Saturday, August 11, 2012

Next time you reveal your A/S/L (Age/Sex/Location), please watch-out for predators keeping an eye on you!

“There is a huge list of scams such as online earning proposals, duplicate websites, phishing and Spam e-mails, credit card frauds and EFT (Electronic Fund Transfer) frauds.

Globally, more than $6 billion are stolen from consumer accounts by attacks called Phishing, and the scale of such frauds in India is fast catching-up too,” says Advocate Vivek Tripathi. With the availability of Internet on the move via Blackberry, i-Phones and portable USB net devices, it has become a lot easier to log in as and when desired. Our passwords, e-mail accounts, bank accounts, social networking profiles and more can be easily hacked; and not only that, our status messages and personal information lead criminals to our doorstep with incredible ease. Revealing too much information on the net such as making your contact number and residential address public is unadvisable. The moment you update a status message conveying ‘off to ___’ through another computer or mobile, someone keeping an eye on you would know where you logged in from and how authentic your information may be. Guardians of the law and those safeguarding our personal interests recommend awareness and precautions on the Internet.

Technology is man-made and so are its hazards. It depends on the user of the technology as to how he/she takes control and uses it to the optimum. It may be noted that when mind-freak programmers and criminal minds join hands, they can stir-up a deadly concoction, which can easily give the gullible a ‘kick’




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Friday, August 10, 2012

A radical way to combine NREGA with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan and create history

Of course, you don’t need to be a philosopher to understand the value and power of education to make or alternatively mar the future of India in the 21st century. And the way things are going at the moment, only the naïve will believe that India is on the cusp of an era where it will reap the much talked about ‘demographic dividend’. Just a few days ago, the international body UNESCO released a report called ‘Education for All Development Index’. It tracks the progress made by various nations on the key Millennium Development Goals of achieving universal education by 2015 from 1999 to 2007. The results in the report are sobering, if not disturbing for those who keep prattling childishly about India’s demographic dividend. The rank given to India is 105, below Bhutan, Zambia, Vietnam and Ghana to name just a few. That is not really surprising since India is consistently ranked pathetically when it comes to human development indicators; and justifiably so. More disturbing are results buried in some tables in the 300-plus page report. A staggering 49 percent of the children drop out of school before they reach elementary level. And before you start talking about some sinister western conspiracy to show India in a poor light, please remember that the report is based on government released statistics.

Let me present some data in a different way to puncture this triumphal talk about India’s demographic dividend. The total number of illiterates in India (as per the official definition of literacy) is more than the combined population of England, France, Germany, Italy Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, South Korea and Japan. If you take a more realistic definition of literacy, the number of illiterates in India would be more than the entire population of the whole of Europe. Each year, the number of children in primary school who drop out altogether is more than the population of Australia. Each year, the number of Indian children who fail to go beyond class V is more than the population of South Korea. Each year, the number of Indian children who cannot cross the secondary school barrier is more than the population of Japan. Look at it in another way; the number of illiterates in India is more than the population of India in 1947, when Jawaharlal Nehru sought to make a tryst with destiny.

What’s more, the number of places of worship currently stands at 2.4 million, whereas the number of places for education stands at 1.5 million! I am sure that things would not have improved since 2000, when the Planning Commission reported that almost 44% of all workers were illiterate and some 22.7% had done schooling till primary level! One would be really optimistic to talk about the demographic dividend in the face of such humiliatingly distressing data. And unless a drastic overhaul is launched right away, hundreds of millions of young Indians will be condemned to live on the margins by the beginning of next decade; and India will be condemned to remain a third rate power!

That brings me back to the Budget for Three Idiots. If things are as bad as they seem, how can Indians like me have even an iota of hope for the future? Actually we can, and we should. Every crisis is an opportunity, as they say, and this could be a game-changing opportunity for the Finance Minister. Often, the right set of people under the right leadership at the right time trigger changes that can have seismic impacts. It needed a Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s to rope in Sam Pitroda from the United States to launch technology missions that could change India. Pitroda faced insurmountable challenges from vested interests and even quit in a huff. But it was his team at C-Dot that had sown the seeds of the telecom revolution that is sweeping across India. In 1991, on the verge of defaulting on its debt obligations, a shaky Congress regime under P. V. Narashima Rao made Manmohan Singh the Finance Minister and gave him a mandate to dismantle the license permit raj and unleash the entrepreneurial spirits of India. The results are there for you and me to see and marvel at. The current regime – the second term of the UPA – has a similar mix of people who can deliver change. In a stroke of inspirational genius, UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have made Kapil Sibal the Union HRD Minister. And with a pragmatic, seasoned and wise Pranab Mukherjee as the Union Finance Minister, one can definitely be hopeful.


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Wednesday, August 08, 2012

The U-turn warning!

After a rather disappointing & loss-plagued 2009, the year ahead will mark a turnaround in the books of the Indian aviation industry. Steven Philip Warner explains…

Call it the past-eraser. Can an individual go back in time, erase his complete past, and come out happier than ever before? The majority would affirm that the answer to that question depends on which individual are we talking about. Only a few would say that the answer depends upon whether such a time machine could exist at all. Fewer still would be intelligent enough to sidestep the complete waste of a question. Being the bard to the fool, the down-in-the-dumps Indian aviation sector has been more than happy to be ‘the’ individual in question! Given a chance, the Indian aviators would attempt precisely what the question portends – to wipe out all the inane decisions that they bet on a few years back!

Yes, the nation grew, and so did the domestic sector post-liberalisation, from 3 million passengers in 1993 to 44.5 million in 2009. But if footfalls had meant profits all the time, even beggars would have been flaunting their flying licenses! Much before slowdown cast its shadow on the global economy, the domestic aviation sector had started rotting; and right from the top! One strategic blunder led to another – illogical fleet and geographical expansions, grossly miscalculated mergers, fractured infrastructure and over-staffing culminated into capacities outrunning logical demand, on the back of ever-growing ambitions of the airline companies. And this is how the numbers appear today: after amassing more than Rs.190 billion in losses in the three years leading to FY2008-09, the boardrooms of airline companies conspired in tandem to rock the flying ships of investors further with predictions of another Rs.70 billion in losses during 2009 (as predicted by the Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation, CAPA). CAPA further mentions that the big three (Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines) accounted for losses of almost Rs.230 billion [$5.1 billion] during the same period. Estimates for losses for the current financial year are to the tune of Rs.65-70 billion [about $1.6 billion].”

Three and a half years back, Business & Economy had warned about the manner in which unsound pricing policies were preparing grounds for players in the domestic sector to end up underwater. It finally happened in 2009, when everything including passenger volumes (the last hope) went against the domestic airlines. Barring only one domestic carrier – IndiGo – all others posted losses for FY2008-09, with the big three, which together accounted for 59.4% of the domestic market share in 2009, posting the biggest annual losses totalling Rs.76.34 billion. The low cost carriers also lost money, with SpiceJet & GoAir reporting negative bottomline figures of Rs.3.53 billion & Rs.225 million respectively. l.

So after a loss-splattered 2009, all questions that arise about the immediate year ahead is simply answered in a one-line poser – how further than the ocean bed can you sink?

After a disaster-struck 2009, it’s not difficult to imagine an improved year ahead; rather a ‘different’ one, when the very structure and composition of the sector would undergo a steady transformation into becoming more of a low-cost strategy dominated market. Strangely, an operating model which was non-existent in the Indian market until six years back, could account for almost 70% of domestic capacity within the next two-three quarters. This is due to the decision taken by carriers such as Jet and Kingfisher to reconfigure the majority of their domestic aircraft to operate all economy, no-frills service. Air India is also planning to follow suit. As the Indian Aviation: Outlook for 2010 report mentions, “There has been a clear recognition that there is a limited market for full service travel, particularly business class, beyond the key metro routes. Full service may in future be restricted to just a handful of services, or may even disappear entirely.” Today, big players like Kingfisher and Jet are already operating about 70% of their capacity in the budget model. Therefore, by the end of 2010, these two players will quite possibly become the two largest LCCs in the market.The transition to lower cost operations should allow the big-3 carriers to develop a more competitive cost structure, which is essential for survival. Jet Airways and Kingfisher are both faced with a cash crunch and urgently seeking to capital.

Though high debt and fuel price fluctuation (which had fallen to stable levels during 2009) remain two big concerns for 2010, Indian private domestic airlines are expected to make a combined profit of $250-300 million (Rs.11.43-13.71 billion) during the coming financial year FY2010-11, with Kingfisher Airlines likely to break even in Q3, 2010. Even a January 2010 report, by Centrum Broking, predicted Jet’s return to profits (of Rs.140 million) in Q3, 2010 as opposed to a negative Rs.2.14 billion in the same quarter in 2009. SpiceJet’s operational performance is also forecasted to improve by FY2010-11. Currently, the Indian aviators have a combined debt in excess of $10 billion, and they would need urgent capital raising of up to $12 billion over the next 2-3 years to finance aircraft deliveries (with a need to increase equity by $1.2 billion over the next 3-6 months). But with global sentiments improving and investors mushrooming thick and fast, this shouldn’t prove too difficult.

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Friday, August 03, 2012

Policy-BY-POLL: HISAR

There is already a buzz around as Hisar district in Haryana goes to poll on October 13. As speculations mount over who will fill in the shoes of Late Bhajan Lal, these by-elections will be the first real test for Congress after the Anna Hazare movement. 

As optimistic and relaxed as he may sound, the going is unlikely to be easy for the Congress on this seat, even history vows for the same. The party has won the Hisar seat only five of the 12 times in the Lok Sabha elections held in the state. Congress candidate and former MP Jai Prakash has won the seat three times, in 1989, 1996 and 2004, with tickets from the Janata Dal, Haryana Vikas Party and Congress tickets respectively. In the last Lok Sabha elections, Jai Parkash had to be contended with the third spot in the ballot tussle won by Bhajan Lal. Even otherwise, Hooda needs to prove that his government is popular after having come to power in the October 2009 Assembly elections backed by the support of independent legislators.

In the May 2009 elections, Bhajan Lal had won the Hisar Lok Sabha seat as a Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) candidate by a margin of about 7,000 votes, beating the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the ruling Congress nominees. This time around, the stakes for the three main players on the Hisar seat – the Congress, INLD and the HJC-BJP combine – are high as all parties are fielding their stalwarts who shall now try to fit into Bhajan Lal’s shoes. The seriousness of the contest can be gauged from the very fact that the main opposition INLD has announced the name of its leader Ajay Singh Chautala for the by-poll. Chautala, the son of former Chief Minister and INLD supremo Om Prakash Chautala, is a sitting legislator in the state. For HJC, & its new candidate for the seat – Kuldeep Bishnoi (who has been supported by the BJP) – the stakes are high – not only politically, but on a personal front as well. Bishnoi would definitely want to win this by-poll and retain the party’s hold over the area. However, his drawback is the fact that, it will be his first election without his mastermind father – his character will also be tested thoroughly.

If the HJC-BJP candidate Kuldeep Bishnoi defeats Ajay Singh Chautala of the INLD and Congress candidate Jai Prakash, the alliance would be cemented firmly for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and the subsequent assembly polls in the state. In a way, the Hisar Lok Sabha by-election could well be an indication of the new change in state politics.

More than anything else, the Hisar polls are only a beginning of the test that Congress has to face in coming times. With elections approaching in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab within the next one year, the possibility of Hisar results reflecting upon the subsequent verdicts too cannot be totally ruled out.

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