A quarter ends

The first quarter of the Financial Year 2013-14 has ended on a note of more uncertainty than when the year began. Global economies continue to be sluggish, the tapering off of QE 3  ( Quantitative Easing or the Bond Buying program in the US ) has caused occasional tremors in the US markets and flight of capital from emerging economies like India. The resultant rapid depreciation of the rupee ( it even touched  60 briefly last week ) is bad for the Indian economy which is already plagued with sluggish economic growth. However...

Read More

The problem of being Narayana Murthy

If you are NR Narayana Murthy you need to have the Midas touch. A company you created with a bunch of friends and built with vision and values has fallen a little out of step with the world of IT and lost out in the pace of change to competitors like TCS Cognizant and even HCL. The problem today is that the world has changed. The SMAC ( Social Media Mobility Analytics & Cloud ) revolution has changed motivations though it hasnt resulted in big contracts yet. And you need a deep understanding of the new world and yet retain the capabilities...

Read More

India Summit – many questions, some revelations! The Economist is arguably the finest magazine in the world with its outstanding coverage of world events and commentaries on the economy, politics and every aspect of the dynamics of the world we live in. And the India Summit held in Delhi end April not only lived up to the hype but met most expectations of the hundreds of CEOs, academicians and thinkers assembled to understand the state of our nation – India ! The biggest note of confidence was struck at the inauguration itself by none other...

Read More

A new Sholay unfolds

It has all the build-up and drama of a blockbuster Bollywood pot boiler and is reminiscent of the Sholay saga that many of us feasted on! A valiant Prime Minister supported by robust rural growth weathers the monster called the Recession of 2008 and India emerges in 2009 as the only economy to remain relatively unscathed by the economic slowdown. But after this the government has to beat back successive raids on its credibility by the dacoits of the 2G scam, the Commonwealth Games fiasco and most recently Coalgate. The Prime Minister, his reputation...

Read More

The logjam in Parliament

The logjam in Parliament I spend fifteen minutes in the Rajya Sabha yesterday watching my friend and new member of Parliament Anu Aga sit on a lonely bench with a few Congress folks on the treasury benches and a dozen ot so BJP folks on the other benches. To a script , when the house commenced at 2 PM the BJP folks walked into the well of the house chanted slogans asking the PM to resign and got the adjournment. The same farce is being repeated for two weeks and the nation has a paralysed Parliament to add to its woes of corruption, high inflation...

Read More