Showing posts with label In The News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In The News. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Arthapedia

A portal launched by Indian Economic Service, to demystify some of terms used in the Indian financial market. The portal is still in it’s early stages.

http://arthapedia.in/index.php/Home_Page

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Japan's Calamity

Well 11th March 2011 was a dramatic, rather unfortunate day in the history one of the most self sufficient country in the world. This is when the deadly earth quake stuck the Japanese coastline, which in turn triggered a Tsunami. Well since then you switch on to any International news channel and the only thing you see are the images of destruction.

Yesterday when I was watching one such news item in BBC there was an interesting thing shared by the correspondent. In the video footage they showed people standing outside a super market where in hundreds had queued outside the supermarket and there was this guy from the supermarket who was announcing that they had very limited stocks and one of the waiting consumers told the correspondent that in near by vicinity this is the only super market which has something with itself. Inspite of all these the interesting aspect was that there was no chaos at all. People were patiently standing outside in the sun in the queue in an orderly fashion waiting for their turn to come. Which as rightly mentioned by the reporter was a typical sign of Japanese culture of patience and forgiveness.

Further the reporter went on to say that most of the houses or shops were open since their walls had collapsed and lot of things were lying in the open, but still there was not a single incident of loot that was reported from anywhere. Quite an inspiring culture I must say.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Zoozoos : The Vodafone Creation

The Zoozoos.. This ones certainly on the verge of becoming among the most watched Videos (much like susan boyle's). This ad campaign with the characters called by its creators as zoozoos was launched by Vodafone during the second season of IPL (2009). The idea was to make vodafone's customer aware about the various Value Added Services offered by the company. Now as a senrior managment official of Vodafone puts across they have an huge customer base which is increasing at a rapid pace, but most of them are not even aware of VAS offered by Vodafone. Say for eg: their phone back up facility was launched two years back. Still most of us don't even know about it ( I am an vodafone customer, i wasn't aware of it).


Now coming back to the zoozoos roughly 22 such ads have been made and intially the plan was to launch one ad on each day of the IPL. But then this has it's own repurcursions, its very well possible that the customers might not be able to imbibe the ads at a pace at which the company's releasing it. So as of now around 7 ads have being released and they have been immensly successfull.


Now there's one more thing about this ad which i never knew untill i read an article. Those zoozoos that you see on the screen they are not animations, infact they are actual human beings, to be more precise they are women and in certain cases children. The reason for this being that zoozoos were designed to have thin arms and legs, with a dispropotionate head. So the zoozoos that u see on the screen are women wearing a costume/mask . The costume/mask is in two parts, one is for the head which is filled with foam to make it look bigger the other is for the remaining part of the boy.


Well, advertising sure is a proffession for the talented ones.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Pantaloon Femina Ms India World: A Touching Story

This is an article i came across in TOI the other day. A real motivaing one. Here's the article about Pooja Chopra(Pantaloon Femina Ms India World) :

Neera Chopra( Pooja's Mother) lived through abuse, poverty and some tough choices to make her once-unwanted girl child, Pooja Chopra, the Pantaloons Femina Miss


I don’t know where to begin... they were terrible times. My husband was well-placed, but the marriage had begun to sink almost as soon as it began. Like most women do, I tried to work against all the odds . My in-laws insisted everything would be alright if I had a son. My first child was a daughter, and that didn’t do me any good... but I couldn’t walk out. I had lost my father, my brother was in a not-so-senior position in Bata. I didn’t want to be a burden on my family and continued to live in my marital home in Kolkata.
Also read Pooja Chopra’s Blog I looked after my mother-inlaw, who was suffering from cancer, and while bathing her, I would tell myself she would bless me and put things right. I don’t know how I tolerated it all. The least a man can do, if he must philander, is to not flaunt his women in his wife’s face. Then began the manhandling. I still wanted my marriage to survive. I was a pure vegetarian and learnt to cook non-vegetarian delicacies thinking it would please him. Then, I was pregnant again. When Pooja was eight months in my womb, my husband brought a girl to the house and announced he would marry her. I thought of killing myself. I hung on the slight hope that if the baby was a boy, my marriage could be saved. When Pooja was born a girl, for three days, nobody came to the hospital. There was a squadron leader’s wife on the opposite bed, who was kind enough to give me baby clothes for Pooja to wear. When she was 20 days old, I had to make a choice. I left the house with my girls — Pooja and Shubra, who was seven then. I haven’t seen my husband since. I promised myself, even if we had just one roti, we would share it, but together. I began life in Mumbai with the support of my mother, brother, who was by then married. It wasn’t the ideal situation, especially when he had children — space, money, everything was short. I began work at the Taj Colaba and got my own place. How did I manage? Truth be told, I would put a chatai on the floor, leave two glasses of milk and some food, and bolt the door from outside before going to work. I would leave the key with the neighbours and tell the kids to shout out to them when it was time to leave for school. Their tiny hands would do homework on their own, feed themselves on days that I worked late. My elder daughter Shubhra would make Pooja do her corrections... This is how they grew up. At a birthday party, Pooja would not eat her piece of cake, but pack it and bring it home to share with her sister. When Shubhra started working, she would skip lunch and pack a chicken sandwich that she would slip in her sister’s lunchbox the next day. I used to pray, “God, punish me for my karma, but not my innocent little kids. Please let me provide them the basics.” I used to struggle for shoes, socks, uniforms. I was living in Bangur Nagar, Goregaon. Pooja would walk four bus stops down to the St Thomas Academy. Then, too little to cross the road, she would ask a passerby to help her. I had to save the bus money to be able to put some milk in their bodies. Life began to change when I got a job for Rs 6,000 at the then Goa Penta. Mr Chhabra, the owner, and his wife, were kind enough to provide a loan for me. I sent my daughters to my sister’s house in Pune, with my mother as support. I spent four years working in Goa while I saved to buy a small one-bedroom house in Pune (where the family still lives). I would work 16-18 hours a day, not even taking weekly offs to accumulate leave and visit my daughters three or four times a year. Once I bought my house and found a job in Pune, life began to settle. I worked in Hotel Blue Diamond for a year and then finally joined Mainland China — which changed my life. The consideration of the team and management brought me the stability to bring them up, despite late hours and the travelling a hotelier must do. Shubhra got a job in Hotel Blue Diamond, being the youngest employee there while still in college, and managed to finish her Masters in commerce and her BBM. Today, she is married to a sweet Catholic boy who is in the Merchant Navy and has a sweet daughter. I continue to finish my day job and come home and take tuitions, as I have done for all these years. I also do all my household chores myself. Through the years, Shubhra has been my anchor and Pooja, the rock. Pooja’s tiny hands have wiped away my tears when I broke down. She has stood up for me, when I couldn’t speak for myself. Academically brilliant, she participated in all extra-curricular activities. When she needed high heels to model in, she did odd shows and bought them for herself. When I saw Pooja give her speech on TV, I knew it came from her heart. I could see the twinkle in her eye. And I thought to myself as she won “My God, this is my little girl.” God was trying to tell me something. Today, I’ve no regrets. I believe every cloud has a silver lining. As a mother, I’ve done nothing great. ‘I won due to my mother’s karma’ Pantaloons Femina Miss India Pooja Chopra’s mother promised ‘One day, this girl will make me proud’. Pooja speaks on fulfilling that promise... When I was 20 days old, my mother was asked to make a choice. It was either me — a girl child, or her husband. She chose me. As she walked out she turned around and told her husband, ‘One day, this girl will make me proud’. That day has come. Her husband went on to marry a woman who gave him two sons. Today, as I stand here a Miss India, I don’t even know if my father knows that it is me, his daughter, who has set out to conquer the world, a crown on my head. Our lives have not been easy, least so for my mother. Financially, emotionally, she struggled to stay afloat, to keep her job and yet allow us to be the best that we could be. I was given only one condition when I started modelling — my grades wouldn’t drop. All the girls in the pageant worked hard, but my edge was my mother’s sacrifice, her karma. Today, when people call to congratulate me, it’s not me they pay tribute to, but to her life and her struggle. She’s the true Woman of Substance. She is my light, my mentor, my driving force. My win was merely God’s way of compensating her.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Bloggers can be nailed for their views

Today a news item featured in the TOI which mentioned about the case of a 19 year old blogger against whom a case was filed by a political party. His mistake: he started a group against that party and lots of people posted their hatred filled thoughts under that group. Though this guy had moved the supreme court to quash the criminal proceedings against him, but it didn't work in his favor as the honourable court upheld the proceedings against him.
I am sure this is going to be an debatable event in the blogging community, more so because we Indian's believe it to be our fundamental right to express our thoughts freely and blogging being one of the mediums to do so. Already i could see many sympathizers posting their comments on the TOI website. Whatever be the ulitmate ruling in this case it would be a path breaking one and would surely impact the blogging community in a considerable way.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Polarization Of News

Its quite surprising to see the extent to which news channels polarize the news depending on the region where this news is read. One of the best examples of this being " Slum dog Millionaire" the most talked about movie in the recent times. Today when Slum dog bagged 8 Oscars out of the 10 nominations it had received, i decided to check on two news websites just to see how they put across this news.

BBC news: Stated the headlines as "British Movie Slum dog Millionaire" sweeps the
Oscars.

On the Other hand IBN Live puts it across as " India based movie " slum dog bags 8 Oscars. Though neither of the news items are wrong as slum dog is an India based movie directed and produced by British citizens, but then the impact that the two news items leaves on the mind of the readers are quite different.

Say for e.g.: an Indian would be more happy to read the IBN live version of the story and for a British BBC's news might sound music to his ears.