First, consumer luxuries have got democratised during this decade. Products that were considered for a few started to reach larger and larger masses of consumers — from colas to shampoos to readywear to mobile to airlines. Categories that started in the 90s began to expand their footprint and became a part of mass life. Consumption and consumerism reached more people than it did in the 90s. Social inequity continues to be part of India’s economic, but the capitalistic principle that “open up from the top to a few, and the benefits will flow down to many” has come true. Consumerism is truly mass!
Along with this, has come a culture of upgrade and step movement rather than lifetime ownership and gradual movement. I think technology, mobile handsets in particular, made consumers get used to constant change — buying a new product even when the old one was “functional”, thus breaking the barrier of the “replace when it’s broke” mindset. And then this extended to other categories in life — from clothes to televisions to homes. Every Indian market presents an opportunity to marketers to get consumers to move up. As technology improves and consumers’ disposable income increases, the willingness and propensity of consumers to make leaps from unbranded to branded and pay significant premia is also increasing. There is no longer “lifetime ownership”, but “lifetime consumer value’!
Third, there has been a shift from product to services and experiences. And this is taking place across categories. Coffee has become Cafes, beauty products are transiting into Parlours — and this is going into small towns too with local “aunties” sensing business opportunities opening parlours and beauty counselling centres at home — and home videos have become multiplexes. And in every case, it provides marketers an opportunity to extract more value.
Source: A Decade of Evolution
Raising consumerism in India
On Investing and and Happiness.
Three things provide long-lasting satisfaction, as quantitatively measured by academic psychologists: autonomy, meaningful contact with others, and the development and exercise of competence. Cognitive researchers loosely refer to fame, fortune, and power as “external rewards,” and autonomy, connectedness, and competence as “internal rewards.” The American workplace environment pushes far too many people to sacrifice the latter for the former. That humans often exchange independence and the love of friends and family for mammon is a trite homily; that they frequently sacrifice the pleasure of craft for lucre is less obvious, but equally true.
The message for small investors is clear. Begin with the assumption that you value your independence, family, friends, and intellectual and physical development, and do not want to spend the rest of your life buying and managing small machine tool shops and insurance offices, or financing chip, software, and Internet startups. Even with their relatively lower returns, the public securities markets will allow most people to finance their children’s education and their own retirement goals.
Source: Executioner of excellence
Best of the year 2009: Books
2009 was dull year for my reading. First time in my life I consumed more content online then offline . I started this year with bang finishing 2 fictions and 2 non-fiction in first quarter but I failed to keep that pace. I have not read single book after I moved to Bangalore in second half of this year. Started Shantaram but was not able to finish it.
In non-fictions that I really enjoyed reading The Republic by Plato, Lila by Robert Pirsig and Confession of a Economic hit man by John Perkins . On fiction side I relish on three awesome love stories The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Crack in Forever by Jeannie Brewer and Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes.
My online reading was focused on PPE : Politics , Philosophy, Economics. I read lot of stuff in economics and governance ( starting with The Republic) and democracy. Will like to continue this for another one year.
Robert J. Samuelson on Journalism
This was a common conceit among journalists of my generation. We would reveal what was hidden, muddled or distorted. The truth would set everyone free. It sustained good government. We were democracy’s watchdogs and clarifiers. One thing I learned is that these satisfying ideas are at best simplifications—and at worst illusions. Truth comes in infinite varieties; every story can have many narratives. There are always new facts, and sometimes today’s indisputable fact qualifies or rebuts yesterday’s.
I started with the naive notion that, by exposing and explaining how the world worked, I would in some small way contribute to better government and a saner society. What I discovered firsthand is what I already knew intuitively: Democracy is a messy, often shortsighted, unreasoned and selfish process. People have interests, beliefs and prejudices that, once firmly entrenched, are not easily dislodged—and certainly not by logic or evidence.
Source: Democracy’s Demolition Derby
Jeff Bezos: We Start With the Customer and We Work Backward
Lyons: Amazon started off as a retailer. Now you’re also selling computing services, and you’re in the consumer-electronics business with the Kindle. How do you define what Amazon is today?
Bezos: We start with the customer and we work backward. We learn whatever skills we need to service the customer. We build whatever technology we need to service the customer. The second thing is, we are inventors, so you won’t see us focusing on “me too” areas. We like to go down unexplored alleys and see what’s at the end. Sometimes they’re dead ends. Sometimes they open up into broad avenues and we find something really exciting. And then the third thing is, we’re willing to be long-term-oriented, which I think is one of the rarest characteristics. If you look at the corporate world, a genuine focus on the long term is not that common. But a lot of the most important things we’ve done have taken a long time.
Lyons: You’ve talked about Kindle being this example of working backward from the customer. Can you explain that?
Bezos: There are two ways that companies can extend what they’re doing. One is they can take an inventory of their skills and competencies, and then they can say, “OK, with this set of skills and competencies, what else can we do?” And that’s a very useful technique that all companies should use. But there’s a second method, which takes a longer-term orientation. It is to say, rather than ask what are we good at and what else can we do with that skill, you ask, who are our customers? What do they need? And then you say we’re going to give that to them regardless of whether we currently have the skills to do so, and we will learn those skills no matter how long it takes. Kindle is a great example of that. It’s been on the market for two years, but we worked on it for three years in earnest before that. We talked about it for a year before that. We had to go hire people to build a hardware- engineering team to build the device. We had to acquire new skills. There’s a tendency, I think, for executives to think that the right course of action is to stick to the knitting—stick with what you’re good at. That may be a generally good rule, but the problem is the world changes out from under you if you’re not constantly adding to your skill set.
Source: Jeff Bezos on Amazon’s success.
Best of year 2009: Songs
You have to excuse me if you find my taste in music lacking variety and taste. I am finding hard to follow music with same passion as I use to do in college days. My resources have reduced from 30+ plus music freak hostlers to FM radio.
1) Most original lyrics
2) New puppy love long
3)Best of fusion
4) Best long drive song
I have a remix version of this song and belive me its sound awesome in midnight 
5) Naughty Sexy Bitchy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDne5fEsxec
6) Creativity ka Aatyaachar
7)Blood on the Dance floor
8)Original love song
9) Findings of the year
a) Boby Daylan
b) Johnny cash
c)John Lennon
10)Most played song in my media list
Best of year 2009 : Movies
What I lost this year in reading , I make up by watching movies. This year I decided to watch movies for alternative education and watched more then 100 movies with at least one film from every genre. I don’t think I had ever watch so many before. Not even in my college days. Selecting best from so many good movies is rather difficult preposition. Let me give a try.
Bollywood: From last couple of years I have become very selective about Bollywood movies. This is partly becoz of lack of originality in scripts and partly due to lack of integrity among Indian directors. This year only Dev D and Firaaq made lasting impression. Gullal and Luck by chance had very interesting scripts . Love Aaj Kal was an entertainer but again director disappointed me with a happy-ever-after ending . Fashion, Jail, Kaminey were disappointing in many ways from superficial and shallow scripts to poor screenplay. Life partner was surprising funny. I was too skeptical about seen New York , Wake up Sid and Kurbaan and gave them a miss. Kachada movies include all the best and APGK (Ranbir kappor).
Autobiographical : I liked all biographical movies I watched but Kinsley was best of the lot. Coal miner’s daughter and Walk the line was also good.
Romantic : Aah!!! this one is tough. Although all romantic e movies look same and temporal from distance, deep inside each one is unique and tell a lasting story. Love story was tragically beautiful. Before sunset and B efore sunrise was a big surprise as it tell a story I had dreamed for myself ;)
Woody Allen: He never failed to entertain me. Able to watch 70% of his works. I will rank Annie Hall , Manhattan, and Whatever works to be his finest.
Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Motivation, Heroism : Tucker: the man and the dream was hell of a startup movie. This one was one of those few movies which command all my attention ( I often digress from movies if I find plot little predictable or lacking depth & surprise ). Would highly to all entrepreneur there. Erin brockovich was stunner. Elizabeth was good but had very thin script. Devils advocate was a surprising good.
Sci-fi: All votes goes to District 9. Amazing stuff, fresh and original story, flawless direction, awesome cinematography. Was not able to finish blade runner and Brazil. Star trek was not exactly my kind of sci-fi movie. Transformers was a good time pass.
Big surprises: Painted veil was a gem of a good movie. I hit on this one while hunting for movies on ‘infidelity’. Dangerous beauty was another unique movie experience which I liked very much . Cape fear was chilling psychological thriller.
Best n Worst of year 2009 : TV Shows
I do not watch TV. Somehow I find it least innovative way of time killing . Yes, more boring then updating Facebook status 10 times a day. This year I finished is my 8th consecutive years of no TV. I do got a chance to see what I am missing when I was in company guest house where I had luxury of cable TV connection. After few days of constant channel flipping I realized I feel more happy without a TV. But entertainment is a human need and sometimes I do feel missing some good comedy shows and discovery series. Thats where YouTube and bit torrent come to my rescue. This year I finished watching some of them like:
- Heroes ( season one )
- FRIENDS (all season)
- Laughter challenge ( in parts)
- Criminal Minds ( season one )
- Sarabhai vs Sarabhai ( season one).
I did wasted few mins on watching Rakhi ka sayamvarr & Splitvilla . Yack !!!
My favorite of this year is SB Vs SB. This is kind of stuff that command all love and respect ( Ekta plzzzzzzz learns something). Awesome work by who team. My previous stress buster was Friends but this year I manage a very thansu replacement: SB vs Vs SB
Bertrand Russell suggested 4 hours of work a day.
When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours’ work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered ‘highbrow’. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.
In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges. These facts greatly diminished its excellence, but in spite of this drawback it contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations. Even the liberation of the oppressed has usually been inaugurated from above. Without the leisure class, mankind would never have emerged from barbarism.
The method of a leisure class without duties was, however, extraordinarily wasteful. None of the members of the class had to be taught to be industrious, and the class as a whole was not exceptionally intelligent. The class might produce one Darwin, but against him had to be set tens of thousands of country gentlemen who never thought of anything more intelligent than fox-hunting and punishing poachers. At present, the universities are supposed to provide, in a more systematic way, what the leisure class provided accidentally and as a by-product. This is a great improvement, but it has certain drawbacks. University life is so different from life in the world at large that men who live in academic milieu tend to be unaware of the preoccupations and problems of ordinary men and women; moreover their ways of expressing themselves are usually such as to rob their opinions of the influence that they ought to have upon the general public. Another disadvantage is that in universities studies are organized, and the man who thinks of some original line of research is likely to be discouraged. Academic institutions, therefore, useful as they are, are not adequate guardians of the interests of civilization in a world where everyone outside their walls is too busy for unutilitarian pursuits.
In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and capacity. Men who, in their professional work, have become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists often seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have the time to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things which they learnt in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.
Source: In Praise of Idleness
