Sucheta Dalal Quotes

Large and profitable newspapers have the ability to drop the cover price of their publications to increase circulation – this, in turn, attracts the advertising bucks and makes them more powerful.

Apart from World Cup merchandising, television companies and game-specific advertising, you see restaurants and bars working overtime to drag people into their eateries with the lure of large projection screens and special World Cup menus.

Senior politicians and police officers as well as their children get away with murder and run extortion rackets. It is all accepted with some anger and a shrug.

Industrialists have begun to realise that they would probably be better at influencing policy themselves, rather than depend on some political stooge or corrupt bureaucrat.

Anyone born after 1985 has grown up during the post-liberalisation honeymoon, when a rash of new banks, phone companies, airlines, care and durable goods manufacturers were wooing them or their parents for business.

If you are a small investor, do take the basic precaution of going to a registered broker/sub-broker and getting receipts for your transactions. Or simply shrug you losses away as you would if you lost your shirt at a casino.

If e-wallet providers are unregulated, dubious operators will easily manage to avoid audit trails and electronic finger-prints.

India needs fresh thinking and quick decision-making to get out of the stifling bind of its galloping population and deadly poverty.

It is worth asking if advertisements are ever an effective counter against negative publicity. International experience shows that it depends on the issue.

At the end of the day, you have to admit that it’s just not cricket anymore; it is a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry, that has to be viewed in a correct and sober perspective.

I do know that lifting from the Net is rampant, journalists do it, students are bound to do it and obviously a lot of academics are also doing it.

There is little incentive even for the media to encourage whistle-blowing or ruffling powerful feathers. They lose advertising, are harassed by government and cut off from the all-important ‘A’ lists of the rich and the powerful.

Technology is changing so fast that investment in hardware is getting riskier everyday. On the other hand, whether it is traditional computers or smart gadgets which are part of the convergence technologies of the future, some planning of hardware needs is still important.

Nobody expects the tax collector to be a friend, but one does expect the government to apply its mind to making payments and refunds fair and user friendly especially for those who are actually paying tax.

Indias rapid economic growth has mainly been due to the dismantling of government controls. An attempt to reintroduce monopolistic pricing must be strongly opposed.

Indian companies have begun to pay lip service to the concept of intellectual capital but a miniscule of them, that too non-family run businesses, understand what that means.

Clearly, rules governing advertising aimed at children differ dramatically from one country to another. At the same time, multinational companies are selling their products across the globe. The need, therefore, is to evolve an international code on such advertisements.

An ordinary person who wants to invest in the stock market or a mutual fund, or simply open a saving bank account, is bombarded by ever increasing compliance regulations under the pretext of automation, efficiency, better governance or prevention of money laundering.

Even in downtown office areas, people would probably beg for a shuttle bus service to ferry them swiftly to the railway stations and bus stations, instead of forcing them to travel squashed up in shared-taxis.

Advertisers with their bag of goodies and promotions have entered classrooms and begun to put up billboards and posters inside schools. They persuade cash-starved schools into opening their doors to them by paying for access to classrooms and space for their advertising material and promotions.

By creating a minority quota in lending the government is clearly playing politics and wants to fatten its vote banks, whether or not it makes commercial sense.

Look around you and you see plenty of prosperous businessmen splurging money like there was no tomorrow but paying no taxes.

If India is notorious for never punishing scamsters and letting politicians get away with loot, rape, murder and worse, it is because they are part of a cozy conspiracy of silence. There are innumerable instances of how politicians as a class let each other off the hook after kicking up some dust in parliament.

The existence of glass ceilings in the corporate sector has been extensively researched and documented and there is no need to reiterate the fact. Women are also, usually paid less then men for the same jobs and are grossly under-represented at the top of the corporate pyramid.

India is a little different from the developed world because discipline of any kind is alien to us. Along with the right to spit in public, we will resist all attempts to discipline our driving. As pedestrians, we will cross any road at will, and as cops, we will view traffic offences as business opportunities.

The sales tax, excise and property registration departments are all more eager to collect cash in their drawers than to collect for the government’s coffers.

A variety of list builders, universities and non-governmental orgainsations are focussing attention on the accuracy and reliability of information on Web sites.

Mumbai is on a seismically sensitive zone; it is also dangerously exposed to the sea.

The truth is that development of public transport facilities needs government funding or cheap loans.

The good news is that the credibility of the Net is already a subject of much research and discussion and there is a serious effort to go beyond surfing tools and lists of ‘best‘ and ‘useful‘ sites.

Some argue that even physical databases were open to abuse and fake passports or driving licenses were fairly common. But technology, coupled with poor security systems, can ruin innocent victims lives by wiping out their bank balances or investments, or by misusing their identity for dubious deals.

India has a high level of corruption, a lethargic bureaucracy and is low on accountability. Investigations are long drawn and often aimless; those in power are rarely sacked for incompetence unless the media sets up a serious clamour for justice.

We do not have to sit back and suffer the consequences of corrupt government deals and inefficiency, but unless a large number of people are convinced of this, nothing will change.

Consumers have to become an appropriately strong and vocal lobby capable of embarrassing the political establishment.

A columnist is not a doctor, who diagnoses the disease and dispenses instant medicine. My job is to highlight problems, investigate issues, to provide factual information, and if necessary, goad the people into action – that too is not easy in the current political and business environment.

There is no doubt at all that the government monopoly over the insurance business had to end. There is a crying need for better service, more innovation, and a comprehensive insurance cover.

Even in private e-mail groups, it is journalists who seem outraged, anguished and disheartened at what has been described as the ‘prostitution’ of news; the reader response is always lukewarm.

Mobile users happily suffer bad connections, dropped calls, inaccessible networks and pay higher charges for services that would have caused endless annoyance on a fixed line.

Everybody loves to receive gifts and free goodies, and often parents are loath to look out for hidden strings attached to corporate freebies.

The e-wallet allowed anyone with a valid e-mail ID to send and receive money from just about anybody, or to settle bills through money stored online in safe systems. All it needed was registration on the e-purse providers website by filling out a simple form.