Yeah, this is about my home land. The people, their problems, them being the problem..
Transport:
Ohh yeah. We don't have any government buses. All we have is buses running on contract, the owners of which consider people equivalent to pigs ready for slaughter. Here is a personal example, Khandwa to Indore is a 130 kms distance, with a private bus every 15 mins. Yet, if you want to go to Barwaha or Sanawad, which are exactly halfway, you are refused. After an hour or so of patience and hatred for these people, all you get is "Samaan upar patko aur khade ho jaao, Indore ki sawaari baithegi" (Throw your luggage on the roof, and get up. Seats are for people to Indore). And they don't give a damn whether you are old or sick or whatever. You can get lost for another hour in a gruelling 45 deg C. I just wonder every time I go back home, is there any way, this guys can learn to be human?
And its not that the economics benefit them in any way by this behaviour. They get an even higher number of passengers mid way, and their buses won't be empty for a single second, but there is just this plain obnoxiousness filled in those smelly breathes of liquor and tobacco. No wonder, every 6 months or so, a bus driver gets beaten, glasses of the bus shattered by the public. And pity, we think, we are gonna be back to the golden days! Trust me, if you are planning to visit MP, do so by your own vehicle. You will love the heart of India if you don't get to see the malice.
Electricity:
OOOOoooooooooooooooooohh.. Electricity. Yeah, we get that some times. Usually, in patches of 1 or 2 hours. And mind you, for most places, this patches come once or twice a week. Every home has inverters and generators (and these generators run on kerosene purchased from a control shop -- have huge 'gifts' for the environment).
I agree that bigger cities have industries, which demand power. But why is it that even in the distribution of home consumption electricity, small cities are treated as inferiors? Don't we have a right to live? Or is it the case that "Kyunki saans bhi kabhi bahu thi" for bigger cities is more important than drinking water of villages.
Every year, newspapers write, "Students from small places crack this, that". I felt it, I really did, when a maa says, "Son! Don't study now. Lights are gone! We need to save some battery for the fan in the night..". This is just plane wrong. Standing in the middle of three power producing dams, we produce a huge amount of electricity. And all we ask for is equality. Lights in our lamps, nothing more. Lights for our students, nothing more. Fan for our worn outs, nothing more.
Change:
Madhya Pradesh is one state, where you will find the highest rate for change -- the 1Re, 2Rs and 5Rs coins. I think, this shortage is created artificially. Every two years, we have an over abundance of change, so much that you get 110 Rs worth coins for a 100 bucks note. And it some how vanishes and again, people are quarreling over a 1Re coin paying 100 bucks for 80 coins. I've vitnessed this cycle myself twice in the past 5 yrs. Yet, no banks try to regulate the liquidity, rather they refuse to collect and circulate change. (Shortage of time is the most common excuse by bankers). It is such a bad bad bad scene, to see people negotiating over lack of currency, and probably one of the best news for those 1Re candy manufacturers. They've kinda become the defacto currency in Madhya Pradesh. Is this how, we dream of becoming the golden sparrow again? Quarreling over change?
Business:
Ahh, my favourite. Its all together a different form of economics -- the economics of ego. If you think, Microsoft believes in monopoly, come to our place. The richer businesses would do anything to crush out the not-so-rich ones. The problem being, where competitors of Microsoft still make a good amount and get lost in little time, people there won't. They will persevere for years and years before giving up. No one makes profits for all these while. Someone's got to teach people, you do business for profits, not for ego. You can just bargain till death, if you say to Mr X "Mr Y is costing me 5 Rs less", then he would reduce the price, go to Mr Y, he would reduce the price again, till the time you spent one hour oscillating between the two shops, saving 20 odd bucks, and no one making any profit. Wake up Guys!! Lost productivity all round. Why don't we teach them how to handle businesses before they quit schools, instead of, complaining that people don't study long enough.
The list would just go on and on and on..
Its not that everything over there is wrong. There is good too. Plenty of good. People still smile despite 'n' troubles, help is forever available. But I do feel like, if this is what is the cost I have to pay for being with my motherland, I better not pay it. The look of filth in buses, that shortage of power for anything, that uselessness of business, so much grief, so many complaints. Yeah, I don't want to live at the place I love the most..
(The views and emotions expressed here are all mine and mine only. This is what I saw, observed, felt.. Feel free to post constructive comments if you feel otherwise..)
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
SBI ATMs -- Demanding serious trouble -- incomplete transactions causing people to loose money
Last week, I was off to my home, a small town with electricity supply of about 8 hrs a day. I was surprised to find one of the biggest problems in SBI ATMs over there. The ATMs aren't failure proof.
Not just that, I had a brief demonstration of the consequences straight away. A poor senescent man, working at the Central Industrial Security force with a salary of round about 10k per month, had lost 4k bucks due to this. I was like, "This is theoretically impossible. My databases course suggests otherwise. You gotta be joking."
Apparently, he wasn't. He said, he was taking the money out of the ATM and power went off. It didn't vomit any money, only a receipt showing 4000 bucks deducted. (Poor man, serious trouble :(). Not only had he lost bucks due to the same, he also hadn't received any response for the complaint he filed. He said, he had been complaining to the State Bank of Indore branch in my town for about a month, but no results. My dad told me that there have been several cases like this in the past as well and he essentially feared using ATM for transactions more than 500 odd bucks. If this is how SBI claims to have the largest number of ATMs in India, I am selling all my SBI shares today. Really sad for the old man though...
Not just that, I had a brief demonstration of the consequences straight away. A poor senescent man, working at the Central Industrial Security force with a salary of round about 10k per month, had lost 4k bucks due to this. I was like, "This is theoretically impossible. My databases course suggests otherwise. You gotta be joking."
Apparently, he wasn't. He said, he was taking the money out of the ATM and power went off. It didn't vomit any money, only a receipt showing 4000 bucks deducted. (Poor man, serious trouble :(). Not only had he lost bucks due to the same, he also hadn't received any response for the complaint he filed. He said, he had been complaining to the State Bank of Indore branch in my town for about a month, but no results. My dad told me that there have been several cases like this in the past as well and he essentially feared using ATM for transactions more than 500 odd bucks. If this is how SBI claims to have the largest number of ATMs in India, I am selling all my SBI shares today. Really sad for the old man though...
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Newspapers: The way I think they can improve sales
Hi.
Well, this is my first blog, and I really don't know the "rules", so kindly bear up with any mistakes I make on the mode of presentation..
Well, one day I was reading in an newspaper, the problems faced by newspapers and magazines due to the free 24x7 news channels and news available on the net. The newspaper went as far ahead as mentioning a need to change the business model used.
Now, this got me thinking, as to why, I still read newspaper. Even though, I am online at least 12 hrs a day, can watch TV whenever I wish to, I still prefer to read newspaper for the news.
I got the following 2 reasons when I asked myself this question:
1. Reading newspaper improves concentration: I believe, while reading a newspaper, you concentrate on what you read. This improves your concentration much more than watching to the news on TV, because, even though you have a lapse of attention, you feel like knowing the news because you can half hear it. This period of concentration doesn't only refresh me, but also increases my productivity.
2. Improves vocabulary: Advertise this. Remember a news reader utter 10 words of which you don't know the meaning? Even if he/she uses them, you won't even try to learn them, because it just flashes off fast. In fact, I don't even bother about this words while watching TV. Now try this with a book or newspaper. You suddenly seem to notice this word. Trust me, some where or the other, having a good command over a language helps a lot in life..
Apart from this, I also get a small advantage over news channels in that I have a record of events till the time I want to keep the newspaper and I can reread it at wish.
Now, how can one use this? The problem which newspaper industry faces is that, in general, people are ignorant of or apathetic to these reasons, they simply don't sit and contemplate over the same.. (or at least I think this is what it reduces to..)
So, a potential solution which I see to this is advertising.. Newspaper industry has to make people sit and think.. A simple advertisement, showing a school boy reading newspaper and another watching news with half concentration, and the first boy doing good in exams (with a snapshot of exam hall with him concentrating better), hopefully will get them a more than linear increase in sales. The point which I want to emphasis is that newspaper industry has to tell people why it is fruitful to spend a few bucks per month on a newspaper and how it will help make their life better.
However this mightn't work against news portal on the net. In order to counter it to some extent, they can put in effort to show it is straining to read stuff on a monitor as compared to a printed paper. You can carry of a newspaper to your bathroom and read it peacefully while brushing or blah blah blah.. Simply an aidvertisement relating the adults' habit of tea and newspaper might be a good deal.
All that I want to convey is that, newspapers need to advertise.
(For those who better prefer to collect data, please try collecting the (dA/dI) data for the same and help me confirm this.. (Okay, I accept you are not gonna care for this blog post then.. :P ) )
By the way, a disclaimer: I am surely not claiming to be an expert at finance or some brilliant statistics holder, I am just another common man, who is looking at the problem from the customer's viewpoint..
Well, this is my first blog, and I really don't know the "rules", so kindly bear up with any mistakes I make on the mode of presentation..
Well, one day I was reading in an newspaper, the problems faced by newspapers and magazines due to the free 24x7 news channels and news available on the net. The newspaper went as far ahead as mentioning a need to change the business model used.
Now, this got me thinking, as to why, I still read newspaper. Even though, I am online at least 12 hrs a day, can watch TV whenever I wish to, I still prefer to read newspaper for the news.
I got the following 2 reasons when I asked myself this question:
1. Reading newspaper improves concentration: I believe, while reading a newspaper, you concentrate on what you read. This improves your concentration much more than watching to the news on TV, because, even though you have a lapse of attention, you feel like knowing the news because you can half hear it. This period of concentration doesn't only refresh me, but also increases my productivity.
2. Improves vocabulary: Advertise this. Remember a news reader utter 10 words of which you don't know the meaning? Even if he/she uses them, you won't even try to learn them, because it just flashes off fast. In fact, I don't even bother about this words while watching TV. Now try this with a book or newspaper. You suddenly seem to notice this word. Trust me, some where or the other, having a good command over a language helps a lot in life..
Apart from this, I also get a small advantage over news channels in that I have a record of events till the time I want to keep the newspaper and I can reread it at wish.
Now, how can one use this? The problem which newspaper industry faces is that, in general, people are ignorant of or apathetic to these reasons, they simply don't sit and contemplate over the same.. (or at least I think this is what it reduces to..)
So, a potential solution which I see to this is advertising.. Newspaper industry has to make people sit and think.. A simple advertisement, showing a school boy reading newspaper and another watching news with half concentration, and the first boy doing good in exams (with a snapshot of exam hall with him concentrating better), hopefully will get them a more than linear increase in sales. The point which I want to emphasis is that newspaper industry has to tell people why it is fruitful to spend a few bucks per month on a newspaper and how it will help make their life better.
However this mightn't work against news portal on the net. In order to counter it to some extent, they can put in effort to show it is straining to read stuff on a monitor as compared to a printed paper. You can carry of a newspaper to your bathroom and read it peacefully while brushing or blah blah blah.. Simply an aidvertisement relating the adults' habit of tea and newspaper might be a good deal.
All that I want to convey is that, newspapers need to advertise.
(For those who better prefer to collect data, please try collecting the (dA/dI) data for the same and help me confirm this.. (Okay, I accept you are not gonna care for this blog post then.. :P ) )
By the way, a disclaimer: I am surely not claiming to be an expert at finance or some brilliant statistics holder, I am just another common man, who is looking at the problem from the customer's viewpoint..
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