism. In 80s the largest selling vernacular newspaper was non-Hindi Malaya Manorama which has been replaced by a Cow-belt Hindi language paper. 

So the growth in Cow-belt lead to spilling over of low cost journos into English media. Traditionally media in India was notorious for paying very low wages & field correspondents were supposed to hawk advertising for the publication. This invasion of English language media by Hindi trained journos brought in new way of thought & expression into the profession. Unfortunately the Cow-Belt has remained most underdeveloped part of India with large number of districts caught up in insurgency. Social conditions shape the personality of people. So these new journos adopted an attacking slandering style of interviewing people in public in the way police interrogates criminals in privacy of police stations in India. These Masala journos will keep asking you same question repeatedly & at the same time telling you that you are wrong to hold your view.  The Masala journos pretends to be educated than IAS, Senior Execs, professors & the other educated elite.

Arnab Goswami of Times Group once threatened the principal of India’s premier college St. Stephens Delhi on public television demanding that the principal must give class attendance to a student who had not attended the college. The compliant political class pressured the VC Delhi University to pass the order making an exception in the case. The principal must have lost his motivation to maintain the tradition of excellence in his institute. Masala Goswami subverted the Taj Mahal of education in India & successive generations would pay the price of his stupidity.

There is general agreement in the media czars in India that electronic media is suited for sensationalism to get viewership. So they have let loose the marauding semi-literate armies on TV screens beaming right into homes with kids watching slogans of “Hang them, Castrate the bastards” & other puerile carefully selected jargon.  All this is done to get the attention of the viewer. These blocks think that minuscule viewership of BBC & CNN in India is because they haven’t matched the profile of consumer with the offer service. So it’s profitable to offer highly spiced curries to titillate the masses.

The media managers are rare in India because the owners want complete & total control. There is an established tradition in India to hire managers for growth phase of the business. Once the business has scaled up to an economic level the managers are often ejected & replaced by a lackey or family. This in media has led to a unique challenge that editors have come back into power in a capital intensive business. The editor wants advertising revenue to grow, so a critical level of viewership would be required to gain attention of media planers. Therefore instead of creating a business strategy they get distracted by a content oriented move to lure the masses. Here they spill the curry !  The business cycle for a hindi movie has to be shorter than a 24x7 New-media.

The media czars have fallen into trap of Editorial led strategy for a capital intensive News-Media business.”The Hindu’ commands a brand value much greater & beyond the covered markets. Masala journalism can increase the TRP but it will completely distract & destroy the attention of viewers from advertising.  Why would some business advertise on a channel where the audience is always emotionally charged?  There would very poor recall scores for the advertising message presented to an emotionally charged audience.  Masala journalism is not only bad business its poor journalism also.  Media must soothe the nerves of low-income country like India instead of rabble rousing. Look at the Hindi movies, light action based comedies do more business than others. People want some peace in their life and want to eat homemade food than spicy stuff available at the street corner. 

How the politicians find what people want ?

Political parties in a democracy are answerable to the electorate goes the cliche, but do our parties undertake any scientific research to enumerate the priorities of the masses? Well in India leaders assume that majority of the people do not vote on a rational basis. Those leaders are right as the results of elections indicate.

Majority still vote for caste, religion, regional and ideological orientations. Economic issues do not seem to motivate the masses to vote in large numbers. But how do the parties find out what the people are thinking in their constituency? Politician in India seems to go by judgement approach and expert panel opinion taken from experts from within the party.

I have undertaken a focus group exercise in the youth segment to unravel their mind and the issues that they think are extremely important for the nation. The list in the order of priority is given under;

1. Population: Surprisingly no political party has talked about it in 2009 elections. What can the electorate do? Population growth remains the most critical issue that is slowing down the growth of India.

2. Respect for talent: Most participants feel that there is no room for talent & talented individuals in India. Youth is perturbed that the talented individuals do not stand a fair chance of achievement in our society. People still give too much importance to other factors over the talent of an individual. Students believe that it stifles the growth of talent, consequently growth of country.

3. Corruption: Why we have accepted bribery and corruption as part of life in India?Corruption weakens the country but no party seem to make it as an election issue and has offered no solutions to curb corruption in public life.

4. Economic policy: Major political parties do not present a clear cut industrialisation plan that could create jobs for the educated. All parties make similar noise about their economic policy.

5. Removal of poverty: Youth do not find mention of how much growth in per capita income would the political party would like to achieve in their tenure of five years.