Different strokes

First the target buyer changed from the jet-setting global executive to users such as oil companies and defenceservices. This happened when the company realised that global cellular roaming had eliminated the market for brick-sized phones which need a pager attachment to receive signals. The second time around, market projections were again absurd. For instance, the potential sales to a large Indian oil company were projected at 1,500 phones when the company itself says that it would not buy more than 10.

Wrong strategies
The Maharashtra government needs to rethink its strategy of harping about the misrule by the Shiv Sena-BJP government. The government is shouting about its bankruptcy, but is going ahead with a large borrowing programme.

It inaugurated at least three flyovers last week and used the occassion to heap scorn over the previous regime, but it did not think fit to tell the people that it was imposing a tax on petrol and diesel. Similarly it is ranting about a TCS study which says that flyovers have increased pollution and touting the World Bank aided MUTP-II project as an alternative.

Butthe MUTP project has been gathering dust for well over 15 years and the BJP-Sena was in power for only five of them. Similarly, it eased out MSRDC chief R C Sinha just two months before the completion of India’s first Expressway, yet a few weeks before his exit, its political leadership was asking him to work on at least four such Expressway proposals.

Then there is Enron. After pretending that it planned to re-consider Enron Phase II because of the surplus power availability, the Maharashtra FM said that the uncertainty caused by re-evaluation of the project would harm Maharashtra’s reputation. Doesn’t this mean that the sporadic statements against Dabhol Phase-II are nothing more than a gimmick? The most damaging though is the attack on filmmaker Rakesh Roshan by the underworld.

The political establishment has not even made a serious effort to correct the damage done by the Arvind Inamdar and Ronny Mendonca episodes.

Low key guest
He is one industrialist who tries hard to remain low profileand unnoticed and manages to do it fairly successfully. So when he gets invited to President Bill Clinton’s New Year celebration at the White House, which say a gathering of the bold, the beautiful and the powerful, he managed to keep it out of the news. A little bird tells us that Mukesh Ambani was one of those at the Clintons’. We can’t say how, why or even who else.

Defending deals
There is something strange about a business paper defending absurd dot.com valuations. Everytime there is a high priced dot.com deal the paper goes defensive and asks why the deals are not attracting the same criticism as the Indiaworld one. It asked the question when Leading Edge and eCapital merged and again when a quarter of the equity of an India related portal was picked up for $ 25 million in the US. Here is the answer.

The Leading Edge deal was a swap. If dot.com valuations change then both firms drop in value unlike a cash deal. As for Indiaworld, it was a cash deal, there are unresolved problems abouttrademark and content which is mostly picked up from leading newspapers.

Author’s email: suchetadalalyahoo.com