Phir Mile Sur

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'Deemed' - The Magic word

In the past 2-3 weeks we have seen the whole controversy on "Deemed" University all set to be "Doomed". By "Deemed" we are basically calling something that isn't as being is. For e.g This college is not fit to be a university but for the sake of convenience can be "deemed" as one. Its a win-win for both sides. One side sees the "deemed" and says "Its not same as being the real thing". Other side sees the same and says "Who cares whats prefixed? Deemed or Shit whatever ! As long as it followed by the real thing"

From where I see it the very notion of "Deemed" is a very interesting concept to say the least. It has the potential to solve so many problems. Here are some top deemed 'peace-keeping' applications:

• Telangana a deemed state
• Kashmir a deemed Pakistani state
• Sonia Gandhi as deemed PM (or maybe Manmohan Singh should rename his post to this)
• Asif Ali Zardari as deemed intelligent
• Pakistan as deemed Democracy

• Bharatiya Janta Party as deemed Bharatiya Janta ka Party
• Congress as deemed Aam aadmi ka Party
• IIPM as deemed B-School
• Arindam Chaudhuri as deemed intellectual
• Upen Patel as deemed actor
• Esha Deol as deemed actress
• Subhash Ghai as deemed Director
• Mahesh Bhatt as deemed Movie maker
• Al-Qaeda as deemed Jihadis

• USA as deemed responsible nation
• Anil and Mukesh Ambani as deemed brothers
• Veer as deemed movie
• Rakhi Sawant as deemed HOT
• Shoaib Akhtar as deemed Chucker
• Shahid Afridi as deemed Batsman
• Ricky Ponting as deemed Gentleman

• John Buchanan as deemed Coach
• Javed Miandad as deemed expert
• Bangladesh as deemed Test Playing nation
• Rahul Mahajan's Swayamvar as deemed Nightmare

........ and list just goes on ...............

Political Consulting

Little known Consulting firm McKinley was worried - Business was drying up, Clients were sinking, Employees were fleeing and their pirated MS Office just crashed. The Financial meltdown was taking its toll. So they decided to hire SmackD as a consultant to get them out of the mess (since he was the only one willing to work in exchange for food - all others wanted cash and to top that the first hour was FREE).

SmackD knew that he had to scan businesses and recommend one big ticket sector which had lots of untapped potential as well as was recession-proof. So thus began the research and he stumbled upon FMCG. Seemed decently recession-proof industry. Recession or no recession - people would still brush, shower, crap, drink and eat. So he decided to met some employees of a really big FMCG firm - Hagga UnLimited. He met two of their many stellar employees - Faffarsh and Gaydar Dede. It was an enlightening conversation. A small excerpt:

Faffarsh: We are mass-shitters i.e. we bullshit the masses. In fact we shit so much that every person joining our company gets diapers, so that we can keep shitting without worrying about the stains. As the economy moves forward and people have more disposable income, we see a clear trend of our CTC (Cost-to-Company) coming down. This is because people tend to downgrade as they get richer, so we'll have cheaper diapers with more shit-absorbents.

Gaydar Dede: The motto of my company is to "Dig a well by doing good". We try and make a difference to every Indian by helping them dispose whatever income they get. We make them pay Rs. 10 for something thats worth less than my teeny brain. In that way we drain their wealth, Do Well and ultimately force consumers to dig a well for themselves.

After the discussion SmackD knew that this industry was full of shit and unless McKinley wanted to go from the Frying pan to Shit-pot this was not a business they need to get their hands on.

Then like a true consultant he decide to break everything down to the last detail, use all the frameworks (even if he didnt understand a f*&k about it), look at the entire "value chain" and frame a 2x2 matrix. During this time a amazing insight hit him "Na biwi na bachha, na baap bada na bhaiyya .. the whole thing is that .... ke bhaiyya sabse bada Rupaiyya" (Money is bigger than anything)

One look at how money flows in different businesses and he quickly saw one common theme - Politicians. Pick any business, any scenario and you'll still see a 'cut' going to politicians. Now, thats a recession proof industry. So SmackD decided to recommend Political consulting to McKinley considering there were opportunities unbound in Politics to make tons of money (tax-free).

Some of the major opportunities he saw going forward are:

1. With demand for more and more states coming, McKinley can advise parties on how and when to enforce Bandhs, how many buses to vandalize to maximize impact, who should go on a fast and till when, plan demonstrations, decide on the exact price point to pay people to come and attend rallies with a view to maximize participation at minimum cost etc

2. With coalition politics only getting stronger, McKinley can advise people on which parties to align with, valuation of vote bank and possible synergies, which seats to share, how to position yourself strategically in a strong bargaining position, which parties to 'break' by offering attractive incentives to key leaders of the opposing party, how to keep your flock together when horse-trading rears its ugly head etc

3. McKinley can also advise parties on Capital raising strategies by enticing investments from Corporate India in Party funds and on how to maximize the same using value-based pricing, form a portfolio of companies which would be diversified in terms of risk of expose, form a BCG matrix to see which companies fell in which quadrant so as to make better policy decisions to attract more 'investments', how to structure deals, which companies to invest in (ranked on possibility of insider trading) etc

4. McKinley can also advise the ruling party on timing the market to announce next elections, make strategic announcements which will drive up stock prices in companies they have invested in, how to creatively report inflation and other macro-economic numbers, when to invoke Emergency / Article 365 / President's rule etc

5. Optimizing the election list by apportioning tickets subject to the constraints of castes, loyalty and money.

Similarly many more opportunities of this nature exists in politics which are very attractive. Currently no firms are present in this space and thus you can make a killing.

IPL 3 Auctions

Indian Premier League is one of the biggest sporting events of the year and naturally a big money-spinner. It is watched by lot of people around the globe and now practically has creeped into every aspect of an Indian's life.

Cricketers are paid astronomical sums of money in a event like this. So everybody wants to be in it. So the IPL auctions are one of the most closely watched events. Cricketers going under the hammer attach a lot of pride and ego to the bid price.

Around this time cricket takes a backseat while money calls the shots. Rumors has it that the reason why England folded so quickly in the last test against South Africa was to make sure that they were able to watch live updates of the IPL auction.

So this year's IPL auctions was no different. The biggest surprise came from the fact that nobody bid for any member of the Pakistan T20 team (who are incidently the current T20 world champions). Everybody in Pakistan right from their media, the cricketers to the politicians are crying hoarse about it. They are claiming that this is all a big controversy. But internally my reliable sources tell me that almost Pakistani crickets failed their IQ tests by a long long way and are about three times more intelligent than their current President. I know that is surprising considering that an average chimp is more intelligent than that.

But more than anybody the terrorist groups were disappointed. Al-Qaeda had planned to carry out some terror attacks by sending their men disguised as cheerleaders-cum-strippers. Since the underwear bomb had failed to take-off they were planning to use Crotch Guard bombs this time. Now that's globalization with adoption to local content.

For securing their future needs they needed to make sure they got all the aspects of IPL right. Now results require investment. Last heard they were sending some of their best men to learn "Game theory" hoping to apply it to cricket in general with specific focus on IPL.

Now considering the bidding is very expensive at IPL, these groups are looking to save costs on all other fronts. In fact they have cut their budgets for arms and ammunitions and are now increasingly looking at cheaper modes to cause destruction and mayhem. The answer to this is not simple though intuition might suggest 'Pakistan politicians' who are not only cheap but highly disposable as well.

I hope the real tournament is atleast half as eventful as the auctions.

News this week: SmackD style

SHOWIN' THEM HOW ITS DONE

Stand-in skipper Viru Sehwag fired the first salvo and called Bangladesh an 'ordinary' Test team. The Bangladesh captain however denied this. Sehwag went one step ahead and to prove his point, the Indian batsmen demonstrated how ordinary batting is done. After this Bangladesh captain proved Sehwag right by exactly matching India's first innings score. The Bangladesh team has now decided to sledge him and call him VIRUS (Viru Sehwag).

CHINA LOOKS TO GOOGLE FOR LOW-COST JAILS

Google has threatened to log out of China. Apparently China has been trying to hack Google Servers and try and access Gmail accounts. But its only a rumor that they wanted to snoop on people's inboxes. The real motive being that they had heard that Google has the highest inbox storage space. Since the Chinese want to get into low-cost jails they wanted use this 'free' inbox space.

OBAMA'S BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT

Obama is in the news again. He is being flooded with people congratulating him for sending his first tweet. He plans to have a gala dinner at the White House to celebrate this great historic moment. That's the only accomplishment he has had since being elected President. Catching the gatecrashers at the last party came a close second.

McKINLEY TO FORAY INTO POLITICAL CONSULTING

Little known consulting firm McKinley has decided to foray into the lucrative Political consulting domain. Till now this space was dominated by small players. They would advise political parties on which states to enter, what constituencies to fight for, whom to align with given the synergies in the systems and processes, optimizing the ratio of different castes in the election ticket list, whom to kidnap using game theory, using demand curve how to horse-trade etc. To build their expertise they have been teaching poaching and arm-twisting to their employees. Some of these employees have been asked to go to B-Schools to practice and fine-tune this art.

Laluji's plan for World Peace

Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav has done it again. Keeping the interests of the nation in his mind he has declared that he would give election tickets to only those who produce jail certificate. After this announcement the inmates of major jails (in India and abroad) were rejoicing. Daku Kaidi Singh, housed at Tihar Jail has declared that this Saturday night's drinks were on the house.

This announcement has had far-reaching repercussions. Here are some of them:

1. Osama bin Laden is now contemplating surrendering. Even his fellow Al-Qaida dudes are willing to lay down their underwear bombs. Even Bush has demanded that he be tried for crimes against humanity.

2. SPS Rathore now wants his bail to be cancelled and is planning to surrender. He now claims to have molested his wife on their honeymoon and now wants to be tried for that also.

3. Lot of Aussies have been flocking different police stations claiming to have carried out racist attacks on Indians. In fact the Deputy PM has now retracted her earlier statement on the whole attacks and now said "We are still ascertaining the nature of crime that needs to be charged to these people. Jail certificates cant be given just for any crime."

4. There were reports of infighting within the BJP as to who wants to own up the responsibility for Babri demolitions. People like Advani and Rajnath who are not hopeful of a party ticket in the next elections are the frontrunners in the race.

5. The Bar Council of India has demanded that Lalu make it mandatory that all jail certificates be notarised since the business opportunity is this is huge. Apparently they are busy figuring out the likely segments in the market and deciding on the pricing strategy.

6. The number of applications for huge number of vacancies for the post of the Jailer have rocketed in the past 24 hours. Lalu is rumored to have asked the IIT council to conduct a entrance test for these people. IIM Council are extremely disappointed considering there was a huge opportunity to make further mess in the political scenario and add to chaos with their online CAT.

7. Mukesh Ambani has decided against filing any more cases against Anil Ambani until the elections.

8. All the IAS babus have been calling up Tehelka to come and shoot a sting operation on them and broadcast it everywhere (even on Youtube).

9. Ex-PM Deve Gowda has demanded he too be tried for abusing current Karnataka CM B.S. Yeddyurappa. He has shown TV footage of different channels as evidence of the same. The CM's office denied all this and claimed that Gowda was doing this at the behest of Sonia Gandhi to weaken his party in Bihar.

10. This would be for the first time that all members of Lalu's family would be eligible for an election ticket.

11. There are also rumors of Madhur Bhandarkar making Jail-2 to capture all of this. I hope he gives me a Title Credit.

12. IIPM plans to release a full page ad on Times of India saying that they will now offer Jail Certificates instead of B-School degrees. They are promising a tour of European jails as an incentive.

13. Ramalinga Raju claims he knew about this all along. This was why he confessed to his crimes so that he could start early and build a stronger resume for election tickets.

14. This is also Laluji's ploy for attracting and bringing Dow Chemicals (owners of Union Carbide of Bhopal Gas Tragedy fame) to India.

15. Lastly, across all B-Schools a large number of people have been claiming of violating Honor codes (plagiarism, copying assignments) and have demanded their respective Deans / Directors to send them to Jail since the job prospects are brighter on the other side of the law.

Bollywood set to beat James Cameron

James Cameron's Avatar has been all over the news lately for being a path-breaking cinematic experience. Seems like Hollywood has done it again.

Some (in)famous Indian movie-makers who always seem to be 'inspired' by Hollywood movies have not been left behind this time either. Rahesh Bhutt, who has an opinion on everything, strangely seems to claim that his movies are loosely based on his life (which are also blaring similar to Hollywood flicks). Makes me wonder if the Hollywood writers know more about Bhutt's life than anybody else. He even goes far enough to claim that showing sex on screen is his interpretation of reality.

But there is one thing I like about him that he always gives chance to new-comers. In line with his style, he has now decided to make another sex-based reality 3D movie called "Sexual Predator" with star newcomer SPS Rathore in the lead role. He has released promotional posters also.

Rathore who has solid experiences in this role even in real life was understandably thrilled. Bhutt also managed a casting coup when he roped in Ruchika's ex-school's ex-principal to play the 'supporting' role. Rahesh Bhutt claims that the story is 100% inspired by his life and the rest is loosely based on lives of others.

However Michael Jackson's family which managed to get a hold of the script, has threatened to sue Rahesh Bhutt because they feel that about 70% of the movie is based on Michael's life. They want Bhutt to compensate them accordingly as well as give him a 'Title Credit' for it. In an reciprocating gesture Bhutt will be allowed the use of Michael's compositions for the songs and background scored of the movie. Seems like people are learning from Chetan Bhagat fast.

To get more and more people into watching this movie the Sex Perverts Sangh will issue branded certificates for watching the movie.

So will Bollywood's 3D movie be able to beat Avatar ? My MBA training tells me that for one product to beat another in the same category firstly they should have points of parity which is when the points of difference will propel the winner.

The points of parity are pretty much in place:

a. Both are 3D movies.

b. Both movies have humans as well as relatively ugly alien creatures

c. It is setup in a make-believe world.

d. They are being made by visionary directors

e. Cameron's Avatar said - "I see you" .... Rahesh's movie will say - "I touch you"

But Bollywood will score because:

a. Though both are being made by visionary directors but we all know that only Rahesh Bhutt's vision is scary!

b. Rahesh's movie will have sex every 15 minutes.

c. SPS Rathore is uglier and scarier than all of Pandora put-together

d. None of Cameron's characters have lived their reel-life characters in real life, Rahesh's lead actors have

e. Rahesh's movie will have Michael Jackson's songs which fit the context better

f. Sex Perverts Sangh will vandalise theatres that show movies other than Rahesh's movie

g. Rahesh might be able to get Imran Hadme to endorse this one too

h. Avatar watchers got only 3D glasses .... but people watching this one might get a condom as well along with the certificate

The real story on what a Lion would not but a Tiger Wood !

On November 27, 2009 Tiger Wood left his home at an unusual time of 2.30am in his car and crashed it. The media has put out infidelity as the reason. But my extremely reliable sources tell me that he was out early to be early in the queue and take advantage of the Thanksgiving discounts when the stores opened. Cash-constrained middle class junta do this all the time. When I was a kid I had gone to the cricket stadium at 5am so that I could be early in the queue and get good seats when the gates opened at 9am.

So here is where the problem started. Apparently when he left his house he kissed his wife goodbye but called her by a different name. Women have some probability of forgiving you for forgetting their habits, anniversaries, birthdays but Name is No-No. So as Tiger scampered for his life his wife chased him down and smacked him with a golf club which led to this car crashing. For the curious junta, why did Tiger crashed into a fire hydrant AND a tree? Seems like he couldn’t decide between a wood and an iron. Golf habits die hard I tell you. Tiger drives very well on the fairway but doesn’t fare very well on the driveway.

This is probably the first time Tiger’s ever failed to drive 300 yards. The Lesson: the difference between a car and a golf ball is that Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards. Reports say that Tiger Woods wasn't seriously injured in the crash, but he's still below par.

As the news spread Tiger's rival Phil Mickelson call Elin. No No, not for expressing sympathies but to pick up some tips on how to 'beat' Tiger. Seems the only person who can beat Tiger Woods with a golf club is his wife.

But that wasn't the end of his troubles as more women came out of the closet. Tiger had been nailing quite a few more than 18 holes in his golfing adventures. In a statement Tiger admitted this crash was the closest shave he’s ever had which made Gillette unhappy because they always thought they were. So Gillette dropped his contract. Nike also wants to drop their endorsement due to accuracy problems. Apparently, Tiger’s spraying his balls everywhere. Even Accenture gave up on him the other day. Seems he's delivered high performance which they cannot hope to match.

It turns out that fixing Tiger’s game and fixing his marriage both require the same thing: better control over his putz.

The case of 3 Idiots, 2 writers and 1 bad contract

Firstly its been quite sometime since I last blogged. Been real busy with lot of things happening but my heart was always thinking of blogging. Shall try and be more regular from now on.

Back to the current topic: We have all seen the mudslinging happening over the last couple of days over the story of 3 idiots between 3 idiots (Aamir, Raju, Vidhu) and Chetan Bhagat.

Facts

1. The 3 idiots bought the book from Bhagat and promised him "rolling credits" in the contract on which they signed over two years back

2. Producer paid Bhagat a lump sum amount before the movie released

3. Bhagat gets in a few more best-sellers in between

4. "Hello" based on Bhagat's "One Night at a Call centre" sinks at the box office without a trace

5. "Chetan Blocks" on twitter fiasco dents Chetan's credibility as a responsible celebrity.

6. "3 Idiots" is a box-office blockbuster breaking all records

Killer Fact

1. Movie is about 40% of the book and not 2-5% as claimed by Raju Hirani but going by his original "Munnabhai M.B.B.S" I know from where he gets his math wrong !

Putting all the media reports, interviews, the movie and the book in perspective, this proves the famous theory that "Success is relative". When you succeed everyone wants to be your relative (i.e. wants credit)

Going my "Marslow's hierarchy of Needs" all of us feel the need to be seen in spotlight. Bhagat is no different. I wonder if the movie would have bombed, would he still have cried hoarse like this ? The contract is very clear and the 3 idiots have delivered on whatever they promised so I dont fault them. But I do get a feeling that they pulled a fast one on him. But being a writer who has written best-sellers, would he not have had his lawyers read through the fine print of his contracts before committing a blunder of this size. So the reason is deeper than we think it is !

3 Possible Reason(s)

1. Mommy forgot to change his diapers on the day of the contract so our man was so uncomfortable that he signed it in a hurry without bothering about the fine print

2. Chetan lost his doggy somewhere. So to save on the "Lost and Found" column fees he decided to use "3 Idiots" to get his photu in the paper for free.

3. Chetan went to the Bhindi Bazaar and nobody knew him. So he didn't get the celebrity discount which Aamir got. During inflationary times that can hurt !

3 Things Chetan must do

1. Block Vidhu, Aamir and Raju on Twitter

2. Copy Raju's "Munnabhai" script and make it into a book

3. Do bedtime reading of "Five Point Someone" to Aamir

3 Prerajulisation Trivia

1. What is the difference between a leech and Chetan Bhagat ?

A: Nothing much only that Bhagat sucks more !

2. Who among the four is a mathematically challenged ?

A: Raju Hirani (for precisely miscalculating that the movie is just 2-5% of the book)

3. In "3 Idiots" who could have been a better VIRUS than Boman Irani?

A: Vidhu (did you see how he said "Shut up" to the journo ..... masterji style)

P.S: Mr. Chetan Bhagat - Please don't block me on Twitter !