MUSINGS OF A SPOTTED MIND – IN THESE TUMULTUOUS TIMES
1. ASARAM BAPU – The revered Guru being arrested for rape of his disciples’ daughter – not at all surprising – in fact molestation and sexual abuse seems to be the common denominator with almost all spiritual gurus in India – apart from the fact that all of them have plenty of gullible ‘bhakts’ following their footsteps – I am sure she is one in a long queue of victims of this Bapu.
2. SYRIA – USA tried once again to throw public international law to the wind and unilaterally impinge on the sovereignty of another nation – on the pretext of human rights violations. If this be a criteria for US to attack, it should attack Pakistan first and destroy all the terror camps which are the root cause of death of thousands every year.
3. RUPEE – it is amazing how quickly the sentiment turned to despair in July 2013 and the rupee crashed to 69 levels against dollar, in the midst of gloom and doom prophecies regarding the macro economic scenario, whereas the situation was exactly as bad for months leading up to July. It is even more amazing to witness significant bounce back within a few weeks itself. Basically nothing changed on either side, it’s just liquidity that dictates the markets and they move the direction that the stronger hands will them to move. It’s easy to get caught up on day to day movements and start to predict levels. Good thing though that the ‘crisis’ happened, as that seems to be the only thing that compels Manmohan ji’s government to act – a la 1991.
4. THE NSEL MELTDOWN– any exchange which offers futures contracts works on the premise that the participants have the opportunity to square off the contracts without delivery and payments. Take any such exchange and on a random date freeze all trading and ask all members to deliver stocks against their short sales and pay for the long positions and take delivery of stocks – what happens? Loads of defaulters. Now granted that the NSEL was supposed to be a spot exchange, nevertheless the contracts being traded were having a settlement cycle (11 days). The authorities step in and freeze all trades one fine day, the exchange is bound to go under. The members are bound to default. After all, all futures positions have a speculative build up, and over leverage therein. Given the barrage of actions and media splurge on NSEL and its promoters, only one thing makes sense – someone has it bad for the promoters. Someone got rubbed the wrong way by Mr. Shah and decided to teach him a lesson. Else, the logical way for the authorities to deal with NSEL’s purported illegal 11 day contracts would have been to give a phase out window wherein the members would have been asked to square off trades and settle the net positions, if any. I am not sympathetic for the promoters of NSEL, but it would have saved the members a lot of pain and financial misery.
5. ELECTIONS 2014 – It seems unlikely that Mr. Modi shall attain 272 + seats for BJP. In fact both Congress and BJP are likely to end up with seats in the mid 100’s. It will thus be a coalition government which would come into the fore – and if it is one which has Mr. Modi at the helm, it would be very interesting to see how he functions as PM with all the shackles and idiosyncrasies of a coalition. After all it’s a whole different ball game to govern a state with absolute majority versus governing a diverse country with the crutch of coalition partners.
6. DELHI GANG RAPE VERDICT – The verdict for the December 2013 gang rape in Delhi was announced. I was pleasantly surprised to see the judiciary redeem itself with swift justice being meted out to all the perpetrators…almost all. The juvenile gets away…I hope not. I hope he meets his maker in the juvenile detention facility itself.
7. IPHONE 5S – just got launched. Apple seems to be making all the wrong moves ever since Steve Jobs left. Given that they launch a new phone only once a year and that all iOS users need to make do with what they dish out in this annual outing, they ought to have made some radical hardware changes to the device. At the very least a larger screen was warranted. Use a 5” screen device for a while and then see the smaller iphone screen, you will know what I am referring to. All in all, don’t see Apple faring too well in terms of its smartphone market share this year either.
8. MARKETS – Liquidity is the mother of all markets. If that be the axiom, 2014 should be a much better year all around. There isn’t a much better liquidity generating event in the country than the elections itself. And in 2014 we have a whole host of elections Centre and State. It wouldn’t matter who wins. Money is going to flow – via the political contributions, and electoral spending. It will be way better impetus than the country hosting the Olympics or Commonwealth…once funds trickle down to the populace, there shall be spending galore, and for obvious reasons real estate sector would be the biggest benefactor.
9. AIRLINES BUSINESS – With more and more private players foraying into the airlines business in India, the mind boggles. Why would someone want to partake in a business that is set to tank? With ever increasing unregulated fuel and infrastructure costs, cut throat price wars, ever increasing capacities and pressure to offer value adds to customers to distinguish oneself, it is no wonder that the business has not seen more private airlines go bust than those doing well. The only success stories are those of state sponsored airlines, such as Emirates, Singapore Airlines etc. The Indian government needs to realize that the best way to manage the airline business, is to provide impetus to Air India by way of funding, as it would for any public utility, at the same time outsource the management and operations to the highest bidder, whether it be Jet or Tatas or any international player backed JV. In this way, the service having national public importance continues to be offered with state sponsored backing, yet we do not have to put up with the inefficiencies and deficiencies of PSU management. The private players would be paid a management fee, and would be motivated to manage the airline in the most innovative way, and we may just end up with a national airline which takes place of pride in our nation’s mantle in the international arena.
10. BONDED OPTIMISM – Tom Hardy as the next Bond…hmmm….one of the first time that one finds a prospective choice for Bond actually exciting.
© Anshuman Khanna
Published on www.anshumankhanna.in\blog
22nd September 2013