The Business of Bakwaas

The business of news has become a business of Bakwaas.A case in point is the front page story carried by Business and economy published by Arindam Chaudhary.The front Page carried a daring and blatant Question - Can Shopper’s stop do it ? Can they pull out of the slow down to become India’s Wal Mart some day.

http://www.businessandeconomy.org/19032009/storyd.asp?sid=4154&pageno=1

To my mind one  cannot get more ridiculous than this.This is cheating !!!

I am in the retail business and I have worked for Wal Mart.I know Shopper’s Stop Model too.I have interacted with BS Nagesh when he came to deliver the closing lecture in my executive program at ISB on Retail Management.He will certainly agree with me if I say that the whole article was nothing but अनर्गल प्रलाप( Incoherent Lamentation) and the headline was just created to attract eyeballs and dupe gullible folks into buying the magazine.

If they would have said that can Shopper’s become the next Macy’s of India I would have understood even though there is still very little common ground but Wal Mart ??? To start with, there positioning,business model,scale of operations nothing is comparable. Shopper’s stop has always been a very niche player serving select clients in select locations as opposed to a mass merchandising everyday Low price retailer that Wal Mart is.I don’t even think that at any point Shoppers wanted to become the Wal Mart of India.Simply put they are as different as day and night as far as retailing business is concerned.The worst bit is that there is nothing about the headline in the body of the article apart from a brief history of Wal Mart which in no way justifies Shopper’s  Stop ambitions.

Media has become so desperate today that they will come up with anything to grab attention.They will say - Can Manmohan Singh marry Bipasha Basu? Come back to read more or may be watch the truth as the case may be and then the truth will be revealed - when we asked this Question to the prime minister he said have you gone nuts  and asked his guards to chase us out.In this way freedom of the press was shamed today.Some channels have become OSAMA/OBAMA channels and others rely on Snake and Ghost stories to keep their channel alive.Dekhiye ye Shaqs kis tarah se saapon ke saath na sirf  khaa raha hai balki unke saath so bhee raha Hai.Break ke baad hum aapko dikhayenge ki yeh saapon ke saath aur kya kya karta hai to hamare saath bane rahiye.And you start thinking - saala saapon ke saath sex wex to nahin karta ?

The word exclusive has been raped beyond recognition.Every beaten to death story is exclusive.You know why ? because no one else than those who made will  watch it or may be it is exclusive for morons and idiots.These program should have an M/I rating and should come with warning - mental discretion required.Not fit for those with active minds.

Then there are news anchors who act and dress like villians and Dev D’s.. Their emotional atyachaar,By God ! Arnab Goswami and Rajat Sharma are champions.In some of the debates it looks like they will start crying and howling and slap the participants.The best part is that these guys will not give a chance to the participants till they have made sure that whatever they got from the research team has been said.After all they have wasted so much time and paper on it.Its funny and frustrating at the same time.

http://karthik3685.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/contender-1-for-worst-indian-journalist-arnab-goswami/

The above link has got 410 comments  so you know what I mean !

Finally the ads seem to be sponsoring the news as well as the events being talked about.Just today Maneka Gandhi was saying something about her Pappu did’nt dance but an ad for Amity University kept appearing right on her face.It looked as if her Sari clad body has suddenly decided to replace her head with Amity University.

These days one should read at his own risk and watch TV only as a source of cheap comical entertainment.The message is simple - when we do not apply our brain while making the programs or writing silly articles why do you want to take the pain.

Thank God we still have the good old newspaper and writers like MJ Akbar , Vinod Mehta and Jug Suraiyya who are a delight to read.If you call the above Tamasha development of media and technology ,I feel I am better off with DD and All India radio.