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Showing posts from October, 2014

A golden Silver Jubilee Meet of BITS85BATCH

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A logo par excellence They were all born in different parts of India, studied hard (some might say they hardly studied but made it to BITS) at different schools and their +2 scores got them to study and play together in the year 1985 at BITS, Pilani – the abode of higher education. While some of them got into 4-year integrated courses, some others got into 5-year dual degree courses.  The year 2014 marks the Silver Jubilee Year and the batch mates decided to have their SJM (Silver Jubilee Meet). That several Pre-SJM meets happened at different parts of the world as a precursor to the actual SJM stands testimony to the enthusiasm of the batch. The size of the batch is 564 and is spread across various continents. It is a humongous task to even communicate a message to all of them, leave alone the task of getting them together. But, thanks to technology that came to the rescue of the Organizing Committee (OC) in the form of Telegram, Whats-app, Google Groups, YouTube and Faceboo

Why this kolaveri? Are e-commerce portals the pied pipers of brick-and-mortar companies?

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The Big Billion Day sale of Flipkart on 6 th October raised quite a few eye-brows of several retailers and especially the brick-and-mortar companies with limited or insignificant presence in e-commerce. The big questions being asked are: how the products are being sold below manufacturing price? Is it not to destroy competition? There is also news that the Confederation of All India Traders has written to Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman complaining about such ‘sales’. The Confederation complained that huge discounts amounted to predatory pricing and is against the principle of ‘fair’ ‘competition’ . There is also a suggestion to constitute a regulator to monitor e-commerce websites to level the retail sales. They may not be aware that there are already some regulations in place. Flipkart was not prepared as needed to address the unexpected ‘rush’ on their website due to which several online customers had ‘undesired’ experiences that found vent on social media. The managemen

Heroes on Screen! Villains Off it?

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Actors in a silent fast protest at Chennai on 30th Sept (PTI photo) The CM of Tamil Nadu and three of her close aides were convicted and sentenced to jail by a special court in Bengaluru on 27 th September in a case of disproportionate assets that dragged for 18 years with several twists and turns. She was moved to Parappana Agrahara jail in Bengaluru on the same day. What happened later and on the day of the judgment is quite a disturbing and disappointing trend that is taking roots in the recent past in India. Thanks to Supreme Court intervention, good sense is forcibly being prevailed. While it is the courts that will decide on the future of the jailed CM and her accomplices, there is an orchestrated movement to apply pressure on the Judiciary and also to disturb the social fabric of peace for the sake of one individual who is no bigger than the law. There is an attempt to channelise justice as desired by the vested interests. There was disruption of peace not only in T