Business environment is an ever-changing, dynamic entity – more so when the concerned business is computer-based technology. If a competitor launches a new technology in the market, it is advisable to launch a similar or new technology as early as possible so that the former does not get the benefits of first-mover advantage for long. It is indeed necessary to be flexible and competitive with the changing business environment, even if it means taking other company’s help. Otherwise, the business will disintegrate.

In order to create new product/service and remain competitive with other firms, a firm needs to invest time, money and efforts to develop it. This can be very costly and loss-incurring strategy as there is no guarantee whether the new product will be successful . With globalisation, small companies are coming up which use software technology familiar and available to all the people in the world. These softwares are called open source softwares and the small companies using them for their business are called open source-based startups.

Open source softwares are free softwares. Start-up companies which emerge from the application of these softwares use it for their specific needs and provide services to customers at cheaper costs. The same service would cost a lot if it was provided by companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM etc. Moreover, with time the software gets developed by inputs from developers around the world and the service quality provided by the startup improves. Open source-based startup is a powerful and competitive business strategy and entrepreneurs have found great success in it. They offer business support, help install a product and provide other features to customers. These startups find it easier to sell their products/services to developers and customers, which is done simultaneously as the interested parties can download it anytime.

A recent trend started is that big corporates in IT and electronic industry are sponsoring these startups because the sponsoror is familiar with the software technology, but want others to do it in order to reduce time and efforts in their own research and development. In 2014, venture capitalists made 37 investments in open source-based startups. Big players like Facebook, Microsoft and Apple too are sponsoring these startups which are mushrooming at a decent pace.

Open source-based startups are here to stay and the trend of sponsoring them doesn’t look to slow down in the near future.

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Sports journalism is everything to do with writing and reporting on all types of sports, both amateur and professional. It include jobs like

reporting game statistics, detailed preview of a game, post match analysis, interviewing players and coaches, conducting press conferences with team managers and offering commentary on television, radio and internet. Sports journalism helps in commercialising of a sport. More a sport is in news, more is its popularity.

In most cases, sports journalism is a department in a media companies and news channels. But there are some companies which only report on sports and its related events like ESPN, Sports Illustrated etc. With the advent of Internet and social media, live updates of matches and live streaming is provided by sports journalists to keep fans updated even if they are not able to watch a game.

Since sports involve outdoor activities, there is a lot of fieldwork in sports journalism. Reporters and journalists have to be at the stadium or sports complex to cover a game and report about the results back to their headquarters. Simultaneously, journalists have to interact with players and officials in order to know their opinion on the game being played. Nowadays media companies hire ex-sportspersons to do sideline reporting and commentary because they can relate more with the game going on and provide inputs for viewers to able understand the game better. It is important the game is being broadcast to people watching it on TV or internet. So camera men are integral part of this field. The photographers too help in capturing the special moments in a game with their high resolution cameras. These photos are later published with the articles to provide an aesthetic view to the reader.

Apart from this, investigative journalism too plays a part in sports journalism. Sometimes there are cases of cheating during a game, unfair decisions, controversies, corruption charges and scams which interfere with the true spirit of the game and taint the sport. Journalists have to investigate the real cause of such mis-happenings and report accordingly. The recent revelation of corruption in FIFA, the official body of football, is an example.

Many feel sports journalism is not serious journalism because it does not have to deal with politics, business, economics or security of a country. But it forms an important part of news reporting. Just like a hand cannot do anything without its little finger, sports journalism is important for a media company.

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Sometimes certain statutory acts come into force which one fails to understand whether it is good or bad for the welfare of the country. Official Secrets Act (OSA), 1923 is one such Act.

Official Secrets Act is one of the important laws for national security but a dark blotch and hindrance in the transparency and freedom of Press and governance. Due to the Act’s stringency, it has failed to tread the middle path and is contradicting other Acts.

As one can see from the year of the Act’s implementation, it was formed under the British rule. It was framed to protect the British officials from accountability from the ever-pestering and constant-questioning emerging Indian media. That time the Act was a means prevent disclosing information rather than deal with security. The Act itself does not properly define an official secret. As per the Act,  official secret is any information in form code, password, plan or article which is kept secret from public. The act does not specify what actually a secret is, but clarifies that secrets cannot be of private nature. Post Independence, there have been amendments in the Act but ‘secret’ remains undefined. Rather the Act has become more stringent and increased penalties for not complying with it. This Act helps the government to regard any information as secret which may cause controversy or scam in the future. During the 1975 Emergency imposed by the then PM Indira Gandhi, Official Secrets Act (OSA) played a crucial role and the government used it indiscriminately to censor thr Press.

Looking at the Act from security point of view, OSA tries to prevent threats to national security, stop any information to get leaked and ensure that our political system is not sabotaged. It deals mainly with spying and unauthorised communication but its sections have been framed such that it hampers many more information.

The Official Secrets Act has been in contradictions with other statutory laws. The biggest contradiction is present in our Constitution. Article 19(1) of Indian Constitution provides us with the Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression. The OSA violate this right by virtue of restrictions put by it. The Act also contadicts Right To Information (RTI) Act, 2005. RTI provide citizens to seek information from any Centre or State’s ministerial department regarding any matter but sometimes bureaucrats use OSA to hide information from public. On one hand we have an Act which helps acquiring information while another provides hindrance in acquiring it.

Due to these contradictions, the government formed a panel a few months back to review the Official Secrets Act, make necessary changes and do away with excessive secrecy without compromising on national security.

Until some favourable amendments come into force, Official Secrets Act 1923 will continue to remain a necessary evil for our country.

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Conducting an interview is a part of a journalist’s job. It is the basis of travel journalism. Sometimes journalist’s job. It is the basis of travel journalism. Sometimes journalists have to interview localites, foreign ambassadors, eye witnesses to an incident, VIPs etc. In all such interviews, the interviewer has to travel to places rather than call the interviewee to the studio. That is why interviews are a part of travel journalism.

Following are points needed to be kept in mindwhile conducting an audio or video interview:-

• Do extensive research and prepare questions – It is important to plan before the interview what one wants to get out of it. He/she should have the foresight to know the probable result of the interview. This is possible when the interviewer has done research on the subject and prepared questions to be asked.

• Proper location for interview – Interview should be conducted according to the subject’s relevance. This will make the interviewee comfortable and provide better result for the interviewer.

• Medium of conversation – The medium of conversation should be comfortable to the subject. Moreover the interviewer should make an effort to keep the interview as a discussion so that it appears like a conversation.

• Keep the flow running – It is important that an interviewee should know the skill to keep the conversation going towards the pre-determined result using the answers of the subject rather than asking questions straight from the paper. This would look more like an act and make the interviewee uncomfortable. Also the interviewer should not change the topic of discussion with every successive question. The transition from one to the other topic should be gradual.

• Emphasis on a question until fully satisfied – The interviewer should repeat or revisit a question if he/she thinks it has not been answered satisfactorily. This happens when an interviewee is sensitive to certain issues, but emphasis should be made until the question is fully answered. The aim of the interview is to get the subject’s opinion, rather than hide it.

• Maintain in-between silence – It is necessary to maintain few seconds of silence in-between the answer and next question just in case the interviewee wants to explain their answer more.

Article writing technique is important for a journalist, but developing interview technique is mandatory in this occupation.

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[This article is the 3^rd part of the 3-part series discussing on how media plays a role in exposing hidden truths and secrets of people and bringing out the actual facts.]

Frost-Nixon interviews were a series of 4 interviews conducted by British journalist David Frost interviewing former US President Richard Nixon. These interviews were recorded and broadcast majorly on American television in 1977. The premiere interview was based upon the Watergate scandal. These interviews are the best example of chequebook journalism as Frost paid Nixon for appearing in the interviews.

One must be wondering as to why a disgraced  President come back into public attention 3 years after being declared the principle man behind the Watergate scandal. And why will a journalist take an interview of a person whom the public likes no more. I believe the best answer to both questions is ‘earning money’.

With no powers and very little respect, Richard Nixon had spent 2 years away from public life. During this time he wrote books describing his life as US President. But the revenue generated from sales was not enough to repay the debts to his lawyers. Thereby, he was in need of money. On the other hand, David Frost’s American talk show got cancelled, due to which he incurred some losses. He was left with anchoring not-so-successful shows like ‘Great Escapes’

Nixon saw an opportunity in Frost to payback debtors and redeem his public image through the interviews. Frost saw an opportunity to get attention of American viewership and make huge money from it. At that time Frost had made name in UK but was not popular in US. This was his chance to do it. Moreover, Frost had agreed to pay for the interviews, thus resorting to chequebook journalism.

Here, Richad Nixon made a mistake. He had assumed that a young interviewer would not press him much on the Watergate scandal and be able to comfortably answer his questions. But Frost had something else in mind. He recruited American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) news  producer Bob Zelnick and a lecturer, James Reston Jr. To research on Watergate scandal prior to the interview. Thus, he mixed  chequebook journalism with investigative journalism. This allowed frost to press Nixon on various occassions during the interview and made Nixon uncomfortable to answer. Ultimately, nixon gave in and revealed some previous unknown details of the scandal, but continued to deny allegations that he had obstructed justice. But nothing could be done as he was pardoned by the next US President Gerald Ford.

The frost-Nixon interviews garnered a lot of revenue for David Frost. Moreover, the premier interview became the most watched political interview in the history which has not been broken yet. This interview is a specimen on how media plays a role in exposing hidden truths and secrets of people and bringing out the actual facts, those facts which even the court of law could not discover.

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The suffix ‘-gate’ has become very popular with political scams and scandals. The Indian media has used this suffix to a great extent to name certain scams like Coalgate, Choppergate, Adarshgate etc. But the suffix is not something created by Indian media, rather its origin dates back to a political scam in the United States in early 1970s.
‘Watergate’ is described as series of political scandals between 1972 and 1974. It refers to the Watergate hotel in Washington D.C. where the scam started. Before going into the details, it is important to know that 1972 was the year of Presidential elections in US. So it was natural that both the Democrats and the Republicans, two parties which compete in the election, take dig at each other and plan how to out-do the other and win the elections.
On the night of June 17, 1972, the police arrested five men hiding in the headquarters of Democratic Nationalist Center (DNC) in the Watergate Hotel and were accused of burglary. It was later discovered that these 5 men were acting on the orders of some members of Committee for Re-election of the President (CRP). CRP was formed to look after the work for re-election to the post of President for the incumbent President Richard Nixon. Some months before the burglary, CRP approved a plan to secretly place cameras and listening bugs in DMC headquarters. The objective was to find out anything to incriminate and accuse Democrats so that votes swing in Republicans’ favour. Things did not go as planned and some members of CRP and the five burglars were indicted for conspiracy and burglary.
After the initial hysteria, things started to settle down because the countdown for Presidential elections had begun. Campaigns, debates and expert views were dominating the prime time in news channels and papers and the media failed to grasp the importance of Watergate. Even FBI were passive in their investigations. In the midst of all this, some journalists of various news dailies, especially Bob Woodman and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post investigated, uncovered and published information that the break-in at Watergate and the attemt to cover it up went deep into the top posts of FBI, Justice department and The White House.
It is important to note that Woodward and Bernstein practiced investigative journalism. Unlike chequebook journalism, facts gathered from investigative journalism has more weight and are to the point. The facts say the truth rather than play with people’s emotions.
Consequently, when election fever finished and President Nixon won another term, media shifted its attention back to the Watergate break-in. Although not yet proved whether Nixon
was involved or not. The Nixon administration and his suppotrters accused media of directly blaming them for the scandal.
Media’s investigation started putting pressure on FBI. By then, the media had linked the funding of burglary to the donations in CRP fund. Things flared up when FBI started suspecting Richard Nixon and his closest aides’ importance in the computer. Trials were held and slowlym any of Nixon’s aides were found guilty. During one such trial it was found that Nixon had taped conversations with people in the oval office and the court asked Nixon to surrender the tapes. After hearing, it was clear that President Nixon was directly involved in the cover-up of Watergate scandal. Though Nixon continued to insist that he had not committed any offence, he resigned on August 1974 as he had lost the nation’s faith. He was pardoned a month later by his successor, Dr. Gerald Ford.
It was due to the investigative journalism and 2 journalists which stoked fire to solve a scandal and get to the bottom of it.
[The 3rd part of the 3-part series articles will be published soon.The 3rd part is titled as ‘The Frost-Nixon Interviewsl’. It is a humble request to my readers to read that article after reading this one.

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GST – Goods and Services Tax – one simple abbreviation to remove all the complexities of taxation in India. The name is so simple to understand that even a 16 year old child with some substantial knowledge on India can get an intuitive idea of what this tax is about without studying it in detail. Even after knowing that a GST will make things simpler, it took us 15 years of 21st century to approve it in the lower house of the Parliament. That is actually too much time.

It is commonly known to all that there is always a considerable amount of delay in decision making in a democracy. Then again, its counter advantage is that in a democracy, this eventual delay gives time to ponder and think upon plans to be considered and avoid wrong decisions. That amount of time would be fruitful only if the decision is successful. Similar is the case for the Goods and Services Tax. If successful, everyone would forget the 15-year delay; if unsuccessful, God knows how people are going to suffer and react.

But what took GST so much time? Let us see – GST: The road gone by and the road ahead.

2000: NDA government sets up a committee headed by Asim Dasgupta to discuss on GST.

February 2006: The then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram mentions the concept of GST in his Budget speech and the deadline to implement it was set for April 2010.

2006-2009: Government and Finance Ministry studied international models of GST and came up with recommendation on dual GST.

November 2009: Discussion paper on GST released.

2011: Task force formed by 13th Finance Commission issues report to adopt dual GST model. The Constitutional Bill (115th Amendment) regarding GST is introduced in Lok Sabha.

2011-2013: States disapprove the Bill as they believe it is a threat to their freedom to impose and collect taxes.

May 2014: The bill lapses with dissolution of 15th Lok Sabha.

December 2014: The bill is re-worked antroduced as Constitutional Bill (122nd Amendment) 2014.

Here is the road that lies ahead for GST-

1. Pass the Bill in Parliament and its approval by at least half of all states.
2. Arriving at a rate for GST.
3. Legislative model to be adopted by states to implement GST.
4. Create rules as to where should goods and services be taxed.
5. Design an effective GST network for its proper administration.

I hope the GST model becomes a success. If successful, I want to remind everyone that come 2019, when India will gear up for its next Lok Sabha elections, do not judge BJP because it implemented GST. This model is a hard work of 15 years and involve efforts of people both from UPA and NDA governments. It should be considered as collective effort rather than one-party effort.

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Media is known to have unearthed a lot of secrets of various events in the past which many are either not willing to share or not comfortable to talk about. The reasons can be plenty. Whether it is related to match fixing in sports, corruption in politics or insider trading in business, the Press always has a knack of finding the true information or close to the truth to showcase it to the world. After all, this how they will earn their bread and butter.

Now, the Press is not just one entity. There are many players who are constantly competing against each other to make sensitive information public and most importantly, become the first one to tell it. One such strategy employed my media giants is chequebook journalism.

Chequebook journalism is a form of journalism where a journalist, news channel or a print media company pays a person or an organization for the right to publish their story. The stories are such that the media companies think and anticipate that the information will create quite a stir among public and induce them to watch their channel or read their newspaper to know about the story. Ultimately it will increase revenue for media giants. Chequebook journalism can be seen during reporting of court cases where journalists pay witnesses or victim’s family to tell their story. In cases where natural disaster was struck and people who survived it give interviews to news channels for a pre-contracted amount narrating their tragedy. It can also be seen where journalists pay money to an insider source to leak classified information.

Usually people having such emotionally-driven stories and delicate information do not own its copyright or royalty. Yet media companies pay them just for the sake to grab the first-mover advantage of showing or publishing it in their news medium, and get ahead of the competition. Many experts consider it unethical because the story or news was not generated through conservative investigation journalism; rather a “short-cut” was taken. Sometimes, in order to show it legal and ethical at the face value, media companies declare publically that they had paid licensing fees to get the rights for the information.

More often, chequebook journalism may not lead to the actual truth because the source a reporter is paying may tell what the latter wants to hear rather than the clear-as-crystal truth. So the credibility of information always remains a doubt.

Many domains in the world have certain aspects which are morally incorrect but still exist and practiced in reality. Chequebook journalism seems to be one such thing in the media industry. Although, one cannot call such strategy a necessary evil, it is a method a media company is bound to use at some point of time during its existence.

[The 2^nd part of the 3-part series articles will be published soon.The 2nd part is titled as ‘The Watergate Scandal’. It is a humble request to my readers to read that article after reading this one.

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Sometimes, a title of an article seems different than what is actually written. The reader does not understand it until he/she reads the whole article. Such an article is this one.

After independence, India was not well developed economically and (with no offence to my countrymen) was comparatively poor. In order to become self sufficient, we followed the economic policy of import substitution. Gradually it was a success and we became net exporter of various goods, for example milk. This means we had started to SELL our goods globally. Around that time Non Resident Indians (NRIs) living in Europe, North and South America and Australia were fascinated by commodities available there. Since they had the purchasing power to BUY such goods, they felt a sense of pride and happiness that they have done well in life to be able to live outside India and buy things which their counterparts in India could not buy.

Then 1991 economic reforms happened and this trend started reversing, albeit very slowly. This reversing trend could be seen earlier in the week when Mr. Ratan Tata invested and BOUGHT stakes in a Chinese phone manufacturer Xiaomi while 2 NRIs – Sunil Wadhwani and Ashok Trivedi SOLD their US-based IT company Igate to the French IT major Capgemini. An Indian resident buys, while 2 NRIs sell. Although this is a business strategy and nothing similar to buying and selling goods, it is worth making a comparison.

Let us look at 2 cases closely.

First case, NRIs are SELLING. Capgemini’s acquisition of Igate costed the former $ 4.4 billion which includes payment of $ 1 billion each to Igate founders Sunil Wadhwani and Ashok Trivedi and $ 1.2 billion to Apax Partners who had owned 29% stake at Igate. Moreover, Igate is selling its shares to Capgemini at $ 48 per share, higher than the share price listed on Friday on Nasdaq at $ 45.85 per share. Igate is not a big player in US market where Accenture and IBM are leading competitors. Capgemini too is not a big competitor but has its stronghold in Europe. It was looking to consolidate its position in North America and Igate seems to fulfil their ambition. This acquisition is going to have little affect on Accenture or IBM, but it certainly affects Indian companies like TCS, Wipro and Infosys who look at US for most of its revenue.

Second case, Indian resident is BUYING. Ratan Tata has now somewhat become a non-operational owner of the Chinese start-up Xiaomi. Mr. Tata is breaking all shackles of old age and retirement and seems to be on a mission. Moreover, it appears that the current Chairman of Tata Group (Cyrus Mistry) is getting less attention than the Chairman emiretus. Keeping aside the sarcasm, Mr. Tata has taken the first mover advantage while Lei Jun, founder and Ceo of Xiaomi has found himself a great asset to increase his phone sales in India. Jun-Tata is going to be a threatening combination, which other mobile manufacturers especially operating in India need to be vary of.

These 2 changes in the business environment of IT and mobile phones is seriously going to be a challenge for Indian companies in future. Soon we will be seeing response by them too. Whatever the result is, hope that the trend of Indian residents buying and NRIs selling continues for a while. Why? It shows the intent of Indian residents – “Hum bhi NRI se kum nahi!”

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By now we all know the most worrying and trending topic on Nepal – a 7.9 magnitude earthquake on Saturday and its aftershocks over the last weekend. People all over the world have shown their concern for the people of Nepal and have prayed for the casualties. But one cannot deny the bitter truth – Nepal earthquake was inevitable.

The reason for this inevitability lies on the tectonic plate movements of earth’s crust. When these plates hit, brush or move against each other it creates faults and folds. Faults are breaking of rocks resulting from fracture along the edges of Earth’s crust, while folds are bending of rocks due to compression in Earth’s crust. Long years ago when Eurasian and Indo-Australian plates hit each other it resulted in a fold, thus giving birth to The Himalayas. This fold is commonly termed as the Great Himalayan Region.

The recent earthquake was a result of the Indian subcontinent moving northwards. This is inevitable in the Great Himalayan Region. According to a study in 2001, in this region longer the time between 2 big earthquakes, higher the possibility of larger devastation. This puts the whole region and the adjoining Gangetic Plains at high risk.

Although tectonic plates move naturally, land building activities can induce faster movement in them because of pressure on the land. Earthquakes will come in future too, no one can stop that. What we can do is minimize the number of casualties in a disaster by having a disaster mitigation plan for a quake.

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