Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Chennai memories

Chennai Memories – Feb 2007

Arrived in Chennai a week ago after 3 days in Dubai. The traffic chaos and murky skyline aside, Dubai is booming. There are few cities doing as well.In Chennai the boom is less palpable. Yes, there is traffic chaos with more cars and there is more construction, and we read in the news about people making more money. NDTV and other such shows enlighten and ocassionally I wish I had stayed back here to be the COO of a multimillion dollar company like my friend Uma Rathnam Krishnan, who heads Optimus, or any number of other women in senior decision making positions. The moment passes as I become aware of its transcience...

If you are following the news Vodafone has acquired Hutch for awhopping 19 billion - Hutch by the way is the blackberry service provider inIndia and ESSAR (owned by Ruias) is its joint venture partner. Vodafone'sCEO is a handsome Arun Sarin.Anyway, Vodafone beat Reliance, Ruia and Hinduja with its pie in the sky valuation - the projected profit for next year is only 1 billion so they areexpecting exponential growth in the telecom industry to pay thisprice. The interesting dilemma that Vodafone and the Ruias face is this..a foreign company (Vodafone is uk based) can only have 76% stake and hence Hutch joint venture with Essar will fulfill that requirement..the ball is with Essar (in other words Ruia) as to whether it will want in?!! rather odd that it would bid against Vodafone and then want in...but thats market economicsfor you...As I watched this news unfold, my first thought was, somepeople are going to be very rich in this process ane most of them live outside India, the second thought was the 3D technology that Vodafone brings thatwill further revolutionise telecom - but to what end..it appears to be a case of putting the cart before the horse..the technology is responding to the need but creating it...in India basic public amenities are still in short supply, governments continue to be extremely corrupt and the gap between rich and poor is widening. So where I expected positive changes, I see less contentment, more frustration and lots of unhappiness..with soaring costs among the poor and lower middle classes and the rich and the upper middle class appear to flourish on their backs....Under DMK there is nothing you hear in the press but the partyline. Kalanidhi Maran owns all the cable networks and has censored access to any channel which will ensure balanced reporting.

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