Fifteen seconds of fame...
The Yahoo-Reuters tie up gives users a chance to make their own news

(column by M. Arun)

If you thought blogging was the best way to express yourself in the Information Age, think again. It’s time to rejuvenate the reporter in you and look out for those ‘Kodak Moments’ that could make you a celebrity overnight. Internet portal Yahoo! has tied up with news agency Reuters on December 4 to launch an online news service – You Witness. People who have captured photos or videos of news events can now post them on the website, after which it will be screened and put up for others to see.

You Witness will run selected images contributed by users as part of contemporary packages in Yahoo! News. As camera-based cell phones are packing in more and more mega pixels and memory space, people could certainly be lured into this opportunity for fame and fortune (there is a chance for a quick buck if the material is used for commercial purposes). Of course, there is an element of good luck too. Someone could just ‘happen’ to be at the right place & time to capture one of those simply sensational ‘Kodak Moments’. For instance, most footage of the tsunami that hit the eastern coast of South India in 2004 was by amateur photographers. Yahoo! plans to expand this to sports, entertainment et al. BBC’s Your News service already invites photo essays from users and holds contests for the best photographs in different categories.

With the launch of the new service, Yahoo! hopes to leverage its resource base to provide quality, relevant news to users, much with the spirit of citizen journalism. However, the main issue is copyrights, which could seriously jeopardize all the potential that this new medium of expression promises. Perhaps that’s why the expertise of Reuters will prove invaluable. On the other hand, all you budding roving paparazzi can now have a field day. But remember people; make sure you do not get others (or yourself) into trouble during your travails. Reporting is risky business at times.

(End of M. Arun column)

Home alone...
...and shopping away to glory!

(column by Akansha Pradhan)

With the Yuletide fever gaining momentum and plans for a New Year bash afoot you can well expect to find half the world retiring to their computer rooms! Data released from the Los Angeles’ online price comparison website PriceGrabber.com confirms that people are now scouring the web for bargains, especially this holiday season.

“The online shopping space is on track to reach $132 billion in 2006, according to Forrester Research. With the space growing 40% year over year, we see more consumers shopping online for all products – apparel, consumer electronics, home furnishings, home appliances and more,” asserts Kamran Pourzanjani, President, PriceGrabber.

India is not one to be left behind, not in shopping at least! eBay India claims that an average piece of jewellery sells every 6 minutes, a consumer electronic product sells every 7 minutes, a mobile handset sells every 9 minutes & a MP3 player sells every 13 minutes on their auction site! “Indians are becoming more comfortable with e-commerce, as evident from the IOA Power Shopper report sizing the e-commerce market at Rs.11.8 billion in 2005-06... (the market is) estimated to explode to Rs.23 billion by 2006-07,” stresses Gautam Thakar, Country Manager, eBay India.

Even e-payments have picked up, but are users now feeling secure about online payments? “Most e-commerce users are aware that there are no concerns when they are buying on a reputed website... For example on eBay India, we offer Buyer Protection of Rs.10,000 on all payment methods and up to Rs.50,000 on online payment methods,” Thakar states.

More tech savvy consumers can now skip those arduous weekend queues & car parking nightmares. For traditional retailers hit by the onslaught of so many organised retail formats, the web is a relatively cost-effective way to reach consumers. Technology comes to the rescue of both buyer & seller, as they revel in the spirit of the season!

(End of Akansha Pradhan column)

Quit ‘Walking in Memphis’! Just log on...
YouTube is indicative of an emerging media revolution, where everyone's invited

Google has purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion. The numbers are staggering. Especially for something that does not seem to have a lot of commercial value, is definitely part of the fabric of “social computing” and is very much exposed to lawsuits for copyrighted content (even more than before considering Google’s “deep pockets”). This is so reminiscent of the Internet Bubble and of over-inflated values for companies with no assets, except for a web site, an idea with a chance to catch the public and nothing to show in terms of revenue.

But this is much more. The key is the evolution of the Internet and its value as a means of communication. Historically, human communication started with text, moved to audio and then to video. Moving from text to audio took about 5 centuries, but moving from audio to video only about 50 years. The same type of development, only a lot faster, is anticipated for the Internet. It started as a way to post & communicate text & still pictures, then moved to digital voice & music. The next giant step is video: news, sports, movies, et al. In fact, we believe that in a short time frame, the Internet will be the prime platform from distributing video content, competing and eventually replacing your video store and your cable or broadcast distribution.

Revenue from ads set aside, the true battle is of a new media distribution scheme that’s going to bring home the same revolution brought up by P2P music and the birth of iTunes & iPod. Signs of this war appeared early, when Microsoft & NBC worked together to bring MSNBC to the public. Of course, that’s tapping into content creation. The Google move, very much like the Time Warner Bit Torrent distribution scheme, is targetted at distribution strength.

If you believe this is far fetched, just think of where people are starting to get their information: most of the young generation is not reading papers, listening to radio or watching TV. They are getting information from the web, which is a media they trust more than any other.

This brings us to the second part of this future evolution: content. We have a bunch of traditional content creators like the film industry, different TV channels, et al. This requires heavy investment in logistics & artistic talent: production doesn’t come cheap. With YouTube, content creation is also transformed. Anyone can take a digital camera & create content. As with blogs, social computing doesn’t require heavy investment and can reach a worldwide audience. Who needs MTV & Memphis studios when you can shoot your own video for a few dollars and broadcast it to the world? The bet is also that beyond capturing the distribution channel, YouTube & similar sites will create a grassroot original content that will be richer, truer & more informative than canned opinions of a few media gurus most young audiences despise?

So, a few years from now, most TV channels will go the way of newspapers: still there, but with a reduced audience. TV comes from your laptop through the internet. Forget cable companies, satellites & other archaic means of broadcasting video. Any one can produce a show, post it, and become an instant worldwide star. We can directly communicate, in quasi real time, between continents and share the most precious and difficult to acquire of all commodities: culture.

This is huge. This will change the world. Beyond Google, YouTube and the commercial ventures, it will change the way information is acquired and opinions shaped. Think of what would happen if anybody in the streets of any troubled part of the world could simply capture what they see & broadcast it to the world, uncensored & unedited by broadcasting corporations? Wouldn’t that beat CNN?

Information has changed the face of the world. We sometimes look at our parents and grand parents and think of how incredibly naïve they were. Actually they were simply misinformed or not informed enough to make a judgment. Our apparent cynicism is a product of our better information: less trusting, more aware. The Internet as a means of broadcasting coupled with people as producers has potential to bring us a quantum leap forward in terms of detailed information accuracy and our ability to hear all voices to form our own opinion.

The shame of growth

It is certainly a reason to cheer that India’s growth rate is expanding at a phenomenal 9% plus; growth that can catapult India to become one of the topmost economies of the world. But is the government pathetically being too complacent about & deliberately ignoring the fact that unless we consciously include the bottom majority of our population, our growth will always be lopsided?

Of course, this treatise is about the ramifications of India’s growth on sectors across India’s expanse, but this treatise is also about the hollowness of such growth, if it doesn’t trickle down, nay, shower down on the bottom 80% of disadvantaged masses. Is India’s Finance Minister P. Chidambaram happy with the quarterly economic report card? Obviously yes! And if one were to make a bipartisan statement, he’s not wrong. This quarter, India has shown its best ever economic performance in the entire post reform period. That the GDP has accelerated to 9.2% in the July-September quarter, is a reason enough to celebrate. But of critical importance is the question whether India’s economic growth will equitably advantage society across sections, or would it follow the killing paradox of providing a plenty for a few?

Yes, the current economic indicators do give us hope, but to keep alive the hopes of eradicating poverty (which has increasingly captured a pitiably massive 400 million Indians in its grasp: UNDP figures), India not only needs to sustain GDP growth rates above 8% for the next 10-15 years at a stretch, but also needs to implement a radical economic reengineering paradigm that facilitates a cross sectional improvement in health, literacy, education levels, perhaps with a larger emphasis on the majority of the disadvantaged masses. Therefore, more important than accomplishing just healthy figures is the consistency of performance for long-term sustainability of India, just as P. Chidambaram, hopefully expresses as, ”...our economy is growing and I hope it will grow at 9%. We hope to maintain this growth for the next five to ten years...”. . It is indeed good news that despite the unprecedented rise in global oil prices, India has been able to retain its annual economic growth rate at around 8% for the past three years and is continuing on the winning path. Although, the exorbitant fuel prices have had an adverse impact on inflation. Consumer prices have increased phenomenally in the recent past – today, the annual rate of inflation is between 6 and 7%. More importantly, the wholesale price index stood at 5.45% in the 12 month period till November 18.

The other factor which could have affected India’s economy negatively, was the sluggish growth of American economy – this single factor could have dramatically reduced India’s export of manufactured goods. As supported by noted economist & columnist Alok Puranik while speaking to B&E, the most promising fact that the manufacturing industry has registered a 11.9% growth during the July-September 2006 period, “is a good sign... as this will lead to growth in employment sector, which is badly needed.” But perhaps the biggest reason to cheer is India’s growth in the service sector, (accounting for half of India’s GDP) – the back bone of India’s economic boom has withstood the onslaught with great resilience, expanding at 13.9%, while even the financial services sector has kept pace with a smashing 9.5% growth in the period under consideration. To top it all, trade and communications grew at a pace of 13.5 % in the six month period, One agrees with the fact the Indian economy is yet to show any signs of ‘overheating’, but the moot point is, can these twin pillars (of manufacturing and services) continue to fuel the growth engine over a long time?

The Economist has already thumped-off India’s above-ordinary dependence on and support to the services sector, for one, as characterising a typical “loose monetary and fiscal policy” system, capable of directly impugning the sustainability of high growth rates. All India Kisan Shabha GeneralSecretary, K. Varadha Rajan, in a tete-a-tete with B&E, accuses policy makers with an acerbic, though cliched, query, “Can a country with disproportionate development stand on its feet?” These ‘disproportionate’ doubts arise mainly because of the poor performance of the agriculture sector – the farm output grew by a mere 1.7% during the quarter as compared to 4.1% in the same quarter a year ago. Having agriculture as India’s Achilles’ heel is dangerous, as that perhaps has the gravest potential to slow India’s economic momentum, especially with a large chunk (a whopping 43%; NSS 2004) of population surviving on agriculture, and with a larger 66% living in rural India. In addition, the non-plan expenditure on public distribution system would further add to the pressure on the economy. Worse, sooner rather than later, the government will also be forced to revise the interest rates upwards to control the demand push inflationary pressures.

With these various factors in mind, unless the government increases the Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) for education, health and employment schemes, lopsided development process across the country will inevitably, and with crying shame, continue. The GBS in the tenth Plan was around 7% of GDP. Estimates by experts within the Left front (if one, however wrongly or correctly, were to assume they are most pro equitable development) suggests that the GBS for the Eleventh Plan will have to be increased by at least another 4.75% of GDP in order to ensure a minimum increase of 1% of GDP for agriculture. Comparatively, the government has sounded off that it is most likely to increase the GBS in 11th plan by only 2.5%.

Also, the availability of quality labour force to meet the growing demands of the industry has become the newest major concern. Suddenly one is discovering that despite a huge youth force, India just does not have enough institutes of higher learning, which can churn out leaders and managers of international standards. According to Nasscom, India will face a shortage of about 500,000 skilled manpower by 2010!

And if the government hopes that things will turn around in the next 10 or so years time, when about 45-50% of the Indian population is forecasted to begin to reside in urban areas, then surely they’re deliberately being blind to the killingly slow pace of infrastructure development. Professor Edison Tse of Stanford University berated India’s infrastructure development compared to China by mouthing a vitriolic remark to B&E, that “India’s best city doesn’t even compare with China’s Tier 3 cities (the ones with lowest development, as per the Chinese government), what to talk about Tier 1 cities.” A fact corroborated to B&E by George Wu, Professor at Chicago University’s world renowned Graduate School of Business. China has maintained a constant 10% and around growth for past three decades in continuation; and so consummate is their economic management that even this year, they have kept their inflation as low as 1.4%.

But then, these critical remarks have been made too oft en by experts and economists; and the government is well aware of almost all of them. So where does India stand? Why isn’t the government machinery working with a fanatical commitment towards poverty eradication and equitable growth. The answer, though most ludicrous, is quite obvious. A majority of politicians realise that India’s growth has been significantly because of the rise of private entrepreneurship, rather than because of moribund government initiatives. Despicably, they also realise that this growth, like in the past, will continue even without government’s support. So what better opportunity, than this, to invest in garnering vote banks – evidenced through the most recent Justice Sachar Committee Report promoting reservations for Muslims, and the ridiculous “affirmative action” agenda forcing private corporations to start reserving jobs. And what better opportunity to earn some additional corrupt revenue by the wayside – evidenced by the government’s deplorable and forcible shut down of the trading community in New Delhi, affecting the employment of a humungous 12 million people, and that after the corruption ridden Municipal Corporation of Delhi had made millions in bribes over the ears misleading traders by allowing them o open shops in unauthorised areas.

Equitable growth is obviously last on the agenda of politicians, many of whom with a genetic lineage of being crime driven, and many more basking in the glory that if the masses of India remain illiterate (more than 65%), and poor, it’s easier (with celebrities), and cheaper (with wine and food), to influence them to give votes! So does that mean that India’s stupendous growth stands to nothing?!?! We didn’t say that. But we did mention, this treatise was also about the hollowness of such growth, if it doesn’t trickle down, nay, shower down on the bottom 80% of disadvantaged masses...

The ‘otherwise’ criticises the ‘wise’

The Reserve Bank has been continuously emphasising on the need to give support to agriculture and SSI. As a regulatory stipulation, both Indian and foreign banks are required to extend 40% and 32% of their Net Bank Credit (NBC) towards priority sector. More encouraging is the fact that RBI is considering a proposal to expand the definition of NBC. Enlarging the base on which priority sector lending targets are set would result in increased credit flow to priority sector by a commendable Rs.500 billion. Though RBI’s priority investments have been criticised by ‘otherwise’ Mckinsey (which termed priority lending as an unproductive one), yet we can only be thankful to our ‘wise’ Indian banks who are currently lending 57% of total credit to this sector. It’s only the resurgence of agriculture, which can catapult India’s GDP growth to the magic figure of 10%.