Category: India

Bengaluru or Bangalore, Still a Mess

Bangalore — now officially renamed to Bengaluru — the most sought after destination of the expatriate Indian community looking to relocate to India is a city that is gone completely out of whack. It is one huge parking lot! Infrastructure and growth have no relation whatsoever and there is no respite on the horizon. The city roads are clogged with traffic throughout the day and most part of the night. Efforts are underway to build a new airport a good 20-30 kms away from the city. Getting to and from that airport is going to be a challenge in itself.

As for cost of living in Bangalore, it seems to be out of control. NRIs who have re-located to India find it more cost-effective to carry cereal boxes from the US rather than buy them in Bangalore. A Margarita is more expensive at TGIF in Bangalore than in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps the only redeeming feature of life in Bangalore is the climate. It is a lot warmer than it used be a decade or two ago (one more for Al Gore fans!), but it is still the closest to Silicon Valley weather one can hope for. With the name change behind them, hopefully the Karnataka state officials will remain focused on improving the city’s worsening infrastructure.

Chennai, which went though its name change a few years back seems to have a head start! But for its weather, Chennai appears to be a much better planned and growing city in comparison.

Domestic Airlines in India: Pains and Gains

With the consistent growth in the India economy, domestic air travel has dramatically increased and competition among Airlines has become cut-throat. It is understandable given that there are plenty of new airlines and a glut of travelers. Unused to handling such high traffic, the airports around the country are struggling. The result is that over 40% of the flights are late according to a recent study. My personal experience with delays on domestic airlines in India was 100% and this includes flights on Kingfisher, Air Deccan, and Indian Airlines. In general, the travelers are not very demanding, and airline employees don’t seem particularly concerned about delays. It is common to find announcements about the departure time being made well after the previously scheduled time has come and gone. In general, a “chalta hai” mood prevails on both sides. The real concern however should be on safety standards. I noticed that several pilots on domestic flights in India were actually foreigners, a clear sign that there is a shortage of trained manpower in India in the airline sector.
Internet Booking: The good news is that there are many online booking sites that cater to domestic air travel in India. The bad news is that they are still very poorly developed. The user interface and reliability are way below the mark. After you enter your credit card number, be prepared for a blank screen! Sometimes you go through the process of completing an entire form and the “submit” button does not work! If you call their toll free number, in all likelihood, the customer service agent will hang up on you all of a sudden because (I hear) they have aggressive customer call duration metrics! Besides, they never call you back.

Positives: On the positive side, there are flights available if you wish to travel, unlike in the past where it was just Indian Airlines all the way. Day trips for business are a possibility assuming you can manage to get work done despite factoring in delays. A 1-2 flight to Bangalore, plus 2-3 hours in Bangalore traffic, plus a couple of hours of flight delays still leaves you with a few hours in the day to conduct business. When there are delays, airlines do call to inform you, though this happens quite often after you have arrived up at the airport. Kingfisher offers “really cool” check in services by airline personnel carrying a mobile device, like the car-return services in the US. A great way to cut down the lines.

AOL: Better Late, Than Never

AOL launched its India site today. With established portals and newspaper sites already well entrenched, AOL’s move seems rather late. But with substantial growth still possible as more Indians get on the net, its a classic case of better late than never. Besides, there is plenty of ad revenue to be made provided AOL can drive the traffic to its site.

As for content and services offered by the site, there is nothing new. Its the usual “boring” stuff — Free email, news and articles on Bollywood, Cricket, Business etc. If you are one of those who is not satisfied with Samachar, HT, TOI, Rediff and the like, here is one more to the mix. The stuffing is the samei, but the package/label differ.

Youtube-Viacom Battle

The Viacom-Youtube battle is nothing but an attempt to sort out in court what the two could not settle behind closed doors.

On the one hand, it just proves that Google made a huge mistake paying 1.5B for a company with $15M in annual revenues and a whole bunch of copyrighted content. On the other it shows that the old media folks like Viacom are clueless on how to deal with the emerging Internet. “When you can’t compete, sue”.

What would make the entire playing field more interesting (not just for the law firms involved) would be if the two didn’t settle this out of court but instead dragged this into a long court battle, and in the mean time devised a viable alternate strategy to counter Youtube, Joost or otherwise.

In the meantime, I am going miss Jon Stewart clips on Youtube. So much for my bottom-line impact.

And Oh, btw, I still think Bollywood must unite and take a serious look at its clips on Youtube. Like I have said before it might be worth a shot.

Musharraf: Pak’s Best Bet

There was an article in the Washington Post by Benazir Bhutto, making a plug for returning Pak to democracy and requesting the West to re-consider ongoing support for President Musharraf’s military regime. The article did make several good arguments though it was highly self-serving. The reality of the political situation in Pak is that the two main alternatives to military rule, Nawaz Sharif and Ms. Bhutto herself, have had their opportunities in the past and during which time earned little credibility to speak off. Ms. Bhutto is widely believed to have lead one of the most corrupt Governments in Pak history. Mr. Sharif on the other hand, gave us the Kargil (his pronouncements after his ouster not withstanding) war against India. If any of the civilian governments in Pak over the years had taken some bold steps to make lasting peace with a vibrant democracy like India, the overall environment in the region might have been very different from what it is today. Unfortunately, successive civilian governments in Pak have all been corrupt, consistently meddled with India (and now with Afghanistan), done little to curb religious extremism, all while enjoying the largesse of the US.

Historically, civilian rule in Pak has never really worked and has always been short-lived. In the current environment, it is even less likely to be successful and could possibly be dangerous if an extremist government came to power. It is increasingly obvious that there is an alarming rise of religious extremism in Pakistan. This has been further accelerated by the spill over from the troubles in Afghanistan. Pak’s role in instigating trouble in Kashmir is universally accepted, its 9-11 roots have been established, to name a few other signs of trouble. Under the circumstances, ironically, a military dictator whose survival is precarious, offers the best bet. He can successfully keep all the warring factions at bay, clamp down the troublesome democracy proponents, sporadically capture terrorists to appease the West, occasionally talk peace with neighbor India but never remain really committed to it, cozy up to China from time to time, but ultimately give the US a freehand in the fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan etc.

In short, its a win-win for most parties involved except for those seeking to return to power. In all likelihood, President Musharraf is here to stay (like General Zia) until the US feels it is had enough of him. The US policy toward Pakistan is based on a pragmatic “better to be safe, than sorry” philosophy. With the current US obsession with the war on terror, this policy is unlikely to change anytime soon.

KBC: Shahrukh Does a Better Job

I saw a few recent episodes of the ever popular Kaun Banaga Crorepati (KBC) television show. I thought Shahrukh Khan does a far better job than Amitabh. I thought Amitabh was stiff, father-like and very often quite boring. Shahrukh Khan was at ease, charming and made the show far more interesting. In fact, the biggest downside with Shahrukh Khan is that he is capable of over-doing it, much like his films. Besides, to maintain performance on an ongoing basis is not easy. For now, Mr. Khan surely does a better job, in my opinion.

Airline Tickets Sites in India: Long Way to Go

Online booking of airline tickets in India have started to take off. Arzoo, Makemytrip, Travelguru, Air Deccan being a few of the competitors. Not to mention, Yahoo’s farechase is also in the game. The start-ups companies in this space have raised boatloads of Venture Capital. (wonder why, for a technology that is so common place in the US). These sites are very much in a state of infancy and there is plenty of scope for improvement.

Here are a few observations/tips in case you plan to use these services.

1. These sites are very much in a state of infancy. All the sites uniformly have very poorly designed interfaces. Combined with the slow connectivity (which is common place in India) the user experience is outrageously frustrating to say the least.

2. All the sites are equally buggy. One of the sites gave me an error when I tried to confirm my registration! Another gave me a blank screen after I submitted the registration form. Then, I tried to register again and I was told that that login was taken. Thinking that this was a sign that my registration actually went through I tried logging in. The login/passwd combination did not match. I tried to reset password but was unsuccessful. Argghhh!!!

2. Prices are similar, though I found Arzoo providing lower fare results on quite a few occasions. Farechase rates are in $ and completely out of whack. In other words, Farechase is not worth using for flight deals within India.

3. Performing a credit card transaction online is scary. Thankfully, most of the India based sites provide toll free support numbers. These work well. You are best off exploring the various options online, narrowing down on your choice, and then calling the support line to purchase your ticket. The e-ticket gets emailed out to you after the transaction has been processed.

4. Only Arzoo appears to be Firefox ready. All the other sites went crazy at some point with content on the screen shifting around in bizarre fashion.

5. The good news is that all these sites returned better rates than the travel agents.

Indian Economy Heatin’ Up

There are no shortage of news reports and articles about the overheating of the Indian economy. Meanwhile on main street the prices have sky-rocketed for everything from vegetables to real estate. The common man is struggling for survival and Wal-Mart’s first launch in India in August is still months away (!!). The BJP Govt. was driven out of power supposedly because the benefits of economic growth (remember “India Shinning”) did not “trickle” down to the masses. I guess “Incredible India” or India Poised leaves the man on the street far behind. Oh well…

Bollywood vs Youtube?

Youtube has been asked to remove Viacom video clips.

…According to Viacom, which owns more than 120 networks around the world, YouTube has shown clips of its television shows, music videos, movies and documentaries more than 1.2 billion times.

“We are asking to get paid,” said Mike Fricklas, Viacom’s general counsel, in an interview with the Mercury News. “Our content is very valuable and we think that has obviously contributed to YouTube’s growth and to Google.”

Viacom is not the only one who can claim to have contributed to Youtube’s growth. What about all the scores of Bollywood movie clips? Given the size of the audience for Bollywood clips, ts very likely that they have made a sizable contribution to Youtube rise and success.

A search on Shahrukh Khan on Youtube returned 3177 results while Jon Stewart returned 2087. Go figure!

Maybe its time the Bollywood production houses came together to battle Youtube?