Die-hard Marxist

Beyond doubt, Prakash is a die-hard Marxist, who draws his inspiration from strong leaders of small nation states like Hugo Chavez & Castro, but ideologies oft en have to take a backseat in the prevailing political scenario in India. He fully realises that the only chance for the Left in India is to cooperate with the mainstream centrist political parties, lest the communists remain confined as regional actors. Prakash, as the ideologically driven 56-year-old General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is said to be devoid of any personal ambitions. But his rather strong affiliations to the party and its objectives make him ferociously ambitious to see to it that the hammer & sickle gets painted on the pan-Indian wall.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Framing farmers

How to kill the farmer with double speak!
Absolutely bizarre and inexplicable actions by policy makers in India are nothing new. Nor is their penchant for double speak and double standards. Add one more to this ignominious list-the recent decision to import millions of tons of wheat to ‘help the Indian farmer’. Quite frankly, that is akin to UP Chief Minister peremptorily shutting down Reliance Fresh outlets in the state to lend a helping hand to Mukesh Ambani. Both actions defy logic, and both make a mockery of the stated objective of the UPA government and of Mayawati of helping the poor Indian farmer earn a better and more dignified livelihood. Elementary economics states that prices have a tendency to fall when supply increases in the market place. So if the government places contracts with multinational food companies like Cargill to import as much as 5 million tonnes of wheat around the time the Kharif season domestic output is coming out of the farms, common sense states that the farmer will be the loser since there will be a downward pressure on prices.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Vietnam comes back to haunt...

The US in the wake of Iraq mess
“The price of America’s withdrawal (from Vietnam) was paid by millions of innocent citizens,” so said US President George W. Bush, in an unexpected attempt to draw parallels between the Iraq war & America’s cold war nightmare in Vietnam. He also argued that, if the US gets out of Iraq, when the threat of militancy looms large over the West Asian country that would affect the credibility and morale of the US in its global “War on Terror.” So far, the critics of the Bush administration have called the Iraq fiasco, the Vietnam of President Bush. The President is now trying to shift the entire focus from Iraq invasion to the presumed consequences of an immediate withdrawal. Many US watchers are of the view that Bush’s risky game with historical examples is aimed at wining the support of the conservatives, who, still, believe that the Vietnam withdrawal was the manifest of vulnerability of the US political class.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

The Devil’s online!

727 pages of ads in a single edition, Vogue shows the way
Being in ‘vogue’ in a fashionable world is an intensely challenging task – after all, it’s all about ‘induced epidemics’, to quote George Bernard Shaw. But it’s a plague of another kind steadily overcastting the publishing world and has in fact forced them out of their contented closets – rise of the world wide web and a general decline in consumer reading patterns of magazines & periodicals. How can they survive this onslaught? In more ways than one, it was Newsweek. com, in 2005, which played the lighthouse. Rather than duplicating text from print editions, this online alibi of the weekly included everything from daily breaking news to video blogs from correspondents at the Vatican to podcasts of the Newsweek On Air online radio show. And there, in this transmutation, from a strict magazine player to an overall online entertainment destination lay what pundits call the ‘gateway to the future’.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Swanky frills

Mallya gets on the racing track
A man famous for tongue-in-cheek remarks, the flamboyant Kingfisher chairman Vijay Mallya gave the very term synergy, a totally diff erent meaning with one of his now famous one liners, on why he chose to start an airline after succeeding in liquor business. His repartee was, “They both make you fly!” And after he has given Indians some unique lessons in flying, the latest interest of Mallya seems to be speeding up on the race tracks. Lately, Mallya has reportedly invested his personal wealth, worth Rs.5 billion, in the game that the speedsters swear on, Formula 1 (F1), albeit what analysts might consider quite a risky investment in a careworn Spyker Ferrari racing team (losses of about € 29.9 million for the half year ending June 2007). What is racing through ‘King’ Mallya’s mind? The larger question, in fact, is what will Mallya re-christen his new team as, considering he wouldn’t like to conflict his interests, as Kingfisher Airlines has been sponsoring the Toyota team in the F1 seasons already.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Save Delta, your Delta!

Born in a small country-side town Galveston, for this Texan, Atlanta seemed a distant dream, but he plodded on. He lost both his parents to cancer by the time he was 21, but today at 52 years of age, is happily married for 21 long years! Everything in Richard H. Anderson’s life seemed to go up against his well-being – but he’s run along well, and how? Well, hardship is a phenomenon known to this high-flier. Even after his parents’ death at a young age, he spent the next few years attending law classes at night & working under the sun to feed himself and his two younger sisters–a true-life hero, you could say! Son of a poor rail-road worker, he could hardly have dreamt of big flying airplanes, but he did... and is today leading an entire fleet! Now beat that!

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

General Motors’ success mantra...

GM India reported phenomenal 114% rise in sales for August 2007. The company sold 5,817 units as compared to 2,720 units during corresponding period last year. India’s fi ft h largest car maker is gung ho with a slew of model launches in the last couple of years. With the launch of the Spark (Daewoo Matiz of yore), GM continues with the momentum set by the already successful Aveo Sedan. U-VA and Tavera are also holding on to the competition strongly. Analysts believe that the consistent improvement in sales is due to expansion of the product portfolio. With a five model line up, GM perhaps has one of the largest portfolios in the country and therefore with respect to unit distribution, sales comparatively increase over time.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative