“A double-edged sword at work”

Don’t expect a high click-through rate on ads on social networks, says Chief Executive, Pinstorm as he interacts with 4Ps B&M

Do you feel that social networks are better for branding, particularly if we take ROI into account?
Social networks are not useful for ROI-based advertising and relatively speaking, they are better for brand or awareness advertising. Unlike search, where people go to a site like Google or Yahoo! to click away and go somewhere else, social networks are immersive and users tend not to click on ads here. So don’t expect a high click-through rate on ads on social networks. Social networks can hence be better used for general demographically or behaviourally targeted brand messaging.

What pros and cons do you see for advertisers on social networks?
Social networks are a double-edged sword for advertisers. On the one hand, they offer large numbers of prime young audiences with high purchasing power who spend a lot of time online. While typical viewership of a TV programme might be in the 10-15 minute range, the successful networks are used for 3 to 5 times as much. And the audience is more urban, more influential and more amenable to new brand messaging. On the other hand, the very popularity of social networks can be the problem – people are going there not to see ads or click on them – or even to get entertained, like they go to a TV channel. They are going there to connect with friends, acquaintances, lovers and the like. So, they’re not exactly in a mood to welcome brand messaging and you run the risk of somewhat becoming wallpaper on Orkut or Facebook. But then again, most advertising on television has a similar fate.

What kind of brand is benefited the most on social networks?
Social networks will be happy hunting grounds for brands which have a core focus around the urban young between 18 and 35 years, with high disposable incomes, and who are trend-setters by nature. In addition there are also vertically specialised social networks like LinkedIn, Xing and such. We use these for B2B advertising, where advertisers like large consultancies, IT/ITES companies, et al can be run very well.

Do you think the only factor attracting online advertising in this recessionary time is the cost?
Well in these recessionary times the choice that marketers are making is between brand awareness and response generation advertising. And the former is losing ground to the latter. So the big gainer is actually response - generation advertising online – publishers like Google and others who offer pay-per-click or pay-for-result solutions. The media losing business across the board is awareness media. I can only imagine that social networks are losing out as much as television channels are. After this down phase is over, I predict a strong growth in online awareness ad options, including social networks.

What are the factors that advertisers should keep in mind while deciding on social network?
Most importantly, who are you talking to? Depending on which social networks you choose, you can target by age, sex, location – or even by interest, keyword or forum. So you have both demographic and behavioural axes to make a media pick on. Use both. After this, realise that people aren’t coming there to click on your ads. Do not harbour hopes of high click through rates. Further, if you want to engage audiences, you have to try harder than just doing a flat banner ad. Try interactivity, humour, fun – remember you have to make it more compelling content than what your friends are saying to you online. And last, try, try and try again.

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative
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Social networks - ::IIPM-NEWS::

Clearly, if blogs spelt the beginning of the end, turning Guttenberg economics on its head and exploding the myth of consumers as mere spectators, social networks are only too happy to pick up where blogs finish, virtually ending the reign of ivory tower marketers. Statistics prove that next to email, social networking sites are the most visited user platform on the World Wide Web. Give in to number crunching and just the top 10 social networking sites globally cross a cool 600 million members. And it’s not just traditional media that is feeling the pinch from these do-it-yourself publishing tools, marketers, whether political, social or business are gradually abandoning their earlier mass-market approach to follow their target consumers into their preferred leisure space.

At the time of going to press, the US Election results had just thundered in with a historic mandate. Barack Obama had become the 44th US President and the first African-American to make it to the White House. Among others, Obama’s crack team of intelligence and marketing gurus must’ve also thanked Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, all of which allowed Obama to gain massive popularity and acceptance among American youth. According to an assessment by web strategy analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, on the eve of going to polls, Obama had a 380% lead over McCain in his social media campaign on the portal with about 2,379,102 registered supporters; while McCain languished behind with 620,359 supporters. A similar story was true for even MySpace. On the video uploading community network of YouTube, Obama had uploaded 1792 videos since 2006 while McCain uploaded only 329 videos. Obama had 905% more viewers than McCain on the website. Clearly, this was a historic election, given the first time ever heavy strategic usage of social media in the campaign game.

So whether it’s Mini USA (the American branch of BMW’s Mini Cooper) that routinely tracks everything being said about its brand on online social networks; or the 50 selected executives at Hewlett-Packard’s corporate office in Palo Alto who log into their individual blogs every morning to catch the ongoing online conversation about each of their product lines; the online social community is changing the dynamics of companies around the world, and also in India. Only difference is that while in the US, the networks of choice remain MySpace and Facebook and the choice hinges around Bebo (AOL) and MySpace in the UK, in India, the most popular connectors are Google’s Orkut, followed by Facebook. The money-spinning mathematics of social networking platforms has coerced even big Indian businesses to start taking the game seriously. Anil Ambani’s BigAdda.com launched last year and Sabeer (hotmail) Bhatia’s ApnaCircle.com are proof of this desi pudding. The mandate is clear. As more and more ‘aware’ consumers shun traditional advertising and as trust develops among online communities, consumers are more willing to take a purchase suggestion from an online peer rather than the traditional marketer. Says Navin Mittal, Business Head, Fropper.com, “Social networking started off as a concept to simply ‘keep in touch’ with friends, but has evolved as a popular medium for big brands to connect to their audience.”

When asked, Atul Hegde, CEO, Ignitee said that the type of content on social networking websites must be tailored to grab the attention of net freaks. “Creative directors should create content which is ‘non advertising’ and the kind that net workers will want to spread around,” he believes. Ashish Kashyap, CEO, ibibo.com agrees. “Social media platform cannot be used in the way you advertise on a portal or search engine. Social media marketing can only be done by engaging intimately with the audience i.e. by developing products and applications to trap the audience,” he says.

Explains Mahesh Murthy, CEO, Pinstorm, a search marketing firm, “Social networks are not useful for RoI-based advertising,” adding that social media is more useful for brand building. He believes that unlike search advertising, where people go to a site like Google to click and go somewhere else, social networks are immersive and users tend not to click on ads here. So, while you may not expect a high click-through rate for banner ads on social networks, some like NIIT have found more effective ways to build their brand here. Preeti Technani, the virtual character created by NIIT on Orkut, answers daily queries related to careers and has been a huge success so far. But there are still many that are missing from the social networking buzz. Analysts blame it on the lack of education and evangelising. “Only a few understand the big picture,” laments Hegde, adding that the ‘hit now, score now’ syndrome – a throwback to the conventional advertising era – is prevalent among marketers. In contrast, “social media marketing is a slow but sure burner,” he says.

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Read these article :-
ZEE BUSINESS BEST B SCHOOL SURVEY
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
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The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
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Is that what you just said?

It wasn’t long ago when Indian retailers were riding on the high tide, but thanks to tumultuous economic conditions they all seem to have fallen flat. It’s high time to revisit retail, says 4Ps B&M’s Savreen Gadhoke…

Famous poet Eli Siegel once said, “If a mistake is not a stepping stone, it’s a mistake.” And the underlying message, it seems, has been well received by the Indian retailers!?? No doubt, the Indian organised retail has gained tremendous momentum in the last couple of years, (pegged to touch $450 billion by 2015 & be amongst the top 10 retail markets in the world, by McKinsey & Co.), but, in the transition they have also made several mistakes. All thanks to their efforts to outdo each other in the game of one-upmanship.

Opening many stores across a single city to increase visibility (without appropriate demographics study), launching different formats to tap all categories of customers (but not accurately estimating the return on investments), not having a robust supply chain management in place, et al, are some of them that seems to have fallen too heavy on the Indian retailers, particularly when the ongoing tumultuous economic conditions are alone enough to take away their happiness. But as Siegel said, the Indian retailers have taken such mistakes as a stepping stone and are now taking measures to correct them. From unorganised to organised retailing, the honchos are now set to re-organise the Indian retail industry.

While Future Group still sounds optimistic about the current scenario as Atul Takle, Head – Corporate Communications, Future Group avers, “Same store growth as well as y-o-y growth has been excellent. We are seeing this as a major opportunity;” Gibson Vedamani, CEO, Retailers Association of India, asserts, “The slowdown in the Indian economy has impacted the retail sector especially the high-ticket sales as they were dependant on consumer loans.” Suports Vikas Vasal, Executive Director, KPMG, who says, “There is a general slowdown in the retail sector as the spending has been low and people are holding tight on to their pockets.” Even the slump in the real estate sector has made its impact felt on retail. “In some places, malls have delayed because of delivery of properties. Slowdown of developers has impacted us,” agrees Sanjiv Goenka, Vice Chairman, Spencer’s Retail.

In fact, retailers have now realised that having too many stores was perhaps not the right strategy to increase sales, as now handling rising operating expenses is beginning to get difficult for retailers. Moreover, rising manpower costs and sky-rocketing rentals too are adding to their dilemma. So, most of the retailers are now either merging their different retail formats or are relocating and resizing. They are even shutting down stores. This is certainly a natural move on retailers part, however, what is intriguing is that how did such a situation rise, especially when the Indian retail boasts of some of the biggest names of India Inc.?

Answers Vasal, “The reason for some retailers closing down stores is the general slowdown & fault in the strategies of the retail players. Some players entered the market during boom and hence the calculations weren’t done adequately.” Recently Videocon-owned consumer electronics store Next revisited its strategies and announced the closure of 20 outlets in prime cities. However, K. S. Raman, Director, Next Retail has a different reason for the same. “We now want to consolidate our presence in the interiors of the country and North East,” he argues. Similarly, Spencer’s Retail, too has shut down 56 stores (out of a total of 400 stores) purely on account of non-performance. Exclaims Goenka of Spencer’s Retail, “It is not an alarming news but a sensible decision.” Reasons cited by Goenka for non-performance of his stores were that in certain places, rents were too high and did not commensurate with the revenues, while in certain other places revenues just didn’t pick up. “You have to see what product(s) you are selling and then choose on a location. In few cases, this was done in a reverse manner,” he adds.

Apart from closing down stores, retailers are also considering to merge different retail formats they opened during the process. Reliance Retail is expected to merge its hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience store formats. Certainly a merged management will help Reliance save on man-power, operational and recurring expenses. Kishore Biyani-owned Pantaloon Retail has also shelved its plans to hive off Big Bazaar as a separate entity and therefore cut on the costs that were expected to rise with the formation of a new company.

In other cases too, retailers have either relocated their stores (Big Bazaar has changed the format of one of its stores and relocated another in Ahmedabad), or are pruning and resizing their retail space (Reliance has shed upto 40% of retail space in its hypermarket store at Iskcon Mall in Ahmedabad). Retailers are also in the process of negotiating rentals (primary reason for cutting down on retail space) with the landlords and may even go in for revenue sharing models.

It is true that tough economic conditions have made the retailers realise their folly and amend their mistakes. But given the kind of investment that has already gone into this sector, it may not be possible for all to sustain. As Vedamani puts it, “Retailers who have been in existence for more than five years, or those who have strong capital backing can withstand these conditions, but for others it’s going to be tough.” And indeed, a host of other retailers are left with no option but to pare down on the number of stores they are currently operating. Indiabulls retail has shut down two stores in Ahmedabad, apparel retailers Arvind Brands, Reebok and Raymond too have started pruning their operations.

Certainly Indian retailers seem to have got a good lesson and are now making no two bones to accept that they were wrong in their super fast expansion plans and huge investments within a short span of time. As Goenka says, “In the course of any business, you’ll have decisions which are not always right in terms of location, vendors and demographics. It’s always best that if you’ve made a mistake, correct it.”

Earlier, the focus was only on increasing the square foots and therefore there was a certain level of delegation that happened in selection of areas to open the stores. But now, the retailers have taken the onus on themselves to carry out a proper research on the demographics and demands of consumers in different places. Based on such studies, the retailers are now being extremely careful on where to open their stores. “In future, due diligence will definitely pick up,” concludes Goenka. Well, it better pick up, as only then it will be determined whether the previous mistakes were stepping stones or indeed ‘mistakes’.


For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Read these article :-
ZEE BUSINESS BEST B SCHOOL SURVEY
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
IIPM in Financial times (Print Version)
IIPM makes business education truly global (Print Version)
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
IIPM Campus

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They still can't call it a day... ::IIPM-Aticle::

It seems no end of woes for them. Already having trouble maintaining their jobs, employees of financial firms, realty companies & airlines are now finding it difficult to get credit cards from banks. Banks are rejecting their credit card applications owing to the possibility of further lay-offs and job losses in these troubled sectors. Although the law prohibits banks from denying credit to anybody on the grounds of his profession, but banks have long maintained negative lists and denied credit cards to reporters, lawyers, chartered accountants and junior ranks of the security forces. With inclusion of these sectors, the list is just being extended.

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Read these article :-
ZEE BUSINESS BEST B SCHOOL SURVEY
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
IIPM in Financial times (Print Version)
IIPM makes business education truly global (Print Version)
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
IIPM Campus

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IIPM News - A Green Dream...

What? At a time when the credit squeeze threatens? But hey, eco-friendly products may help you tide the crisis. By Vareen Ray

Jeff Immelt – the Chairman and CEO of the world’s largest energy behemoth General Electric (GE) – does something called a growth playbook every year with each of his businesses. In 2005, he called his new strategy of business growth Ecomagination – a strategy, which believed in investing in technologies to help customers win in a world with more regulation, more scarcity and higher energy costs. GE developed a range of environmentally conscious products that would lighten his company’s Goliath-like environmental footprint. At the launch, even as GE’s fleet of senior managers canoodled with the who’s who of Congress members and industry at a glittering cocktail party on Pennsylvania Avenue, Immelt magnanimously spelt out that environment and business were “no longer a zero-sum game.” As the glitterati nibbled organic canapés, Immelt uttered the now-proven words: “Things that are good for the environment are also good for business!”

Almost prophetically, revenues from GE’s 70 Ecomagination-certified products – ranging from CFL’s, dishwashers, water purifiers, refrigerators to even energy efficient home improvement loans from GE Money – are expected to hit $17 billion in 2008, and the company has raised the revenue target from $20 billion in annual sales by 2010 to $25 billion by the same date. Small surprise that now, every business worth its salt is seeing the green (dollar signs!) in going green. Even as governments’ continue to debate the economic risks of more stringent curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and environmentalists continue to cry hoarse about global warming, an unlikely hero is rising out of the dust – Yes! Big businesses including heavy industries are starting to become the new green protagonists of the world. From food to clothing, auto to IT, everyone’s looking for an eco-friendly label. They’ve realised, on one hand that going green helps them in overriding objections from flag-waving green activists, and on the other, helps them cut costs, improve performance and overall efficiency of their businesses.

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Read these article :-
ZEE BUSINESS BEST B SCHOOL SURVEY
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
IIPM in Financial times (Print Version)
IIPM makes business education truly global (Print Version)
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
IIPM Campus

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'This is one of Big B's best performances'
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IIPM Delhi - Indian Institute of Planning and Management New Delhi ...
IIPM ranked ahead of IIMs

Sufism's green to jehad's red

Kashmir has travelled a long way to stick to its Sufi tradition, but now, quo vadis? asks Zubair A Dar

In Khanka-e-Moula, a shrine on the banks of the emerald-coloured Jhelum, thousands of Kashmiri Pundits set to flame their sacred threads when Shah Hamadan’s ‘message of Islam’ reverberated across the Valley in 14th century. Islam did not come to Kashmir riding on a horseback with a sword. Here, it came by Word. Down the centuries, when Kashmir is torn by centuries of foreign rule, the fallouts of the 'two nation theory' and then two decades of a violent conflict, the basic fabric of Islam in Kashmir has remained unchanged; barring those acts that go against the basic fabric of Islam.

Before Islam arrived here, the cultural mosaic had been shaped over several centuries under the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism. Though Islam came to the Valley 700 years after arriving in mainland India, for the past two decades Kashmir stayed in news mostly on Islamist issues – a violent rebellion against the state wrapped in religious jargon and its transition to orthodox Islam.

Sufism – with love, tolerance and service of humanity at its core – had been perfected by poets and philosophers like Ghazali and Rumi and great saints like Abdul Qadir Jilani in Persia and central Asia. After reaching Kashmir, Sufism attained a unique form by blending into Kashmir’s cultural milieu.

However, since the eruption of violence in 1989, Kashmir has been viewed as an increasingly ‘intolerant’ society. Groups like Dukhtaran-e-Millat challenge westernised lifestyles and even encourage girls to carry daggers for self-defense. Is it a temporary aberration or a more permanent change in religious outlook? Answers remain embedded in socio-cultural as well as the politico-religious history of Kashmir.

Introduced in Kashmir in the early 14th century by Turkish Sufi saint Syed Bulbul Shah, Kashmiris welcomed Islam, as Mahayana Buddhism had already broken the rigidities of caste system. As more and more Muslim dervishes came to Kashmir, it became a centre of Sufism, like Delhi and Ajmer. Noor-ud-din was in fact the first Kashmiri-born Muslim saint to assume the title of a Rishi. The Hindus called him Sahaj Nand, his original name. The Muslims called him ‘Wali’. His shrine at the central Kashmir town of Chrar-e-Sharief, a reflection of the Buddhist architecture, is a place of pilgrimage for both religions. Though he died in 1440 AD, he is the most frequently quoted Sufi in every home.


‘’It was a great period. The famous Shaivite saint Lala was wandering across Kashmir with her wakhs (mystic poetry), a blend of Shaivism and Sufism. She was Laleshwari to Hindus and Lala Arifa to Muslims, and Kashmir was becoming a melting pot of the two great philosophies,’’ says renouned poet and scholar Ghulam Rasool Nazki, who has been living a solitary life since his two sons were killed in a grenade blast nineteen years ago. And Nazki is not the only father to loose sons in the violent conflict. Observers place the number of lives lost in Kashmir at 80,000 – among them many moderate voices of Kashmir politics like Moulvi Farooq and Abdul Gani Lone. It is the extremist voices that dominate the scene today.

But the violence in Kashmir did not erupt all of a sudden. By the turn of the 20th century, Kashmir had been under Dogra rule for more than five decades after British sold the Valley to them. It was only after a decade-long political struggle by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah that land was handed over to the tillers, and thus alleviating the economic condition of a common Kashmiri.

If that came as a relief, the partition came as a gory reminder of the alienation Kashmir had been facing for centuries. While the political struggle again continued to be peaceful till 1989, a militant movement dressed as a holy war and backed by Pakistan started in Kashmir. The sound of gunfire silenced every other discourse. Kshmiri Pundits were forced out of the Valley after hundreds of them were killed.

“The call for Jihad attracted one and all. Youth would travel to towns near LoC and cross over for training,” says Javed Mir, one among the four militant commanders of Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front who started the violent movement. But it was Hizb-ul-Mujahideen that soon became the largest militant outfit by asking youth to take up guns and projecting the struggle as ‘a holy war that is rewarded with martyrdom’.

In Kashmir, Hizb came to be known as the militant wing of Jamat-e-Islami, an organisation founded in 1946 followers of Maulana Maududi of Pakistan. Jamat exploited the arterial base provided by the land to tiller reforms and started its own chain of schools.

But though Kashmiri youth took to arms, the society had resisted whenever a group tried to enforce its views of Islam on them. The people did not blindly follow the dictates of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, a women’s group lead by Syada Aasiya Andrabi. Their activists smeared the faces of women who did not observe Hijab. But the force did not work in the 1990s. Internal persuasion did. “More women put on the veil now as compared to early nineties," says Rifat, a university student. Meanwhile one major reformist group that is emerging is Jamiyat-e-Ahl Hadith. The group concentrates on building personal character of a Muslim and now controls around a thousand mosques in Kashmir. Though the Hadith people disapprove of ritualism that had been emphasised by the religious elite till the early parts of 20th century, the organisation does not discard the teachings of Rishis like Noor-u-Din or Lal Ded. “They are our guiding lights. Their teachings will never become irrelevant,” says Jamiyat-e-Ahl Hadith President, Maulana Showkat Ahmad Shah

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

Read these article :-
ZEE BUSINESS BEST B SCHOOL SURVEY
B-schooled in India, Placed Abroad (Print Version)
IIPM in Financial times (Print Version)
IIPM makes business education truly global (Print Version)
The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM)
IIPM Campus

Top Articles on IIPM:-
'This is one of Big B's best performances'
IIPM to come up at Rajarhat
IIPM awards four Bengali novelists
IIPM makes business education truly global-Education-The Times of ...
The Hindu : Education Plus : Honour for IIPM
IIPM ranked No.1 B-School in India, Management News - By ...
IIPM Ranked No1 B-School in India
Moneycontrol >> News >> Press- News >> IIPM ranked No1 B-School in ...
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IIPM ranked No1 B-School in India :: Education, Careers ...
The Hindu Business Line : IIPM placements hit a high of over 2000 jobs
Deccan Herald - IIPM ranked as top B-School in India
India eNews - IIPM Ranked No1 B-School in India
IIPM Delhi - Indian Institute of Planning and Management New Delhi ...
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The sunday Indian Story :- “Muslims must join mainstream political parties”

Nawab Mohammed Abdul Ali, the Prince of Arcot, lives in the historic palace Amir Mahal in Chennai. His family, which ruled south India as Nawabs of Carnatic, traces its lineage from the second Caliph of
Islam, Hazrat Omer bin-Khattab. Abdul Ali, a staunch secularist, is also the founder-Secretary General of the ‘Harmony India’ association, formed in 1990. In conversation with TSI’s N Asokan, the prince let us know his ideas on Islam in India

As compared to north India, communal violence and prejudices against the Muslim community is very muted in southern India. What are the reasons for this?

If you compare north India with the neighbouring countries, I would say that Muslims are safe and happy in India. And south India, particularly Tamilnadu, is very cordial and peaceful, even more than the north. In the south, Hindus and Muslims live together and are least bothered about communalism. Even when my ancestors ruled southern India as Nawabs of Carnatic, they contributed for our Hindu brothers. The nawabs donated land to build temples, and even today these temples stand there. For example, the Nawabs of Arcot donated a vast area of land for Srirangam Temple, near Trichirappali. Land was also given for constructing Kapaleeswar temple tank in Chennai, and also for Christian institutions. The St Bishop Heber College and St Joseph’s College in Trichirappalli also received our family's contribution. Around 250 to 300 years ago, the word ‘secularism’ did not exist and the nawabs and maharajas had a good rapport with subjects. In spite of all that happened - from Ayodhya to Bombay - India remained united. Only a handful of people are harmful, the whole religion should not be made responsible for an act. If a particular group is involved in terrorism, only that group should be blamed, arrested and brought to public. If Muslims are caught, why do you say Islam is a religion of terrorism? If Hindus are caught, would you say that Hinduism is a religion of terrorism?

A few days ago, opposition leader LK Advani said in Parliament, “Spiritual Islam is to be respected, but political Islam of this kind has to be countered and combated.” Some feel Islam cannot be separated from its political projection. Do you agree?

In India we are intolerant. So, politics and religion should be kept separate, because if both are combined, there will be major chaos. India is a great country. Allow a Hindu to be a better Hindu and the same goes for Muslims. Why should we go and destroy other religions’ places of worship? I don’t think a Hindu will ever say that one should go and destroy the place of worship. If he says so, he is not a Hindu, for Hinduism does not preach that. But what Ayodhya witnessed was 100 per cent political. If you ask me whether Islam has any political project, I don’t have any answer. Ask any politician …

Till the end of the 12th century, science, technology and mathematics flourished in the Arab world, which was much ahead of medieval Europe. But later, Europe grew by leaps and bounds whereas the Arab world got stagnated. The major reason, scholars say, is the decisive victory of secular forces over clergy in the European world. In your opinion, what needs to be done to change the present condition of the Muslim world? It is a very technical question. I’m afraid I can’t answer that one. But I can say that Arabs have done a lot in the fields of geography, algebra, etc. Muslims all over the world should wake up and apply their minds and most importantly, stand united. Throughout the world, Muslims are not united, even though some of the world’s wealthiest countries are Islamic.

The Rajendra Sachar Committee Report says that deprivation of the Muslim community is widespread in India and the worst compared to all other communities except Dalits. Is this self-inflicted or externally influenced?

It is true. If you consider the Muslim community in Madras, many are living in abysmal conditions. Unless they are educated they can’t move forward. I believe it is a self-implicated situation and not caused by external forces.

There are a lot of Tamil-speaking Muslims in TN. Is there any identity clash between Tamil-speaking and Urdu-speaking Muslims?

Both are good in their own ways. One thing is for sure, that Tamil-speaking Muslims are much united than Urdu-speaking; you can see the solidarity within them. But I feel that we are only Indians. Our religion should not be brought out of our homes.

Do Muslims need separate reservation in this country?

When other backward classes are getting reservation benefits why not Muslims? Theirs is also a backward community.

In Tamilnadu, places like Ambur and Vaniyambadi had great hubs of Urdu literature. but not any more. Why?

I also feel bad about this. Urdu is not only Muslim’s language; it is a national language. Many Hindus speak and write Urdu. Our premier Manmohan Singh, and former prime minister Vajpayee sahib write and read Urdu. The reason for the decline is that people feel studying Urdu no longer benefits them. Urdu-speaking people should come forward to save the language.

Do Muslims need a separate political party?

I used to tell my Muslim friends - you go and join national mainstream parties. Muslims can do great service to the nation if they join hands and work in national mainstream parties. Otherwise what have they achieved?

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

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