Can 'sympathy' be selective ?

As the heart wrenching scene of life less bodies of children being taken out of rubbles of Qana, a village in Lebanon, were beamed by television channels, the whole world was outraged. These graphic pictures were too disturbing, and evoked strong sense of compassion and sympathy for the innocent civilians being killed in Lebanon. The basement of the four storey building, where these civilians were taking shelter becomes the unfortunate target of Israeli air attacks. More than 50 souls, mostly woman and children were the innocent victims. World wide condemnation followed, forcing Israel to announce 48 hours cessation of air attacks. Israel expressed deep sorrow for this tragic incident, but nothing seems to be enough.

Sympathy is an emotion that binds the suffering of one person with the society, country and whole world. The genesis of this cognitive feeling lies in the knowledge of the suffering.

I am not trying to rationalize the killing of children. No logic, religion, ideology or country can rationalize it, so I won’t even attempt. My only question is, Why selective sympathy?

What was the fault of the old lady in Haifa, when a Katyusha rocket hit the coffee cup she was holding and killed her?

Why no sympathy for those 19 year old kids, serving in the border outpost of Israel, who were ambushed and killed by Hezbollah? They were like youngsters anywhere in the world, probably thinking of their studies after their military service. Why no sympathy for those two, still in the captivity of brutal 'Hezbollah'?

Just because no images are beamed, no military analyst is covering the incident, no graphic images are displayed, no minute by minute commentary, are their suffering less?

Thousand of people are forced to live in underground bunkers in Northern Israel to save themselves from the barrage of Katyusha rockets. What is their fault?

Who started this conflict?

Israel has released images taken from aircrafts and infrared cameras, showing rockets fired from neighborhoods, where refugees are sheltered. Hezbollah is using civilians as human shields. Now they should share the blame for this civilian tragedy. Sheikh Nasrallah, the coward he is, can shout at the top of his voice from his secret hiding place. Why do not he and his terrorist brethren engage in proper war and not sacrifice these innocent civilians?

No one likes to see those gory pictures every morning, but no one should forget those innocent who are killed everyday in these terrorist attacks. People who would not even seen a gun in their life have their guts and brain splattered, who just try to make their ends meet have their life snatched away.

I am not speaking for Israel, but for these victims. Israel should not stop till every single of these terrorists are removed from the face of the Earth.

Biggest Brands

Business Week has published the top 100 brands for this year. There are few big winners, big losers and the usual suspects. I am pretty much sure; it won’t be hard for anyone to guess the topmost brand. Yeah, it is ‘Coca-Cola’. In fact, there is no change from last year’s list till number 6.The top ten brands are as follows:-

Coca-Cola
Microsoft
IBM
GE
Intel
Nokia
Toyota
Disney
McDonald’s
Mercedes Benz

The methodology adopted by Business Week is based on the five year future earnings. So this takes into account the future strategies, innovation, leadership and not simply based on present position in the market.

One of the biggest winners for this year is ‘Google’, which had 46% jump in its brand value and is on 25th position. Good news for them just after a day of 90mn settlement of ‘Click Fraud’ class action lawsuit. In contrast to this, the biggest loser is GAP, having 22% erosion in its brand value.

‘Toyota’ climbed two places up and is mentioned to be fast catching with GM by Business Week. In the same segment, it is reversal of fortunes for ‘Ford’, which is estimated to lose 16% of its brand value. Not good news for the turnaround effort of William Clay Ford Jr, better known as Bill Ford. The analysts do not seem to have faith in his strategies.

‘Microsoft’, having a loss of 5% in its brand value is still comfortably placed, far ahead of its powerful competitors, Google and Apple.

The criteria for qualifying this list includes, each brand must derive about a third of its earnings outside its home country, be recognizable outside of its base of customers, and have publicly available marketing and financial data.

On the hindsight, do the top ten brands tell something about the kind of life, we are leading these days?

Lack of post !

I seem to be hit by the blogger's block. Or may be it sounds better that way. It is lean season in Finland, with respect to work, which means I have ample time, but still..

I have become severly opinionated, and I don't want a post full of harsh, knee jerk reactions. My choice of topics does not help either.

I will be back very soon.

You all enjoy the summer !
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Why it always happens this way ? This is one time, I didn't take back up of the post (wrote directly on blogger) and blogger crashed. Damnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!

Work place - nothing weird there !

This is the most opportune time for a 'much needed' light post on my blog. I have not done the tag of ‘weirdo at work’ of Ipanema girl, so going to do it now. I have been evasive on this for chiefly two reasons :-

I am not weird(believe me) at all hence didn’t want people to be disappointed with the post

Since I write using my name, so anything sounding 'real' weird might go against me. Who knows, who all reads or might read my blog. I am sorry if candor is missing, but you all understand.

So here goes the list:-

If I am talking on phone, and typing messages at the same time then I sometimes type what I want to speak, and speak what I wanted to type. Have faced some funny moments due to this.

I totally need something to drink while I am thinking or stuck up at work. It is water, if I am stressed, otherwise coffee/tea.

I don’t like those ‘ultra casual or cool’ events at work place. No, I don’t mean office parties or some celebration(Birthdays); I like them. But I mean , things like, ethnic dress week, or 'rose day' or 'Valentine day' or such. Fortunately, my office(even in India) does not have them. I guess these things started from call centers and now few organizations are embracing them. I 'totally' want a degree of formality and seriousness associated with workplace.


I guess that will be all, could not think of anything more even after 30 minutes. Now all of you who reads this post, may please do the tag. Thank you.

Proud to be an Indian

Mumbai, 11th July 2006, terrorists killed 200 common citizens of India in cold blood. They were murdered in series of seven blasts, while traveling on the commuter trains during the evening rush hour. Many families lost their sole earning member and their loved ones forever. World sympathizes with the grieving Indians. Outraged at this heinous, diabolic, hideous and cowardly attack, the head of the Indian government addresses the nation and promises to take action. Next day all blog websites are blocked in India!

I commend Indian government for taking the strictest possible 'action' for killing its hapless citizens. There was no option left for Indian government, particularly after no terrorist organization came forward to claim responsibility. When there is no one, with whom they could start peace talks ? They did that(peace talk) last time, when Bangladesh attacked Indian border and carried Indian soldiers like dogs, after slaughtering them.

Indian government should further contemplate bringing criminal charges on all those traveling on trains that day, including the dead. It was their fault to be traveling on train and getting killed. After all, suicide is a criminal offense in India.

If one thinks that Indian intelligence agencies are doing nothing then this is absolutely false. In the latest news, Indian intelligence and top security agencies, successfully hunted the crew of Air India after bottles of Scotch Whisky were found missing from the flight of Indian 'Prime Minister'. A flight engineer was booked for stealing them. Indian intelligence is receiving praises from across the world for this highly successful mission.

Amidst all this terrorist attacks, Indian should not lose its focus on economic front. India, being the pioneer of outsourcing industry should lead it from front. They should outsource its defence forces to Maldives. This would provide highly effective for the economy of Maldives, and full credit should go to our first ‘economist’ Prime Minister in decades. The total defence spending of Indian government is around 12.9 billion US dollars more than that of Russia, which spent around 11.4 billion USD (year 2002 figure). This spending by Indian government on defence has increased since then. Even if half of this money goes to Maldives then its economy will hugely benefit. The other half could be used by India for the foreign trips(with extra Scotch bottles) necessary for ‘those’ peace talks. The only strict commitment Maldives would be required to make, is to compulsorily provide soldiers in time, for the parade on the streets of New Delhi on 26th January. In fact, to increase the utilization of tax payer’s money, Indian government should seriously consider having two parades per year instead of usual one. I am sure every tax paying Indian would be highly pleased with the concern of the government for their money.

Proud to be an Indian!

ICICI Bank - What's Customer Service?

I know, I will have to eat crow on this, still I will write the post. It was not long ago when the Indian community in Finland, were narrating their traumatic experience with regards to India’s largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank Ltd. I was the only person who stood with ICICI bank and spoke in their favour. May be my words reached ICICI, and they set to rectify the aberration. Yeah, today I speak in unison with all those harassed customers of ICICI bank.

Their first interface with the customer, i.e customer care, is actually a farce. The sole purpose of having the call center and all those Shailesh, Madhav, Ranjeeta, Vandana, etc is to keep the customer confused. They are fully trained to churn out millions of excuses (most of the time stupid ones) and ask the customer to call the next day. I once decided to test their patience and kept calling the next day. My patience ran out on 15th day. By now, I know all their excuses (and also told them to use new ones). If you think you had enough, and ask your call to be routed to their supervisor or want to escalate the matter, you will first have to cut their excuses. Finally after reaching the supervisor, you would feel the first executive was better. This time the supervisor not only will confuse, but also fudge the issue. The only time their call center was of any help to me was when I asked them to open a new account, or called them to ask the 'date' today.

All this has become routine with regards to ICICI bank, but what they did to me yesterday was the most exciting one. Yesterday, at midnight I got an email from the bank. The mail mentioned “In compliance with your request, we have dispatched a new trading password to you”. First I thought it was some phising mail, but on careful analysis, it was found to be genuine. The strangest thing is that I never requested them to reset my password and send me a new one! I tried logging in with my old password and it didn’t work. Clearly my password was changed. I was alarmed that someone changed the password and got it on my behalf. I immediately sent an email raising the suspicion of ‘fraud’ and asked them to call back as soon as they read it. As expected, I got no calls and two ‘half hour call’ to their call center during the day was of no use, excepting learning few more names.

It was only when I called the office of their DGM, Ms Satinder Kaur (nodal officer designated by RBI for customer care) thrice, they decided to do something. I got a call from someone in ICICI bank around evening. My first question was, “who asked my password to be changed, and why it was changed?” The guy answered, “We have changed your password as per instructions from government authorities”. I nearly fell off my chair and asked again to be sure, “Did the government ask you to change my password?” The guy told me the whole story. It happened that they had to de-activate my demat account, and they knew no other way to do that, except to change the password to keep me away from logging in. The guy further mentioned that government has asked them to check the accounts for proper identification and my details were missing so they had to de-activate. They chose middle of night, with no prior intimation, and de-activated my demat account.

I remember opening my account in June, 2004. At that time PAN card (Income tax card) was not necessary for opening demat account and it was not even asked. Since I already had one, I had given that along with all other documents and yet my account was de-activated on the pretext of missing PAN number. The person further mentioned to me that my account will not be activated, unless I visit their nearest branch and submit the identification documents. When I said I am in Europe, he asked me to send the documents by post. This whole thing was enough to blow my fuse.

I explained to him that I have salary account, savings account, credit card and almost all sort of accounts and since you don’t have my identification documents so first close all other accounts as well. How come one account will work without identification documents and others don’t? To this question, ICICI personnel lived up to their reputation. He accepted that I had indeed submitted those documents at the time of opening of account, but all of them were washed away in last year’s flood of Mumbai, and now government has become strict in making them keep the proper documents. This statement left me shaking with rage.

I had enough of it and decided to end the story with ICICI bank. I told the guy that if he doesn’t activate my account in next one hour then I am not going to send even a scrap of paper. They can keep my account deactivated for ages. Further, I will close all my other accounts with the bank and will also write a letter to the HR head of my employer asking, “Why they made me open my salary savings account with ICICI bank?”

I don’t know which threat was effective but it worked. In the next 15 minutes, I got three calls and they gave me a new password over phone. I checked the password, it worked, and I am able to operate the account. At the end of the day, my issue was resolved but ICICI bank really rewarded me for thinking good of them. Even if they have some valid reason, they treat their customers in a manner that just displays their utter apathy. This is not the first time but second time in last two months for me. Morever it can happen only in India that a lady(Roopalben Panchal) can have around 6000 demat accounts in her name with forged documents, can commit fraud in stock market and keep doing it. But a simple stock investor like me will have his account deactivated without prior intimation even after submitting all sort of documents.

I apologise to all with whom I disagreed on the quality of customer service of ICICI bank. Please accept this post as a formal apology.

Update - The page of ICICI in Google Finance, where the profile of ICICI and the market information of its ADR( US market) is listed, is now carrying this post in the blogger section. You can read it here. There you go ICICI, time to get your act together or the whole world reads this.

Mumbai terrorist attack

Mumbai (Bombay) has been struck by terror again. This time it was the evening crowd on the commuter trains. Infact, it is fast becoming a routine in India, for one of its cities to face brutal attack. With ever heinous act, the next one becomes more sophisticated, deadly and comes at quicker interval. October, 2005 it was New Delhi; March brought gory attacks to Varanasi and now it is Mumbai.

The dastardly attack of Mumbai is being covered by the media across the world. It is heart wrecking to see such pitiable sights. Bodies being carried in make shift stretchers, personal items strewn around, and poodles of blood. Also seen are, what remained of train carriages, mangled heaps of metals and destroyed train stations.

It is surprising that no ambulances, no rescue workers, no police presence were shown on television even two hours after the incident. It was fellow citizens, who had taken the task of relief and rescue. Few police constables are shown, loitering and shooing away the onlookers. Wonder where is the government relief and rescue machinery? Or perhaps the death of couple of hundred people doesn’t matter much in a city of 17 million.

The media was no surprise either. One Indian television network(IBN) was too happy, to say it again and again that they were the first to cover the incident, as they had one of their reporters traveling on one of the ill-fated trains. They seemed to lose no opportunity of earning few brownie points over the other news media. Reuters seized the opportunity by suspecting the “militants fighting the rule of New Delhi in disputed Kashmir” to be involved in the blast. It went on to further mention, “Kashmir has been split between India and Pakistan since shortly after the two countries gained independence from Britain in 1947, but both claim it in full”. NBC reports that atleast two Americans are injured in the attack and alluded to possible Al Qaeda link. They mention information from Indian intelligence for this.

As to be not left behind the trend, the Indian media tomorrow, will first of all name this attack as '11/7' or '7/11'. There will be few reports about ‘spirit of Mumbai’ and the ‘indomitable courage of the people’ living there. Does not matter, if it was the ‘spirit’ or the ‘compulsion of life’ for the average people of Mumbai to take the same commuter trains and head to their place of work the very next morning.

May God give strength to all those who lost their loved ones in this cowardly act and all departed souls rest in peace.

Share holder activism

Global corporate world, in the past few weeks, has seen two major developments. Though both of them are from different industries they have very interesting similarity. In the steel industry, it was culmination of half year long bitter fight between the top two players resulting in Mittal steel’s successful takeover of European giant, Arcelor. Guy Dolle, CEO of Arcelor, used every trick in the book to thwart the takeover. He proposed merger of Arcelor with Russian steel giant ‘Severstal’. This merger, conceivably, would have made it impossible for Mittal to acquire Arcelor. Mittal had already raised its offer for the buyout. What turned the deal towards Mittal, were the shareholders. It was shareholders, who rejected the proposal of Severstal and forced Arcelor board to accept Mittal steel’s takeover.

The second development is from one of world’s biggest automakers, General Motors. The beleaguered company is taking several measures to turn lean and profitable. But the shareholders of GM weren’t amused by the pace of it. The biggest individual share holder of GM, Kirk Kerkorian, who owns 10% of GM’s equity, has proposed a tie up of GM with French ‘Renault’ and Japanese ‘Nissan’. Though, it is in very juvenile stage, the GM board of directors has agreed to explore the possibility. GM executives might not like the idea but it has been forced to explore by its own shareholders. It might have been unthinkable a decade ago for GM to tie up with any other automaker for its own survival.

These two instances have highlighted what economists are increasingly terming as ‘new era capitalism’. The successes of today’s corporate are judged by their share price on the bourses and the market capitalization. Today share holders are much more active than they were ever before. In many case, they are not shy of even having a confrontation with the executives. Though this has increased the pressure on the CEOs, with the results being published every quarter, it does satisfy the most basic tenet of capitalism – ‘to maximize shareholder’s value’.

I am sure, this share holder activism, is not going to be limited to these two instances. There would be many more to come.

Messaging courtesy

The past few years has seen revolutionary penetration of broadband. Today most of us have high speed internet access. This has brought about radical changes in the way we communicate and is often called the ‘new age’ communication methods. No one would disagree with the above assessment. But there is more to it.

Has this ‘new age’ of communication also changed the basic courtesy involved? To me it hasn’t, others may disagree. I have tried to collate the basic courtesies of communication to this ‘new age’ way. I am not talking about emails but about those online messengers or Instant messengers (IMs) or chat applications. Most of the people these days are courteous on emails but are they on instant messaging (IMs)? I don’t think so.


1. One should not leave the ‘chat’ midway without explicitly telling so. More than anything else it shows ‘contempt’ towards the other person. It does not require much of effort to tell that you have to leave the chat. Well, there could be other unavoidable reasons. The net might disconnect, power switched off, computer crashed, etc. Even then one could pass a message, saying something happened for that abrupt termination after coming online again.

2. It irritates the other person if he/she gets the reply after a long delay, each time. The other person might be waiting and waiting. Thought one should not do ‘multi tasking’ while instant messaging, it is courteous to mention that you are doing some other work alongside, and would be slow in replying. And “my typing speed is less” is a lame excuse.

3. Many times people just leave some important message as offline communication. They unilaterally assume that everyone checks their instant messenger just every day. This is not always the case. Email should be used for important messages.

4. I think it is courteous to ask before chatting whether the person is free to chat? Don’t we do it when we call someone? So why not in IMs? An online status does not always mean ‘free to chat’ status (unless the person is close one). Related to this: one should use those status messages which say ‘busy’ or ‘away’, etc.

5. This is more with those internet instant messengers. Now days almost all have the ‘call’ functionality. However again, one should always ask before calling. The other person might not be in a convenient moment to talk.

6. The modern ‘text message lingo’ or ‘cool English’ (as they say), should be used only if both the parties are comfortable with it.

7. Instant messengers should not be used for playing ‘mind games’.

8. Instant messengers have a limitation in the sense that your body language is not evident. So one should take care, lest messages might be interpreted just the opposite.

9. As with any written communication, chat transcripts are also documents. So take care.

10. If you are messaging someone unknown, then please identify yourself at the onset.

11. If you send an email for asking someone to come online and chat, it would be highly helpful if you mention in a line what will be the agenda of chat?

12. Use the word processing tools available for clarity in communication like bold, italics, etc.

13. It is inherently assumed that there are only two people in an instant messaging session. If there are more than this then please explicitly mention it.

14. Please take care of time zones.

15. Please respect status messages such as 'busy', 'away', 'on call', etc (suggested by Ipanema girl)


I can’t think of any more, if any of you can, then please add in the comments. I will update the post.

Since ‘instant messaging’ is so difficult, so by now it would have been fairly clear that I don’t do it.