Novice Poker Effect

It had been a while since I had been sent out of a classroom… the last time this happened, I think It was in the OOPs lab in 2008, well teachers wouldn’t get offended that easily in UVCE I guess... anyway it was an interesting class of rural marketing and I seemed to be interested, but sadly I was caught fiddling with the phone and making some kinda tattoo on my hand and the teacher took offence at it and pushed me out of the class. But what I was googling about was the Myths involved in Rural Marketing. I’m not gonna bore you with what I found, heres a snap shot. 

Something I remember from class held my attention for a long time. The prof had said ‘One of the biggest myths about rural marketing is that the marketers think we rural buyers don’t ask many questions, they ask more questions than urban buyers, they are smarter than the urban buyer. They sometimes ask questions that seem silly and make you laugh, but we fail to find answers to such questions and that’s what makes rural marketing more challenging.’

Yes, we’ve heard this being said a lot of times. It’s almost a cliché. But something doesn’t fit right, does it? How could rural buyers with less exposure and information about what’s happening be harder to outsmart? Why would they be harder to sell to? Why do they ask harder questions? Why are they tougher to convince? Do they know what we’re trying to do from before? Not really. I like to call it, The Novice Poker Effect.

It happened roughly 2 years ago; out of boredom I decided to teach my cousin how to play poker and tried to play him a little. I couldn’t read him, I couldn’t bluff him, I thought he bluffed when he played simple and I obviously lost. The reason is simple. A novice poker player is not playing you, he is just playing his cards. It’s the same with Rural Marketing, a rural buyer is just playing what’s on his cards, he isn’t bothered about what or why a marketer is trying to sell. 

We could conclude that a rural buyer is not smart; he’s just like a novice poker player. Hard to read, hard to pick up trends and hard to know what he wants. It’s this Novice Poker Effect that makes us think a rural buyer is smart. If we understand that the rural buyer just looks at things from his side and dont try anything fancy against him, we would succeed. 

So to round it up, learn to play poker with a kid, maybe you’ll excel in rural marketing.

Theft at Gandhi's Grave

“Holy day or just a holiday?” I took pride in this poor attempt at cynical pun. Today was a holiday but still I wasn’t happy when I woke up, reason being my father had told me that we would be going to Raj Ghat to see Gandhi’s tomb and pay our respects to him. I wasn’t interested; my mom even resented the idea. 

It was hot but not far. We reached Raj Ghat in less than half an hour. The place wasn’t as crowded as I expected it to be. Not shockingly, Anna Hazare was also present, there was a small contingent of about 50 people around him, then there were tourists; local and foreign, a hoard of school children in Blue and white, and who could miss the loud and happy tamilians. 

The tomb was beautifully flower decorated for the occasion. I could say it was special because there was more than just the Genda Phool that you find everywhere in Delhi. People stood by the tomb, near the flowers, behind the torch and posed at a thousand more places in the 15 X 15 space. Momdad went ahead close to the tomb to offer the fist full of Genda Phool that they had bought at the gate for 10 rupees. I decided to stand this one out, I stood leaning to the parapet wall surrounding the tomb and looked at the crowd. Some offered flowers, some bowed their head and some just wanted to click more and more photos.

Just a couple minutes later I saw my parents panic stricken faces. My mom’s purse had been stolen. A girl had put her hand into my mom’s handbag and had stolen the purse while in the crowd paying respects. We were aghast. Spoke to the security nearby, and looked for the purse hoping to find it fallen nearby, but it was stolen, deliberately and consciously stolen.

I was angry, at mother for being careless, at father for thinking up this useless plan and at myself for not bothering to stick with my mother in a crowd. Then I was angry at the thief, she had stolen right in front of Mahatma Gandhi’s tomb! Such irony!!

It reminded me of a line said by an 18^th century poet, he says “No man can be patriot on an empty stomach” Ofcourse he died 69 years before Gandhi was born. But there was only 1 Gandhi(and there were many other great patriots in history who almost fasted to their death), but the saying holds good for the thief, she was just trying to make a living, steal in front of Gandhi’s grave or from a pretty dame, it was just an attempt to feed herself. 

We spent the whole journey back thinking of what was lost and talking about how we could’ve prevented it and how people have lost their conscience. Stealing in front of Bapu! 6 hours after the incident I was still thinking, not about our loss, but the Gandhi connection. How these values of truth and justice and honesty and everything has turned out to remain just a sound of humbug! I thought about the Irony again and again, Theft right in front of Gandhi’s grave, how ironic how ironic... I said that aloud once.. then silently again. Then it struck me.. this wasn’t ironic, it was symbolic. Theft at Gandhi’s grave.

BMTC Ki Jai

About time I wrote something about the Bangalore Metro Transport Corp. AKA the BMTC. History has known the bus service, then called BTS (and with love called Bitre Tigra Sigalla) to be a loss making and inefficient public mode of transport. The rickety buses that broke down without warnings to no bus for hours and a few other bad memories of Bangaloreans of the 90s were all taken care by the dissolution of the BTS and the formation of the BMTC. 

Don’t worry, I’m not planning on boring you with history, but just know that the buses were not that good in olden times and are now better. That should be enough history.

So why did I start writing about BMTC? Well… I was always scared and unhappy about travelling in buses, as a 9-10 year old kid with his school just 3 stops away I had a lot to complain about. The bus would be so crowded, I couldn’t go deep in the bus or stand by the door and not to mention that I’d generally forget the pass and try to get by without paying. Apart from the school part, the 3 of us would take the bus on Sundays and on holidays to go visit the aquarium and other pet stores. I never really liked it. Once I remember someone sticking a burning cigarette in my ear while I was trying to get on. I guess smoking wasn’t banned in those days. 

It was probably in 2002 that the BMTC first started reporting small profits. It still didn’t matter to me; I stayed 3 just stops away from my school and didn’t like travelling in the bus. 

Oops! :D Even though I said I won’t bore you with history I guess I somehow still managed it. Anyway… So after I joined college, I was for the first time I was able to travel long distances. It was then that I fell in love with the buses and the BMTC.

By this time the BMTC had started reporting profits almost every year. They had increased their fairs, but they had also introduced new things that were never seen in Bangalore. They started by abandoning all old buses and got new coaches. Here they introduced the auto door system. The Driver would open the doors when there’s a stop and he would close it as soon as the bus departs from the stop. This idea of having a door surprised many people. People believed it just made things bad from the public, so we can’t climb onto the bus when the doors are not open? What about signals? Well, they generally wont let us in even there! 

Then came a rush of ideas, a pass bus for all those who have passes, it was generally intended for students but everyone with a pass, even monthly and daily pass would be allowed. Then came the Pink Bus, the women’s special bus, it worked well first, but you might’ve seen the pic on fb, men got in and the idea failed. Then they still maintained the Pushpak bus, which has better suspensions and costly by a rupee. 

A Lady Driver of the BMTC

There was also the advent of Vajra, the Vovlo AC bus. This took everyone by surprise. An AC city bus! Yay! After a couple of years, BMTC bought a few Marcopolo buses too, these are the AC buses that run on the streets of New Delhi. They are a little cheaper but eww! Look so ugly! :D 

You can say BMTC is the Muhammad Bin Tughlaq of Bangalore, they came up with so many innovative ideas and well... Not all of them caught on.  

Some such ideas were:

Janti vahana: Two coaches connected (like a train!)at the middle with a seating capacity of about 60

The Orange and Blue Lines: High Frequency buses that go around a route

Big 10: Buses that connect suburbs on 10 Big and famous roads to the center of the city.

The Atal Sarige: Named after PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the bus connects places with low income earning people with the city.

Bus Day

The Hopital Bus: Makes a route around the bigger hospitals in Bangalroe

The ORRCA: Outer Ring Road Companies Association route, that goes around the IT companies on Outer Ring Road. 

The 156 Stops On Route 601

Ring Route Buses: These just keep circling around the city. My fav in Route # 601, it has 156 stops!! 

Then theres the Vayu Vajra AKA the BIAS, it connects the city to the Airport, now this is interesting, the then transport minister R Ashoka tried a lot of new things here too, like LCDs and Mobile Pantry and WiFi hot spots on these buses. Some of them still work I suspect.

Bus Day:  The 4^th of every month is to be Bus day in Bangalore. It’s to spread awareness of public transport, buses won’t cost less, but there would be many buses that day. And the officials of BMTC won’t use their personal vehicles that day. 

Now there are the JnNurm Air Suspension buses, Metro Feeder service and a lot more. Another thing that deserves mentioning is the maintainance of these buses. Well, I'm not much of a mechanic, but you dont generally see a broken down bus these days :)

The Only Remaining Double Decker in Bangalore

So the thing about BMTC is that it’s sitting on a huge pile of money and the officials and ministers are not afraid of trying new things. Ofcourse all this came because they improved the service and improved their coverage. BMTC covers... well lakhs of KMs everyday and ferries even more people, you can look for more facts and figures on their site. 

BTW they launched a new site a few days ago, check it out its got all the details from routes to fairs to maps and everything!

http://www.mybmtc.com/

KSRTC is not far behind; they have lots of services too, from regular non A/C to A/C pushback, multi-axel Volvo’s and Mercedes to buses with LCDs on the back of every seat, mini pantry and on board chemical toilet! The KSRTC has got to be one of the best state owned bus service in the country! 

 

Recently, Or maybe that was last year, I read in the paper that BMTC and KSRTC are the only profit making Bus service in  the country, and traveling in BMTC actually made me like buses now, I make it a point to take atleast 1 bus when I’m in another town. 

The contrasts... well we’ll talk about it some other day :)

Here are a few more pictures

Collage of Airavata 

A Fleet of  KSRTC A/C Volvo Buses

Flower Decorated Mercedes Benz in Front of the Vidhana Sauda

Psalm E Pakistan

The climax of the movie border always leaves a warm fuzzy hangover. Though it’s about a war, the song at the end does make you feel that the war was a mistake and both of us have so much more to worry about than fighting over boundaries or anything for that matter. I was always interested in Pakistan, and writing about Pakistan. Any Indian or Pakistani of the Present day or at least the youth would have strong feelings about the whole partition of India episode. Some objective and some perspective, but all of us have views, bends, feelings and a stance. 

India was one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 50s and 60s while the USA and the USSR were busy making pacts and treaties to make their respective power blocs bigger and stronger. Now one might say the Non-Aligned Movement was started by poor or the then 3^rd world nations because they just couldn’t risk supporting one and be the target of the other’s fury. As it is, the Non-Aligned Movement is based on a bigger idea. Its about Believing that it is possible to remain neutral at any time by anyone. And being an advocate of being objective I support this theory and hence have always held an objective view over Pakistan. 

A few months ago, say 2 or 3 maybe I picked up Shashi Tharoor’s Pax Indica. It basically talks about India’s foreign policies, foreign relations and India’s place on a global setup. He spoke extensively about Pakistan and India. The chapter was rightly caller Brother Enemy. Pakistan is after all born out of India and the people are more or less Indian. They always have. 

Mr. Tharoor speaks of partition, Kashmir, the different wars we’ve had and finally talks emphatically about terrorism. His points are straight and precise, and so yet sensitively carved live the curves of Megan fox. (Sorry whenever someone says curve I think of her :D)

He talks at length about the gaps between the INTELLIGENCE and the civilian government of Pakistan. Its a known fact that the INTELLIGENCE is sitting on tones of cash. In fact the INTELLIGENCE gets almost or more than half the total budget of 1 fiscal year. So in a situation where there is a serious lack of schools, hospitals, or in general amenities of life the army and INTELLIGENCE suck all the money out of the people of Pakistan. The army isn’t too keen on listening to the will of the civilian govt. and caters to its own goals, which may not always be intended at the best of India, and in turn resulting in the bad of Pakistan it self.

I was torn in half when I read these. Of course I knew that the army or Pakistan and the civilian govt. don’t always see eye to eye, but the revelation of the fact that the govt has limited hold on the army did raise my brows, like my eye brows was one with my hair.

Another question boiled into me was who’s gonna tend to the people?  The politicians made a lot of noise and puffed up the people that theres a need to end Musharraf’s rein as president and there a need for proper democracy and what not. So the people did get excited and come out on streets and after a lot of crazy things (beyond my comprehension) there were elections and Muhammad Mian Soomro was elected president.  And after Benazir Bhutto’s murder, the PPP was elected to power and Asif Ali Zardari became the President. All this is fine but what are these people doing? 

Pakistani people are still struggling against the terrorists, there are criminals hiding in Pakistan thanks to the INTELLIGENCE’s invitation and reformers and socially responsible civilians are killed in broad day light.  And if you’ve been complaining about the raise of fuel prices in India, the fuel price is way over a hundred rupees in Pakistan, and its gets worse, price determination happens every week! 

So is the democracy drama and all the things these politicians did to overthrow Musharraf an eye wash? I asked my Pakistani Orkut friend of 3 years. 

Yes! 

The one answer with an exclamation mark was like a gun shot at point black.

He went on to say, 

Things were very good in Musharraf regime, call him a dictator or whatever you want to but he is the man who supported freedom of media. Even pak's economy was boosting. And now things are pathetic. You know, he was the one who set Pak before Islam. That’s what a country needs. 

It felt nice to listen to him. I probed more and asked,

Ok what do see for Pakistan in the Future?

I can not say anything here. If you see the history of pak, there have been some good times. But when they start building up they falter somewhere. so I can only hope that future is bright; which is only possible by imparting proper education. There is a dearth of rationality among masses and one simply CANNOT understand religion without education. Thats my opinion yours can differ obviously.

I definitely had no reason to differ there. I was also stunned at his strong emphasis on improving education. I liked that. I had never spoken much about national politics with this guy. It had always been about Harry Potter and cricket. Except one odd day when he’d told me he wanted to be a computer engineer. 

So I bit the bullet and finally threw a tough ball at him. 

Me:

cool... one big question thats really been eating me

your cool right?

He:

haha

yeah

Me:

yeah.. so

the question is

how does one remain patriotic and try not to be ashamed of his country and not choose to make rash decisions when there are so many figures pointing mistakes from outside and so little action been taken from those responsible?

He:

thats a tough one

and mature people here in pak do think about that

Me:

but good question right? ive been thinking a lot

He:

yeah good question!

but majority satisfies itself by conspiracy theories

it may sound weird to you

but majority here thinks that all these nations are anti Islam

anti pakistan

and that is the reason why all this blame game is being played

Me:

some ppl get high on substance.. some on religion

He:

true

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It was really something. It gives a lot for the Brain and Heart when there are people thinking and acting like this guy. The teenager Malala is a example. She’s another example of the youth wanting rights and education for their people. She was a strong, neutral voice talking of the truth and that offended many a bad man. Too bad the system just won’t let such people run the country. It also reminds me of a beautiful video featuring mid/high school girls from Pakistan talking about how they really feel and how they are made to feel about the Indo-Pak relations.

Rounding up this post, I’m not going make comments on the partition of India or the numerous wars or other difference India has had with Pakistan because this was never a political write, the post was aimed at talking about the people in Pakistan. (I don’t know if they call themselves aam janta :D) I wanted to say that we need empathize with the people of Pakistan. On the one side there is the adamant army and intelligence with its own agenda (no one knows what the army wants) and on the other side there is the helpless civilian govt and politicians fishing for power and money. In this quarrel... what’s to happen of the people of Pakistan? Does anyone care about the people anymore?