The Modern Indian Holy Trinity

Looking at Aamir, Rehman and Sachin, I have always wondered about the striking parallels between them. The post 90s generation has been lucky to have these three absolutely world-class performers setting new standards in each of the three uniting passions of this nation.

All of them have somewhere reinforced our faith in our abilities to take on the best in the world in our respctive fields. Their single minded, almost obsessive devotion to their respective crafts, the extremely private existence beyond their profession, and an unbelievable refusal to succumb to any of the power/celebrity temptations of their success is something which has natural resonance with most of us.

Isn't it interesting how even physically these three guys are remarkably similar with their short height, curly locks and baby faces? Wonder if there is a common archetype at the heart of it all!

When a nation is on an economic upswing, its ascendancy is also felt across other fields like cuture, sports and entertainment.

Today, the Indian soft power has something more to offer beyond yoga, henna and tandoori chicken as Rehman breaks all language barriers to take Indian music to different parts of the world. Sachin's fearless strokeplay provided the confidence in our players to take on the likes of Australia and Pakistan and our cricket witnessed its gloden-est period ever with the likes of Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman and Kumble forming the kernel of a fairly successful outfit. Aamir demonstrated that being a super-star and being an outstanding actor were not mutually exclusive (fans of Shahrukh and Amitabh may disagree, but my strong views on their acting skills will be the subject of another blog).

While Rehman and Sachin have managed to have stable marriages, Aamir's divorce after nearly a decade of marriage continues to be looked at as one sour note in an otherwise clean celebrity life, by quite a few of his fans.

These three guys emerged towards the late 80s early 90s and have consistently provided us all with one sublime performance after another. From the looks of it, while Rehman and Aamir continue to reinvent themselves, Sachin is still searching for some direction for the next phase of his career. It will be of interest to see if these guys reinvent themselves in a manner that is befitting their stature. If i were to risk some crystal gazing, I see an opportunity for Rehman to outdo a certain Reshammiya to emerge as the first truly global rock star out of India; Sachin clearly has role models in Gavaskar and Vijay Amritraj to build a great career beyond playing cricket and Aamir most certainly is a director to look forward to.

Hopefully, there is still lots more magic left with these maestros for a few more decades of pure joy.

Life and Times...

This could be a blasphemous assertion for some, but I feel that ToI is another iconic Indian brand that does not get celebrated enough. In my opinion it is also an iconic youth brand! One can (perhaps rightly) have a moral/ethical take on some of their practices in blurring the lines between marketing and journalism, but as far as the marketing story goes, it is the stuff legends are made of.

Here is a 160 year old brand, which till about 15 years ago was struggling on all counts- small business, category under threat from 24 hour news channels, management mired in investigations, and perceptions of an outdated brand.

And under those testing circumstances, it demonstrates prescience of a rare kind in betting on the younger, modern India and goes on to reinvent the whole business and takes on the lions share (according to some estimates, ToI's profits are nearly 5 times the next 4 competitors put together!) of that growth.

Not only the growth, but even on parameters like customer service, operational efficiency, and sheer cosmopolitanism of the product, ToI has no alternative as of today. Its content is most usable and visually it is the most appealing. It also doesn't come across has having an agenda of its own and lets you be comfortable in the place you are by putting up most sides of the story. I will be surprised if there is any other newspaper brand in the world that has demonstrated marketing prowess of the kind ToI has. There is a lot of savvy hard work behind the creation of this juggernaught and unfortunately I have seen only ToI bashers but hardly anyone who recognizes the monumental marketing achievement of that brand.

All the criticism about them may be valid. Yep, the journalism is passion-less (even on Cricket ;0)), and occasionally some initiative may violate our puritanical sensibilities, but one needs to give the devil its due on these counts.

And till I see an alternative that is even remotely as successful as ToI, I am hesitant to put the blame of reducing journalistic standards at the doorsteps of ToI alone. I feel somewhere we see our own idealized self in a brand like ToI- refined, modern, youthful, liberal, ambiguous on politics, highly materialistic etc.
As someone sagely put it- a newspaper is the nation having a conversation with itself.

Infosys & the Curse of the Incumbent

Infosys has truly been an iconic brand for the 1990s...one of the defining metaphors for what our country went through as it shed its socialist past and embraced capitalism. To use Douglas Holt's thesis, brand Infosys provided a dramatic reconciliation for the ideological conflict the nation was going through. While a nations of so many underprivileged people naturally resonated with the idea of socialism and central role for government, the 1991 crisis exposed the vulnerability of that model. On the other hand, while the success of capitalism was unmistakable, our society was still suspicious of unbridled capitalism.

Infosys emerged as a brand which was highly competitive, global, high technology and yet humane, socially responsible and authentic. Like JN TATA almost a hundred years ago, it was difficult to say whether NarayanMurthy was a socialist or a capitalist. He reinvented the archetype for the new century. In a way, in the 1990s, he was more TATA than the TATAs.

Moreover, with their middle class educational upbringing, the management made the dream beliveable 'for the rest of us'.

However, the last 3 years have been relatively tepid as far as Infy's masterful performances are concerned. It has been a while since one got to see a bold visionary move that this brand had been so good at in the past. Whether it is putting the value of the human capital on the balance sheet or the generous wealth sharing or the breathtaking campus or taking bold stands on various issues...the new Infy seems to be far more conservative and self-centred.

And the impression one gets is of an extremely efficient execution machine delivering great stock market performance but losing touch with its soul. The CEOs after NRN have also been more managers/strategists than visionaries.

Probably they see themselves now as incumbents rather than challengers and thus the need to preserve status-quo rather than invent new paradigms....

At times their efforts at making a difference have looked publicity stunts rather than authentic expressions of care. Case in point being the one crore donation for Kashmir earthquake a day after announcing quarterly profits of over 600 crores.

It is a brand that has been the pride of this nation and one hopes it continues to play the progressive role it provided through the 1990s in inspiring Indian corporates towards greater transparency and equitable wealth-sharing. That was the Infosys difference and definitely something that all of us who want to see standard-setting global corporations emerge out of India, would want preserved.

The challenger in Infosys probably needs to be rekindled!

10 Baby Steps- a look-back

It's been nearly 5 months since I took the baby steps and although the discipline of regular posting is still missing, I am happy about clocking 10 posts. I feel a few thinsg going for it are that there is an overall subject matter coherence to the blog. The OFIs are in the areas of technology, quality of writing, particularly making it a bit lighter and fun (brands are actually far more poetic and fun than my writing style suggests) and more original and provocative thinking.

But for anyone thinking/planning/mulling about blogging, only one piece of advice- 'get-on-the-court'. Read this pragmatic piece by Penelope Trunk on how to kick-off. Probably the best one I've read on the subject.

On how it feels at this juncture- well, i am a bit surprised occasionally about where my mind takes me when I actually start writing...nothing new there but definitely builds confidence. Intuitively, a few things have fallen in place in giving this blog a definitive focus and character. It has also become the number one item in google search when my name is googled (that definitely surprised me)! Should build traffic as old friends and acquaintances try to figure out what I am upto.

This entry is more like a pause for breath, just after the warm ups in an aerobics session. The game has not even started and here i am feeling a little smug about the whole thing...! ;0)

Unreasonable India

The last few years of economic growth in India have been remarkable.World over there is acknowledgment of its stature as a force to reckon with. There is also great deal of appreciation of the foundational strengths of the India story i.e. democracy, freedom of press, vibrant private sector, domestic consumption, a knowledge/service competence etc. All this, coupled with the fact that literacy and productivity have been on the rise along with a slowing population growth, there have been few contrarian voices to the Indian fairy tale. However, in this euphoria, one may have lost sight of some of the harsher realities that lie beneath this gloss. Like our cricket team, we may not be present to the real gap that will prevent us from becoming a world-beater.

Besides areas like primary education, stunting & undernourishment and infrastructure which have been discussed ad-nauseaum, India also stares at a growing HIV epidemic, crumbling institutions like judiciary and police, archaic labor and agricultural policies, and massive shortfalls in power availability. Moreover, the gap between the haves and the havenots represents a potential show-stopper as bulk of the Indian growth has come through sectors which require skilled manpower like IT. In purely numerical terms private sector only accounts for less than 5 percent of our labor pool. How do we expect the other 95% of ordinary, unskilled people to move up the chain? Where are the poverty busting ideas that will provide them a piece of the action?

By not acknowledging this aspect of India, we may be headed for a socio-political revolution of the kind we do not want. Even if that were not a case, how do we hope to sustain the growth momentum without deepening the foundations on which it rests?

The vibrant, rapidly upgrading, almost globally competitive private sector has an opportunity to play a much bigger role in this context. It has an opportunity to articulate a unique point of view to world about what progress and development really mean.

We have an opportunity to articulate and execute a vision for India that leverages the best of the Oriental and Occidental wisdom. Can the Indian story be about creating a model society which preserves all the affection, social support, compassion associated with it and yet delivers globally competitive performance withing a liberal, democratic, secular framework?

Identifying what needs to be done is the easier part. Breaking through our old paradigms to do things differently will be often tough, awkward, annoying and sometimes even frightening and completely unpleasant. It will cause a lot of disruption and discomfort in the short-run and will require enormous discipline.

The worst we can do is to underestimate the challenge. Given some of our cultural tendencies of celebrating early, hypocrisy and complacency, we may need much more than hope and optimism to create the resolve internally to see this thing through. We will have to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask whether we have the will to change as a nation in an atmosphere of relative calm, or should we wait for another crisis of the 1991 kind to get us off the chair?

Do we have the courage to stick to new ways of doing things and resist the short-term temptations? Many fine-lines will have to be walked simultaneously-- How do we preserve the democratic, inclusive traditions and yet instill a strong bias for action?

How do we maintain the affection and compassion in our society yet set deliver demanding standards? How do we create the small victories that keep frustrations at bay and yet remain aligned to the goal?

For India to achieve things that the world never thought were possible, it will have to be extremely demanding and unreasonable with itself. To reach the zenith called Incredible India, it will have to deal with a brutal and tortuous climb that begins at a base-camp called Unreasonable India. Are we up to it?