Opinion: Ambani and Adani will run India (and make most of India’s fortune)

Two articles in today’s newspapers made me think two business houses (or rather families) will be the biggest beneficiaries of the upcoming policies and Govt. spending.

First news item is, Anil Ambani getting into defense manufacturing - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/indl-goods/svs/engineering/anil-ambanis-reliance-group-forays-into-defence-manufacturing-sector/articleshow/46206018.cms?imageid=45757525#slide9

Ambani’s always meant business – the senior Ambani built the empire from oil to textiles, and his sons took it further getting into Telecom, Retail, Energy, Infra, and you name it. They always knew next big what and made sure they are there. But see that they are quick to cut loss and exit when their new businesses do not make money (like Reliance Timeout). Now Anil is keen to enter into defense manufacturing. Do they have experience in that – you may ask but it does not matter is what you will realize quickly. The biggest challenge in India is to work with Govt. and its bureaucracy, they can beat competition there and the lack of experience is made up by hiring the experienced from industry. Anil hired a former managing director from Lockheed Martin to lead this business. You can see he will make this happen.

And another news item is, Adani’s plan to get into Airport sector via Ahmedabad - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Adani-eyes-airport-foray-via-Ahmedabad/articleshow/46207279.cms

Gutam Adani already runs Infrastructure business. His company operates ports in Gujarat – so why not operate Airport too? Again the success here depends on ability to work with Govt., and securing long term finance at low costs as rest of the project related skills including technology can be hired or bought and some of the works can be outsourced through contract works. It is how he transformed his small scale businessman into billions worth enterprise.

With the ‘Make in India’ initiative, both Govt. spending and private investment are expected to go up significantly in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors. And you know who is set to ride that wave. They already made news today and you will see their fortunes rise too in the coming years.

Book Review: Shattered Dreams - Ramayana-The Game of Life by Shubha Vilas

Most of us would have heard the story of Ramayana early in our lives from our grandmothers (even before we learn to read or went to school). Thanks to Ramanand Sagar, his TV serial filled the gaps in those homes where grandmas were absent. At schools, it was teachers who retold it. At dramas, our elders enacted the scenes from it. After one learns to read, it opens up the bigger world as there are numerous books on Ramayana written over many centuries. Each author had put forward his or her views though the central plot and the subject matter remained the same, it was the style and the focus on certain characters made them unique. So it became an epic as it had the strength to survive many generations and remain relevant.

I too had read many versions of it with different perspectives and kept wondering each time about the capability of the story to be retold but still holding readers interest. And I had my set of questions too. If the purpose of Rama’s birth was to kill Ravana and if it was all destiny, why Sita was made the ignorant victim as Rama would have found any other reason to kill Ravana? I always found Rama too ideal for a human being (is that the reason they term him God?) and wondered how such a person who did not lose his tranquil in many odd circumstances but lost his serene when one of his countrymen accused his wife. It was strange for me to see Lakshmana losing importance in the story after the war gets over and wondered why nobody thought of his wife. As a fellow human being, Lakshmana’s wife would also have craved for her husband’s love but she gets little attention than she had deserved and so on.

When I had received the book “Shattered Dreams - Ramayana-The Game of Life” from BlogAdda, I begin with an impression that I am reading another version of the great mythology but soon I realized that the footnotes are making it more than a novel like read. For fictional/novel readers, footnotes are a distraction as they break the flow and continuity. But in non-fiction books, they are a must to provide references and other notes from the author. This book is full of footnotes almost in every page which are sharp and full of wisdom which gave me a feeling of reading a case study and the take away from case study captured in the form of foot notes. As you read a page from the book, the footnotes below it offer an explanation and reasoning why the characters behaved that way. That helps us understand the characters in depth and dissect the situation.

If one reads this book like a novel, I suppose the objective of the author will not be met. It is the synthesis of Ramayana and how we can improve our lives reading it is the significance of this book. So this book appeals to me more of a personality development/leadership guide book, and a good one at it as it has the backing of the great epic. The story of it everyone knows but what we can learn from each character and the situation from Ramayana, this book shows it. So it cannot be read in one go but need to be used like a study guide and I feel it is worth the time invested. It helps to clarify one’s understanding of life, transform himself and elevate to next level of understanding and produce a tolerant leader out of the reader. It helps the readers understand the importance of character and integrity. 

I am sure to come back to this book again in time.

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Book Review: Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene

Henry Pulling is a retired banker. He is unmarried and content spending time growing flowers at his home garden. At his mother’s funeral, he meets up with Aunt Augusta, a younger sister of his mother who was not in touch for decades. Aunt Augusta too is unmarried and they take a walk together after the funeral and decide to meet up frequently. And his Aunt reveals a secret to Henry that he is his father’s son but the mother who was dead was a step mother and he was born to someone else as a result of wandering of Henry’s father. Henry surprised with this revelation, wants to know more as no one else knows about this as his father is long dead and his mother (or step mother) is too dead now. He visits her aunt’s house and as he gets to know her more, he is drawn into a world of adventure, romance, and he travels to the places he had not seen in his conventional, predictable life as a banker.

When his aunt asks him to accompany for a travel, Henry joins her but he is not aware that they are going far away from London where they lived. Henry had not traveled out of his home country till then. And he did not have a slightest suspicion that his aunt is taking out gold (smuggling!) with her to pay for the foreign exchange they need. When he finds that and asks if she is aware that it is illegal, she smiles back and tells she has not read the law so she does not know what is legal or not and it does not matter for her. Travel takes them to Paris, and then to Istanbul. Over a series of conversations Henry learns about the past of his aunt and her lovers. Though she was not married, she had moved from one lover to another during her prime of life. And this travel was to meet the people from past life again. Henry gets to meet those people from his aunt’s past and that this travel had many purposes to serve for his Aunt.

After they return, Henry wants to know how his father had died and where he was buried. Who else can take Henry to his father’s grave? So Aunt Augusta joins him and they find another mourner there at his father’s grave, who was a lover of Henry’s father and was present when Henry’s father breathed his last breath. Henry is curious to know more details about his father from her but he is surprised to see how irritated his Aunt Augusta is with this new woman in his father’s life.

Aunt Augusta leaves for another travel leaving Henry behind. After several months, he is asked to join her and that journey takes him to Argentina and Paraguay. That is where his aunt has found an ex-lover of her and plans to get married with him and settle. And Henry learns that his aunt is his real mother and her elder sister had marred his father to cover up the mistake. And that Aunt Augusta along with her marriage plans, has a found a match for Henry too there.

This plot involving two elderly people (Henry in the mid 50’s and Aunt Augusta in the 70’s) and their journeys into their past is a fascinating story. I read this book during my commute hours between office and home (which is 2 hours a day one-way!) and I was transported into a fictional world created by the author and was so involved with this novel that I wondered how quickly two hours passed. It took me five sittings to completely read this novel. I was impressed by this author but felt somehow the end of this novel doe not go with the flow of it. Aunt Augusta after her marriage allows killing of her another lover Wordsworth but that does not seem to fit her character in this novel and Henry agreeing to marry a teenage girl too. And both of these central characters deciding to marry at an old age is strange since they remain unmarried for most of their life and did not not have inclination towards marriage till then.

This book was first published in 1969. Author Graham Greene has more than 25 novels to his credit and is one of the most widely read British novelists of the 20th century.

Book Review: A Writer’s people by V S Naipaul

This is a writer’s journal. And naturally for a writer, the closest subject to his/her heart is other writers, from all generations and not just fellow writers.

In the first essay ‘The worm in the bud’, author during his upbringing and formative years in Trinidad, narrates the authors who fascinated him, how poetry did not interest him in the beginning but made sense as he found the poems which brought out their meaning in simple but enchanting way.

The second essay’ An English way of looking’ is a critic of various British authors who put emphasis on English ways of living in their books. He dislikes many of the authors as he fails to understand their point of view in their works, but likes a few, Tony Powell among them.

In the third essay ‘Looking and not seeing: the Indian way’ author after exploring few Indian authors comes to the subject of making of MK Gandhi. He points out that the culture shock Gandhi had to face in South Africa led to a revolt in a shy, introvert lawyer. Had Gandhi was well read and was aware of the culture before he arrived in South Africa, he would have become just another migrant from India. Similarly he observes that Nehru, only after participating in peasant movement learnt how the poor lived in India and the blind faith those poor kept in Nehru made his will stronger and made him a socialist later.

In the fourth chapter ‘Disparate ways’ author revisits some of the literary works, classics, history of Rome and Greece.

In the last chapter ‘India Again: the Mahatma and the after’, author puts out his opinions on Vinobha Bhave and Nirad Chaudhuri and his work ‘The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian’.

V S Naipaul is a unique author and deeply opinionated on many subjects. His observations are stunning and contrast at the same time. It appears he has more hatred (and less pride) in his Indian origins, so some of his opinions might leave distaste in Indian reader. But for those readers who are tolerant, he shows how to read in between lines and how to dissect a literary masterpiece.

Opinion: Will it be 1 USD = 1 Euro soon?

All stocks, commodities and currencies or anything traded for that matter see fluctuations. But when a trend persists, it is clear that there is some fundamental change going on. So with the Euro currency. It was above 1.5 against USD during the 2008 financial crisis, and it seemed to be a stronger currency. But Europe too was drawn into crisis, thanks to PIIGS. Now US seem to be pulling out itself out of economic mess but European central bank announced a QE signaling its troubles are not over.

Source: http://www.investing.com/currencies/eur-usd

Why and When?

One would argue that it is the case of a stronger Dollar than a weaker Euro, and that argument is true to some extent. Dollar index has become stronger and would become even stronger when Fed begins raising the rates during later part of this year. At the same time, ECB announced bond buying program to pump more Euros into the banking system expanding its balance sheet. These two factors will drive down Euro further to peg one Euro to one USD by the end of the year.

Who will benefit and who will lose?

A weaker currency makes exports competitive, so the net exporting country, Germany, is set to gain. But at the cost of other partners of European Union as they do not have the same competitive advantage that Germany has. Their imports will become expensive. But the fresh and cheap Euros hitting the market buys the troubled countries time to turn around. As Germany is the biggest lender to its neighbors, they would show patience and a weaker currency boosts their domestic economy too.

If the situation continues this way for some more time, Germany or Germans will end up owning significant assets all over the European Union countries before Europe recovers and begins it economic growth again. 

If ECB’s program does not produce expected results, and if Greece, Spain opt to have their own currencies, Euro would become much weaker against USD. Though it is less probabilistic now as ECB’s aim is to avoid that situation, in case if it comes to that, Gold will be the ultimate gainer as currencies do not remain successful in preserving the value.