ybrid hunger solutions

Dominos India introduced a 'cheeseburger pizza'. It's kind of ironic because a couple of years ago the burger people - McDonald's - introduced the 'Pizza McPuff'.

Well, I had a taste of the new hybrid pizza and must say it was surprisingly good. I use the word surprise because I'm not a satisfied Dominos customer.

Originally we ordered Dominos because it was the only home delivery pizza available where we lived. Now there's a Smoking Joes (which is infinitely better) but I can never recall the number. And so, Dominos wins every time.

Besides, Dominos keeps dropping coupons by your house with this or that offer. And one fine day when you're tired of the cooking but too tired to go out and eat either, you see their flyer with the cheese doing a nach balliye with the toppings and say, 'let's order!'

However 8 times out of 10 I have been unhappy with the pizza when it actually arrived. The base is too thick and elasticky in your mouth. The pizza too bland. Or, exotic sounding but ordinary.

In fact the non-pizza items on the menu have always been more satisfying. The twisty bread, garlic breadstick and most of all the Cinna Stix with Apple Dip.

Mmm ..accha hai
Well, this time was different. The 'cheeseburger pizza' was good. The good thing was I didn't know what I was biting into or I may have had a less objective opinion. A cheeseburger pizza, after all, sounds pretty 'cheesy'.

This pizza had a filling and a topping. The filling reminded me more of pav bhaji than a 'burger' but the overall effect was good. The concept seemed to be inspired by our desi stuffed parathas than a burger if you ask me. But 'paratha pizza' may not have sounded that cool.

Of course, I am sure the extra layers of cheese + the burger filling = many, many more calories than regular pizzas. So, plan to have two slices instead of three.

And yeah, do check out their new 'India' website. The steam rising from the pizza featured on the home page is a great idea. Makes you actually want to order now.

But no, I'm trying to shed some weight and so will firmly resist!

One day they'll figure out how to add smell to the cyber equation and then.. well it won't be that easy.

Shoots, eats and leaves

Nope, I didn't get the book title all mixed up. This is the exact sequence of events at the average I-know-you-barely-but-must-attend-your-wedding scenario.

The invitation came from a known friend of my father's whom we have dealt with closely over the last 14 years. So had he not invited us for his son's wedding thoda bura bhi lagta. And having been invited we had to turn up. Knowing fully well we will know not a single soul at the event.

So what do you do? Land up, stand in line, wish the happy couple, hand over the bouquet and get the mandatory picture clicked. Then, you head straight for the food and boy - was it great!

This was one of those classy Gujju weddings held in an open air ground. So while there was opulence in the air, unlike the similar weddings I've seen in Delhi, everything was pleasantly understated.

Yes, there were some 25 different food counters - including pasta, stir fry, chaat, salad, crostini, north Indian, south Indian, Gujarati and what have you. Plus a separate 'without onion/ garlic' counter. But the best part was the portions - everything had been made in mini-size servings so you could try 10 different things but end up wasting very little.

As for the dessert counter - it had a 'chocolate fountain'! OK, not as grand as the kind you'd see in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'. This was basically a variation of the fondue pot. Dipping bits of fruit or bread or whatever into the chocolate was fun though it didn't taste all that great.

But all put together... Mmm, it was good.

Shaadi ke prakaar

Weddings are like sentences - they come in three forms:

* 'First person' : When you are the one getting married
I am sure many people have memorable, perfect weddings. Mine - crammed with relatives and rituals - passed by in a blur. Years later you look at your ghastly pics in a photo album with a ghastlier red rose on it and vaguely recall "this happened"

* 'Second person': When someone close to you gets married
This is the best kind of wedding. You get an excuse to shop for sequinned outfits and matching purse/ footwear without worrying about in laws, joint accounts and 'shall I change my surname or not?'

Of course, if the one getting married is too close to you - like a brother, favourite cousin or best friend - you may have to volunteer for some of the 'work' as well. Such as ferrying people from railway stations and airports, keeping track of gifts and envelopes or minding the bride's suitcase filled with jewelery... Grin and bear it!

* 'Third person': When someone barely known to you is getting married
This can be the most boring of all events. Or extremely interesting. I have to admit that I have attended very few marriages ... specially when I was at school and we were dragged by parents to alien marriage parties. Protocol followed - wish, eat and come back)

Marriages have more or less become important venues to flaunt the wealth one has... Here in the South, The Chettiyars are supposed to exhibit whatever they pass on to the marrying couples. They stack hundreds of big vessels, old cauldrons etc (of all sizes, numbers, types :)) ) in a separate room. Their food is also too good. The next nitty gritty is about the gift :) How big someone brings a gift has been made into a rib-tickling comedy into one of the Tamil movies.

The fact that you know very few people there means you don't have pressure to dress up too much and look your best. But you have every right to check out what the others are wearing and pass judgement without feeling guilty.

But like I said, the real deciding factor is the food... A great wedding feast has a charm of all its own.

Enjoy the next one that comes your way!

Ethics and Education are not the same

Fallacy:
The axiom that the education at Ivy league schools like IITs,IIMs ensure ethical behaviour by the students. Anybody who fails to meet this high-bar in personal life is a "blot" on his/her alma mater.

The unsaid corollary being, if you are not from a top-notch school, ethical behaviour is not such a hard requirement. Anyway, the papers print the colourful resume of fraudsters only if it is from a well known institute which very few can boast as alma mater.

To me, ethics and education - at any institute - are two different things. The terms corporate governance and ethics in business gaining currency in B-schools is a very recent phenomenon. The blue blooded US B-schools started to focus on corporate governance only after their alumni at Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, etc were caught red handed in world's biggest corporate scams.

Back home, there are quite a few cases where the super-educated were arrested in illegal acts. And, do keep in mind that only "illegal" activities make it to the papers. Save columnist like Sucheta Dalal, the media is too busy covering lives of celebrities to look into "unethical" activities or white-collar crimes. So, Ivy league education and ethics are different things.

The entire idea of ethics being taught in classrooms sounds laughable. The upbringing of 20+ years ensures that a decision to classify an activity as unethical is taken almost instantaneously. Rest of the time is spent building the argument supporting for the decision. Also, schools like Stanford Business School hesitate to express truth like saying Mukesh Ambani did not complete his MBA from school. Instead, they choose to use an utterly deceptive "pursued" to describe his stint at Stanford. When the schools themselves are not clear about what is true and ethical, how can one expect them to impart the value system to students?

Continuing with the IIM-Samsung case, this doesn't look like first.

• Sridhar Vagal, IG of Police, was the first police officer to go behind bar in the high-profile Telgi scam. He "allegedly accepted Rs 72 lakh from Telgi over a period of time and had amassed wealth and property amounting to Rs 50 crores". He is an alumnus of IIT-B and IIM-A.
• Sanjay Kumar, CEO, Computer Associates had to quit amidst charges of financial fraud. He is an alumnus of an IIM. (I couldn't find a more concrete link.)
• Another potentially unethical behaviour by IIM alumnus - Sushmita Sen made sexual harassment charges against a Coke executive, an IIM alumnus. In the out-of-court settlement, Coke paid 1.5 Crores.

Thousands of young people look at IIMs as their ultimate destination and toil to gain entry. To that extent IIM grads do have a 'role model' effect.

Listen, all those India Shining campaigners. India has reached such a stage that the role models for the younger generation are the graduates of Ivy League schools. And these "role models" should behave truthfully only because they are the leaders of the society. Pity.

Vagal could have been a great role model. After having an enviable resume, he resisted the temptation to join corporate world, thereby denying himself a financially comfortable life. Instead, he chose to "serve" the nation. Had he not been nabbed, his "sacrifice" would have been glorified to no end.

"We, who condemn corruption at large should highlight the need for ethical practices in business."

OK, here is my prescription. To begin with the IIMs should stop bragging about the placement offers with $$$ salaries at large financial corporations for the reason that most (I am just being conservative by not using "all") have been found indulging in illegal and unethical business practices at some point in time. A more drastic step would be to ban all these companies from campus recruitment process. The steps would be to denounce the association with any alumnus working with such "unethical" corporations. Sounds ridiculous, right?

Apologies if this stinks too much of MBA bashing. I don't intend it to be. But, to me, such self-righteous argument built on fragile ground by a really admirable person is unbearable.

Ethics of MBA's

Felt rather disgusted when I read this.

In a shocking case of corporate misgovernance, a senior executive of Samsung India Electronics, the Indian arm of the South Korean electronic giant, misappropriated funds worth several crores of rupees from his firm, using ingenious methods to achieve his task.

Vivek Prakash, vice-president, sales and marketing (IT division), had everything going for him. He was only 34 years old and, in the firm’s hierarchy, he was next only to the director, drawing a handsome salary. His total package amounted to Rs 40 lakhs per annum.

Yet, he put in his papers abruptly one fine morning. When he did so, his bosses in India and in South Korea were not surprised. From the past year, they could detect irregularities in his functioning. On scrutiny, they stumbled upon something to give them sleepless nights for many days.
 
Using R S Sahu, manager, accounts (receivables), an officer who was reporting directly to him, as an accomplice, Prakash had duped the company of Rs 18 crore. While the Delhi Police’s economic offences wing (EOW) had already laid its hands upon evidence on the embezzlement of this amount, there was a feeling that the magnitude of the fraud could be bigger.

Was even more disgusted when I learnt that this guy was an IIM grad (Bangalore - '95 batch).

Yes, on one hand there was Manjunath who sacrificed his life, unwilling to be bought out and on the other hand there was this Vivek Prakash who sacrificed his honour, who so willingly sold out.

And for what? Why would someone who had everything going for him take such a risk? I guess he thought he was just too smart to get caught.

But he did and the future looked pretty bleak. The Delhi high court refused his application for anticipatory bail.

Smarts vs Ethics
There was a hectic debate going on in some of the IIM e-groups and mailing lists. One alum wrote:

I suggest IIMs and alumni collectively should have taken the lead in denouncing this guy (and any other alumnus caught doing such things or worse)... take back the degree, etc. To send the message that while even IIMs may have black sheep, we strongly condemn such behaviour, and will take the lead in punishing him, in whatever ways we can.

Another adds: I just finished reading a book about the Enron collapse ("Smartest Guys In The Room"), where most of the fraudsters were very highly educated. Education is no guarantee for ethics... But still, it is a shock - coming so soon after Manju.


Of course in the case of Enron it wasn't one individual but an entire organisation built on a culture where the bottomline came first and nothing else mattered.

Oh, they did have an 'Official Code of Ethics'. As Michael Miller described it: The July 2000 booklet is nearly 65 pages of take-the-high-road legalese that must have made employees feel they were working for the Vatican or some other equally pure and clean organization...

As they say it's all about what you do and not about what you say or preach. And a conscience is something that ought to prick you when no one is looking. This is the very pride which destroys the image of IIM grads in the eyes of so many corporates and people who believe that they are snobbish and have an attitude many times rightly so.

IIMs are a great brand value and it fails us when it makes you think that its the place where characters can be moulded and ethics driven in. The students of IIMs are typically of the age 22-24 and a lot depends on their upbringing and the circumstances of their further work life that might make them get into the booby trap.

If you still believe that those 2yrs in an IIM are the reformatory period of an individual, then well God save all those grads.

We have made the IIM brand a tad different by choosing a different career line but by making ourselves stand out as belonging to a "privileged" community will only make all think of the IIM grads as snobbish.

One's level of education is only mildly correlated with one's ethics. One's ethics are a function of one's nature plus upbringing plus opportunity/context. When opportunities present themselves in the context of power that one possesses, the path down the slippery slope begins to beckon. It doesn't look slippery at first. The stakes are small, the temptation is small, the first transgression is small. This serves then to inoculate you against the next, bigger transgression. That's what happened to the folks at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco etc.

Another question which pops out is what does ethics have to do with the IIM's? Aren't students from other B-schools taught ethics? There are scores of management graduates pouring out into the corporate world every year and every once in a while we hear such instances. Would it have generated so much interest had he been from some other institiute? Agreed that the IIMs are great institutes and all but once you're in the corporate world for a few years it doesn't really matter any more, what counts are your actions. Besides, while two years in a B-school does alter the course of your life, it does not in any way guarantee whether or not a person will be caught with his hand in the cookie jar.


Solution offered : Let the IIM's make a policy of recording each student's PAN number (similar to SSN in the US). Any offence that this student commits should be reported to IIM, and the student given a chance to respond. The record of student offences should be public at the IIM. When any IIM alumni takes up a new job, the employer can look up his record...

But can the two years in a college change the fabric of ethics and values? Do we really believe it will override the 20 years of life before an IIM?


We have been privileged to attend these institutions; ethics and values are part of what we are meant to have imbibed there.

There is this old saying : more money = more problems , err maybe an old equation but now i would like to say more IQ = more problems, because eccentricity is the price you have to pay for being a genius.  

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principals which direct them.--Napoleon Bonaparte 

To that extent IIM grads do have a 'role model' effect. Of course, every individual's acts are based on his own character. But if today people are talking about 'IIM graduate Manjunath' on its front page, tomorrow it may be referring to 'IIM graduate Vivek Prakash'.

There are some things money can't buy. The honour and respect of one's peers is one of them. "Character is what we do when no one is looking." Education doesn't guarantee you a place in the Hall of Integrity.
Corruption is a far big problem in India than what this case displays. All of us give or take money to get the routine work done. Everyday most of our politicians are eating our money by illegitimate means.

The crux of the problem is that most of the people who are not at these posts where corruption is an easily viable option, want to be here to do corruption. This means punishing these guys will not be enough but it requires a larger effort correcting the attitude of people.

The latest KPMG Forensic Integrity Survey says companies are more aware of ethics, but that unethical behavior is continuing unabated. That suggests companies are doing a fair bit of spin when it comes to ethics.
Regardless of his IIM status it should have come across as disgusting. But I find the reaction a bit typical (the one that you talk about on the e-groups) of the insular attitude taken by the A-list colleges.

This chap got caught. God knows how many people on that e-group are lurking around after years of deceit, or evading tax, or making bill-less purchases and killing the VAT. Mob-justice is as disturbing as lynching. It assumes a collective virtue (as opposed to collective intelligence).

IIM or any other college is a reflection of the society that feeds students into it. As a country, we accept bribery and swindle as long as we don't get caught in the act - It's getting caught that appears to be more shameful than the act of commission. It may upset some yes, but hhmm.. nothing extraordinary.

I believe that in India stealing from big organisations is considered cunning and not theft. Why do we think that IIM guys can't do anything wrong at all. Temptation maybe anything and in any form ...why do IAS officers become corrupt after all, even the IAS exam too is tough. In the IAS, honest offiecrs are hard to find. Why do Doctors sell kidneys? The list goes on perhaps why do people become spies and betray the nation? Nothing to do with the degree that they get. It's the values and ethics they nurture. 

Hardly feel that there is any connection between this guy having swindled the money and he being from IIM. That does not mean all the hundreds of IIM graduates who pass out are Mahatma Gandhis. There are Gandhis and Godses every where whether it be the medical field, IIT, IIM, XLRI etc.

This is the case which is to be condemned by one and all of the country. Mere a passout from a good B-schools doesn't ensure that he/she is ethical and is imbibed with good values. The whole system is creating and encouraging such individuals . After all, they are human beings too. There is nothing exceptional in them except for the two years of "extraordinary" education they go through. They too are driven by the whims and fancies of the mundane world and commit gross crimes, including non-payment of loans or fraudulent transactions.


But yes, in some small way his individual decision to embrace the Dark Side does leave a small blot on the collective brand equity of IIM graduates. Just like Manjunath's principled stand added a positive shine to it.

We, who condemn corruption at large should highlight the need for ethical practices in business. And along with Manjunath, include a case study on Vivek Prakash to be taught in B schools as well!

LET DIWALI LIGHT UP OUR LIVES BRIGHT

CELEBRATE A PROSPEROUS & A LIGHT-FILLED DIWALI

Ethics of MBA Admissions

A decade ago life for a B school aspirant was relatively simple. You gave the CAT, CET and XL entrance - then hoped to get in somewhere.

Now, the sheer multitude of entrance exams, procedures, interviews, GDs - simply boggles the mind. Add to that admission deadlines and the ensuing decision dilemmas that candidates face. Because B schools can't follow student-friendly policies.

Some announce their admissions as early as February, others in April. Students who pay up at B schools which close their admissions early end up losing anything from Rs 50,000-100,000 even though they withdraw their applications a full two months before the start of the academic session.

The vacated seats are invariably filled up by wait-listed candidates.

Nilesh Gupta, an FPM student at IIM A decided to take up the matter and knocked the legal doors. The strange bit is Nilesh is doing this not because he himself lost any money but because he feels justice must be done.

Many students have faced this 'non-refund' problem. It's a problem that prevails at a multitude of institutes.

This sort of discrepancy is prevailing in the refunds process, but I was really amazed at the amount they deduct. It is painful that these highly reputed and respected institutes can stoop so low. Deducting a part of an aspirants fees is ok, but returning a bare minimum really pains. They should be allowed to deduct the amount that is spent in the counsellings and selection of a candidate. Even the government should step in this matter and if possible bring a legislation regarding this anomaly.

The plight of aspirants is miserable who had to part with a major chunk of their moolah. It is in students interest that such issues should be highlighted so that institutes do not rob the students of their money.
Most of the policies which the top B-Schools in India follow are a replica of IIM's only.

Seems it is a serious case of Selective Understanding . Its absolutely not justifying that a person who is in want of "better things" in life deprives many people of a place which they deserve.

Expecting any changes won't happen all of a sudden, but at least there will be no false "We-are-a-non-profit-concern.." hogwash any more. This is not the only thing that's not correct in this system. I can telll you that even the admission process of several top B-Schools is at best questionable and at worst highly biased.

Its a pity that any system which becomes popular finds it impossible to stay pure and the top ones are guilty of fleecing poor students, what with their 1000Rs plus forms. Add to that TBL costs of exams. And they talk of providing scholarships to meritorious students. But that can happen only if one is lucky enough to get in one of them after spending at least 10000 bucks (conservative estimates!). How does a lower middle class afford that!!... Would have been more apt had that the Education Ministry raised the entrance fee & refund issues than the semester fees at IIMs.

If we take on an average of 1000 bucks for a form with even 10000 applications it works out to be Rs.100,00,000. Its 1 crore !!!! No college would need 1 crore for just printing of prospectus and forms. The cost of conducting the examinations can easily be borne by this mullah that they have collected with the  applications.

These are the institutes that teach the students about leadership and ethics. They themselves have to lead by example by not fleecing the students' of their parents' hard earned money.

At the end of the day, these are educational institutions. If they feel that they don't want mayhems because of students withdrawing, then why do certain institutes have walk-in wait lists who get admitted if some students don't show up without intimation on the starting day of the session. There are ways and means of controlling a situation but robbing students of the money, that they havent even earned yet, is surely not one of them.


The admission procedures DO cost the colleges, money wise and of course student wise.. as they sometimes end up losing some brighter students.. who eventually opt for a better college when an option opens up.. so if they have no such regulation in place, a student would go mad hopping from college to college and hence disrupting the whole admission procedures.. The student is not unjustified when he / she does so, but there should be a regulation to the fickle minded state that the students are in when going through the admission procedures..

Bottomline: At the end of the day, its the students who pay for being managed and not the Management !!!!

The Sting Thing

What an amazing sting! Amazing because just a few days ago Aaj Tak was pleased as punch that apna patrakaar managed to sneak into Amitabhji's hospital room.

Operation Duryodhana, executed in partnership with Aniruddha Bahal's Cobrapost , the channel gave a real and powerful example of what being 'sabse tez' can be about.

Yes, competition may have dumbed down TV but with it also comes the incentive to take risks and do something to rise above the clutter. Something like Operation Duryodhana.

It's great that Aaj Tak recognised 'we can't do everything'. No major media house would have the expertise, the patience or the balls to pull of a sting operation of this magnitude. Working 8 months on one story? Uh, 8 days is a major 'well-researched' magazine cover. 8 hours is more like it on most days.

For Cobrapost too, the Aaj Tak tie up made a lot of sense. Remember what happened with Tehelkagate? Sure it got coverage but by giving co-ownership of the Duryodhana story to the Today group, Cobrapost's sting made a huge impact. And it didn't die down easily either.

Within hours all the parties whose MPs were implicated had suspended their MPs. Excepting the RJD.

In contrast with the Tehelka scandal where those caught on camera remained defiant and instead tried to harass Tehelka. Probably thinking: woh log chhote hain, unka mooh band karva sakte hain.
Now, it ain't gonna be possible. You can attack Aniruddha Bahal and his team but can you malign the India Today group and get away with it?

Win-win
The Aaj tak tie up also made great financial sense for the Small Guy. 5 lakhs were paid in bribes to the MPs alone. There must have been thousands of other incidental expenses. And of course the cost of running the Cobrapost operations - salaries, cellphones et al.

Instead of worrying about how the office electricity bill - as well as how to create an impact with the story - Cobrapost could concentrate on its core area of expertise: conducting the sting operation.

And it looked like they invested in some really great spy cameras 'cause the picture quality was far far superior to the grainy visuals generally seen in a sting operation.

As far as Aaj Tak was concerned what was Rs 15-20 lakhs? Or even more?? Sure there was a small risk that things would not come through but with Bahal's reputation that was a risk worth taking.

The result was a story that gave Aaj Tak eyeballs worth several crores. Given that the channel had Star News nipping at its heels, this was surely just what the TRP doctor ordered.

And it went on to show that no matter how many times you change your channel graphics, the ratings will come only when you give viewers a reason to tune in for your core offering - NEWS.

Giving Credit
The issue is of such national interest that no competitor can afford to ignore it. But surprisingly, this time almost all were graceful enough to acknowledge it was a Cobrapost-Aaj Tak sting operation.

This included even the biggies like TOI and HT although curiously ET had not done so and in its online article TOI was a little more coy, only mentioned Aaj Tak.

Only NDTV appeared to be in denial and sulking. . No mention of this news at all on their homepage
In their late night bulletin the top story was 'opening of Pune International airport'.

Star News, meanwhile, took a 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' view and was airing its own series of 'look, these are your dirty politician' bulletins.

Questions
Getting politicians from across the spectrum of parties was a really smart idea. Perhaps that's what took the operation so long?

Given that 6 BJP MPs succumbed to the Dark Side one can infer that those in the party out of power had less avenues for 'income' and could be tempted more easily.

But how come there were no MPs from Left parties? Could the public conclude they have more integrity?

Secondly, did all the MPs approach/agree to take bribes? Or were there some who refused? That was interesting to know.

Some of the questions MPs agreed to raise were absolute rubbish. eg an imaginary genetically modified "Catch 22 cottonseed" . And the ROTFL :
“Is it true that while NRI firms such as India Uncut of USA, Sepia Mutiny of Britain and AnarCap Lib of Netherlands have been allowed to invest in Indian SSIs, the reputed German investment firm Desipundit has been denied permission? If so, the reasons thereof?
 
Was the Union Government of India planning to make automatic the long procedure of permission for SSIs to import new technologies such as Trackbacks, Pingbacks, Blogrolls, Splogs and Hitcounters?”

This question was submitted with the purpose of getting a reply from the minister of Small Scale Industries. Thankfully, there were some brains functioning in Parliament house because from Cobrapost's press release it would seem that none of the faltu questions actually made it to the floor or even as questions worthy of written replies.

But yeah, they made for a great story. It was good to see the Cobrapost guys retain a sense of humour in what must have been a tense and trying time.

If you offer an individual a bribe to do something corrupt, it is but natural that most of the time they will accept it, so it's the briber who is at fault for offering it in the first place? If we lose even the ability to be shocked by this kind of thing, times really are dangerous.

Of course, nobody's claiming that the media did this with purely altruistic motives -- of course they wanted a scoop, of course they wanted greater hits and TRPs. But in the process, if they revealed something as ludicruos as this, surely that was a good thing? And when you say the media could produce such scoops to serve their own ends, what you don't realize is that the media has too many checks built into the system. Nobody works alone, too many people are in the know and it's difficult to guarentee everybody will keep their mouths shut.

Made great business sense to conduct such sting operations. Behal & team also deserved credit to make honest & investigative journalism lucrative. Hope to see more Behal's in the future. Second, the Parties immediately suspended their MLAs because they had seen the Tehlaka days & they realised that it will harm their image, even if they fought it legally. This is the beauty of our system. No, Bangaru & Jaitley (jaya) weren't treated differently beacuse they were big fish.

The parties would have played defiant had this not had the potential of rewriting their political future.
All around us know about the court clerk who takes bribes, (except the police, of course), and so the media people will also have known who to invest their 15-20 lakhs on.


With all the reactions these sting operations have created in the country, I'm surprised that no one has flipped the coin and looked at the other side. The whole operation was a publicity stunt based on the fact that somebody will definitely fall for a bait. The question is, in any country with a corruption statistics like ours, how many politicians follow these ethics strongly, because for those who follow it with little lax can happily take this bribe since its not doing any direct harm to anyone (or is it ?). I'm not taking any sides, but I do think that the way media-power is rising in country, they'll surely become a big part of the corrupt system and use their power against/for political parties, but guess what, their misuse won't be technically termed as 'corruption'.


Jaya Jaitley and Bangaru Laxman were presidents of their parties instead of a everyday MP. Also since it had names of two main political parties, the parties knew the pressure wouldn't be on a single one. So best way out was take a high moral ground.

This sting operation was indeed something to be appreciated unlike the cheezy ones conducted by India TV which were more inclined to peek a boo in the private lives of the rich n famous .... Operation Duryodhan surely had to do something with the common man ...i m sure there will be many more like this and hope all the other political whizkids learn a sabak from this ....

Anyways the crux of the matter was that Aaj Tak had definitely got the TRP"S rolling its way ..

And I love the name 'Operation Duryodhana'. Although it's not apt in the literal sense coz the operation was more of a political 'vastraharan'.

This time the Duryodhan's were the ones getting 'exposed'. And ironically, it was a woman - Cobrapost's intrepid Suhasini Raj - who was doing the exposing.

And much as I'd like to see who she is, I hope she and the rest of the sting ops team stays away from the limelight. So we can look forward to many more such Duryodhans and vastraharans!