Remembering R.D.Burman…

I had a bunch of R.D.Burman tracks, and I found a couple videos on YouTube – so wanted to package it all together into a post. June 27th was R.D.Burman’s 69th birth anniversary. Popularly known as Pancham (fifth note in Hindustani music) to his family, friends and fans, his music has been enjoyed by more than 2 generations of music lovers since first his independent composition for Chotte Nawab in 1961. .

After his best years in the 70s, Pancham was overlooked by the Indian film industry in the late 80s and early 90s. Arguably, he was ahead of his time. I remember talking to Manohari Singh, his music assistant and saxophone player, in 2003 long after Pancham’s death. Manohari Singh said, “Pancham knew we were back in the game when he had finished composing the music for Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 1942: A Love Story. Pancham told us be ready for good times again.” Unfortunately, Pancham passed away on 4th Jan 1994, just weeks before the release of the film.

Vishwas Nerurkar writes in his book on Pancham, “My assessment of a great composer is that he should fulfill three criteria: 1) timeless compositions, offering the same freshness of melody years after their period or lifetime; 2) originality; and 3) trend-setter in the industry. On each of these three vital conditions, Pancham emerges in bright colors and honours.”

During his peak in the 70s, Pancham claimed he was composing 4-5 songs/day. A couple songs from lyricist Gulshan Bawra’s tribute to Pancham. In a heavy Punjabi accent, Bawra introduces these songs with anecdotes on how they were composed.

Kasme Vaade Nibhayenge Hum (the sarson saga)

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Jane Jaan O Meri Jane Jaan (the newspaper influence)

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Samandar Mein Nahake (the monsoon magic)

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Pancham has collaborated with many western musicians, but his work with Jose Flores to produce ‘Pantera’ is commonly known. Though the Pantera songs are not among Pancham’s best compositions, they’re very rare. So I’ve uploaded the Pantera title here, and the hindi version he used for Priyadarshan’s Gardish.

Pantera (with Jose Flores)

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Rang Rangeeli Raat (Gardish)

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Pancham was a genius in inventing new sounds – rubbing a comb against plastic tube for Mere Samnewali Khidki (Padosan), blowing into an empty ‘Thumbs Up’ bottle for Mehbooba Mehbooba (Sholay), tapping glass with a spoon for Chura Liya Hai (Yaadon Ki Baarat). These are Pancham’s original musicians demonstrating his talent for composing and inventing new sounds.

And in this one, his musicians are jamming away to some of the old classics.

Mumbai-Pune Expressway Among World’s Fastest Roads

Wired features the world’s fastest roads in its latest edition of the magazine, and the Mumbai-Pune Expressway is one of the five fastest roads.

Writes Wired, “These are well-engineered roads with sporadic law enforcement and a high straightness index. They’re in places where fairly consistent temperatures prevent car-tossing pavement buckles and there’s no danger of road salt corroding your $200K engine-with-wheels. In these pace havens, speed limits are just a running start.”

Wired’s list:

1. I-75 (Alligator Alley), Florida, US — Distance: 82.9 miles
2. A81, Gottmadingen to Weinsberg, Germany — Distance: 121 miles
3. Mumbai-Pune Expressway, India — Distance: 55 miles
4. Goudies Road, Reporoa, New Zealand — Distance: 9.1 miles
5. Attiki Odos, Greece — Distance: 35.6 miles

While stories of accidents due to speeding on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway are fairly common, I didn’t realize drivers were doing 200kmph on the expressway.

India: A Services Based Economy

More Kiran Karnik, who as I mentioned in my previous post, was the closing keynote speaker at the Indian Business Conference 2008.

As the former President of Nasscom, Karnik focussed on IT and its benefit to society and also on India’s attempt at shifting from a service based economy toward manufacturing.

India’s GDP: 22% agriculture, 54% services

IT-BPO exports = 40 billion dollars = 5.5% of GDP

Distribution of exports by region: Bangalore 36%, Delhi/Noida/Gurgaon 17%, Mumbai/Pune 15%
How is IT benefiting the Indian society?
* Gender Equality: Young women earning at par with male counterparts.
* Good work ethic: Long working hours in a professional work environment.
* Application towards public service and social causes: NGO emergency services, online payment of bills, online rail reservation, etc.
Total organized labor force in India = 15M; IT accounts for nearly 2M direct jobs, and 7-8M indirect jobs (support/household services).

As a services-based economy, India is losing out on its two competitive advantages:
* Rupee getting stronger against the dollar.
* Wage inflation – salaries rising 15-20% every year.

Problems with the education system in India:
* Individualized – no group projects or class discussions; the only team work is when students decide to collaborate during exams (cheat)!
* Poor talent pool – Only 25% grads are suitable for direct employment, the remaining 75% varying degrees of training.

Photo courtesy: NYTimes.com from a recent article about debt collection services moving to India.

Insurance Against Ticketless Travel In Mumbai Trains

Kiran Karnik, former President of Nasscom, was the closing keynote speaker at the Indian Business Conference 2008. Karnik said, Innovation will the key to India’s future. And good innovation doesn’t just mean product innovation (new products coming out of India), but could also include process innovation. For e.g.

For anyone that has traveled in a crowded (understatement) local train in Mumbai, where there’s hardly any breathing space, what are the chances that a TC (ticket checker) walking into the train and checking for tickets. Not to mention, the serpentine queues at the ticket window in case you’re not a regular monthly pass holder. So an Indian entrepreneur came up with the ingenious idea of providing insurance for getting caught traveling without ticket. You pay 500 rupees to get insurance, and if you do get caught traveling without a ticket, you pay the 250 rupees fine to the TC and then turn in your receipt for a full refund.

You can run the numbers to figure out the value proposition for the traveler and whether this is a profitable venture. But on the surface it sounds like an unethical business practice – the venture is encouraging people to travel without ticket. Well, here’s the twist – if you’ve ever been caught by a TC, you probably also know that there’s a pretty good chance you can bribe your way out of it without having to pay the full penalty. Hence, the Indian Railways doesn’t see a dime. However, this venture insists you pay the fine in order to get a receipt. Therefore, it discourages you from bribing the TC. Less corruption!

This story was originally published on this blog and was later even picked by Freakonomics.

Photo courtesy: WSJ.com. View the complete slideshow here.

Five Differences Between India and China

Rajiv Lall, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC), was the opening keynote speaker at the India Business Conference 2008. The India-China economy comparison is inevitable in any business conference. As the head of IDFC, Lall talked about India’s infrastructure issues by comparing it to China’s.

Note: I haven’t had the time to figure out how to insert a table within WordPress, therefore I created an img. Please click thru the img to see full table text.

Indian government finances 50% of its infrastructure projects. Therefore, India is not as highly levered as China where the govt only invests 16% from the budget and 54% is funded by debt from banks and private sector. However, India has very high subsidies and inefficient distribution system and hence loss-making operations. For e.g. 45% of the total power distributed is lost due to theft (illegal tapping of power lines).

In India, only 44% villages have power. Farmers enjoy subsidies, and power is delivered for free to villages. On the other hand, 99% of China’s villages are powered. Rural taxes are often higher than those in urban areas.

Said Lall, India’s biggest challenge – Leadership. Enough said!

India Post: Innovation In An 150-yr Old Organization

I don’t watch TV regularly, but a show called Startup Junkies caught my attention as I was channel surfing. Start-up Junkies takes you behind the scenes of a growing start-up company, Earth Class Mail, as it attempts to raise funding, build a team, develop a prototype and find new customers and partners.

In a nutshell, Earth Class Mail scans your snail mail and brings it online. For a subscription fee, you can now scan and shred your snail mail online. TechCrunch covered the company a while back, the comments to the post are very interesting. The pitch by Ron (skip to 13:50 mins of the video – sorry MojoHD doesn’t provide an embed option), CEO of Earth Class Mail, to India Post was entertaining. It is hard to tell whether the India Post officials really “drank the koolaid” or just being polite.

It’s hard to see any value proposition for India Post and the average Indian, for various reasons – including lack of internet penetration outside the cities (5.3% in all of India). Not to mention, India Post is facing increased competition from private courier services and is getting creative to boost revenues and keep its staff busy. In the past, they’ve even experimented with retailing and services, including delivering milk. I went to the India Post website and they do have an ePost feature. It’s email-to-snail mail or vice versa service, and that makes a lot of sense, again considering the low internet penetration.

If you’re currently living in India, would love to hear stories of encounters with India Post services and your experience using ePost.

Out SEOing The NYTimes.com

If you’re an Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert, here’s some interesting data for you to play with…

Christine Mohan, my friend and co-worker, emailed me 11/26 morning – “NYT: Indian manhole covers. Front page story today.” Christine knew I had blogged about NYC manhole covers a few months ago, just for fun.  It’s been little under a week since J. Adam Huggins of The New York Times covered the story, and nicely packaged it with a must-watch audio slideshow. And for the entire week since the story appeared in NYT, Google Search has been sending a good chunk of traffic to my blog. I’ve WP-Stats and Google Analytics installed on my blog, and out of curiousity I ran a Google Search test on the entrance keywords. (Note: Google constantly tweaks its search results algorithm, so these findings will certainly change over time).

manholes made in india (#1 NYT, #2 AdosPados)

made in india sewer (#1 AdosPados, #2 NYT)

n.y.c sewer india (#1 AdosPados, #2 NYT)

ny sewer made india (#1 AdosPados, #2 NYT)

nyc sewer made in india (#1 NYT, #2 AdosPados)

Indian Mythology Industry – Third Incarnation

Last week, ACK media announced the acquisition of a popular Indian comic book brand Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle for $2.5 millon and is reportedly planning to invest $15-20 million in the next 3 years.

Samir Patil, founder investor and CEO of ACK Media told Hindustan Times: “It is a 100 per cent cash deal. We are looking to invest $15-20 million over the next two to three years to make use of opportunities in licensing content and characters, intensifying retail penetration and introduce more offerings in the digital medium.”Â

Smart move by ACK media, in acquiring the IP rights to popular Tinkle comic characters Suppandi, Shikari Shambu, Nasruddin Hodja, Kaalia the crow, Tantri the Matri, and the crew. I’m pretty sure the $20 million investment is largely towards digitizing these comic book characters into feature film releases.

The animation industry in India is heating up – Â opened up by the successful release of India’s first animation film Hanuman in 2005, and now followed by a sequel Hanuman returns, and a bunch of other big-budget and big-banner animation movies in the pipeline. With India being the most religious country in the world, most of the animation movies are based on Indian mythology characters India.Â

For the publishing and media companies, this is the third incarnation of the Indian mythology characters over the last 40 years – same stories, but packaged in a different format…

 1967: Anant Pai, the father of Indian comics, partners with India Book House to launch Amar Chitra Katha after contestants fail to answer questions on Indian mythology. If you, like me, grew up in early the 80′s, Amar Chitra Katha was the only source for Indian mythology characters besides, of course, your parents and grandparents.

1987: Then in the late 80s, Ramanand Sagar produced Ramayan, the first epic TV serial that ran for years. It was immensely successful and spawned a new industry of Indian epics made for TV – followed by Maharabhata, Krishna, and a few others.

2007: India’s first animation movie, Hanuman, is released in 2005 opening up the animation industry in India. And according to this IndiaFM article, bg names in Bollywood are falling over each other to hit the market with new animation movies based on mythology characters from popular characters like Hanuman and Krishna to little-known characters like Ghatothkach.