"Bobby Jasoos" (Hindi) Movie Review

You are Vidya Balan, lovingly called Bobby. You live in Moghalpura, Hyderabad, a pincode that has a density of over 100 people per sq.meter. Narrow lanes, dingy corners, claustrophic separator roads and noisy people. You have a doting mother and two younger sisters but your dad has an eerie coldness to you and doesn't treat you like the eldest child in the family - that regrettable male fixation thing. Still you pick a reputation as a quick-fix spy - someone who noses in on neighbourhood girls with "excusable" traits to help out reluctant bridegrooms or help aunties with "reliable" information. One thing leads to another and you soon become a sleuth to reckon with your own "adda" and assistants. One of them, played by the charming Ali Fazal becomes your unwilling lover and eventual supporter of all risky undertakings. One such undertaking, the riskiest one, comes calling in metastazing instalments from one Anees Khan, played with uneasy grit and intensity by Kiran Kapoor who comes in limousines and oozes out royalty unlimited. What does Anees Khan want? He comes and goes in a jiffy everytime but leaves Bobby with two brown envelopes, one gives cryptic details of the girls he wants Bobby to track down and the other envelope gives a hefty advance sum. The pattern repeats, Bobby succeeds in getting to the "X" or "Y" and the stakes get bigger. Then, at interval time, Bobby gets a doubt. What is happening to the girls she is ferreting out for Anees Khan? What if there is a twist in the tail, for the girls? What follows is a different drama with hugely unintended consequences and a cool ending.

Made by a debutant director Samar Shaikh, "Bobby Jasoos" is not a regular spy-thriller fare. It is a quirky, raw attempt at blending the genres of thriller with emotional drama and desi humour from the street corners of the bustling old city of Hyderabad. If you want to savor the charms of Charminar with a candid camera  that peeks into what a half of Hyderabad are all about - stuck in simple ways, hard living and countless paradigms of male stereotypes and "chalta hai" attitudes while eking out a honest day's labor, "Bobby Jasoos" serves you right. Vidya Balan is one woman too many in the film as she straddles many roles and costumes to come up trumps on her assignments - using innovative and sometimes bizarre ways of ensnaring her "target". There are emotional angles - the father-daughter angle between Rajendra Gupta and Vidya Balan and the romantic angle between Ali Fazal and Vidya Balan which make the film evocative amidst the distractions of a boisterous i-spy game played by Vidya throughout. The film's weaknesses lie in its treatment by Samar Shaikh. Director takes a flippant route to the protagonist's job description and makes mockery of how many folks get fooled by the maverick methods of Bobby Jasoos in getting to her targets - even as she covers humongous ground in uncovering them. She covers her constituency of Moghalpura better than what the local MLA does - covering the range of her target universe with her own sampling techniques - doing a census of an audition for a serial her aunts watch for smoking out the girls of the desired age-group or making elbow room in Spoken English tutorial classrooms to figure out the right birth marks of the girl. All that gets sometimes trite and outrageously irritating - because not a voice is raised in the neighbourhood against such antics.

Be that as it may, the redemption of the film lies in its many strengths - its starcast that is too perfect from Supriya Pathak, Tanvie Azmi, Kiran Kapoor, Vinay Varma (what a cameo by Suthradhar Agency's Vinay!) and the lovely pairing of Ali Fazal with Vidya Balan. Music, especially the BGM and the two cute songs uplift the film's dull moments. One of the songs, composed like a ghazal duet with an unusual rhythm stands out. Dialogues liberally sprinkle the notorious "Hurdu" slang of Hyderabadis with killer effect - "Hau", "Nakkho" abound enough to tickle you. Undoubtedly, Vidya Balan is the greatest strength of "Bobby Jasoos" as she effortlessly delivers a range of emotions with her spontaneity and charm. Neither obesity, marriage nor recent flops deters her confidence as she exudes perfection in her roles of a focused spy or as a misunderstood daughter or as a paradoxical lover. This may be an imperfect spy thriller by Samar Shaikh but "Bobby Jasoos" wins your hearts with positivity and sincerity to the plot. At 121 minutes, "Bobby Jasoos" is a family entertainer that deserves cosmopolitan adulation.
My rating: 3.25/5

Indian Railways - Why the Passenger fare hike was necessary

The Passenger Far hike is a bold decision by the NDA government that remained a work-in-progress by itself in its previous innings from 1998-2004. While the communists have already taken to the roads against the Railways decision (pun intended), the truth must be told.

What is the truth? Except for 2012, there has been no hike in passenger fare since 2002. India's largest employer - the Indian Railways - faces many battles even as it is constrained in capacity and resources. Expenditure on Railways as a share of transport expenditure has dipped from 56 per cent to 30 per cent by the Eleventh Plan. Share of railways in freight transport is down to 36 per cent from 89 per cent in 1961. Despite the highly subsidized passenger fares, passenger transport is losing out to alternative modes of transport - low cost airlilnes and road transport. Traffic is clearly moving away from Indian Railways due to poor quality of service already made worse by capacity congestion and extremely high rail freight tariffs. India's rail freight tariffs are among the highest in the world - perhaps the result of intense lobbying by the road and cargo transport operators. And how did we get there? Because freight revenue is used to cross-subsidize sub-inflationary and politically driven passenger rail fares. Indian passenger fares are 1/4th of those in China, 1/9th of those in Russia, and nearly 1/20th of those in Japan. Adjusted for purchasing power parity, they are at only 37 per cent of tariffs in China, 15 per cent of those in Russia, and 11 per cent of those in Japan. Whereas freight tariffs in China are only 72 per cent of the tariffs in India in nominal terms and 58 per cent when adjusted for purchasing power parity.

Now look at the other travesty. Because Indian Railways struggles to generate surpluses, coupled with the government's fiscal constraints, there has been significant under-investment in rail. Passenger trains, and more of them keep getting added in budget after budget use up nearly 65 per cent of network capacity (rail network that is) but contribute less than 30 per cent of the revenue. Every year, more and more unremunerative routes of passenger trains are added for various political appeasements. All this ensures IR keeps getting sicker by the day. And we now want bullet trains too at subsidized prices. According to Businessworld magazine article, I read a few years back, at current costs, a bullet-train ticket from Mumbai to Delhi will cost anywhere from $1450-1680 per head or thereabouts. And talk about so much pain with a passenger fare hike of 14.5 per cent, literally after a decade. There are more issues at hand that need redressal before Indian Railways gets up and going  - get freight traffic back, stop subsidizing passenger fares, use the network to atleast 40 per cent (we are using less than 15 per cent) and have a collaborative approach to address intermodal transport issues and connectivity. According to one estimate, countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Russia and the US which collectively carry more than 90 per cent of the world's rail freight outside India, all now have unitary transport ministries. China too has consolidated all transport ministries except railways. But for now, the free lunch on passenger fares has thankfully stopped. This is one of the best key messages that the NDA government has given out - something that it has ducked itself from taking in 2002.

#Indian Railways #Passenger Fares #Railways #Fare Hike #Bullet Trains

The Politics of the Hindi Language

The Politics of the Hindi language must never be extended beyond paying just lip-service. And there are many reasons for this even if you are tempted by the shenanigans of "national language", "national integration" and all that jazz. Nonsense.

To begin with, you cannot impose Hindi language as if it is a god-send or it has to be spoken by all of India's population. There are as many national languages in India as Hindi which are as beautiful, lyrical and classical, infact, more classical than Hindi. It is not heaven's exclusive license to Hindi to be spoken of highly and get multiplied manifold times. Down South, Tamil is one of the world's oldest languages and beats the pulp out of many others in the sheer volume of literature. Infact, it is more than 2000 years old language with wide variety and cultural richness. Telugu is equally old, dating back to atleast a thousand years of rich lineage. In a survey of the world's most beautiful languages done in 2011, judged primarily by three reasons - lyrical beauty, elegance of letters as they are written/printed and the richness of the alphabet, Telugu came second only to Korean language beating most languages in the world including Modiji's second-favorite language, Hindi (the first one must be his mother-tongue, I am just guessing). The Telugu film industry is India's largest segment in the number of films made per annum. Malayalam is another mesmerising language that has a cult followership across and outside India, aided by a race who have been migrant yet proud of its heritage. Malayalam's movies, warts and all, continue to dominate the film industry in India on matters of story-telling essentials. Malayalam's language itself resonates with most of the words derived from Sanskrit. Kannada, considered a mirror language to Telugu has a history that is co-terminous with that of Telugu. Scratch the surface and you will find many other languages in South India which are vibrant, exciting and alive - Konkani, Tulu are few examples of tongues which are equally vibrant and celebratory of the richness of life and language albeit without formal written scripts. Then you have the languages of the west and east - from Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Bihari, Bengali and Assamese - all have their own niche.

At the height of the Mauryan empire which ruled for three generations the whole of the Indian subcontinent from the edge of eastern Iran to today's Bangladesh, portions of South would remain outside its direct control. For most of the Mughal rule and the British rule, the Southern peninsula always enjoyed a halo of respect, identity and privilege to thrive in its atypical avatars and myriad hues. When the British ruled India, they understood that South cannot be reined in by imposing HIndi, so they indoctrinated English into the veins of trade and employment, creating a class of administrative army that kept their linguistic identities yet breathed fire into English. The intercourse with English created a renaissance but Hindi's rise was slow but not uniform. Given a choice of three languages, many South Indians still prefer to learn English rather than Hindi and there are historical reasons for that which have to be understood and empathised with. Even a docile prime minister Nehru understood the language divide that exists between North and South India. He created a Deputy Prime Minister post exclusively for catering to the interests of South - a tradition that continued until Shastri's rise.

Experts who do not understand this divide jump to conclusions that South is anti-nationalistic or anti-patriotic. Nonsense. It is just that language has always given a rare indemnity from colonial invasions and tortures to the South Indians; on some occasions it provided them quasi-independence or even satellite status while allowing a socio-economic resurgence on a scale that seldom was surpassed. Traditionally, it was the South that opened to the sea routes, developed maritime trade and allowed comprehensive mapping of the Indian Oceans between the Arabs and the Portugese, and later the next European powers that came calling to India - the Dutch, the French and the British. The South also adapted easily to Western influences faster than the North. When Vasco Da Gama came to India and hit the coast of Kerala first in 1498, he thought the people of Kerala were closer to Christianity than Hinduism because he felt the buildings looked like Christian churches rather than Hindu temples. Infact, the "Hindu" itself was a word the Europeans coined to describe the race from the valley of Indus. So much on the South-Indians.

PM Modi should realilse that Hindi has earned its spurs more from the proliferation of Hindi-speaking people who permeate the country and the world and the cultural exports of Hindi into Bollywood, the cuisine and the television. But it hasn't grown to become the language of the country in totality. Hence, that cannot be the reason to impose Hindi on the rest of the country. Hindi is a pulsating and lively language that is beautiful and simple but imposing it as a mandatory language has its down-syndrome. Yes we all love Hindi films and Hindi actors and Hindi writers and Hindi singers but know that no Indian language can be singled out as the lingua franca. For good or bad, the jury is out on which language is the best. Again, for good or bad, English has become the language of convenience and the language of business which cannot be replaced in many lifetimes. It is unwise to thrust your limitations of language on everybody else and re-invent the wheel. There is no long-term good now in learning a language at the cost of development and growth. Sooner or later, the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Russians and the Chinese will realise that winning the battle against English is not the same as winning the war. It feels great to know that Spanish is the fastest growing language in the Americas, thanks to centuries of spanish invasions. But who cares for Spanish unless the world switches to Spanish. Ditto for the Mandarin. You may speak in Hindi addressing the Bhutanese and the Americans but the impact will never be the same as speaking in the language that rules the air waves.

Talk about language chauvinism, you must know this, DW - Deutsche World and RT - Russia Today, two of the state channels of German and Russian governments broadcast in English language are growing faster than the English channels of CNN and BBC - proof that language chauvinism serves little purpose in a world that almost became a global village with English. Also proof that the Germans and the Russians are eager to playing English. Play to your strengths but don't let language be a barrier to communication. The best way to build national pride is through building up levels of literacy, build up self-reliant people who are productive, skilful, employable or entrepreneurial and get global recognition not by getting chauvinistic about languages. The politics of Hindi language has always proved costly for a Union Government committed to restoring federal balance in India. I fail to understand why this time has to be different.

The Story of the Mouse-Merchant - and Lessons for Telangana and Seemandhra/Andhra Pradesh

I am sure you all read the famous tale of the mouse merchant from Amar Chitra Katha series. In case you like me to retell, here goes:

Seeing a dead mouse on the floor, a merchant Vishakila says angrily to his son: "See that dead mouse? A clever man would be able to use even that as a means to increase his wealth. I gave a stupid fellow like you so many dinars, and far from multiplying that money, you have not even been able to keep what you had!". 

An enterprising onlooker asks Vishakila: "Sir, Can I take this dead mouse from you as the capital investment for my business?"

"Of course!"

Vishakila gives the onlooker, Gunadhya, the mouse, wrote him a receipt for it and left. 

Gunadhya sold the mouse as cat food to another merchant for two handfuls of gram. He ground up the gram and took a pot of water and sat under a shady tree at the crossroads outside the city. He offered the gram and the water humbly to a group of tired wood-carriers. Each of them gave him two pieces of wood. Gunadhya then took the wood to the market and sold it. He used part of the money form the sale to buy some more gram, and in the same way, the next day. He got some more wood from the carriers. He did this every day, and soon had enough capital to buy all of the wood-carriers' wood for three days. Suddenly, there was a great shortage of wood for a lot of money. He opened a shop with that money and became a merchant. He soon became a rich man through his own ability and business acumen. 

A few years later, Gunadhya ordered a mouse of gold to be made and returned it to Vishakila who gave his daughter in marriage. He became famous as the Mouse-Merchant because of this story. He became a rich man without having had no money at all.

                                                                                                           

Moral of the story? If you are enterprising and resourceful, you will convert a dead mouse into a golden mouse. If you are not and instead mess around, you can convert a golden mouse into a dead mouse. Wake up and smell the coffee!

#Telangana #AndhraPradesh #Seemandhra #KCR #Naidu #Entrepreneurship

"Ulavacharu Biryani" (Telugu)

Prakash Raj has a knack of picking off-beat stories and backing them all the way if there is striking point in them. Almost all his films produced by him in the past carry a subtle message with clean entertainment - "Movi"(Tamil) is about coping with challenges of mute and deaf people, "Aakasamantha" (Telugu/Tamil) is about the pleasures and pains of parenting and "Dhoni" (Telugu) captured the mood of today's  young who get sandwiched between parent pulls and youthful aspirations. "Ulavacharu Biriyani"(UB) his latest is a remake of Malayalam "Salt n Pepper". This is a film about lonely hearts and late-marrying men and women who delude themselves into false cocoons of achievement and inferiority complex at the same time while keeping good things waiting. I neither knew about nor saw the original film before watching UB. I watched UB for only one reason: Ilayaraja's music which already became a hit, I wanted to see if his BGM outscored his music in the film. I was not disappointed. More of that later, but short view first - it is a decent film with feel-good factor and terrific performances by the short cast - Prakash Raj, Sneha, Samyukta Hornad, MS Narayana, Tejus and Brahmaji. Worth watching once.

The story is about a foodie called Kalidasu (Prakash Raj) who at age 45 hasn't yet found a companion yet. His main interests are purely epicurean but for earning daily bread he works in the State Department of Archaeology where he works with a team in excavating relics of past and rehabilitating the tribals who live in forests. At home, he is helped by a cook MS Narayana who persuades him to get married. In one such meeting for a marriage alliance, Prakash Raj bumps into an old-time chef Brahmaji who makes delicious "vada"s for the bride. Prakash Raj dumps the prospect bride and returns home with his prized catch - cook Brahmaji. At work, his desire to do good to tribals makes him shelter an old tribal who makes herbal medicines - sought to be exploited by a mercenary businessman. So, it is now four males at Prakash Raj household. In fact, it soon becomes five people with the joining of Prakash Raj's nephew Tejus who comes looking for a job in the city of Prakash Raj. On the other side of the same city, a beautiful-but-aging lady Gowri (Sneha) lives with her sister Urmila and her gang comprising of her transvestite helper and niece (Urmila's daughter) Samyukta Hornad. Sneha is a successful dubbing artiste for film heroines but she is still struggling to find her soul mate. Pressure mounts on both of them to find a suitable match. Call it syncrocity or coincidence, a wrong number dialling by Sneha seeking an order for Kutti Dosa lands on Prakash Raj's mobile. First fire, and then roses all over, sweet small talk leads to mature blossoming friendship. Will it convert to love and marriage? How do two successful professionals who are in their late 30s/40s find their mojo in life - in the sweet companionship of a soul-mate? Are there any hilarious twists? Or a twist in the tail? Watch UB for all of that. In 126 minutes, Prakash Raj has given a watchable narrative thats remarkably clean, straight and fresh. 

The only incomplete chapter is  the troubled lives of Adivasis which are exploited by profiteers in the name of development. Despite an intense-looking characterisation of an old tribal, Prakash Raj lets go a great opportunity to create some drama or infuse more perspective on their plight. All we see is a fierce-looking old man who squats or stands for hours vehemently defended by Prakash Raj but meekly surrendered by him when confronted by human right activists and policemen. If this sequence couldn't be climaxed well, the film's length could have been 15 minutes shorter and that could have been another miracle for an otherwise good film - it could have breached the 2-hour limit for a feature film - a feat that is now regularly being attempted by film-makes in Kollywood, not Tollywood.

Technically, the film stands out in cinematography and music. For a film of this kind emblazoned by the orchestral magic of Ilayaraja, Prakash Raj uses safe distance picture shots avoiding any close-ups even during the most intense moments of the film. That is a rarity these days, when cinematography doesn't dominate direction but rather the eloquence of the music director and the minimalistic intentions of a director call the shots. The titles of the movie scroll in the backdrop of a Kailash Kher song with great original shots of the best street--side food and restaurant food available in India. There is another song shot on the youthful pair of Tejus and Samyukta which show them at their vivacious best using a mixture of natural and golden glow color frames. The cinematography's work aces up in one of the most memorable reels of the film - where Prakash Raj gives out a recipe on phone to Sneha. The recipe called Joanne's Rainbow Cake has been well-shot with Ilayaraja scoring classical music - a slurrpppingly delicious cake with layers of strawberry, pista and orane, made simultaneously by both the narrator and the listener on phone and then the first bite into the cake by both the creators at their respeective ends - it will give any foodie a melting memory. Dialogues are also crisp and urban-cool -wonder why we can't have more of these in our films rather than those elephant-and-mice-and-tiger-likening one-liners.

If the film is enjoyable despite some lazy editing and laid-back screenplay by Prakash Raj, two-thirds credit must sit on the shoulders of Maestro Ilayaraja. Apart from original compositions for the soundtrack of the film which bought him as much fame as "Yeto Vellipoyindi Manasu" in recent times, Ilayaraja has given a great BGM score that will flood the youtube channel soon after the prints get released. Obviously, it is the luck of Prakash  Raj for roping in a heavy-weight name like Ilayaraja. Until "Dhoni", Prakash Raj always had Vidya Sagar score music for his films. Vidya Sagar is himself a gifted composer trained with IlayaRaja. In this film, Prakash Raj must  have given a free hand to IlayaRaja and it shows in the soulful re-recording. The entire film is masterfully punctuated by Ilayaraja and he uses different variety of instruments including vocal support to give one of his best shots. Except for Sneha and Prakash Raj, Ilaya Raja uses BGM for introducing the second youthful romantic pair as they appear and also when they meet for the first time. Then at every crucial juncture, he uses pulsating instrumentation. His music reaches a crescendo in one of the climactic points of the film where all the four lead characters travel in the same car - Ilayaraja uses high notes using extensive violin orchestration, something that would have required a huge budget. Ilayaraja fans will remember that there were few times in his career where he used elaborate multi-crew orchestra for composing music when it demanded - one was for "Dalapathi" and the other for "Yeto Vellipoyyindi Manasu". This must ave beeen the third occasion. Not surprisingly, I checked up with "Salt n Pepper" music director Bijlibal. Ilayaraja didn't even see the original film once to get inspiration for composing the songs and the BGM. Imagine the outpourings that come from ordinary souls when they see a scene of 4-5 minutes, bland without music. Now imagine Ilayaraja looking at a scene only once, making some notes in mind, going to his music room, dictating the musical notations  to the crew for what to play in the background and creating the magic that we aall see. This is exactly the process that Baradwaj Rangan described in his book of interviews with Mani Ratnam as to how Ilayaraja composes music. I am not surprised by the high-octane quality of his BGM in this film. Ilayaraja must have composed around 5 songs per film in a career composing 900 films plus - including original and dubbed films. But he has never relegated the job of re-recording to lackeys or assistants except on few instances. Now imagine the sheer magnitude of the output with the BGM output that comes with equal combinations of energy, velocity and melody - at an average of 900 films multiplied by 10-20 orchestration pieces. Lets settle at 15 pieces per film. Thats a staggering 13500 pieces of original, song-ready musical pieces  that may never be surpassed in quality and the language of film grammar, mastered by few other Western Masters. Hat-tip to you, Ilayaraja Sir for all that and for this film's output.

Finally, back to the film UB after that lengthy excursion on Ilayaraja (I owe myself a lengthy dissertation on his music one day). Good performances by MS Narayana, Prakash Raj and the newcomers. Sneha is good but sulky throughout. UB is a worthy watch even if you are not a foodie or a culinary expert or an expert on marriage- it connects with a lot of people on the planet who live lives of solitude or eke out their existence desperately seeking soulmates at work or neighbourhoods. Despite the few flaws of an elementary story and a slow narration,  the film doesn't bore.  If you do not like it well enough, blame it on the zombie films that are deadening your sense of good  and meaningful cinema. This one is definitely good and meaningful. More power to them. 

My rating: 3.25/5

Raghav Bahl - the original media baron!

Sad to see Raghav Bahl sign off from the group he built from scratch. While Prannoy Roy was part of our growing interest in media, Raghav Bahl made the progressive jumps in media's leaps in technology. He was a chatty host for a programme called "Newstrack" produced by India Today magazine. My parents and I used to wait for editions of "Newstrack" every fortnight - it had the most comprehensive coverage of the newsmakers of that time and of course, the most candid interviews. I still remember Amitabh Bachchan's best interview till date was from "Newstrack".

As a lead anchor, Raghav Bahl was an original - chatty, witty, intelligent and full of beaming smiles - always talking in an accent that even Chaiwaalahs and butlers will understand. The program was such a smash hit that video parlours were ordering multiple copies and there used to be commotion to watch it first in households. It was a watch-per-your-convenience alternative to the other interesting programme of the 1980s - "The World this Week". Raghav Bahl then ventured into TV 18 - that made history by tying up with CNBC.

Those were the days of only three pink papers and one white paper -and the idea of a business channel itself was revolutionary. Raghav Bahl did it again with unconventional guys leading the commentaries and anchorage - Paronjoy Guha Thakurta and Senthil Chengalvaranarayan were the prime poster-boys. Paronjoy still asks questions longer than what anybody can give answers to and Senthil - he still looks like a boy who just topped the IIT entrance but stammering to speak fluent English. Over the years, the network grew. I still remember the wealth-creation opportunity Raghav Bahl gave us in 1999-2000. I was working in HDFC Bank heading the Loans Against Securities division. TV18 came out with an IPO and I had a brief to do IPO-financing to investors. The IPO season itself was getting dizzy with the successes of Polaris, Glenmark and Hughes Software. It was the middle of the dotcom era where TMT (Technology, Media and Telecom)  stocks were the darlings of the market. Previously, Polaris Software created a record for post-listing performance. But TV18  - how do you value it? How can you be so sure? I put my my money where my mouth is - I beseeched my parents also to put multiple applications. I persuaded all my customers at HDFC Bank to plonk their savings into TV18 IPO. Total applications  collected 2150 from Hyderabad. The IPO listed like a Godzilla - it soared 700 per cent upwards. Raghav Bahl created a jackpot for investors. Very few could retain the shares even for few years after the IPO because it was running up and away, defying gravity. The dotcom burst finally, stock tumbled but the group still bludgeoned in its many manifestations and forays into new businesses - moneycontrol.com, film distribution, financial literacy books, etc.

Nobody in contemporary Indian mediascape has harnessed the power of media in all its unleashing of the many Avatars - Raghav Bahl rode all of them. He was there in every wave of the media business from VHS cassettes to Digitalisation of cables. He  created a great team, led from the front, raised equity from the market,  shared his wealth with the public and the employees and always happy to step back (even giving up controlling stake) when a stronger partner stepped in - like Viacom. Network18 hit the lows too - when credibility suffered as the CNBC channel in India nose-dived, the ownership of the channel fell into the cartels of stock brokers, and now lies in the hands of India's most hated businessman. Whatever Raghav Bahl achieved so far, warts and all, he deserves a special mention in the history of Indian media. He proved again and again with his foresight and enterprise that he can bounce back.  Raghav Bahl, in my mind, is the holy trinity of Indian media that every student of its history will admire - the other two being, Prannoy Roy and Ronnie Screwala.

Amway CEO arrest again!

I wrote this longer piece almost an year and a half ago on the arrest of Amway's CEO then. And it happens again. The shorter version of this blog post got published in Businessline too: "The Bane of Multi-Level Marketing". (http://tinyurl.com/lpq5bsu)

Amway's CEO got arrested for financial irregularities. I am so glad this happened in my lifetime and not during my kid's retirement years. Amway is just one of the several MLM schemes that have got the better of many intelligent people. I know of most sober and savvy people working in companies like Google, Microsoft, SBI, SBH, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank guard the Amway products and schemes like a fanatical zealot. I had always resisted the advances of such people and wondered what is it with lovely people who will turn mercenaries overnight and begin to talk like vacuum-cleaner salesmen. Daniel Pink has just written a book "Its Human to Sell." I beg to differ. It is not human to sell always, especially when the audience is captive and they are your best buddies, teachers, students, co-workers, pen pals, boss's wife or husband, twitter followers, facebook friends, landlords, tenants, co-travellers, gas suppliers, meter readers, you name it. I have gone through the embarrassments of being at the receiving end of atleast few of my relatives and friends and closer kin. I was devastated whenever I went through the experience, I couldn't say No because they are so close to me, I couldn't buy the products, and I wouldn't "recruit" more. The chain invariably broke with me and I could never, never again resume a normal conversation with any friend or a relative or an acquaintance who sold me vague concepts of "time", "annuity", "financial freedom" and other fuzzy financial management concepts steamrolled into emotional packages.

At the core of such schemes of Amway or any such MLM scheme lie three principles: 1. They play on your insecurities of life - inadequate money, passionless job and rising expenditure to match aspirational levels.
2. They indoctrinate you with fancy "recruiting" functions that have the feel of an Evangelist session where many newcomers like you are greeted by older "recruits" breaking out into ecstatic shouts and shrieks, even getting footloose from where they are standing, talking about "How I raised myself from failure to success in selling Amway/Tupperware/Japanlife/Saradha/MihiraMagic/Landmark/whatever, how everything in life is achievable and all prosperity is sitting in the bank balance and how you can too". You have to attend atleast five such functions before you get into the jingoism that is smeared into the experienced elite who are singing hosannahs now.
3. Then having got you, your "converted" zeal, you will have to get into a producing mode of recruiting other people into your network, or become a huge consumer or even a pro-sumer  - a combination of both. This is where, very few make it. And those who make it, may have succeeded against all odds - of embarrassments, of ostracisation, of hard-selling their own friends and colleagues and relatives.

I have seen a few cycles of such principle-centered selling of these schemes and have been a victim of atleast one bad experience where I was conned into a Questnet MLM scheme in the hope of owning a rare coin, an insignia of a FIFA World Cup, which will become so rare that it will cost more than the gold and the silver blended into the coin. Finally, the Questnet scheme owner got arrested and the scheme was abandoned. Having paid Rs.45000 in those days for a puny coin which has a Mexico World Cup signage on it. I got a mere Rs.9000 when I gave it to my mother a few years back because there was less silver than gold and even less gold than the powder used as letters on the coin! For all the love of soccer, my savings became a succor for someone's greed. I never invested in any Ponzi scheme after that because I now firmly believe P.T.Barnum, America's greatest showman salesman who said: A sucker is born every minute.

Many years back, when I was a banker at BNP Paribas, I spotted atleast two such Ponzi schemes  - Mihira Magic, which made stuff that are flying off the shelves just as Amway products today  and a call-centre which operated like a Ponzi scheme, which I will not name. Mihira Magic also finally folded up but I tried to outstmart the owners by making every chain subscriber open a salary account with the bank. It won me lot of plaudits and helped me register a fine performance at work. But the tragedy struck elsewhere, BNP Paribas, the retail bank folded up in India before Mihira Magic pulled down the curtains many years later. Moral of the story here: One swallow doesn't make a summer for a bank.

At a basic level, at a very conceptual level, one can argue that all schemes are Ponzi Schemes, whether it is about products or product managers or product consumers - its all about recruitment. But the ones that stand out are usually having the flavor that marks all the others which eventually collapsed, sooner or later. Having been in sales and relationship-building for many years now, I like to conclude this autobiographical excursion on Amway-like schemes with a few strong learnings which I learnt after many fifty-hour work-weeks during my career.
One, whether you are an employee or a business owner, your biggest asset is your career (in case of a working professional) or your business (in case of an owner or an entrepreneur).
Two, Invest in your career or business most because they have the best payoffs. Do not fall for schemes which promise you the moon and the six pence - they cannot succeed like the way you can.
Three, Stop burning your inner and outer circle of contacts with bummer proposals and schemes which take you nowhere and what more, ostracise you forever. Build your skills, spend all your energies into making yourself relevant, employable and precious till your last day. There is no financial freedom that comes without blood, sweat, tears and hardships. DeVos is the richest man in Michigan. Okay, he is the co-founder of Amway, is worth $5.1 Billion but that is the worth of all his factory assets and stocks traded. The rest of the MLM subscribers are not worth as much.
Four, in a day of 24 hours, you work for 8 hours whichever way and sleep for 8 hours.  The remaining 8 hours is for relaxation, recreation, renewal or capacity-building. Not for selling a pipe-dream, somebody else's dream.
Five, repeat of point no.three. Do not run the risk of becoming a social outlaw - "Here comes the Amway man or woman". Get the boot or Re-boot your thinking about MLMs. Build businesses or Invest in businesses or become a careerist. Don't be a MLM evangelist.