The Return of the Expats

Many have spoken about the return of the NRIs to start businesses in India but few have shown interest in the return of expats from the middle-east who have been in blue-collar jobs for years over there. It was just another usual day and I had booked a cab using an app and the driver was very courteous. I struck a conversation with him to understand the perks offered by these online cab aggregators to the drivers. He started by saying he had joined the company only a day before and I was his first customer.

He has been in the arabs as a driver for over a decade and he had come home for an extended vacation. He was planning to return in a couple of months when a friend recommended the new-age cab aggregators in India. Within a day, he had his police verification done and joined the fleet of one such operator. The chat with him was an eye-opener to me. For decades, many young Indians who couldn’t find a job here have sailed away to the middle east and other countries to work as drivers, electricians, plumbers and in a variety of similar professions on contractual basis. The pay is good although the living conditions, contractual obligations like the requirements to stay abroad for a couple of years before they could return have been a pain-point for many who sailed away with the hope of providing to their families. Add to this the political crisis in the arabs in the last few years like the recent Yemen crisis, very few want to sail now.

The boom of startups couldn’t have come at a better time. With the millions of VC money, startups are splurging on drivers, delivery boys, etc to get them on their platform. The salaries have seen a huge rise due to the high attrition caused by many alternate opportunities. Not just the expats, but also the prospective sailors are preferring to stay back home.

After all, the change observed at the ground is what gives every entrepreneur the ‘high’ of being an entrepreneur. The change couldn’t be explained better than the rise of livelihoods of many a blue-collar worker.

Indian 'Game of Thrones'

We are in the middle of another season of the american fantasy drama Game of Thrones,that has gained attraction from across the globe with its raw depiction of power and politics. Many have likened it to the great Indian epic ‘Mahabharata’ but few have thought about the ‘Delhi Sultanate’ in a similar way, that saw five dynasties before the Persian dragon dynasty ‘Mughals’ overtook them all. Mostly because all the five kingdoms weren’t contemporaries and there was no ‘Iron Throne’ or the ‘Throne of Hastinapur’ at the Delhi Sultanate before the Mughals who had ‘Peacock Throne’ to ornate their durbar. But one interesting factor is that it is a true story recorded by historians and proved by hard evidence and not a fantasy fiction or epic.

The Delhi Sultanate witnessed the rise and fall of five kingdoms within a span of 300 years, the shortest of them being the ‘Khilji’ and ‘Sayyid’ dynasties that lasted for less than half a century. But within the three centuries, the demography of the sub-continent changed drastically that many have called the ‘Biggest Holocaust in Human history’ that hadn’t changed much in the previous millennium.

Also the 3 centuries saw the pivot of power move to Delhi and many a monuments today owe their existence to these five dynasties. Similar to Game of Thrones, the history of Delhi Sultanate is filled with assassinations within family for power and people without lineage or wealth raise to the corridors of power with mere force and playing the right chords to the right people.

Another similarity is that like the ‘King of Seven Kingdoms’ couldn’t exist in power without the support of the seven powerful families and their large list ofvassals, the course of Delhi Sultanate was channelled by the Turkic, Afghan and Persian amirs.

Maybe 1 or 2 seasons later, we can draw similarity between their ends too. Till then, go and catch up with the latest episode ‘Kill the Boy’-like you need to mention a death in the title, isn’t that a practice in every episode..:P

India's Daughter..

It has been a while since it was all the rage about India’s Daughter in the media. Although it incited the interest in me to watch it, I only got around to viewing it today.  It was an eye-opener. No doubt the statements from the convicted affected me but the defence lawyers were inhumane. The circumstances and surroundings of the culprits’ childhood explains their ignorance and unapologetic behaviour towards women whereas the lawyers who are supposed to be the defences of our legal system and constitution going berserk and sounding like morons appalls me. Their professional ethic is understandable that they are bound to defend the accused and give them a chance at fair trial by pleading on humanitarian grounds (one might argue against that due to their beastly behaviour on December 16) but accusing the victim and proclaiming it to be the right of men to take women for granted is intolerable. 

For one, the loss of a soul instigated the activist within every modern Indian and brought the hitherto undiscussed topics of sexual abuse and violence into the dining table conversations of every household. The documentary helped me understand the genesis of such acts by men. Not everyone is fortunate to avail education, global exposure and understand gender equality when the majority is exposed to gender inequality from childhood within the family. It is time people started looking within their laundry before airing others in the public. I do not claim such acts are defendable but raising slogans and going on marches won’t stop people from committing such crimes in the future. It is just a first step in the right direction. Charity begins at home, so does Change. The day when every man & woman treat their son and daughter equally, the thought of male dominance over women is eradicated from the society, this journey would end at its destination. Otherwise, we will keep taking the wrong turns from the right course.

Net Neutrality

Of late the newsfeed in facebook is full of petitions and posts supporting net neutrality. It was less than a fortnight back that I saw an episode on net neutrality by John Oliver on Last Week Tonight show in HBO. I was just amazed by the way he connects such serious issues with humour while he also successfully creates an empathy amongst his viewers for the issues he brings to limelight. For those of you who missed the show or have been lazy till now to read and grasp what exactly 'net neutrality' means, let me give a synopsis.

Till now, we have been using the internet by paying for the amount used, say 1gb, 2gb, etc at flat rates. That is the net rates are neutral to all domains. If it were to be abolished as many data carriers like airtel and vodafone seek, your data pack will change the same way your erstwhile TV cable connections gave way for DTH services.

Remember the days when you used to pay a minimum of 100 bucks or so and you could watch the boring soap-opera channels as well as the world cup finals? Slowly, the DTH operators entered the fray, started by offering good quality streaming at competitive prices and lured the market their way. Just the predatory pricing strategies are adopted by e-commerce players to acquire customers, the DTH acquired customers and eliminated the small cable operators from the game. Once they got rid of them, they started milking the cash by increasing the prices. That was just the tip of the iceberg until someone came up with the idea of DTH channel packs. You pay a minimum of 200 odd bucks to get a handful of channels and then subscribe to additional packs by shelling out more coins.

If the data carriers had their way, you would pay base price for one gb data and pay extra to use different domains. For instance, 120 for 1gb + 50 for facebook + 30 for watsapp + free for hike. Before you rejoice over the free service for 'hike' it might not be applicable to you if you are an unfortunate vodafone customer since hike has its links with airtel only.

The case that these carriers set forth is that if you pay extra,you will be able to use these websites at ultra-high speeds whereas without these also you can use them at the existing speeds. Sorry airtel, we are not stupid enough buy this bullshit!

For all of you who were over the moon when supreme court repealed section 66, anti-net neutrality is a fix at this by those in power. The next time you post something against the autocrats, the website will not be accessible at normal speeds, thanks to the back channel links between the government that ends net neutrality and the corporates that reap the billions.

Although you might be happy to not to come across my writing if net neutrality ends, let me also tell you that you probably won't be able to access any website at your private time either. If you know what I mean, you better sign the petition.

https://www.change.org/p/trai-take-an-action-to-preserve-net-neutrality-in-india

It might not be all that the fight needs, but am sure as hell that it is not nothing.!

Happy b'day Anna.!

Hi ra,

Wish you a many more happy returns of the day and a great year ahead. Let me start by apologising for not finishing this piece before today but lets face the truth, both you and I know how good I am with timelines :P. So let that go, especially since its still not too late over there in the Fundy city. It would be an understatement if I said I have known you most of your life for I am the only one who knows you as a brother, a friend, an opponent and a guide.

We had the squabbling phase in the '90s before you were packed off to a boarding school. Luckily it didn't last forever and you returned in a year with much exposure and maturity. But that didn't help a lot in our fights for the remote because come what may, we have the 'right to fight' with each other on every silly stuff that we could. Then it was my turn to try my luck outside the comfort of home and fortunately it turned out to be better and I started seeing you as a big brother, for you were the one who considered me mature enough to tell stuff that Amma and Appa would never do. The five long years at sainik changed our equation altogether. Our thoughts evolved and somehow we started agreeing on most of the stuff. That meant a great deal especially when we needed to convince mom and pops.

The college years were the best, both yours and mine. A day doesn't pass by when I wouldn't miss the days we spent in coimbatore. Those were the days we had on our own without any chaperone. By the time I moved in to college we were adults and started the long conversations on career choices, business prospectives, and stuff I wouldn't publish on a blog :P.

We have come a long way, both you and me but I still long for the days when we used to play at our locality with the cousins as nothing could come close to the carefree days that we shared together. I know that I would never have to worry about falling down, for I have you for a safety net to confide in. So, let me toast to another great year we shared and for the best of your health.

Cheers,
Brother.

Stereotype

Stereotype- this is one word I have been trying to explaining a major part of my life since I come from a State, the culture and customs of which are entirely different and new to people from rest of the country. That added to a recent chat I had with one of my colleagues from North who happens to be in Tamil Nadu currently, gave the push I needed to let it out on the blog.

It is not just personal to me but I am tired of people judging every possible guy based on their region, language, and so on. The judgement is hardly driven by understanding and majorly swung by the perceived notions about stereotypes with the same background. The funny part is, in most cases the assumed stereotype is itself a myth and the stereotypes are mixed up. Again, it is not personal but just so it is easy to understand for the many Indians who have heard it a zillion times by now, Tamil and Telugu are not the same. First, you judge a person without even trying to know him. Next, most of your perceptions are made up or illogical. Finally you mix up the notions too and expect the other person to fit the bill. That doesn't appear to be personal at all.!

Well, this thinking is not regional. For a stereotypical Tamilian, everyone from India except the four peninsular states is a North Indian (my bad, it is actually five now, and it is not long when Telangana also might become northern), who eat nothing but rotis and speak only Hindi.

Enough about pointing fingers, when I actually tried to understand the cause behind such preconceived notions, my thoughts on idioms were instigated. Stereotyping is similar to the usage of idioms. One uses it with the conviction that he/she has in its usage rather than the true meaning of the phrase or the actual genesis of the idiom. That is indeed why they are called idioms and similarly that is exactly why the baseless concepts are called stereotypes. It is in the usage and thoughts passed around instead of an actual understanding.

For instance, the idiom ‘black sheep’ gives a negative colour to someone in a group whose views and actions are different if not opposite to that of the collective viewpoint of the group. When you trace the origins of the phrase, it was given a negative colour because the black wool couldn’t be dyed and was useless. I don’t know about the rest of you but sure as hell I didn’t know that actual black sheep existed. So, the people who were negatively impacted by the birth of a black sheep laid the seeds for this idiom. Likewise, people who don’t understand and find it difficult to accept a different view or thought try to stereotype it amongst a group of thoughts they can’t digest.

The next time you have time to read upon Russian idioms, please do check out the phrase ‘white crow’. :P

Discount Generation

I guess, the title says it all. The festival and holiday season just got over. The shopping fever has gone down and so has the rainfall of discounts. So for the Gen Y folks who have become far too dependent on discounts and deals, it is a bad time to go shopping, even online. Coming from this lot, I do experience the same hardships as any other young man who wants to buy the latest gizmo in the market during off-season. The discounts have been for better and worse. Although they have increased the number of purchases an individual makes turning us into shopaholics, they have also definitely made us price conscious. Today's youth is ready to wait it out for a month to get a product on an e-commerce portal rather than buy it from the 'new arrivals' section in a retail store. 

I remember, as a kid I used to wonder how can the big shopping centres offer discounts upto 60 percent and more in the time preceding the festive seasons and my dad used to tell me that the stores try to clear out the old stock from their inventory and its not always better to but at that time. Fast forward a decade and now I am telling my dad about the working of the e-commerce, at least what I have a grasp on. Adapting to online shopping is not easy and may be it is for the best because once you do, you kinda become addicted. The websites don't make it easy for you to decide by sending a humungous number of promotions and you end up shopping what you might not use more than once or some stupid stuff you thought looks great in the image. As I mentioned earlier, the preconceived notions about purchasing below the listed retail price is one hurdle before the portals and it is actually ironical too. Should you offer discounts to get customers or should you not offer much to ensure they don't perceive of you as selling faulty goods? 

While this is the case of online shopping, in the last couple of years even the restaurants, hotels, taxis and other service offerings have jumped on to this bandwagon doling out steep discounts and fighting it out to capture a bigger pie of the market. There are indeed apprehensions about the future of e-commerce too, since it is reasonable to believe that the discounts will run out once they capture that bigger pie. But again, how bigger? for instance amazon has been around for quite a while and still it is extending discounts in the established western markets. Yes, the kind of offers have changed over time. One clear indication is the scrapping of loyalty program on Myntra post the acquisition by Flipkart. 

Compared to this scenario, the old brick and mortar stores of the '90s were better. Then, if you purchase from the same shop the experience changes for the better every other time and the discounts keep increasing as your bargaining capacity increases due to the rapport build over time. But it is vice-versa in the case of online purchases. One thing is clear, no matter how much the portals scale, the stores are here to stay forever as has been observed in the western countries albeit a doubt, will the individual stores stay or will they be beaten to the line by the corporate chains?

As an end customer, seldom do we think of such business and economic (if not socio-political) impacts behind our day-to-day purchases and activities. We are in our own race to scout for the best discounts and deals that can be availed at each and every transaction possible. With no worries about the future, just living the present. Carpe Diem!