Mumbai Indians IPL2018 team ideal playing 11:

Openers: Ishan Kishen, Evin Lewis.

Middle Order: Suryakumar Yadav, Rohit Sharma.

All-rounders: Krunal Pandya, Keiron Pollard, Hardik Pandya.

Bowlers: Rahul Chahar, Mustafizur Rahman, Pat Cummins, Jasprit Bumrah.

Alternatively:

Pat Cummins sits out. MI play only 3 specialist bowlers, play Duminy as an extra batsman and use Hardik, Krunal & Pollard to make up 8 overs.

Aditya Tare may replace Ishan Kishen. Whether he opens or swaps his place with Rohit Sharma is to be seen.

2 out of Akila Dhananjaya / Anukul Roy / Pradeep Sangwan may replace Rahul Chahar / Pat Cummins.

JP Duminy remains a backup middle order batsman.

I have no idea how good Jason Behrendorff, Tajinder Dhillon, Sharad Lumba, Siddhesh Lad, Mayank Markande, Mohsin Khan, Nideesh Dinesan are.

MI has one of the strongest bowling attacks in the tournament but, while they probably let Rayudu and Bhajji go coz of their age, I really have no clue what Saurabh Tiwari is doing in the squad.

I was confused about the press conference by 4 judges of the Supreme Court against the Chief Justice…

Then I realised some things:

1. Two days back, CJI Dipak Misra ordered a special investigation team (SIT) to reopen 1984 Sikh riots cases and investigate 186 cases related to it.

2. Last month, CJI Dipak Misra slammed Kapil Sibal when he asked to postpone the judgement of Ram Janmbhumi case after July 2019. 

3. In a month, CJI will start to hear daily hearings into the Ram Janmabhumi matter with a result expected in under 3 months.

4. D RAJA of the CPIM met one of the judges immediately after the PC. Immediately after, he announced that Parliament should debate the issue…

5. The 4 judges got the immediate support of D Raja & the CPIM, Indira Jaising, Rahul Gandhi & the Congress, KTS Tulsi, Majid Memon, Prashant Bhushan, Salman Khurshid & AAP gang.

I am not confused anymore…

Further, If all the judges are equal, then why such heartburn about allocating ‘high profile’ cases to ‘junior’ judges?

Apart from ‘continuing’ litigation (which is Court-rules mandated to be handled by the same judges) and appellate litigation (which is Court-rules mandated NOT to be handled by the same judges), all other cases are equal & hence can go before any judge.

WRT decisions to be made about the judges roster – all judges are NOT the same. The Chief is primus-inter-pares (first among equals) and it is the Supreme Court that has itself allocated the responsibility of rostering to the CJ. Have the 4 ‘revolters’ officially asked for a change to SC rules to make rostering a ‘random’ selection? No. Then what do you want? To handpick cases that you want to hear??? And to throw a hissy-fit when you don’t get those cases? That’s all this is – a tantrum…

Lastly, someone asked me what were the 4 judges to do other then hold a press-conference?

In my opinion, they needed to do THIS –

Behave like mature adult ‘top management’ & find common ground to resolve your differences amongst yourself. If that doesn’t happen, go to the President of India and seek mediation to resolve their issues with the CJI. Go to the Supreme Court Bar Association and ask them to mediate. Go to the Law Ministry and ask them to mediate (If you trust the executive, that is…).

Further, If you think so much inappropriateness is happening, resign. They have not resigned. They continue to be part of the same system. Holding a meaningless PC has achieved NOTHING but washed dirty linen in public. There is no legal matter moved, no charge made, no official request for impeachment (any judge can ask for impeachment proceedings against another), NOTHING. Nothing except raise very vague, non-specific questions on the CJI with no official request for any action. There will be ZERO outcome from this stunt-of-a-press-conference!

A lot of monkeys lived near a village.

One day a merchant came to the village to buy these monkeys!

He announced that he will buy the monkeys @ $100 each. 

The villagers thought that this man is mad.

They thought how can somebody buy stray monkeys at $100 each?

Still, some people caught some monkeys and gave it to this merchant and he gave $100 for each monkey. 

This news spread like wildfire and people caught monkeys and sold it to the merchant.

After a few days, the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys @ 200 each. 

The lazy villagers also ran around to catch the remaining monkeys!

They sold the remaining monkeys @ 200 each.

Then the merchant announced that he will buy monkeys @ 500 each!

The villagers start to lose sleep! … They caught six or seven monkeys, which was all that was left and got 500 each.

The villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.

Then the merchant announced that he is going home for a week. And when he returns, he will buy monkeys @ 1000 each!

He asked his employee to take care of the monkeys he bought. He was alone taking care of all the monkeys in a cage.

The merchant went home.

The villagers were very sad as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell it at $1000 each.

Then the employee told them that he will sell some monkeys @ 700 each secretly. 

This news spread like fire. Since the merchant buys monkey @ 1000 each, there is a 300 profit for each monkey.

The next day, villagers made a queue near the monkey cage.

The employee sold all the monkeys at 700 each. The rich bought monkeys in big lots. The poor borrowed money from money lenders and also bought monkeys.

The villagers took care of their monkeys & waited for the merchant to return. 

But nobody came! Then they ran to the employee…

But he had already left too!

The villagers then realised that they have bought the useless stray monkeys @ 700 each and unable to sell them! 

Bitcoin is monkey business 🐒🐒🐒

It will make a lot of people bankrupt and a few crooks filthy rich.

This holiday season, not having gone for the customary long holiday out with family, I had a lot of time… Time to read the Constitution of India…

While there are several gems in, what can only be defined as a brilliant document, here are some facts about the 2 words ‘SECULAR’ & ‘SOCIALIST’ with reference to the Indian Constitution:

1. The words ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ were inserted into our constitution by a dictator-led fraud parliament, during emergency!

2. Other than its mention in the preamble, there is no definition of either of these 2 words anywhere in the Constitution of India.

3. The only other place these 2 words are mentioned in the Constitution or its amendments is in the list of Constitutional Exceptions that apply to the state of Jammu & Kashmir. These 2 words are omitted from being applicable in J&K. So J&K is a non-secular, non-socialist state.

Here is an article that talks about why Dr. BR Ambedkar did not want these 2 words in our Constitution.

https://swarajyamag.com/commentary/the-2-s-words-ambedkar-did-not-want-in-the-constitution

It makes total sense. I’m sure inserting the word ‘secular’ did not even occur to Ambedkar or to the Constituent Assembly during drafting of the Constitution, simply because of the underlying Hindu foundations of our Indian society. Hindu here is used as meant to define the Indian ‘way of life’, not the religion. You could use the word ‘Indic’ instead of Hindu if that works better for you. Rather than the western concept of secularism which emerged from a unipolar religiosity, we have, for millennia, practiced the inclusive concepts of ‘sarv-dharma-samabhav’ & ‘vasudhaiva kutumbhakam’, which emerged from our multi-polar religiosity and understanding of the plurality of people…

How to win well!

Winning

Winning well is an art. It’s not something that can be taught. It’s something that has to be discovered for oneself. Many of the people in the BJP are poor winners. Sorry, let me correct myself, most of the old establishment BJP were poor winners. There are multiple reasons for it. The primary being that they haven’t won enough. Almost anyone who’s been in the BJP old guard have been poor winners. They have spent decades in opposition with no little or no power, seen the heavy politicisation of religion in India & the Congress pandering to minorities to build vote-banks. And now, thanks to the new-age BJP (Modi-Shah-Goyal-Gadkari-Sitharaman-Prabhu are the new BJP), the BJP has won. And this old-guard don’t know what to do with this all-powerful position that they find themselves in, have extremely myopic thinking and don’t know how long this situation will last. So they try and do stupid outrageous things thinking “let me do shit while I can”. Also, they believe that because the broad ideology of the BJP is pro-hindutva, and they won; (albeit not on the back of a Hindutva agenda but an anti-corruption & pro-development agenda), that they are now free to stretch that mandate out to the extreme right…

People like Amu (10Cr on Deepika’s head) and that other moron (5Cr on SLBs head), Sakshi Maharaj and numerous other crazies (usually called the nutcase right) fall under this category. So do those assholes who beat up dalits for riding a horse or wearing nice clothes or marrying ‘upper caste’ girls / boys. And, unfortunately, the Pramod Muthalik / VHP / Bajrang Dal / Sri RamSene groups, take things to an idiotically extreme abuse of power and hence end up hurting the same new-age BJP that got them the power.

The Congress, on the other hand, are good winners. They have been winning for a while now (through whatever means). They don’t go to town tom-tomming their wins. When they win, they usually do 2 things: 1. Start figuring out how to start profiteering financially from the win; 2. Name a dozen more monuments, roads and bridges after whichever Gandhi is ruling the Congress at the time in order to enhance their aura; & 3. Ensure status quo with the bare-minimum needed to maintain a semblance of development, so that they can continue to use the lack of development as a election issue the next time around.

The BJP can not do this. The new BJP’s moral standing does not allow it. Also, since the BJP’s leadership at any point is aware that their time is term-limited and that they will not continue into perpetuity like the dynastic Congress Party, each BJP leader wants to achieve something while they are at the top.

Losing

The BJP are good losers. Very sporting. Very fatalistic. Because they’ve been losing all this while, they historically have looked at it as fait-accompli. Not the new-age BJP though. Much like the Indian cricket team under Sourav-Dhoni-Kohli, they seemed to have developed a grit & a fighting spirit that enables them to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. That and the absolute debacle of the Congress under Rahul Gandhi have ensured that they have lost very little over the past 5 yrs. And when they have lost, they have learnt from their mistakes and come back stronger.

The Congress, on the other hand, are extremely poor losers. They genuinely believe that winning is their birthright. They have been winning despite emergencies, riots, scams and decades of general degradation of India under their watch. So they almost expect to win. Hence, when they lose, it’s like their ego has been offended and someone has attacked the very being of their existence. They get personal with the voters. They attack the winners personally and hope that a poor reaction to it will ensure their win again. It has happened in the past, so they are trying it again now.

Modi-Shah have figured this out. They have morphed the new BJP outfit into one that wins well. Almost nobody from the new BJP makes ridiculous outrageous statements or misuses their position to take ideologically  extreme stances. They have also figured out what they need to do to rile up the Congress (Congress-mukt-Bharat, etc). What they have not been able to do is teach this understanding to the old guard. Also, the sheer plurality of people within the BJP makes it hard for them to keep these poor-winners in check. Hence we see this clear divide in the discourse between the government and those on the fringes of it.

Now what has all this got to do with Ali & Foreman?

When Ali won against Foreman in the famous ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ in Kinshasa, came the greatest punch in the history of boxing – it was the punch Ali never threw as Foreman was going down.

Pic 1 is the last punch that threw Foreman against the ropes.

Pic 2 is the punch Ali never gave Foreman as he was going down.

While a big contingent within the BJP remains poised with their arm cocked but holding back from the last punch (of rightfully throwing Vadra, Chidu, Maa-beta, et al into jail), the old guard still seems to be excelling at being bad winners.

It is these morons that the PM unfortunately has to suffer. I have it on good record that he silences them privately and it shows. Sakshi Maharaj has reduced his blabber significantly and Kailash Vijaywargiya has actually moved over from a poor winner to a good winner but the sheer plurality of the old guard morons who refuse to learn is causing patches on the otherwise bright shine of this government.

Anyway, the crux of all this is that I hope the new BJP is able to teach the old BJP to win well and if not, PM Modi refuses to suffer these fools and kicks them the hell out of his BJP!!!

The Indian Digital Content Industry grew at 28% in 2016 (as compared to 9% for the Media & Entertainment Industry as a whole and 3% for Film) and is expected to grow at 30.8% in 2017-2021 (as compared to 14% for the M&E Industry and 8% for Film).

Before we move ahead, let’s just look at the Indian M&E industry with respect to the marketshare of its components.

What is worth noting is the significant rise of Digital as a component of the Indian M&E Industry.

The Indian Digital industry is expected to QUADRUPLE in size over the next 5 years, from Rs77Bn in 2016 to Rs294Bn in 2021.

During this journey of growth, somewhere between 2019 & 2020, it is expected to eclipse the Indian Film Industry. Yes, I am talking of an industry that’s less than 15 years old which will eclipse an industry that’s over a 105 years old!

Let’s all pause to take this in!

Growth Base

Every consumption-based market has a base, a metric that defines its scalability & hence its growth factors. For Film, it is number of Screens, average seating size and the no of shows one can have in a day. For TV, it is number of Channels and no of hours of content one can have in a day.

For Digital, the base is internet users in India and the kind of content they are expected to be consuming using that internet going forward. India, at present, has approx 1.19 billion cellphone connections of which approx 400million are data-enabled. Over the next 5 years, we are expecting a 2.5 times increase in these, to reach almost 1billion internet-enabled cellphone connections by 2021.

The other factor in this equation is Tele-Density, which is the number of cellphone connections per 100 people of population. India’s tele-density presently is 93.88. However, India’s urban tele-density is 173.21 & rural is 57.45. Also, since 70% of India is considered rural, most of the 600million new data-connected cellphones are going to be in rural India.

It’s not just the number of connections though. It’s also what is expected to be consumed using all that data. There’s a 1.5times increase expected in video content consumption. That’s a whole lot of video content that there will be demand for.

The telecom providers are already battling for this pie. When Jio launched in 2016 with the statement ‘Data is the new Oil‘, not too many would have expected that in less than 1 year, it would reach over 120million 4G users, which is almost half the size of Airtel –  India’s largest Telecom operator which has been in business for over 15 years. With consolidation & aggressive marketshare-capturing activities by incumbent providers like Airtel & Vodafone, India can expect an average data cost of Rs10 per GB in 2017, cascading down further to Rs 2 per GB by 2021. Which is AWESOME! That will further propagate increased monetary resources that a consumer would be able to allocate towards content consumption on the mobile, most of which will be video content.

I dunno about you, but me being from the Filmed entertainment industry am extremely happy that people will pay more for content and less for the pipeline that gets the content to them 🙂

Pieces of the Pie

The Digital content business has 3 pillars – CONTENT, PLATFORM & TECHNOLOGY (listed in order of importance, in my opinion)

Let’s start with CONTENT first. Why? Because if No Content then No industry. Simple. Its also both the most dynamic and the most underdeveloped aspect of the industry.

So, here comes the big question – what is so special about Content Creation for Digital Platforms?
Ever since YouTube / Netflix burst through over the past few years and YouTubers / Netflix-content-creators acquired their own space within the Film / TV content industry, Platform-specific content creation has been the most researched aspect of Film Education for the past few years. It has also meant that YouTube has launched its Educator Lab and has been working with Film schools around the world to impart their content insights to each forthcoming generation of film students. What the unique content characteristics are for content created for the various platforms out there is a subject on ongoing film education research.

Looking at the table below,

What we see is that the Platform Viewing details and the Key Content Characteristics go on to define the nature of content created and hence specialised type of content is needed for each viewing platform.

Further, and drawing from the tele-density & growth data as indicated above, by 2020-2021 nearly 80%+ of digital content consumers will be those that want Indic / non-anglicised content.

With content, its all about building a brand, an IP, which goes on to define the kind of content that a platform stands for. Netflix is a brand. We need to create such quality-defining content brands from India too.

Evolution of content & content creators for the same is currently already happening in India with a few players gaining strength in Hindi/English & Tamil/Telugu (AIB, TVF, Pocket Aces, etc)

The 2nd piece of the digital pie is TECHNOLOGY. With it being the bedrock of the industry, piracy prevention being highly critical and considering the big-video-data-mining benefits that content aggregators / managers can provide to advertisers, technology providers are going to play a big role in the digital industry going forward. Organisations like Vidooly, etc will add great value to both content creators, aggregators / managers & digital platforms.

I don’t want to talk much about these here as it is a specialised area which needs its own separate blogpost but to say that the 4 Vs of bigdata will end up defining success / failure of this piece.

And last, the 3rd piece is PLATFORM.

Nearly all the major global content platforms are in India now. Though India isn’t a large piece of their global market presently, it is definitely one of the fastest growing markets for all of them.

Our domestic entrepreneurs aren’t far behind.

We have over a dozen Indian Digital Content platforms at various stages of their existence. Some are actively commissioning fiction content whereas some are focussing on non-fiction / sports / international content. TV catchup viewing having made its way from YouTube onto the the TVnetwork-owned platforms has given their viewership & business model a big boost as well.

While there are multiple business models being explored by the various platforms, most of them are in the trail – error stage. That said, the time is not far away when the platforms will have worked out a well defined robust monetisation-based business model.

Trans-Vertical presence of Organisations.

Looking at the plurality of players present in the Digitial ecosystem, here is a good overview of ‘Who is doing what!’

In Conclusion – Digital is no longer an ALSO platform

Not two years ago, a content creator working in Film / TV and ‘also’ doing digital content was commonly heard of. Producers, directors, writers, actors, technicians, etc would still consider digital as the filler while they pursued their professional peaks of Film / TV. That is no longer the case. Today there are hundreds of people who are seeking and making digital their professional peaks.

This, if nothing else speaks of the great potential that  The Indian Digital Content Industry carries with it!

-Chaitanya Chinchlikar

Based on this research…

• 85% of Indians trust their govt to do right for the country.
• 79% of Indians believe that democracy is working well.
• 76% of Indians vote on the basis of major national issues.
• 65% of Indians believe in leaving governance to experts.
• 55% of Indians support an Autocratic form of government.

So by the looks of this, the Narendra Modi Govt, which was elected on the basis of major national issues (not caste), is managing democracy well (while still making those who want Autocracy happy), is comprised of experts and has an overwhelmingly positive trust-factor with its citizens!

Excellent!!!

Those who know me, know me as someone who is anal about environment protection, clean air & reduction of pollution (noise or otherwise). To the point that I almost force my bosses (yes, I’ve used the words ‘force’ & ‘boss’ in the same phrase) on whose route from home to office I stay, to pick me up and drop me, simply to avoid fossil fuel burning and screwing up of the environment. To the point that me, a self-confessed strict non-vegetarian, have reduced my meat intake by over 50% simply because of the extent of environment degradation that meat causes. To the point where I believe that, despite all the despicable things that the current American President has done, his denying climate change & global warming and his pullout out of the Paris accord have been, by far, the worst things he’s done, and will cause the most damage.

I am also a fierce dog-lover. While its a recent phenomenon, what I lack in history on the issue is more than made up by my current fervour for it, to the point that I am asking for dogs to be classified as sentient beings (like they are in Canada) and strict punishment to be awarded to those who intentionally cause injury to dogs, including imprisonment.

Despite all this and despite knowing that the firecracker ban will help the environment and will reduce stress to dogs, I am still against the Supreme Court’s absolutist ban on firecrackers. Why? Because the Supreme Court has no business telling me what to do on my festival. OK, I stand up for the national anthem before a film (I was doing that long before I was ordered to do it) and I will continue to do so. And I will be grudgingly OK with the fact that my Cricket Board is currently being run by an auditor (Ugh!). But I will not be ok with an absolutist ban enacted by a bunch of unelected cosy-club-appointed judges, who I strongly believe, have hijacked one of the 3 governing branches of my country (through the Collegium and the rejection of NJAC).

I completely understand the scientific logic behind reduction / elimination of usage of firecrackers, especially those that give off an ridiculous amount of smoke and noise. But it has to be something that comes from within the society. It cannot be court-imposed. Like cleanliness.

I am willing to pit my entire scientific knowledge to say that the aggregate amount of smoke (and air pollution) that is caused by all the people in India who drive cars, throughout the year, is significantly more than the pollution caused by firecrackers during Diwali. So will the SC ban petrol & diesel cars now? Are we going to say “Let’s give banning cars a shot”, and see what happens? Sounds ridiculous right?

What we do instead is build a good metro, bus & train system and encourage usage of public transport. We try to reduce cars on the road through carpooling PSAs. We encourage usage of electric cars. We bring in the odd-even rule (albeit that is quite stupid too) to try and reduce the amount of cars on the road. All of these are options to banning cars. Well, the same is the case with firecrackers too.

With a tribute to the recently awarded Nobel-prize winner Richard Thaler’s ‘nudge economics’ which propagates that people respond better when exposed to the negative results of their action and are willing to correct them, I am ok with children / adults being shown the harmful after-effects of the pollution caused by firecrackers. I am completely FOR conducting sensitisation programs in schools / community halls all over the country where children & adults are taught the importance of environment & noise protection and encouraged to reduce / eliminate usage of firecrackers.

I am completely OK with regulating the number of days / hours per day that firecrackers are allowed. Let’s say the courts mandate that for only 2 days and for only 3 hours each day will firecrackers be allowed, like they do in many many countries around the world. That is absolutely acceptable, even welcome. In fact, I would welcome strict punishment for people who violate such a judgement, including forcing them to watch all the Messenger Of God films on repeat for 1 week.

What is not acceptable is an absolutist ban on firecrackers. The financial implications on those who have stocked up on crackers and will now be no longer able to sell them, aside, this judgement is, what was correctly referred to recently as ‘the tyranny of the unelected’.

The Supreme Court has got this wrong. And I hope better sense prevails, and they fix it.

P.S. I don’t think this is the judges acting against Hindu festivals or anything like that, though they do most times tend to treat the Hindu majority in India as taken for granted. In this case, they are simply them going wildly beyond their job description…