Security, crowd and service led Indian Railway towards mess
After the inception in 1853, Indian Railways, steadily blossomed
into a colossal organisation, to become the second biggest rail network in the world. But yet, one and half centuries later, the great railway network remains overcrowded, vulnerable to security and poor service provider to the enormity of India’s goods and 1.1 billion population!
Indian Railways (IR) is perhaps at present at its zenith of glory and development. It has started running into profit, revenue has also increased by 16% over last year. It carries 16 million passengers daily. Still, it is mostly overcrowded to the point that a traveller has to wait for months to get a reserved ticket. The sheer madness that goes with travelling in a general compartment shows us profoundly the pain that one needs to undertake while travelling in our most esteemed Indian Railways. The reserved sleeper classes of Express trains, barring Rajdhani and other few, are overcrowded, heaving with people trying to claim every bit of available space as their own. Therefore, the compartments soon get squalid and worst of all, is the lavatory, which gets sordid beyond the point of tolerance. IR is the Commercial Utility Employer, with 1.6 million employees, being second only to Chinese Army, as regards, maximum number of employees. In spite of such huge workforce, IR is not really the safest railway in the world, with accident rate over 300 per year.
However, with the onset of economic prosperity, Indian Railways has also seen enough progression. Outlay of Rs.23,475 crores in 2006-07, public-private partnership for development and major technological upgradation are some of the achievements. But beyond the pervasive conceptions of railway authority, IR remains at the target of crossborder and internal terrorist groups while the dream of providing world quality services remains far distant, with increasing underutilisation of existing resources. Inspite of good intentions, there remains hardly any progress on these serious issues. Is Indian Railways an exmaple of the very nature of Indian PSUs?
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
After the inception in 1853, Indian Railways, steadily blossomed
into a colossal organisation, to become the second biggest rail network in the world. But yet, one and half centuries later, the great railway network remains overcrowded, vulnerable to security and poor service provider to the enormity of India’s goods and 1.1 billion population!Indian Railways (IR) is perhaps at present at its zenith of glory and development. It has started running into profit, revenue has also increased by 16% over last year. It carries 16 million passengers daily. Still, it is mostly overcrowded to the point that a traveller has to wait for months to get a reserved ticket. The sheer madness that goes with travelling in a general compartment shows us profoundly the pain that one needs to undertake while travelling in our most esteemed Indian Railways. The reserved sleeper classes of Express trains, barring Rajdhani and other few, are overcrowded, heaving with people trying to claim every bit of available space as their own. Therefore, the compartments soon get squalid and worst of all, is the lavatory, which gets sordid beyond the point of tolerance. IR is the Commercial Utility Employer, with 1.6 million employees, being second only to Chinese Army, as regards, maximum number of employees. In spite of such huge workforce, IR is not really the safest railway in the world, with accident rate over 300 per year.
However, with the onset of economic prosperity, Indian Railways has also seen enough progression. Outlay of Rs.23,475 crores in 2006-07, public-private partnership for development and major technological upgradation are some of the achievements. But beyond the pervasive conceptions of railway authority, IR remains at the target of crossborder and internal terrorist groups while the dream of providing world quality services remains far distant, with increasing underutilisation of existing resources. Inspite of good intentions, there remains hardly any progress on these serious issues. Is Indian Railways an exmaple of the very nature of Indian PSUs?
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
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SL requires you have a first and a last name. This is simply because if you have both in your real life why should it be different in your alternate one? You can choose the first one but the latter has to be one from a drop-down list of over 500 predefined last names. It is SL’s way of keeping it all standard. But don’t think of it as a problem. You will be surprised to see the amount of choice you have including Agrawal, Chakrabarti and Jehangir. Next you need to register. Now there are two kinds of registrations. You can either have a free basic account which does not allow a certain special features. We will talk about it in a moment. Or you can have a premium account available at $9.95 per month with the special features, which reduces to $6 a month if the fee is paid annually. I used my credit card and paid for a six month membership. Next, you download the client application from www.secondlife.com and install it on your PC. Remember to check if your box fulfills the minimum software requirements. Else, it’s no fun.
five years is a testimony to its growing popularity as a long term savings and investment option among investors. Sustained inflows into MF schemes investing in equities, fixed income or even gold suggest increased investor sophistication and also broad-based investor interest. And why not, as investment through mutual funds are fairly simple and offer the most convenient and effective mode, especially for the small retail investors to channelise their savings in building long term wealth. But consider the following steps while investing your savings in mutual funds:
business tycoon, Richard Branson created waves across the globe. But now he’s trying to regain his virginity (ahem! We mean the Virgin Radio brand in UK). The buyout of Virgin Radio by Indian media powerhouse Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL) has taken the Indian media by storm. However, Branson’s intervention to keep BCCL away from using the Virgin brand may be a damp squid for BCCL’s overseas plans. Will Branson’s bravado prove fatal for BCCL? Or is it just a hiccup that will soon pass by?
consumers demand more, pricing will be a mere facilitator and not a deciding factor when choosing one mobile retail outlet over others. This is where brand recall is expected to play a big role as Ratno Rudra, Director Brand Curry Communications avers, “At present the retailing companies should look at ringing in accessibility and affordability and then look at pumping in resources to build their own brand name in order to get repeat sales.” Small surprise that many retailers in this segment are looking beyond mere number crunching (volumes) and adding more value added services for customers in their kitty. Leading the pack is mBazaar, from Kishore Biyani’s Pantaloon stable. “There is no limit to the pricing war so what we offer is the value format for mBazaar that is through deals and combo offers, et al,” explains Rahul Rajamudhiah, Chief-Operations, CorvergeM, adding that going forward, mBazaar would be looking at adding more value adds to customers like offering them insurance, after sales services, et al.” Incidentally, mBazaar stores are located mostly within Big Bazaar outlets. “We wanted to be present in all areas of consumer spending and mobiles comprise a great chunk of spending for households,” explains Mayur Toshniwal, Head-North India Operations for Pantaloon Retail. 
opening up its application programming interface (API) to developers, also recently announced the Facebook Connect to allow its 70 million users to port their identity and friends list to other websites. Facebook’s announcement comes close on the heels of MySpace’s own data portability initiative whereby users can move data to eBay, Yahoo!, Twitter and Photobucket. Amit Ranjan, one of the founders of the popular Power point sharing platforms, Slideshare, traces the precedent of this in the Single Sign On alias Open ID project. The idea behind it was to create a single username and password which could be used to sign into different social networking sites. A question that comes to mind is who stands to gain the most. If experts are to be believed, the smaller players would stand to gain the most.
that any sensitive male sees everywhere, across a nation on the move? Gifted director Aparna Sen (36 Chowringhee Lane, Mr. & Mrs. Iyer, 15, Park Avenue) joins the fray. She believes that the Indian women is represented in a truly pathetic fashion, forever one-dimensional – North Indian, fair, urban – with occasional, unimaginative and degrading forays into tokenism. “How is it that beyond this cardboard, stereotypical cut-out, one hardly ever gets to connect with a real, believable, flesh & blood type! When was the last time one saw a woman from the South, East or North-East as ad models”? While Sen appreciates the crafting, technological highs and slick execution of these endeavours, she feels very strongly about the real Indian woman being hi-jacked by a predictable and soul-less stereotype, completely powered by a consumerist culture and vested interest.
in target audiences. Then came in the concept of high-end mobiles such as the Nokia Nseries and Blackberry, which took the premium market by rage. And now, marketers are trying their hands at designer handsets to entice the moneyed aspirational consumer. Hummer, launched by Fly mobile in India, is a designer mobile handset created on the lines of the American car Hummer from General Motors. According to Sagar Chatterjee, Chief Marketing Officer, Fly Mobile, “Hummer is targeted at the green category and to a large extent youth. The idea is to create hype about the product as the youth would want to pick only things that are the talk of the town.” Chatterjee reveals that Fly will be launching more such phones in the coming year like Tag Heuer, Levis, et al. The idea is to peddle designer mobiles that have a niche feel to make bigger differentiation. Armani Samsung handsets, LG KE850 Prada and Motorola V3i dg (Dolce & Gabanna) are prime examples of players in this segment, who are successfully experimenting with designer phones.