A Flicker of the flame

This whole week has consisted of people telling me that India has no future and that the cancer has set in too deep and me denying it vehemently.

It started from an old friend of mine visiting from Canada. ( A Muslim friend who was with me during the Mumbai riots and moved there after that saying that a racially charged India had no future for Muslims like him)

We were speaking about how we should be better citizens, and more interactive citizens like knowing about our local areas, knowing about what number to call for what , etc.

He turned around and laughed at me and said, how can you people be so stupid. In Canada we only know one number and that number is 911. Once we dial it, the government takes over and we get a return on the taxes we pay. Only in India are you people so stupid that not only do you pay your taxes, but you also do the governments job for it.

Its like buying a dog and then barking for it. Not only are we paying taxes, we are also doing the govt's job for it.

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A further jab came when  I spoke to someone else who told me about the hopeless situation of the education system. According to her the new lot of MBAs was a bunch of nincompoops from second rate cities due to the number of colleges being setup, getting approved by a bunch of jokers at the board of education,  and then run slipshod just so that some initials can be attached to the students name.

Running a placement firm, she was interviewing a bunch of candidates from a campus placement. Out of sheer exasperation at the level of dumbness of the supposed Masters of Business Administration (MBAs) she was talking to, she tried a trick question, which was if I was to offer you a job at Satyam right now, would you take it.

She got an overwhelming response saying yes Satyam is an excellent company, beautiful reputation, and we would love it. She walked out and 2 hours later called up the placement co-ordinator at the college and told her " please ask your students to pick up a newspaper once in a while".

This, folks is the management corpus of your tomorrows companies. Do we really wonder why corporate governance is going to the dogs ?

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During the week of course we got news of the Satyam (I wont say fraud like most people do) fiasco. I think its been dragged to bits for me to repeat the whole thing, but what my take on the whole issue is,  Mr. Raju said a very interesting thing. He said that he had an over-inflated balance sheet , which my sources tell me is de facto for companies in India for a variety of reasons and he was trying to balance it by buying 2 companies at 6400 Crores which he would never have paid physically, but which would have balanced the books.

Lets understand the move. His asset side has 6400 Crs showing which doesn't exist, he needs something on the liabilities side to bring it down to zero. So he shows the purchase of 2 companies which does a 6400 Cr on liabilities side.

	Assets	Liabilites
Before purchase	Cash and bank balances worth 6400 Cr	====
After purchase	Cash and bank balances worth 6400 Cr + 2 companies worth 6400 Cr (allegedly)	6400 Cr to be paid for the two companies
Nett Sum	2 Companies worth 6400 Cr (allegedly)	======

Three thoughts come to mind with this:

1) Wasn't Satyams' meteoric rise begun with the purchase of IndiaWorld group of companies which was valued at 10 Cr for 500 Cr which kick started the dot com boom. Deja vu, anyone ?

2) How many other companies have tried a similar move and gotten away with it or how many others are in the process of doing similar moves as we speak.

3) Mr. Raju said he would have never paid the 6400 Cr physically for the two companies but just balanced the books. There are 2 fallacies with the logic. One unless he did, how would the 6400 move off Satyams books into the books of the promoters of the 2 companies he was buying and the second is were the companies worth 6400 Cr to begin with or was that also creative accounting.

This kind of creative accounting had my Canadian friend clucking his tongue in disapproval.

To top it off, I saw Mr. Harish Salve our ex solicitor general saying on television when asked if Mr. Raju would go to jail for his actions, "We are gods country, we don't send anyone to jail". I love his sense of humour.

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The lowest point of my week was when I had the news that Sunjay Dutt is possibly contesting the elections on a SP ticket. I saw this coming in the second part of my article in July 2007. http://theindipatriot.blogspot.com/2008/07/sarkar-raj.html

Folks, this is a ghastly salt being rubbed into the wounds of Mumbai by the joker Amar Singh. I think people across India have forgotten the real meaning of the word "parliamentarian". They are behaving as if this is a gala event and the tickets are for the latest potboiler premiere at the local theatre.

JAAGO RE INDIA JAGO !!!!! The tickets are to the parliament. The most august body of a country.

For all those who didnt know, it is a ticket to legislate. To write laws for the common people.

Do we really want Sunju Baba writing laws for us ?  If there was a variety show to be done in parliament, Sunju baba would have my full support for a ticket to it, but to allow a person who has made it a rule to break the law time and again, to write laws ?????????? (the litany of his lawbreaks are endless from drug abuse to firing rounds at Kaka's bungalow to rash driving ad infinitum)

Problem with India is, we are not looking for legislative people anymore in parliament, we are looking for a tamasha. It is getting to be a joke, the only people in parliament now are people who are used to doing "mandoli" (settlements between people), no wonder we get co-alition governments, its in their blood to make deals.

Lets take our dear Sanju Baba and his "mandoli", lets see.... his father swore that he was a  Congress-ite. His sister is one, the Shiv Sena fought for his freedom from Jail, has a BJP lawyer defending him, hes standing on a SP ticket.

Now thats what I call Indian politics. 

I heard someone defend him, saying but the SP is an ally of the Congress. I'm scratching my head, didnt the SP threaten to withdraw support from Congress this week. Lets say hes elected and Amar Singh pulls another of his such stunts while Sunju Baba is in power, which way will he go ? Will he side with his sister (his fathers heir according to his statements) or with his new mentor ?

What strange bedfellows politics makes.

I have time and again, fought against the stupidity of mixing Munnabhai with Sanjubaba but it seems the general public is too stupid to even look beyond the 15 mins of celluloid fame. http://theindipatriot.blogspot.com/2007/07/lage-raho-munnabhai.html 

I am amazed that just after the shouts for politicians blood, we are standing around and seeing this happen, have people forgotten the blood of the riots ? I still wake up smelling the blood. Its a stench which never goes away.

The same people who were screaming for the blood of the people associated with terrorism a week ago are now okaying the electing of someone who has been convicted of having an AK47 which was delivered by Dawood's henchmen who was linked to the arms cache of the  Mumbai blasts ?

I guess we all saw this coming, In Mumbai times this week Zeenat Aman's comment was very telling where she said that "the perpetrators of this act" must be punished. Lovely !!! 

Its gone from the politicians who allowed this to happen being punished to "the perpetrators" (as in Pakistan, Qasab, the ISI, etc etc anyone third party) .

Guess the fire is cooling faster than I thought.

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Thought for the week:

Till a few weeks ago, I used to get SMS SPAM which said "Make 100% profit in the stock market, money back guarantees.....etc etc"

Yesterday I got a message which had me rolling in laughter " Recover your stock market losses......"

Everyone knows marketers only push whats in the clients mind, so guess they are now assuming post Satyam almost everyone has made losses so they are now pitching for that. 

Wonder what happened to those money back guarantees. If they ever honored them, these companies should be broke by now.