I used to believe until recently that people write a book or blog when they have some thing unique or different to share, some idea to spread or  to provoke a thought in the minds of readers. It will have your own voice. Your way of thinking and readers see the world through your eyes.

One of my favorite bloggers wanted to write a book for a long time. But not sure what to write about. So a new post appeared on the blog asking its readers what do they want to read.  And the community contribution to the book did not stop there. New posts appeared asking readers on how to cover a particular chapter/concept in the book specifically asking for examples and illustrations.

It looks like writing a book is just another business. Write a book that people wanted to read instead of write your own book and create your own trend.

Same things I observed in case of blogs as well. Are you writing your blog based on what will be read in the market or what will be interesting to general readers or you have something to share so you write and build your own community.

When I look at all the blogs I happened visit, almost all falls under the category of ‘there will be market so I write’. Only a few believe they have something to share so they write. So it looks like entire Media works this way. Every blog wanted to imitate New York Times, in a subject they chose, just like another news paper. No more like a Column.

I was the one with the wrong impression so far. Good, I thought about this.

Indians with a midas-touch as Forbes calls it, with an eye on star startups. There are 12 of them in the top of the list.

People of Indian origin seem to have developed a habit of making it to the Forbes magazine — this time it is for making investments in start-up companies and then selling off their stakes with handsome gains.

As many as 12 Indian-origin persons have made it to a list of 100 dealmakers with ‘midas-touch’ prepared by the renowned business magazine, based on the value of the companies these people have taken public or sold in the past five years as well as the capital and involvement it took to get there.

Ram Shriram, a founding board member of internet search giant Google, has been named at the third position in the renowned US-based business magazine’s Midas 100 List

The Hindu News Update Service

What a delightful video!

HighNotes

Review of a new book by The Economist offers an interesting insight of the shift of gears in the debate of India vs China.

FIVE years ago, Tarun Khanna, an Indian-born professor at Harvard Business School, grabbed attention with an article in Foreign Policy magazine speculating that India might eventually overtake China. Co-written with Yasheng Huang, a Chinese-American scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the article argued that India’s economic model offers more freedom to entrepreneurs which could help the country outpace its fellow Asian giant in the longer term.

From a macroeconomic viewpoint, this argument was rather implausible, except in the extremely long term, for China’s economy is already three times the size of India’s. At the corporate level, though, it made more sense: as its recent unveiling of the world’s cheapest car showed, companies such as Tata Motors promise to make the global grade rather faster than their Chinese counterparts.

With his new book Mr Khanna has returned to the topic of entrepreneurship in Asia’s emerging giants. But he has dropped the idea of India outpacing China and replaced it with thoughts about the potential for co-operation between the two countries. Their social and economic systems are vastly different, as he shows in admirably detailed but chatty studies of companies and cities in both places. But they have strengths that could be complementary, he thinks, and he argues that foreign multinationals need to start thinking about the countries together rather than separately.

Chinese and Indian capitalism | Shifting the balance | Economist.com

May be reality is catching up that India can’t possibly overtake China as it stands, it would make a perfect sense to partner with it.

No Legal and Administrative Protection to you or your  Property !!

I am not sure about other parts of India, but in Hyderabad, Bangalore and most southern parts of India that is experiencing Real estate boom, when you buy a property there is no guarantee that you can keep it.  Politicians are the new mafia. Political mafia in close ties with the police force and state administration is ruthlessly grabbing land and property from people. They even resort to killing everybody that comes in their way. There is no way you can fight. Courts don’t work. Police are already part of the criminal elite.  Who else can save the hard earned money and property of Individual citizens?

What kind of a Freedom do you really have when you can’t even protect yourself and your house from these hard core politician turned mafia land grabbers.

When we talk about the brave optimism and vibrant economy we tend to see the brighter part of India. But  at the core, we have no infrastructure that can sustain the growth. The essence of Infrastructure including protection of your life and property is becoming a luxury that only very rich and politicians can afford.

What India are we talking about? We all Indians have a bigger dream. But we have a really long way to go.