The Inner Voice: Can you hear it?

"Mani Ratnam's Yuva turned real, with five IITians deciding to join mainstream politics", reported TOI.

The party - Paritrana - was launched in Jodhpur in the year 2006. Paritrana means 'complete relief from various causes of distress and that is what we want to do for our people'.

Brave. Foolish. Idealistic. All of that - and more.

Tanmay Rajpurohit, who's done his MTech from Georgia Tech after a BTech (Aerospace) from IIT B is the party President. Other office bearers include Ajit Shukla, Smit Bisen, Chandrashekhar and Bharat Sundaram - all IIT B and IIT K graduates.

Says Shukla, "My inner voice told me I should invest in my efforts in country instead of making my pocket heavier... People think we are crazy so much so that our families have also failed to understand our motto, but we won't give up."

Deadly thing, this inner voice. That's why most folks pretend they can't hear it. Or choose to drown it out. Because listening to it may mean acting in ways which are strange and unacceptable in society.

Of course the families of these young men would be upset. IIT kya is liye bheja tha? But as Mahatma Gandhi once said: "There are moments in your life when you must act, even though you cannot carry your best friends with you. The 'still small voice' within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty".

Which, ultimately, is what these young men did.

Let's not make too much expectations.....
Let's not be too sceptic either.........
Their effort needs encouragement and support..........
Let's not burden them with more n more expectations.....
It's great effort for great cause......
There must be nothing to regret,no matter what are the results...
Not all the start up succeed in change we wish.....
and more importantly there would be no change if we just wish....

In the end.....Efforts matter as much than the end....b'coz there is no guaranteed ways to success.

I really appreciate the initiative taken by these guys and I m sure many youngsters want to do something good for our country and everybody knows that the main problem lies in this Political system. If we can't take such initiative, at least we should give them the support in achieving their goal.

The fact that they have taken a bold step to give up lucrative careers gives a hint of commitment, passion and objective in them. They are young and may not have everything that's required to run a successful political party. We should help them in anyway possible to help achieve the objective in the best interests of country. With the support of young, educated and passionate people, this party can only get stronger to compete with existing political parties and bring about a considerable change in a positive way. Good politics and governance can make India a superpower. We are not loosing anything by giving these guys a chance to make a difference.

I hope Paritrana will be the answer to India's Future. Lets first stop analzying on whether they would be successful or not.

Deep inside the heart every true Indian wants to do something for India. So lets see how we can help them rather ridicule or doubt them. I can understand where they are coming from. If they are able to give up their career and do something for India, dont you think its our responsibility to see how we can help them and help our country. I can assure there are 1000's of people like me who are sandwiched between the right decision  I truly believe that young peopel like them can and will turn the path of India.

Kindly stay away from religion when it comes to politics. I really salute these guys for having so much of guts and passion to follow their dreams. So use our network to make them more powerful. Let's use our students network to gather men and power for the party and see how we can contribute to the country.

I apologize openly to anyone if I had stepped on your toes , so plz dont come back with a rational logic to defend ur negative statement towards the party. I never said you are wrong , I just request everyone to see things with a positive way. I know everyone is true from their perspective. All I am requesting is to help them and not to be a faultfinder.

When will we learn to think positive? Our minds have become so much used to doubting only the positive things. You doubt a person's honesty and you require proofs to believe in his honesty, but believe in his dishonesty almost comes immediately without any proofs. Have you realized this? Greatest of the distances can sometimes be covered by taking smallest of the steps in the right direction. I guess Paritrana is a right step, though small, in the right direction. Kudos to them!! They are at least planning to make a difference in the current scenario of our polluted politics. There are different categories of people:  
1.People who accept the things as they are.
2. People who take responsibility to change things and do something good.  
3.People who join and follow the second category of people to support them.
4. People who keep passing negative comments about all the other categories of people.

I would definitely not like to be in the last category, rather would like to be in the third category when it comes to Paritrana. Once again, congrats to the founders of Paritrana!!

Segmund Freud had once said that intution should be used to choose major decisions. It is said that "Great decisions are made through the heart, not the head". Even industrialists use more of gut-feel than analysis to arrive at the final decision on whether to go in or not for mega projects.


Good governance cannot come about without competence. There are too many incompetent Indian politicians and that is why we have a bad governance.

Because staying motivated and free of self doubt is always a challenge. One that I am sure both Sidin and the 5 young men at Paritrana will meet head on.

Have you tuned in to your inner voice lately? If you have everything and still feel empty inside, it might be time to slow down. Stop. And listen.

Hot chocolate Lux

First, they put Shahrukh Khan in a bathtub . Then, they slathered Kareena Kapoor with chocolate paint.

Both, ostensibly, to celebrate '75 years of Lux'. And beyond the column-inches these activities may generate, neither is going to do anything for the brand in the long run.

The Lux strategy was especially confused and confusing. The brand is being stretched across the entire customer spectrum. So there's a soap cake being sold for 13 bucks and a White Spa body wash costing Rs 70.

A new 'chocolate seduction' soap.
A 'sandalwood + honey' variant.
A purple 'Aromatic Glow' variant.

The idea appeared to be: ek hi teer se saare competitors ko maar do. But that usually doesn't work.

A single brand can't be a Lux AND a Palmolive Aromatherapy AND a Santoor AND in liquid form, an economical alternative to Bath & Body Works.

And this was especially applicable if the brand reworked only its image and not the formulation.

No seduction here
Yes, I actually bought the Lux chocolate soap. My verdict: Melody may be chocolatey, Lux still isn't.
The shape, look and feel was very nice but the soap SMELLED like any old regular Lux soap. So you never feel seduced by the 'chocolate' element.

Fragrance is in my opinion far more integral to a soap's appeal than how it looks. And for those who think that a chocolate smell in soap is unappealing - think again!

Try any foreign cocoa butter lotion. Or if you are in Bangalore's Garuda mall check out the shop on the first floor which sells 'hand made' bath products.

The delicious smell wafts into your nose while you're on the floor above! Everything in that shop is absolutely fascinating. The chocolate soap is chopped off for you from a cake-like brick. Looks good enough to eat...

The only sad bit is the company is from the UK and insists on charging UK prices. An 800 rupee soap was a bit much - even in the name of indulgence. You feel like the soap would have to be guarded and sparingly used. And what if it melts in the soap dish and turns into mush?

I don't understand how they managed to take a topless woman, slather her in chocolate, and somehow get a result that just isn't sexy.

These ad campaigns probably bring about the early birds who would like to try anything new... But in the long run, Lux will need to stick to its USP: Delivering the middle-class housewife a soap that would make her feel like an on-screen diva! Remember, Lux is a Sitaron ka Saabun!!! 

Well Lux has a simple positioning - Filmi sitoron ka saundrya sabun. The beauty soap of Film stars. The entire strategy is probably to give this positioning a lively new feel.

Their target is less "people like you and me" but more an average typical Indian housewife. They are found in large numbers in India - who live by dreaming themselves in the clothes, makeups and styles of film stars. They gossip about them. They love to try things that these film stars suggest.

SRK - was & is an error - I am sure that's why that ad suddenly became "gayab" - because it did not go with the aspirations of the traditional housewife in India.

Was Kareena & Chocolate also an error - probably yes!! becasue the whole theme seemed to be targetted at a younger audience - less to the taste of the typical housewives.

However, coming from an HUL one wishes thay had done the research they are known for. If thats the case - may be the face of the typical Indian housewife might have undergone a transformation before we took notice.

Well tried HUL. May you succeed.

Ha, you can see how hard I had to work to convince myself it wasn't worth buying. Now that is what I call chocolate seduction.

Eat your heart out, Kareena!

Gaming, serious? Really ??

Well, here is this piece in the  Business standard that seems to think so or at least wants us to believe so.

Xbox is pretty similar to Playstation and offers more or less the same technical specifications. Though officially now available in India, it has still created quite a stir among gamers in the country.

And it is still big, eh?

PS 2 sold about 100,000 units in the country and was expecting to see an upward swing after the launch of  PS 3.  PS 3 was said to be one of the most awaited gizmos.

The sound of big. Hundred thousand units. Check out the console wars section of wikipedia for some dope on whats big.

Gaming is niche, niche and niche. It is not mainstream, not yet. In a country where PC penetration is yet to be "big", I fail to see how gaming can be big. One thing that does have potential is mobile gaming and here too, numbers are low.

Mobile Gaming: Too many 'wrong numbers'

It's being touted as the Next Big Thing. But how big depends on which numbers you believe. And there are a LOT of different figures floating around right now.

ET declared: "Paid download figures for mobile games are around 600,000 a month but it could be anything between 50-60% more".

Huh? Why can't ET arrive at a fixed figure for number of paid downloads after speaking to all mobile operators? I can understand operators overstating downloads - why would they understate them by 50% ??

Incidentally, on 22 Nov 2005, Hindu Businessline reported 450,000 downloads a month. "And it is growing by 30-40 per cent". Annually, or monthly? Must be the latter if it's 600,000 less than 45 days later - which is impressive.

Perspective, please
Hutch said that it had had a 50 fold rise on downloads (from 2200 per month in Feb 2005 to 120,000 per month currently). But while growth is heady the numbers are chickenfeed compared to ringtone downloads - 300,000 a DAY.

That's about 9 million downloads a month.

Of course the average ringtone costs Rs 10-15 while the average game costs Rs 50. Still 80% of Value Added Services revenue come from ringtone and caller tunes as of now; games accounts for 2-8%.

In light of that statistic, this statement by the Business Standard does not make sense: "Within a year, the market (for mobile games in India) has expanded from a mere Rs 25 crore to at least Rs 80 crore in 2005".

3rd standard mathematics problem: The ringtone market in 2005 was estimated at Rs 150 crores (a figure that appeared correct given the no of downloads X Rs 10-15 per download formula).

8% of Rs 150 crores? Closer to 12 crores than 80 crores!

CIOL on the other hand estimated (correctly, I think) that the market size of wireless/mobile games in India was US $3 million (Rs 13.5 crores) in 2004. They explain how the figure was arrived at:

It is estimated that, on average, there are 200,000 downloads of games via GPRS network of the cellular mobile players - Orange, Airtel, Idea, and BPL. The market size estimation assumes an average charge of Rs 50 per download.

Elementary, my dear Watson. Maybe all journalists should be put through a compulsory course in addition and multiplication!

And oh, somewhere in the equation lie another 15 million free game downloads in the CDMA space.

More maths lessons
Sorry for throwing all these figures at you - honestly I am the last person to show off when it comes to mathematics (my worst subject at school). But bear with me, there is a point in all this somewhere.

Currently India has approximately 76 million mobile-phone subscribers .

The question is - how many have GPRS/ java/ colour screen handsets? Pyramid Research, an Economist Group company estimated that "almost a third of Indian mobile users are restricted from gaming due to a lack of sophisticated handset availability".

The Pyramid survey showed that around 32% of cellphone users in India played games on their mobiles - double the UK figure. Obviously these were pre-loaded games like Snake, given that we don't see corresponding figures of downloads.

Again I fail to understand how this FE journalist concluded that "Indian mobile gaming market constitutes 5% of the world share".In 2004 the mobile gaming market in China ALONE topped $98 million.

Arun Gupta, COO Mauj Telecom said, "With the introduction of faster networks and colour java handsets becoming more affordable, the Indian mobile gaming market was expected to grow tenfold in five years."

Fair enough - sounds entirely plausible. But according to a research by In-Stat/MDR , the Indian mobile gaming market was projected to grow to $336 million by 2010.

From $3 million in 2004 to $ 336 million is um... just not going to happen. The analysts are in the business of making dizzying projections - the figures get printed - everyone feels good.

It's like the astrologer who makes yearly predictions. No one checks back on the 99 things he predicted which did NOT come true (I distinctly remember one gent who predicted on Jan 1 2005 that Salman and Aishwarya would get back together..)

Magar agar ek bhi prediction sahi nikli - ya 50% bhi sahi nikli - both astrologer and analyst ki lottery lag gayi!

Who's playing
Back to the gaming conundrum. You and me know ringtones are huge - everyone has them. But games? Ask 10 people around you and it's unlikely that any has downloaded a mobile game.

Survey after survey confirms that the 15-22 year old India metro-based youth is not an avid mobile gamer - at least not of the download variety.

Why? For one, they aren't impressed with the quality of games on offer. Most Indian developers are churning out a large quantity of games but there's no one game that's proved addictive enough to spread by word-of-mouth and become a must-have.

Secondly, Rs 50 (going upto Rs 150) is not a sum you want to throw away on a dud game download. Earlier operators did allow you to download a trial version of a game for Rs 20 but that seems to have been scrapped.

So neither do we have a killer app in mobile gaming, nor a price so low that the average Anand doesn't think twice before making an impulse download.

Games at throwaway prices (I'm thinking Rs 10) could expand downloads significantly. Mobile operators know better than anyone else that once they've hooked you, they've cooked you. That, and they would need to identify a few 'killer games' which junta would want to own.

The combination of affordability + desirability is crucial.

The Action shifts
The interesting thing is, currently B and C towns are driving a large portion of the growth in value-added services for the mobile industry. Techtree reported:

In such towns, mobile entertainment cost is almost considered as mainstream entertainment, because of the lack of an alternative."

Which is why Mauj launched mobile games in Hindi and 7 regional languages including Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Urdu. The move was targeted at regional audiences, as only 3 to 5 percent of the populace is familiar with English.

The 3 games developed by Mauj - "Mastibhari Udaan," "Saahas Ka Yudh," and "Jaanbaaz".

This is also why Bollywood based games are finding favour with developers. According to Mid-day: On average, a movie sells 7,000 to 10,000 copies with more popular movies like Hum Aapke Hain Kaun even going up to 25,000 downloads. The Sholay game, which kicked off the Bollywood-mobile gaming frenzy had over 50,000 downloads.

This puts all other languages, other than Hindi at a sub-par level and we know this is not true. I hope you will take note of what I said in the right spirit :-).

Again, you and me would probably not download these games - but their appeal to the large mass of users is high. So they do make good business sense.

Among the SEC A and B metro crowd Nokia's Ngage was high on the most-wanted list last year. But now, the camera and FM have reduced its appeal.

Bottomline: Mobile gaming will grow in popularity - since the base is small to begin with the growth will appear spectacular. But better - and more affordable - games are the need of the hour.

And honest statistics derived from common sense calculations need to be used by the breathless reporters helping to hype up the phenomenon. Wrong numbers are inevitable in telecom. They should not be, in journalism!

Baba Ramdev ki ajab dastaan

I have a healthy dislike of gurujis and babajis of all ilks. Top of my list are the miracle workers who claim to cure uncurable diseases - they so obviously prey on the helpless and the hopeless, people clutching at straws of hope.

Second on my list are the preachers who recite this mantra or embrace this form of worship and thou shalt attain salvation. As if.

Both of the above, invariably, get drunk on the money and power that fame and following brings. And then come the whispers of sexual favours, molestation, even murders involving the 'Holy One'. Does not sound God-like to me!

However a New Age calls for New Age Gurus. This guru is one who offers more of practical and psychotherapeutic advice than deep religious or spiritual fundas. And in a format that's nicely packaged, easy to digest.

The two gurus who fit the bill are Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Swami Ramdev .

The key take away from Sri Sri's 'Art of Living' course is the 'sudarshan kriya' breathing technique while Ramdev is chiefly known for teaching ordinary individuals of varying shapes and sizes all manners of yoga asanas and pranayams.

Art of Living has a more premium brand image while Ramdev has a wide, mass appeal. But both, I think, are doing a great job of delivering ancient Indian wisdom to a modern, skeptical and stressed population.

The Bone of Contention
And then, Ms Brinda Karat is accused Ramdev of selling 'adulterated' medicines. Financial Express reported:

"We came to know recently that herbal ayurvedic medicines prepared by Divya Yog Pharmacy, owned by Ramdev, contained animal material and human bones. We then handed over the medicine samples to Department of AYUSH and now they have confirmed our apprehension," she said.

But the swami's followers as well as leaders across the political spectrum have come out in support of Ramdev. Because medicines have never been his primary appeal.

As Acharya Balkrishanji, director of Ramdev's Divya Yog Pharmacy pointed out in an interview with the TOI,"While Swami Ramdev started teaching pranayam about 15 years ago, we started selling medicines only a year and a half back. The turnover is Rs 1 crore annually."

The 'overall assets' of the Divya Yoga Mandir Trust, incidentally, are worth Rs 45 crores.

Sach kya hai?
Ramdev denied adding animal content to his medicines . What, then, of the samples tested which the  Health Minister  said contain some ' animal residue'?

And does 'animal residue' necessarily mean 'animal and human bone' as Ms Karat and ex-workers of Ramdev's pharmacy allege?

Dr Madan Gulati, Deputy Director, Ayurveda, UT, said to the Tribune: "Ayurveda is not a system of medicine for vegetarians alone. In fact, it is incomplete without the use of minerals and animal parts. Ayurvedic medicines contain herbs, minerals, shells and corals but there is no place for human bones".
This is what the description on Ramdev's own website stated:
Medicine: Divya Arshkalp Vati (for curing piles)
Main Constituents: Pure rashont, termalia, chooti harad, bakayan seed, neem seed, reethatawka, desi kapoor, kaharva, khoonkharaba, makoya,alua, nagdaun etc.

Khoonkharaba? Apparently there is a herb by that name.
What I find more interesting is the "etc". Etc could be anything.

The Solution
If Ramdev stands firm that his medicines do not contain any 'non-veg' content then he has to be able to prove this by getting more samples tested at a nationally recognised laboratory.

If they do contain some 'animal' elements he should simply come out and say: "Some medicines may contain animal content - but they work. You decide if you want to buy them!"

To my mind even that would not pose a problem:
a) as long as no people or animals are actually killed for their bones
b) those buying the medicine are aware of the facts and accept them

When I was growing up 7 Seas Cod liver oil was a much favoured prescription for 'health and vitality'. My sister and I consumed those yucky transparent yellow capsules for years. (God forbid if one opened in your mouth before swallowing!)

But then, the question arises - would Ramdev's medicines qualify as 'ayurvedic' if they contain animal / human bone?

What is ayurveda?
The big mystery today is - what is an ayurvedic product in the first place. My first memory of a product that unabashedly called itself thus: Vicco vajradanti toothpowder and toothpaste. "Ayurvedic jadi bootiyon se bana sampoorn swadeshi..." went the jingle.

Then, multinationals discovered Ayurveda.

a) For tax purposes: If an OTC offering or cosmetic product is labelled 'ayurvedic' - there are several commercial benefits.

The most famous example is Vicks Vaporub which uses the exact same formula in America and India, except here it lists the Indian (herbal) ingredients on the label. The company was able to establish that all of its ingredients were listed in traditional Ayurvedic texts.

b) Customer appeal: Companies realised that any product labelled ayurvedic or herbal connoted 'natural' and 'chemical freee' to the customer. The Hindu reports that the Rs 300-crore segment is perceived to be "the hottest and the fastest growing". And hence everything from toothpaste to shampoo to face cream went ayurvedic with a vengeance.

So we saw new and amazing products like Clinic Plus Ayurvedic Hair Wash with natural ingredients such as neem, tulsi and cinnamon leaf oil...

Do a few drops of one or the other plant extract make a product 'ayurvedic'? How herbal do you need to be to qualify as truly herbal??

Someone, somewhere urgently and immediately needs to set clear and definite standards for what constitutes 'ayurveda'. Both in medicine and cosmetics. Or, in the name of ancient India, consumers will continue to be taken for a ride. Maybe one they are enjoying - but a ride nevertheless.

Meanwhile the Brinda Karat vs Ramdev slugfest continues... And at the end of it all, both will come out unscathed. Looking good in the eyes of their respective followers. Make no bones about it!