Youth Brigade or 'Papa Power'?

Indian media is providing wide coverage to youngest member of Manmohan's cabinet-Agatha Sangma. While media is quick to point out her age, nowhere can you find an analysis of her strengths, capabilities achievements etc. The only thing known about her is her lineage - she is daughter of veteran NCP leader P A Sangma.

I am genuinely confused about call to nation's youth for joining politics - be the change that you want to see in the nation. I believe that its a movement that is gaining strength. Many youth I know (if I can consider myself young!) are getting serious about politics. In general there seems to be realisation in today's youth that apathy is not going to work any more. We need to participate in the politics to get rid of our corrupt political class. I expect 'youth movement' to really change the face of Indian politics in next 10 years. A lot of credit for bringing youth factor in focus must be awarded to Rahul Gandhi.

While I admire Rahul for his perseverance in call to the youth of nation, I am also frustrated by 'dynastic' nature of participation of youth in Indian politics. Think of any young politician that you know. Nine out of ten times, you will find the young brigade to have strong political lineage. All torch bearers of youth politics in India are people like Sachin Pilot, Agatha Sangma, Kanimozhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, Akhilesh Singh etc.
These are not the youth leaders who have come through ranks in Indian politics. They owe their existence in politics to their families. All of them are alumni of Ivy League schools, and many of them tried their hands at professions like investment banking before turning to family trade of politics.

This is what I am confused about. Its good to see the young of nation leading the polity of nation. But do these young leaders actually represent their constituents? Do they really understand the social, economic, political intricacies of India? Or are they just good looking ineffective politicians interested in furthering the cause of their friends and families?

I would love to know the answer to this. Do YOU have any clue?

Will Sunil Mittal beat Laxmi Mittal and Ratan Tata at their game?

Laxmi Mittal entered into $34 billion deal with Arcelor to create world's largest steel behemoth.
Tatas entered into a $12 billion deal with Corus for India's largest cross border deal ever.

Now Sunil Mittal has initiated a $23 billion transaction with MTN to create world's fourth largest telecom operator by number of subscribers - 200 million+. And this would indeed be the biggest M&A transaction witnessed by India Inc so far.

Most analysts consider this to be a prudent move on part of Sunil Mittal despite Laxmi Mittal and Tatas struggling to manage their mega deals. There are various reasons for it.

- Telecom is still a growing industry as compared to mature industries such as Steel or Auto.

- Majority of operations of Airtel and MTN are in India, Africa and West Asia, where there is tremendous growth opportunity on account of growing mobile penetration.

- Airtel and MTN both have been growing their subscriber base aggressively and are market leaders on home turf. Airtel is undisputed leader in India while MTN with 36% market share is the second largest player in South Africa. MTN has a wider subscriber base with significant presence in Central and West Africa.

- While Tatas and Laxmi Mittal closed their deals at the peak of valuations, Airtel - MTN deal is being done in a more sane environment. Already Airtel is valuing MTN about 15% less than last year's offer which did not materialise owing to differences in the ownership structure of merged entity.

- Owing to the nature of telecom business there will be significant scope of cost savings by employing common suppliers. Part of Airtel's fabulous success in Indian market is attributed to its innovative outsourcing agreements with principle suppliers such as IBM.

Ratan Tata recently admitted that with hindsight Corus deal was an expensive one and too bullish. Bruised by acquisition of Corus and JLR, Tata group is fighting hard a credit crunch across the group. Laxmi Mittal is battling record loss and huge debt at Arcelor Mittal to keep afloat.

Sunil Mittal may have the last laugh by closing this mammoth deal in the sunrise telecom sector. He seems truly on his way to be the global telecom czar.

Delhi DareDevils or Mumbai Indians?

Its with lot of sadness I am having to change my RT (Mumbai Indians theme song). Despite showing some sparks early on in the tournament, Mumbai Indians failed to get their act together. Given their celebrity quotient - Tendulkar, Jayasuriya, J P Duminy, Abhishek Nayyar, Harbhajan, Zaheer Khan... much more was expected from them :(

Its actually surprising that Mumbai, with its vast cricket following and professional approach to cricket coaching, has failed to match other top teams in both the seasons of IPL. Mumbai is one of the best domestic teams in India and getting in Mumbai's team is considered to be the toughest thing on domestic circuit. Mumbai is host to some of the biggest domestic tournaments. Check out on any weekend, and all its grounds are bustling with cricket being played by young men dressed in whites.

Its interesting to compare Mumbai to Delhi in this regard. Delhi Daredevils has been one of the best team in both IPL editions so far. Its unfortunate that they lost in semis both the times. While Delhi has its own place on the domestic circuit it cannot match the stature of Mumbai. Cricket infrastructure in Delhi is nowhere near that of Mumbai. And like all other things, cricket is played much more professionally in Mumbai than in Delhi. Still Delhi is miles ahead of Mumbai when it comes to perofrmance in IPL.

Unsurprisingly Sachin seems to be supportive of idea of allowing more foreigners in the playing XI, while Viru has dismissed it straight-away. And I find it tough to agree with Sachin on this point. Long term interest of IPL as well as cricket in India lies in providing platform to Indian players. If teams are not performing well because the local players are not delivering, the solution lies in finding better local players, or working hard on exisiting players. Packing the
team wih more overseas players is the easiest option but not the best one.

Mumbai Indians need a serious revamp of its approach towards the local players. May be they need a new captain and a coach. They need to start scouting and developing new talent, NOW. Unlike other iconic players, Sachin still has a great role to play in shaping of Mumbai Indians, though probably not as a captain. Time to interospect, and start rebuilding. Mumbai has all the resources that a team may need, somebody needs to get the planning right.
I am waiting for a new theme song from Mumbai Indians, and the new champions...

Election results - lesson in marketing?

For second econsecutive elections Indian electorate has surprised poll pundits, marketers, political parties alike.

In 2004 BJP and NDA were high on "India Shining" campaign. There was a positive mood across country's urban elite and so called opinion makers and political analyst actually fell for NDA's glossy campaign. Everyone was expecting NDA to be back in power. Some commentators even predicted Congress' demise. But Congress surprised everyone, including itself. Not that it sweeped the polls or anything like that, but it emerged as the single largest party in a highly fractured mandate. Its 'insipid' but highly effective "Aam Aadmi" theme struck a cord with many voters.

Fast forward to 2009. One would think BJP had learnt its lessons.

Indeed they had...so instead of a positive campaign they embarked on a negative campaign. They countered Jai Ho by Bhaya Ho! They did not tell voters what would they do, but went around the town telling them what UPA government did or did not do!

Advani briefly thought he was Obama of India. May be he was. But he forgot that he was fighting election in India and not in the US. His advisors forgot that India has a parliamentry form of democracy which is different from presidential form of democracy that the US has. Even though Indian polity is hugely dominated by larger than life leaders, still voters identify leaders with the parties. They ultimately vote for the parties. They do not vote for the post of Prime Minister.

I found Advani's PM campaign to be too much in the face. Its fine to be popping everywhere on internet proclaiming yourself to be the next PM, but where was the content? L K Advani was the largest advertiser on Google's Adsense network during elections. They must have directed quite a lot of traffic to lkadvani.in. I myself visited his site at least 10 times during the campaign. But the content out there was very boring, static and did not do anything to promote Advanis' cause.

It seemed that Advani was running one race and BJP/NDA another. The two campaigns appeared disjointed.

Advani forced Congress to formally declare Manmohan Singh as its PM candidate. In hindsight, and with Advani's help, it turned out to be an advantage for Congress. Direct personal attacks on a man considered to be honest, upright and sincere by most hurt Advani and BJP big time. It also helped Congress rally behind its leadership.

While all these are reasons that would have affected the urban voters, I think despite 2004 setback BJP has not been able to discover a way to reach out to rural voters outside the states where it is in power. Its electronic media campaign had an urban look to them. Its digital campaign also was an effort to reach out to urban voters. While Congress reaped the benefits of its rural oriented programs such as NREGA and farm loan waiver, BJP did not have a specific communication meant for rural voters.

BJP managed the media well. Its spokepersons did a better job on electronic media. They exuded a sense of confidence, but were also dismissive about lot of things. In the process they scared the voters, they alienated them. On other hand mumbling Congress spokespersons seemed more genuine, and seemed more approachable to common man. Voters did not fall for suaveness, they empathised with bungling orators! BJP seemed arrogant to them.

For the second time running, general elections have proved that political parties at large, BJP in partcular, failed to understand who is their consumer. By failing to identify them, they also failed to articulate their USP to them. A glossy, agressive, over-the-top and negative campaign was rejected by voters in favour of an image of sincerity, mildly positive mood and actions-speak-louder-than-words campaign.