ReleaseWire Connect

Come Diwali and the sky across India would glitter with magnificent fireworks and sound. This is one night which when starts even overshadows the moon under the cracking light and glamour of fire-shows. This is one night where every corner of India tries to match Sydney’s’ New Year celebration in its own way. But then, the entire Indian shines on one night because of life-risking production works done in one small town of India – Sivakasi.

After seven odd assassination attempts over the last four decades, it was on October 20, 2011, that one of the most successful Libyan leaders Muammar Gaddafi kissed the most brutal and disgraceful death. Libyan fighters snapped him out of his ‘hole’ and shot him to death. His body, half naked, completely wounded, shambled hairs and bloodied was then delivered as prized possession to Misrata (a city near Sirte) where it was put on public display as a token of victory for the rebels. And with it came an end of the era, which Gaddafi built over 40 years. And with his end, the US again proved its double standards to the world!

Now that Sarah Palin is out of the American Presidential race and Lindsay Lohan probably back in the jail, the whole of America – and hence the whole of the world – is talking about the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Sans the sound and fury, this grassroots outburst of rage is about a majority no longer willing to lie down and let a small minority of the elite fix the rules of the game and even the whole system to gain at the cost of the majority.

A decade down the road, instant historians will perhaps marvel at this paradox: how a bunch of absolutely true blue brilliant people managed to destroy growth prospects for India. Just look and marvel at the names: Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Jairam Ramesh, P. Chidambaram, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Kaushik Basu, D. Subbarao…. Each name is brilliance personified. And yet collectively, these pilots of the Indian economy are failing to prevent a crash landing of growth.

This December, I am supposed to be speaking on education in a summit in Africa. As I was researching on what to speak, I realized that while the entire world is leapfrogging to state-of-art technology to impart education to their children, there are a few unfortunate countries – rather, almost an entire continent – still struggling with blackboards and chalk pieces. On the one hand, developed nations are all set to impart knowledge through varied technology platforms, and are modernizing their syllabi to suit the new learning curves; on the other, we have Africa, a continent that has still not been able to teach basic reading, writing and arithmetic to its children. The continent is still lagging behind the rest of the world in school enrollment – evidence to the fact that dramatic global improvements in education haven’t touched the continent yet. In the last 40 years, while most of the world improved its enrolment trends by leaps and bounds, Africa could only showcase discomforting educational profiles – only about half of Africa’s children are enrolled in primary schools, most drop out; and more than 60 per cent of the adults and over 50 per cent of women are rank illiterates!

Last month, a beautiful film named Dolphin Tale hit the theatres. Based on a true story, it’s a ‘tale’ about a dolphin without a ‘tail’. It’s the story about a young boy’s efforts to convince scientists to create a prosthetic tail for this dolphin named Winter , whose tail had got amputated. In doing so, he not just changes the life of the dolphin but also of the people around him. It’s a story of grit and determination. It made the audiences cry and the producers fly high – in North America, the movie grossed $14 million from Friday to Sunday. It opened at #3 but rose to the #1 spot in the second week, something not very common.

A magazine in 14 languages? Everyone even slightly serious about media – the seniors in the fraternity included – had genuinely laughed when we had bounced the idea off them! They gave tens of reasons why the idea was not worth it and why the same would not be successful. The reasons given were very logical ones though. We don't want to undermine anyone’s intelligence or reasoning; but they were totally right in their own ways and were not trying to pull me down. They were trying to be helpful... it was just that our definition of success differed from their definition. As our magazine The Sunday Indian completes five years, I can say that financially, we haven’t yet become successful – so all of them were right. We started breaking even as a media house only one month ago, after about seven years of struggle. It has not been an easy journey. But financial success was never our benchmark of success. For me, personally, success is always a competition with self-imposed standards of excellence. And if I am convinced that excellence has been achieved, then I go into the market and fight it out against all odds. Thus, we have always believed in striving for world class and then going all out to market it. We have failed when the product failed to live up to the expected standards; but then, we’ve reworked and bounced back. Our institute fought out and won against the biggest of established names despite being tagged rank outsiders! Our movies did the same! And now our media house is doing the same!

The saga of shame of the Indian Commonwealth Games continues as more and more shameful skeletons tumble out of the cupboard. And it only makes my heart cringe. More so because I believe that sports is literally one of the key routes to a healthy nation. From child health to adult health – both physical and mental – sports has a great role to play, especially in today’s day and time where children are getting addicted to videogames and to the internet. To me, personally, the Commonwealth Games event – good or bad – was in reality a great opportunity for India to develop the Indian sports scene. Instead, we found it a great opportunity to plunder more and more money. And that’s what forces me to take a look at how the Chinese used the Olympics as a great leap forward and how they have over years made sports a way of life.

Early this month, Nike did something a lot of movie fans and shoe collectors were waiting for. It created the exact replica of the shoes worn by Michael J. Fox in the popular 1989 flick ‘Back to the Future’. He wore the shoes when he travelled to 2015 in the movie. 1500 shoes were put on e-bay for auction – they were sold out faster than one could imagine; the campaign has been evidently massively successful. This sneaker is getting Nike extra attention not just because of the ‘limited edition’ of the shoes but also because all the proceeds will be donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s disease research. To top it all, Sergey Brin has pledged to match the donations made to the foundation up to the next year (to a maximum of $50 million). The shoes have been auctioned for anywhere between $3,500 to $10,000 with the British rapper Tinie Tempah even paying $37,500 for his pair! The purchase of the year did help Tinie jump into the spotlight, but this has kept Nike in the news too and for some good reasons.

The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) has scored consistently high in this year survey. Not only has it retained IIPM stands top in DNA National B School Surveyits place in the overall top ten rankings with an eighth position (advancing one level higher as compared to last year's survey) but it is also topping the entire list when it comes to international exposure. IIPM also features in the top twelve list across the remaining parameters when it comes to curriculum (11th position), intellectual impact (9th position), image of the institute (6th position), placement (11th position), industry interaction (6th position), infrastructure (8th position) and the potential to network (12th position).