It is a Friday evening, and the traffic jam is unbelievable. It is a game on, and i am pinching myself. Is it for real? The entire city seems to be heading in just one direction- to the stadium. I am in Boston and could not help wondering as to how it all impacts the Economic activity, and the overall sentiment. At home, the Cricket match is perhaps the rough equivalent. The loyalties are very fervent, and the supporters are all dressed up in the colours of their favourite team. For someone who is not in any way interested in the sport ( how can that be, you wonder!), it is sheer madness. For others, it is all that they want to live for. Club loyalty, team support and perhaps even nationalistic feelings of patriotism, when the national team is playing, all go intertwined into creating that magic. From time immemorial, people busied themselves in amusement, and then competition to bring the best in human endeavour. What started off as simply the outer boundaries of human performance became overtime, a well-crafted entertainment, with the right dosage of media, television and of course entire facilities and good old-fashioned gambling, in betting of the outcomes. Of course, there was a perverse joy of the Emperor feeding the Lions. Past that, the resultant outcome, which in many ways is predictably predictable, depending on which team one is supporting, turn entertainment into a derivative instrument. Not to speak of the huge stakes involved in the economics of organising the events, the gate money, the advertisements, the food and refreshments, and in current day and age, the satellite television which brings the action live to the living rooms!! How does this all add up? The investment to generate a cash flow and a steady income, starts in every sport with the " catch them young", and systematically, with the logic of "promotion" of the game is done by the Sports Association, who have a vested interest in ensuring the " supply" side is protected. Hence, the creation of the infrastructure in the form of stadiums, facilities, the coaches and the tournaments, and of course the medals, the shields, and the cups, all go to create the aura of future champions, and eager mums and proud dads, to hop from city to city or venue to venue to ensure that their ward is the next super star. From this eager lot, by a process of natural selection and a fair amount of drop outs, given the statistical probability of the normal curve, emerge a crop of players who have either the gifted ability in contact sport or the "eye to hand" coordination sports, who are further carefully coached and rewarded. Not forgetting, the wards of the yesteryear sportstar, naturally would like to emulate the parent and add to the lineage, all further contribute to the crop of The media is on the look out as ever for the next emerging team or the player with the flair and flamboyance and creates a larger than life image, to ensure that the fan following builds up with each exceptional performance. Team then vie to populate with the " high performers" ( much like the HR departments of modern corporations!), and a winning team is built on both the star appeal and the actual outcomes, for the public to root for, and over a period of time, a myth is built and sustained by the joys of wining and with each victory, the folklore and aura is sustained. Clubs go to great lengths to sustain the "loyalty; like the airlines which want people to fly more, by creating a support base either based on a geographical segregartion based on cities and regions. The economics of it all is like the " fuel to the fire" of making a sport event a social occasion, The most important aspect is the media build up, the live coverage, the sponsorships at the venue and the TV advertisements and commercial spots, the buzz around the outcomes.. Nations vie with each other to host a World Cup Football and cities pitch hard to host the Olympics, and the infrastructure that is developed to host them become the hub for the economic activity that accompanies the creation of social assets. Once the stadia and other facilities are built, then the associated activities kind of align themselves and a proper seasonal calendar is structured for each sport. Of course, modem day wonders like Astro turf and Indoor stadiums, with closed roof means that spectator sports can literally be held any day or any time! But despite the buzz of the live coverage into the living rooms via satellite and dish tv, and now the broadband, nothing substitutes for watching a sport live in the stadium. The grandeur of the stadium, the war cries of the supporters cheering on the teams, and the actual ecstasy of the goal being scored! Whilst living rooms with the supply of the popcorn and the beer might come close to it, on HDTV and projected screens, the noise, smell and the atmosphere of winning ( and losing also !), can never be substituted.. Perhaps that explains the traffic jams ...

The Billboards in Pune scream at you! Fancy names in Anglican etymology and endless adjectives adorn the promise of your Dream Home !! Driving across the roads you cannot but wonder. Who are going to buy them, and more importantly who are going to stay in them!! Are Homes meant to be lived in, or designed to be a store of value and traded in like stocks and other investment vehicles? The concept of home has a very emotional link to the average person. No, to every person. It is a private space of that individual where he retreats and shares his life with his family, from the hustle bustle of the daily life and hence a shelter is indeed a primary need. Birds make their nests, the bees their hives,and it is only man who has this complex web to weave when it comes to houses!! Yes, we can linger on what makes a house a home, The emotional need of having one"s OWN HOUSE has never been more pronounced, than as of now, more so with the tandem of easy sops of the Bank Loans and Housing Projects mushrooming at the edge of the suburban landscape of our cities. When this is coupled with the current norm of "Double Income", means meeting the challenges of the monthly EMIs should be a breeze. Yet, owning a house remains a distant dreams for most. The reasons are not far to seek. Given the emotional need and the willingness to go that extra mile, for that House, the realities have been a different kind of "rent-seeking " behavior! The choking of the Land Banks by antiquated Urban Land Laws, the reluctance to open up the Sector to Foreign Investors directly, and in tying up the Developers in endless red-tape, makes the costs spiral. However, what really drives the rates of housing up, is that it is a perfect tool for that speculative investment that can bring a huge windfall. Given the poor trust levels and equally dubious experience for the uninitiated into the world of financial instruments, the need to park liquidity into an intangible asset makes one section of the population gravitate towards parking all their legitimate and illegitimate earnings in Housing !! The outcomes are there for all to see... Grandiose Housing Schemes for the elite in so called "Deluxe" sectors where the prices are mentioned in hushed tones, creates House, but not Homes !! The marginalized sections remain on the fringe when it comes to Housing. Thus we have fancy apartments, that would be on par with those in advanced nations, and cheek by jowl, the ugly slums and somewhere in between rows and rows of squeezed out houses !! But then empty Houses of Investors, never makes Homes ! That indeed is a saving grace !

The morning news item was catchy. It displayed a picture of a line of women in skirts, all seemed like having queued up for rations, given the serpentine line that the picture suggested. The photograph panned only the torso and from a distance and hence one could have mistaken it for a line of women waiting for the theatre, all dressed up. Alas, it was the shot of a girls from a local MBA college, who had been rounded up having been caught in a "raid". What is the fuss about? They were partying into the night with their male friends and a large contingent of liquor was seized and the moral police was simply delighted.. In the inside pages was a dramatic shot of a girl desperately squeezing her face behind the dangling pair of stilettos to cover her identity! What is right or wrong is a viewpoint. As Shakespeare said, " there is nothing wrong or right- but thinking makes it so!". So what it the big deal about Alcohol? World over it is a tug of war between the moralist and the State. The moralist who see very clearly the social impact of Alcohol does to Society. More importantly, to the poorer sections. What starts out as pure peer pressure fun, as a night out on a drinking binge, soon becomes one more outing for fun, and in the natural consequence of events, becomes a habit forming behaviour without one"s control. Fine, as long as it a habit, like chewing gum or even lesser evils like popping a peppermint every hour or reaching out for a cup of tea, at the drop of the next visitor , one may wonder as to what is the noise about. Unlike anything else, Alcohol is a big time revenue puller for the State. Whilst on one side, the State picks up easy Revenue for it development activity, which is what all revenues are meant to be in theory at least, the other side is more tragic. It decimates a population with poor health, chronic sickness and leads to unimaginable domestic violence against women, and triggers irresponsible behaviour in the long run. Crimes against women has long been traced to free flow of Alcohol, and it is a balancing of contradictions between availability and price. One restrictive way is to tax it so heavily that it hurts affordability, and contribute a large portion of the end price to the revenues of the State.. However, there is a double contradiction in this approach. If the price is very high, cheaper substitutes in the form of illegal hooch or spurious liquor, which is far more dangerous becomes the substitute!! The Alcohol Economy, is one which has a disproportionate share of revenues coming from the sales of Alcohol... the larger the share, the greater the penalty in socio-economic costs that has to be paid over time.. Delayed gratification is not limited to only psychology!! The tugs and pulls of what is right and wrong keeps playing its act.. Hence the morning newspaper splash..! But as someone said, if it is not safe to drink and drive, then why have parking lots in Bars in the first place? A moot point indeed

One of the most intriguing aspect of human behavior is the desire to get rich and really rich by winning a lottery!! Whilst Economics talks about factors of production and demand and supply, and the macroeconomic aspect of banking, foreign exchange, interest rates and employment, speculation and outright wagering are left to the realms of human behavior that cannot be rationally predicted. In many ways we would expect people to make rational choice, and that has been studied and projected that in most cases that human behavior is never rational and desires and emotions swing the exercise of choice. Take the lottery ticket. Once in a way, we glance the headlines in the newspaper that how a deliveryman made a fortune by bagging the high stakes in the super jackpot and he never expected good fortune to come his way, but it did and he has now a problem of how to spend the money. Nice problem to have, we would remark and move on to the next page. However, the business of Lotteries is a big one and one that plays on the psychological weakness of the populace, especially the lower income bracket and highly profitable one at that. How does it work? Grand prizes are announced and the ticket prize to the winning amounts are an indeed a substantial multiple of perhaps 10000 times or more. One would be sorely tempted to purchase a ticket of say Rs 100 for a first prize of Rs 1 Crore and similar prizes in declining order, depending on which of the numbers or a series of numbers match the winning number. To give it the authenticity, the actual numbers are drawn in an open forum and perhaps televised in live TV, so that the viewers who are betting on hope can see that the whole process is transparent. It generally is, when the industry is well regulated. The ‘lucky’ winner is often glorified in newspapers and TV channels, and what he would do with the ‘jackpot’ is discussed gleefully, much to the amusement and chagrin of the wannebes who never made it!! In reality a wide audience is cast and wider is the circle when the prize money at stake is very large. This is essentially because the more the volume of the tickets sold, the lesser the chances of the winning combination being stuck by any one individual. If the string of numbers is alpha numerical with the first two being alphabets the rest of the 8 characters being numbers, the probability of any one ticket matching that winning combination is very miniscule. Just an observation- The odds of a 6-digit number matching the winning number is as low as 1 in 302 million, mathematically as per one study. Such is the remoteness that it is as good as zero! Yet, the public will keep on buying the lottery tickets and the organisers will keep pumping the media outlets, outdoor adverts , through high pressure advertising and tempting them to pick up the tickets, since the mind gets tricked with parting for a small sum, in the hope of the elusive large amount, which purely based on probability is not going to materialize. The tantalizing part is that there is always that sliver of hope that the probability will turn one’s way. who knows?? That is the logic that the irrational part of the brain falls for the cognitive trap called the ‘ Neglect of Probability!” In many ways, as one observer puts it ,” a cheap source of fantasy and fun!”. In India, lotteries became such a menace and a social problem along with other addictions like alcoholism, drugs and gambling, amongst the daily wage earners and those on the fringes and just above the subsistence level. The promise of the lottery is that glimmer of hope needed in the enveloping gloom of day to day existence, that almost all the savings were being pumped into the lottery scheme. The problem is more accentuated with borrowings being funneled into purchase of the lottery tickets , when the addiction gets the better of rational judgment!! The Govt had to recognize Lotteries as a social menace and ban it officialy , vide Lotteries Regulation Act 1998 in all the states that an assured source of revenue for the State Governments was plugged in the larger interest of social harmony, given the vast ignorance of the populace, and the various fraud schemes and scams that the institution of Lottery offered Yet lotteries exist in societies with free choice in the Western World, where perhaps the onus is on the individual and the State is more than happy to leave it as it is as a game of chance and not interfere., but is tightly regulated with full transparency. So, if you think that you can be the chosen one, go right ahead. As they say, a fool and his money are parted quickly!! Posted by subysan at 5:0

IIn an age of Globalisation, the issue of cultures comes up very often. The pundits advise us, that cultural integration is the first step in bringing minds together,and till such time this is done,no meaningful progress can be made in unleashing the potential of two distinct national entities. When societies were primary and localised, they evolved in their own unique way. What changed? The movies became the accelerating factor of cross border pollination of ideas,styles,and fashions. Not to speak of life styles, dress and communication of both dissent and rebellion to the " set way of things"! So, how have the two huge free societies, India and USA, impacted the social thought process? Life reflects in art and theatre goes an old saying, Add cinema to it, Very few people can go to theatre and enjoy the joys of a play . Cinema came and made a mockery of that form of art. The motion picture industry continues to evolve and fascinate. Cinema, as it has originated , faithfully reflects in all its broad sweep, the’ originality of thought, expression and in many cases dissent and a voice- the “ truth’ as interpreted by the story teller to the audiences. Given the fact that nothing works like the magic of the box office- a term used for the collections in cash, for a movie that is distributed, an entire industry has been built with the end consumer in mind. Hollywood, which made much of the commercial movies ( as opposed to the art movies, which few people see, and is the joy only to the bunch of people who take themselves so seriously to make and largely ignored by the consuming masses), and distributed them worldwide, made a formidable dent into the collective psyche of the world at large. It is not the stories, which revolved around the adaptation of a book, or the creative direction, photography and presentation with special effect, with the added subtle titillation of one or two scenes, to shock and delight the audience, that carried the message home. It was a complete lifestyle, that added magic to this form of commerce. The dress of the heroine, the hair style of the hero, the various dialogues, the fast cars, and so on. World over, young and impressionable audiences not only lapped up this form of entertainment, but were more than willing to imitate and copy wholesale the latest trend in fashions and styles that popped up and evolved as time slipped by. The Indian version of Hollywood, as exemplified by Bollywood , has continued to evolve over the last 60 plus years and has melodrama and song and dance thrown in, with its own variations over the years. As society evolves and migration and cross pollination from the villages to urban centres continues, old values were giving in to newer ones and more bolder and passionate themes surfaced. The Indian thought now travels not only to the nook and corner of India, but is a rage in most Asian countries and is faithfully digested in most of the western world with an Indian diaspora eager for more. How does this impact the commercial context? Not only does Indian music and dance has evolved, there is a distinct flavor of style and delivery has emerged as Bollywood dancing, and mega stars have surfaced, each with his own distinctive style and personality and like a Brand, driving the success in box office collection, with little regard to the story and the content. So a larger than life image surfaces, of an individual , with all the associated ‘hero worship’ making a fan following of proportions that are larger than for those typically associated with performing arts like music or reserved for sportsmen and tennis stars. An ‘industry’ has emerged which has turned creativity to an assembly line , with an average of more than one picture a day. Yes, indeed Bollywood churns out more than 365 releases in a year. Quite apart from the frantic activity, it has given employment to the thousands of aspiring stars, creative directors, stage and set organisers, and a whole array of support artists in the form of a choreographers, dancers, musicians, sound and light engineers and so on. Quite frankly, the overall quality in such a deluge is questionable, as is evident from the fact there is a rare movie like a ‘ Slumdog Millionaire’ which made it to the Oscars, that a film has won international acclaim for its overall content in terms of all the elements that make for an award winning movie. But then Quantity and Quality never went hand in hand ! A movie unlike life is not to be taken seriously, and just worth that 3 hours of fun, like a game of soccer to be enjoyed for that moment and to eagerly lap up for the dose of excitement for the next one around the corner !!