The Hindu Business Line : Will 2008 be a better act?

But I am writing this column gently sunning myself by a rather pristine strip of beach here in sunny Goa. There is a gentle breeze in the air, beer in the cooler, foreign tourists running up and down the beach in their swimsuits and the missus monitoring my line of sight very carefully indeed.

The beach gently thunders in, wave after little wave, unobtrusively, as I sit in front of my laptop thinking of what the business world could hold for us in the year to come.

2007 was distinctly a mixed year, I thought, for business.

Yes, yes, the Sensex did well and inflation is on the decline. A recent magazine article tells me that more M&A has happened in India this year than anywhere else in the world. Yes, perhaps more than even China.

But who has any access to the real numbers? (I don’t. I make them up 83.7 per cent of the time using that random number thing in Excel.)

I recently discovered that a chain of extremely desi sandwich store: cucumbers, tomatoes, green chutney and such like, that began out of one outlet underneath a railway overbridge somewhere in Andheri, is now going for a national strategy on the back of some fresh Private Equity funding.

The mind boggles at the amount of cash that’s been building up over 2007 in funds, vaults and bank accounts. Besides mine, of course.

Retail running for cover

But amidst the good news there was the bad too. Organised retail arrived like a towering opening batsman ready to hit the ‘trading’ ball out of the park. Instead, the little people served up over after over of politically fuelled bouncers that had even the ‘Modern Retailers’ paring down business plans and rethinking whether they should pay the management consultants who sold them the ‘Multi-billion dollar opportunity’ in the first place.

Nandigram was a terrible blot on humanity and governance in general.

So what is your ‘business, markets and investments’ wishlist for 2008? Growth? Stability? You are one of those ‘equitable growth or bust people’ is it?

I’ll tell you what I want to see.

‘Free my mobile bills’

Perhaps in 2008 we will finally see some resolution to the entire mobile GSM spectrum imbroglio. I haven’t the faintest idea what it is all about. But when anything takes up that much space on the cover of a business newspaper, you know there is a problem.

Note to government: Do anything you want as long as my mobile bills stay low. If not free altogether. I am sure there will be some advertisement-supported model that can make it work. “This call to your HR manager is sponsored by Kulkarni Explosives — When some people just have to be blown up! Now with doorstep delivery!”

I would love to finally see a working prototype of that Rs 1 lakh car that everyone’s been raving about.

“This car will revolutionise the way that Indians travel! Now that we’ve launched it in Mumbai we expect to break several records including ‘Only traffic jam visible from space’ and ‘Most cars returned for servicing within twenty fours of launch!’

Dollar doldrums

The dollar better settle down now. Otherwise all those IT companies are going to go broke and roll back those fabulous perks they dole out to their employees. How will people in non-IT companies negotiate for pay packages anymore?

Non-IT guy: “Boss! You have to work on scaling up my HRA! Do you have any idea how much Infosys and Wipro and HCL are…”

Boss: “Oh, look in the paper! The dollar is going at 34…”

Non-IT guy: “… so the point I am trying to make is that I don’t care about how much HRA you give. I am not one of those pesky money-oriented people, you know! Work is its own reward I say! Really it’s the thought that counts boss.”

2008 will also hopefully see a little more predictability in the stock markets. That way the common man investor, —especially the guy who manages that SIP Mutual Fund of mine and sends me weekly e-mail newsletters titled ‘Would you believe it! The market moves contrarian for the seventeenth week in a row! We think it’s the poor monsoons this time! Maybe.,’ — can finally make some money on it.

Infrastructure take-off?

Will 2008 be the year that airport infrastructure spruces up, airlines get their act together and passengers no longer have to burn ground staff alive to get boarding passes?

“Give me the aisle seat now! Or this young man in-charge of baggage gets it!”

“Sorry sir! We don’t have a free seat. In fact we don’t even have the aircraft. Bye bye Prabhakar! We will miss you during lunch break…”

But most importantly, will we finally see a big boom in the English language print media business this year? Will more newspapers see greater circulation, better advertising income?

Will they finally start paying freelance writers more so that that they can finally afford middle-class holidays in Goa? While we ponder upon that final and all-important question, I will quietly slip out of this beach shack from underneath the wooden railing here and make a dash for it.

Here’s to a fantastic 2008 that will see all your professional and personal wishes and ambitions come true.

(The writer, an alumnus of IIM-A, was a management consultant before quitting to work as a freelance writer, author and general handyman. He blogs at www.whatay.com)

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