Barkha Meets the Bloggers

Managed to see a “Face the People” on Indian bloggers. Barkha did us version of the false empathy-Indian Oprah act. The rest of the programme was on expected lines:

Lots of talk about people blogging about sex. (Gasp!): I guess the people at NDTV have not read Mastram. Or are people just out of girls convent schools and have not seen the latest item number in Hindi films. But I guess it gets the ratings up so that “Dr Roy” can shore up his dwindling net worth and compete against the richer TV/Network/Whatever 18 guys. So pretty much in order. And anyway I don’t see what’s wrong in writing about sex anyway. I mean Lolita is about sex, and it is the one of the greatest works of fiction …

Blogs are scurrilous /rumor spreading: True. But there are a lot of bloggers doing some path breaking work in the last year. The Khairlanji massacre was first broken by a blog (atrocitynews.wordpress.com) before the TOI (surprisingly) picked it up. NDTV did its bleeding heart act much later. And Indiatogether and Shivam Vij have consistently done some great work about stuff which the Mainstream Media chooses to ignore.

In my view most of the mainstream media still follows the old information economics model where a bunch of self appointment wise mean , like the aforementioned Dr Roy tell us what is good for us. The truth is that TV news channels are in the entertainment business, not the news business. The channels which have realized this like India TV are doing great guns. While Dr Roy at NDTV is just doing financial engineering to ready himself for a sellout to an international broadcasting company.

Tata Nono

Ratan Tata has pulled off a major PR coup with the Tata Nano. I suspect that apart from copying the name, he also copied the launch strategy from Steve Jobs. The secrecy, the media leaks and the final unveiling had all the hallmarks of an inspired Apple launch.

However the product itself was a little underwhelming. Sure the car looks cute, but this does not mean anything. Even the Reva looks cute. However the engine specs left me cold. A 33 bhp engine is very slow. With an AC on, I expect it to be marginally slower then a auto rickshaw. But the major flaw is the claimed mileage of only 20 kmpl. This makes the running cost of a Tata Nano only 20% more than a Maruti 800. Ratan Tata’s wish to convert 2 wheeler owners to cars seems farfetched with this product. The diesel launch will be more economical, I expect.

I am seriously thinking of buying 3-4 Nanos and putting them up as Taxis……