A Rs.15 billion rich NGO!

BCCI should be taxed as it is no more a national sporting body

It might sound absurd that the world’s richest sporting authority needs tax exemption. That’s the state of affairs at present with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). In a request to the Indian government, the board demanded that it be recognized as an NGO and given some tax waivers.

However, if one goes by numbers, BCCI is one of the richest sporting bodies of the world today and mints tremendous wealth through various commercial and private tie-ups. The IPL franchise model is a crying instance of how BCCI is now more of a commercial organisation rather than a board to promote sports in the country. The board is now more concerned with its own bottom line rather than the cause of cricket and cricketers. Even in the recent past, BCCI has not started any coaching centres, awareness programs or training camps to promote the game and has not constructed any sporting complexes either. As a matter of fact, tax exemption for BCCI was withdrawn in 2007 as it was observed that the board was no longer a body working for national sporting interests.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri 
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles. 

IIPM Best B School India
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting

From theory to practice

India ‘s constitution defines the country as a democracy, but countries without a consolidated constitution are more democratic in reality

In the famous Gettysburg Address (in November 1863 in Pennsylvania), American President Abraham Lincoln described a democratic republic as a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. However, the real forms of democracy prevailing throughout the world vary.

Whether a country will be democratic or not is more or less delineated in its constitution. The Indian constitution is a compilation of the constitutions of various other countries and it declared India to be a “sovereign socialist secular democratic republic”. Though the preamble labels India as a “democratic republic”, true democracy is still a chimera even today, some 64 years after independence. In the Democracy Index 2010 (released by Economist Intelligence Unit), only 26 nations (with a mere 12.3% of world population) were considered as being fully democratic and India is languishing at 40 (score 7.28) under the category of flawed democracies. It scores low in particular on the parameters of political participation and political culture.

What is even more shocking is the manner in which India is slipping on several important parameters of measuring democracy. This eventually led to a fall in the score from 7.8 in 2008 to 7.28 in 2010.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri 
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles. 

IIPM Best B School
IndiaManagement Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting

Our stupid obsession with Narendra Modi

The countdown to a macabre anniversary has begun and the media has already started reliving those gory moments and days. Even if you want to, there is simply no way you can avoid reliving the horror. Yes, I am talking about the burning of the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express – in which 'Kar Sevaks' were travelling from Ayodhya – at the Godhra station on February 27, 2002, and the subsequent riots in Gujarat that led to the brutal deaths of about 2,000 human beings, most of them Muslims. There is little doubt now that a lot of those killings were conducted in an organised manner and the state government failed to protect innocent citizens. Of course, I must say that the manner in which our secular fundamentalists use the word 'Genocide' to describe the 2002 Gujarat riots have a deeply perverted sense of history as well as the English language. I find it stranger still when the same folk insist that the burning alive of 59 children, women and men inside a train compartment was merely an accident, or a conspiracy hatched by Hindu fanatics to provide ammunition for the pogrom (there goes another word) against Muslims in Gujarat.

Since 2002, no other man or woman in contemporary Indian history has been demonised the way Narendra Modi has been. And as the 10th anniversary of Gujarat riots approaches, you can bet many pundits will dish out more armchair psychiatric nonsense while claiming to analyse the psyche of a ‘mass murderer’ (there goes another word) like Narendra Modi. The more polite and possibly more objective ones will say how the taint of the Gujarat riots will prevent Modi from being able to play a more effective and meaningful role in national politics and even in BJP (God knows how desperately the BJP needs a national leader at this juncture). The more ideologically perverted types will continue to declare him persona non grata. By the way, our Indian comrades managed to convince Capitalist and Imperialist America to deny a visa to Modi. But I guess the comrades either forgot to ask or failed in their attempts to persuade Communist China to deny a visa to Modi! I think such small ironies of life entirely escape our Indian Lefties who still think Stalin and Mao were 20th century versions of God.

So Modi as Ravana will become the leitmotif for India in the coming weeks. But don’t you honestly think we are going too far in our obsession to demonise the man? And that we are belittling ourselves and India in the bargain? I wont repeat stuff about how our media conveniently ignores the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 and the myriad massacres of Muslims in the (then) Bombay, in Bhagalpur, in Nellie, in Meerut and many other places in which surely Narendra Modi was not the ‘mastermind’ (there goes another word).

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri 
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles. 

IIPM Best B School
IndiaManagement Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting

Now, your rights face inflation!

New RTI rules introduced by the Chhattisgarh government come across as blatant misuse of power and undermine the very essence of the act


Once again, the much hyped Right to Information Act (RTI) has returned to the headlines. And this time, it is due to the outrageous hike in RTI fees by the Chhattisgarh government. While all states charge Rs.10 as fee and Rs.2 per print page of the RTI response, Chhattisgarh has increased the fees to Rs.500 and Rs.15 per print copy. The main reason cited is reduction of frivolous applications (interestingly, official sources have stated that the number of applications filed in Chhattisgarh since RTI got enforced is just around 50!). Furthermore, they have made it mandatory to cite reasons for filling applications, restricted the number of queries per applicant to one and also limited the word count to 150. The move has been taken after the Karnataka government took a similar step in 2008 with respect to number of queries and word count and the UP government hiked RTI application fees.

This fee hike would deprive people who seek information especially at a time when the Chhattisgarh government is undertaking face saving measures in the light of the paddy procurement scam. The Central government has given the power to revise fees. But as per sub-section (1) of section 6 and sub-sections (1) & (5) of section 7, “The fee shall be reasonable and no such fee shall be charged from persons who are of below poverty line as may be determined by the appropriate government.”


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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

IIPM Best B School India
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting

Chinese Fire vs Indian Thunder

Considering how they made The Incumbents Bleed, both Micromax and G’Five have been Revelations in The Indian Mobile handset Industry. Now they are Increasingly getting in each Other’s Way

Ages ago, Charles Darwin coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”. His words make all the more sense in today’s era where change happens overnight. And verdicts are given on the victor and the vanquished in much lesser time. In fact, one can safely adapt Darwin’s theory and say that this is the era of survival of the “fittest and the swiftest”. The Indian handset industry, with estimated sales of around 10-12 million units every month, currently has its hands full with a number of players already in the race for a slice of the pie; of course, the larger, the better. But with that perspective, comes the fact that there are always newer players looking to get their foot inside the doorstep. This market, which earlier boasted of only a handful others, was redefined a few years back by a clutch of companies, which made the incumbents bleed, and profusely. Micromax and G’five are two brands, in particular, that emerged from the resultant hostilities to become prominent players in their own right. And while they both have benefitted from attacking the leaders, they are off late increasingly finding themselves in each other’s way. And given the fact that they perhaps are the most acerbic competitors in the market front, 4Ps B&M decided to cover them in this section of Marketers@War..

Micromax established a new business model in India by importing handsets – as there are no duties levied – and selling them in the Indian handset market. Most imports are occurring from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other east Asian countries. Off late, the Chinese players have also realised the potential and growth opportunities and entered directly. And Honk Kong based G’Five, irrespective of its lineage (how many of us associate Hong Kong with consumer electronics?), is playing on similar tunes.

Micromax and G’Five are competing in the Indian market on a common principle – offering exceptional value for money to their users and becoming the alternatives to the incumbent MNCs. However, they are not similar in their actual method of approach. Micromax, since its inception, has adopted an aggressive marketing campaign to promote its brand. It has leveraged both cricket and Bollywood (it roped in Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar, a testimony to its ambitions) and indulged in a number of visibility campaigns. “Our target audience identifies itself with cricket, Bollywood and music. That is why we have been marketing our product around them,” points out Pratik Seal, Head Marketing, Micromax.

On the other hand, G’Five has remained a silent killer in the industry and hardly promoted its products or its brand at the national level. It therefore came as a shock when IDC reported that G’Five has emerged as the largest handset player in India after Nokia for the quarter ending September 2010. Nokia further slipped by around 5% to post a market share of 31.5% and G’Five took the second spot with 10.6%; beating Samsung at 8.2%.“Yes, I agree that G’Five as a brand was not visible in the Tier I cities and metros. But we have been doing enough branding and marketing campaigns in Tier II and III cities,” says Arshit Pathak, Managing Director, G’Five. In the initial stages, the company has been targeting Tier II and Tier III cities, and 80% of sales of G’Five handsets are coming from these cities. After having reached a formidable position, G’Five is now positioning itself in metros and Tier I cities. It is also looking forward to tie-ups with some of the large format retail outlets.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM Best B School India
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM's Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
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