Passionate About India

Rajat Gupta has hogged headlines over the past twenty odd years – he has championed that art. While his educational background without doubt has been exemplary, his consulting advisory was not necessarily so. McKinsey & Co.’s way of focus on core competency – and divesting from diversification strategies – necessarily has been one of the most debatable strategies that he represented during his tenure at the firm. Actually, it is one of those strategies that have given consultants the reputation of being people who take your watch and tell you the time; there is no strategy in this strategy. McKinsey’s consultants, of course, have championed such strategies and theories which are arguably of no great significance or research. I’m reminded of the book In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman – two McKinsey consultants – written on the basis of research that Tom Peters himself later admitted was concocted. Rajat’s stint post McKinsey has been clearly far more controve...

Yes, she has been in the news in the recent past for all the wrong reasons. It’s outright insecure and almost suicidal for a national leader of an intellectual and free-thinking state like West Bengal to target a professor for forwarding a cartoon! There are no two ways of looking at it. Leaders are supposed to let their work do the speaking and not their might. We aren’t living in the Hitlerian era. It’s also ridiculous to talk of turning Calcutta into London by painting the trees blue. London is about its democracy (freedom of forwarding cartoons), equality in access to health, education and justice, its high life expectancy, negligible infant mortality and a far more equitable society apart from its astounding standard of safety and cleanliness in comparison with Calcutta. In all these respects, West Bengal and Calcutta are at least 25 years away, assuming we get a government led by a sincere leader who works genuinely day and night for its people. Apart from arguably destroying the...

Doctors are angry! Why? Aamir Khan has targeted them in two of his first four shows! And why not? After all, the show is called Satyamev Jayate! And the first and most important responsibility of a civilized society towards its citizens is that of giving them a good healthcare system (followed by education, employment and judiciary, in order to make a good democracy), that too in a country like India where an estimated 17% of the population die before the age of 40. The reality however is shockingly quite worse. The reality is that in this country, medicines for treatment of cancer patients – in one of the cases, 550,000 Morphine and 5,200,000 Morcontin tablets sent by the World Health Organization – that were supposed to be distributed free at all the hospitals in India, were dumped in the stores of hospitals beyond their expiry dates. These were costly medicines and Morphine is typically meant to relieve patients from intensive pain. It basically meant that in this particular case, p...

When he sees elderly idealistic looking people in the audience, he himself says that he knows he is blamed as the symbol of a decadent culture! In fact I almost jumped with surprise when he said that in one of our IIPM shows, for those were the exact words I heard from my dad just a few hours before entering the venue! Later, he laughed it off saying he knows that’s how parents often look at him!! Actually that’s what sets him apart.. While most stars in Bollywood wouldn’t have ever used the word decadence in their lifetime, SRK can use it upon himself and laugh! That’s the intellect and spirit that sets the King Khan apart from all his contemporaries. While it often seems he is torn between going the Amitabh way of completely dignified existence or the Salman way of brashness, the fact is that he is just himself! As his supporters vehemently tweeted after the Wankhade stadium incident that he is most caring and soft spoken, specially towards children.. He most certainly is. Till he is...

Five very important things happened in the month of May for India. They have actually made an impact on our destiny. I will write just in a while about what those events are and how they affected India. Two words seem to have become very popular in popular media: governance and leadership. From America to Greece to Venezuela to India, the big journalists that I know and the media that I read and watch seem to complain that the world faces a crisis of governance and leadership. Even during my recent trip to America, I sensed a public cry about great leadership. I think almost all of us will agree that there is indeed a crisis. People across continents are angry and the media is doing a wonderful job of highlighting that anger. Frankly, I am more concerned about India. In my last editorial, I wrote that the Indian media seems to have forgotten its purpose and mission as the fourth pillar of our democracy. In fact, I often call it a demonocracy! But perhaps, it is also time to remember le...

While the media demands special privileges because they claim that the press is the fourth pillar of Indian democracy and serves a national purpose, the sad reality, especially over the last two decades is, social conscience and pursuit of public good have been replaced by total commercialization of media. “As Rekha takes oath, the camera kept focussing on Jaya Bachchan’s priceless expressions”... Thus went the first few lines of articles on the first pages of all national dailies the day after Rekha took her oath in Rajya Sabha, and that is exactly what TV channels had done the day before! Add to that the shameless gossip about Amitabh and Rekha.What national purpose does this story serve? And that too as headlines in the front pages of respectable dailies? Or even as the key stories of TV channels? Yes, Rekha is a big star, and her swearing in makes news. But is this the way to cover the event? Aren’t there enough Bollywood shows on TV and entertainment pages in newspapers where such...

Continuing my American series from my previous editorial, I must admit that my American tour didn’t start so well. On my flight to the US, I saw three films which symbolized the epitome of boredom of made-only-for-Oscars and Oscars nominated stuff! First, I saw The Iron Lady; then I saw another forgettable movie whose name also I have thankfully forgotten; and finally I saw the movie J Edgar – each outdoing the other in trying to be slow, boring and almost meaningless. But then, when you want to win at the Oscars, a boring biopic is often the best way! Nevertheless, in the most boring J Edgar, what struck me was the fact that perhaps the biggest achievement of the iconic Hoover, the man behind American intelligence, was his investigation of a case of kidnapping of a little boy called Charles Lindbergh. The film and the American society, way back then in 1932, made such a huge issue around the kidnapping and disappearance of a kid – so much so that a famous newspaper writer called the k...