Youth is the latest mantra & Zee is next

After a spate of announcements of launches in the general entertainment genre of Indian television by many players, Zee Group has also announced their plans to launch their second general entertainment channel. Zee Entertainment Enterprise Ltd. will launch a youth channel called ZeeNext, which will focus on a younger audience ‘without alienating the higher age group’. However, the company has abstained from revealing the actual date of the launch and the investment that will go into the venture. Recently, the Indian television industry has seen a lot of efforts by existing and new players in weaning the youth of the country towards the general entertainment channel segment by either pepping up their offerings or by announcing new channels.

India’s greater ‘Reliance’ on loans

India Inc. has raised over $8 billion through syndicated loans by way of 33 deals in the first half of 2007, the leader being Reliance Industries. RIL alone mopped up a massive $2.7 billion. Syndicated loans volume of India Inc. was at $8.3 billion for the first half of this calendar year, which showcases a steady growth path over the previous year’s figure of $8.1 billion through 41 deals. Others, which followed the behemoth are, Tata Group raising $400 million, British mobile giant Vodafone and largest lender State Bank of India (SBI), both gathering $300 million each while HDFC (not too far behind) gathered $285 million through syndicated loans.

Bachchan’s philanthropic act?!

Amitabh Bachchan has relinquished his farmlands in Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh and Pune, which saw him getting involved in many controversies over past few months. Bachchan communicated his intent through a letter, expressing his desire to donate the Barabanki lands to the Gram Sabha and the Pune land to the original owners. Bachchan was accused of acquiring the Barabanki land through fraudulent means so that he can get the status of a farmer which was mandatory to safeguard his land in Pune. Meanwhile, another controversy regarding alleged violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) by Bachchan (which is being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Union of India) is waiting in the wings.

Bharti-Vodafone: Cutting off the ties

Sunil Mittal led Bharti Group has bought back 4.9% direct stake from Vodafone in Bharti Airtel; the country’s No.1 telecom service provider. The stake has come at a price of around $1.4 billion. After the buyback, the group’s holding in Bharti Airtel has risen to over 50% from the earlier 46%. However, Vodafone still commands 4.4% indirect stake in the group and a 0.61% direct stake in Bharti Airtel. In the year 2005, Vodafone bought a 10% stake in it for $1.5 billion. The move comes across after Vodafone acquired a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar (Hutch) in February this year. The company plans to buy back the remaining direct stake in the next 15 months.

Question of six million PCs

The Indian populace bought 6.34 million personal computers between April 2006 and March 2007; a growth of 26% since previous year, as per the data revealed by the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT). It is predicted that by next fiscal, the number will touch the 8 million mark. While Notebooks registered a whopping growth of 97%, desktops grew by 19%. While in the previous year, laptops comprised 9% of the total PC segment, this year the percentage has increased to 13%. Vinnie Mehta, Executive Director of MAIT said, “The mood in the IT hardware industry is buoyant in the face of rising demand arising on the back of industrial and infrastructure growth as well as rising incomes and falling prices of IT products.” Worth scripting a success story!

Past imperfect & present tense!
Learning from their formative violent past no one else but the...the deformed future generation...

In the 21st century when mankind is at threshold of path-breaking innovations that can bring about a paradigm shift in the way s/he lives, perceives, thinks & changes the world around, it is unfortunate or rather an irony that amidst all the talks of technology & economic revolutions s/he has not been able to fully insure the lives of their own progenies. A look at the less civilised & more rustic wild life out there in the jungles would vindicate that it is this very thing i.e. the protection of the younger ones, which has always been & would always be a priority for any species, barring mankind & serpents perhaps.

World over it is not just the divide between haves & the have-nots, but also the disparity between the handful of children who are growing up in affluence while the majority eagerly waiting to hug misery. For they don’t need to wait till death, to get a glimpse of hell, (if at all), as for them the world itself has transformed into a living hell for them. The medium of atrocities might be disparate – from being forced to become a young soldier in a war camp, sexual abuse on the streets, sleeping with empty stomach in chilling winter nights or being openly traded like commodity at flesh market, the ends are the same. The gruesome reality today rampantly covers more than two-thirds of the world. Call it propaganda or ignorance, most think that gun to drug addicted children working for militias are restricted only to Sub-Saharan African countries, while the reality is pretty far from truth. This phenomenon has spread across more developed continents too. In South Asia, most militia organizations find it easier to recruit kids in their terrorist organisations, while in more developed countries of Western Europe & especially the US, peer pressure, frustration, identity crisis, jealousy & distorted childhood is giving rise to new generation of trigger happy children, who for a momentary pleasure of raised adrenaline can anytime go out for a killing spree in schools/colleges, such incidence of mass firing have became regular feature in the US.

At the crossroads of the millennium, mankind needs to take certain crucial decisions, as to whether all these, happening in the name of development (or in absence of it), would essentially make this world a happier place to live in or not? Which is certainly not so to begin with, it is better for mankind to go back to their basic instinct & make sure that their young ones are taken care of.

Bullet riddled destiny!
Millions of young hands are learning to press the trigger...

War has been an indispensable aspect of our history. Inspite of the best intentions, the bare fact still remains that it has been successful in spreading its tentacles much deep into our social milieu & afflicting most innocent creatures of this biosphere.

Sadly, the era of using children as foot soldiers would still take long time to be a bygone. For the militias & war mongering mercenaries, it makes sense to recruit children as their demands are minimal, they can be indoctrinated fairly quickly & they never revolt. Who cares for the fact that this inhuman approach not only deprives these innocent lives of their childhood but keeps an indelible & haunting mark in their memoirs making them mentally unfit for a society, long after the physical war is over. Loss of eyesight & limbs have become a norm than an exception. Most cannot even afford to get their children operated & thus many still have bullets wedged inside their bodies. At any point of time about 300,000 kids are involved in some kind of war or conflict in more than 85 countries. Some are yet to cross their tenth year on Earth. As of now, Africa alone has more than 200,000 child soldiers involved in wars & armed conflicts in Burundi, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, & Uganda. As if all these were not enough that an additional 500,000 children are estimated to be involved in paramilitary groups in almost all continents of the world. The worst suffers are the fairer sex, as many girl soldiers (40% of total) are recruited to provide sexual services & are even raped & gang raped in the war camps repeatedly. Such reports no wonder oft en go unreported or at best ignored. This stark reality of millions of kids in this word is incidentally a stark contrast to the affluence that an equal number grow up in developed world. Forget the digital divide, unless steps are taken to restore some sort of parity, be prepared for the coming apocalypse.

Commodity called child…
World over children are bought & sold in market…

The dark ages have arrived & the testimony to that is the increasing trafficking of children & the perpetrators are going Scott free for want of substantial evidence. It is an irony that while many powerful nations boast of an arsenal good enough to blow over their adversaries many times over, when it comes to protecting their progeny, they seem to be woefully short of ideas, means & efforts.

When Tulasi Das, a Nepali child, was sold to a trafficker & sent to brothels in Mumbai, she didn’t have an iota of idea that she was about to enter a society devoid of dreams, hopes, future & ecstasy. She didn’t know that her only cohort for the rest of her life would be relentless agony. Yet she can take solace in the fact that she would have company in this journey into darkness. UNICEF reported; there are 1.2 million children trafficked each year worldwide. Coalition against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific (CATW-AP) states over 200,000 children & women have been trafficked during last ten years in Bangladesh & 200-400 children are trafficked monthly. UN estimates that nearly 200,000 children are trafficked yearly in Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Mali, Ghana etc. Reports also state that Burma, Cambodia & Laos exported more than 200,000 women & children. There is also a startling increase in women & child trafficking in Asian countries. India imports about 5,000-7,000 Nepali girls annually. Japan, home to Asia’s largest sex industry, trafficked 150,000 non-Japanese from Thailand & Philippines.

Do we essentially want to create a society for our progeny where every mother, sister, friend & spouse has been through this nightmare? And can one imagine the horrifying impact that it would have on a society that took thousands of years of painstaking effort to build? This decision would someday have to be taken. Or else....