The good news is that there are some of the species still around, people who spot a demographic, behavioural, fashion, or business trend before it happens, in the process making fortunes, sometimes their own, and at other times those of others. The bad news (and it really couldn't get any worse) is that inclusion in the club (of trend-spotters) comes with having spotted one big trend; and historical evidence suggests that there is a handful of individuals who manage to consistently spot mega-trends. In the mid-1990s, the emerging trend of note was mobile telephony (although it is unlikely that anyone could have anticipated that India would boast the lowest mobile telephony tariffs in the world); in the late 1990s, it was off-shoring or the global delivery model (GDM) of software services if jargon is your thing; in the early 2000s, it was the generics (drugs going off patent) opportunity in the us and the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) boom, although the last was actually a logical extension of the GDM.

The thing about trends, is that, if you want to make money off them (a fair objective) without making trend-spotting your business - in the world of commerce, this is the exclusive purview of venture capitalists and private equity execs - you must first understand the rules (well, it is akin to a game). There are four: the first is that all trends have a lifetime; there is a point when a trend ceases to be one. This doesn't mean that off-shoring and the GDM will suddenly go out of fashion. It just means that it may no longer be profitable for a company (for competitive reasons) or investors (for financial reasons) to enter the business or invest in it. The second is an old one, actually the concept underlying most financial transactions: there is an inverse relationship between risk and return. The third is almost a truism: no two trends are alike. And the fourth is a near-truism: no two companies seeking to leverage the same trend do so in similar fashion (this is something that has a bearing on their success or degree of it). The rules, when applied with retrospective effect, show why there can be just one Infosys Technologies or Bharti Tele-Ventures or (although pharma is a four-letter word in the trend-spotting business right now) just one Ranbaxy Laboratories. They also serve to highlight the challenge of spotting trends. Then, as any venture capitalist would have you know, it is fun.

Perfect Information

Spitzer: Keeping it to the straight and narrow

There could be four million people out there who know that a Delhi-headquartered business school with a presence across India, Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) is at war with several bloggers. Four million, assuming that India has 40-million internet users, and that one in 10 reads blogs. For the benefit of others, here is a quick lowdown, although this piece actually has little to do with either the bloggers (specifically) or IIPM. A Mumbai-based youth magazine JAM, broke a story on how IIPM did not appear to be all it claimed to be. The magazine's editor wrote about this on a blog, another blogger picked it up, IIPM threatened to sue both (and actually filed a case against the magazine citing factual inaccuracies), even called up the employer of the latter and allegedly (according to the blogger) threatened to stage a protest outside its offices, the blogger quit (or was fired, depending on which version you go by), other bloggers got into the act, one tapped the Election Commission's site and discovered just how much the founder of IIPM, who contested an election sometime back was worth, another went public with the alleged educational qualifications of the current dean, and others did other small reports based mostly on their opinions and, sometimes, on facts they had unearthed. The one thing that emerges from all this is that there is enough information on the www on anybody that can be dug out by anyone who possesses some net-savvy, a fast connection, and a dash of patience. The existence and availability of this information is a boon for the small man (or the layman), but a bane to organisations. Elliot Spitzer's crusade against USA Inc, for instance, was largely based on the latter's incriminating e-mail (or web) spoor. Not all the information available online is accurate, but unlike the print or electronic media, the net has a self-correcting mechanism. Habitual net-users consider it their responsibility to point out such mistakes and responsible sites correct them (one online encyclopaedia actually allows users to edit entries). Indeed, the growing ubiquity of information is one thing that should encourage corporates, even the government, to stick to the straight and narrow. Not having an online presence isn't an option in this day and age (and even if a company doesn't have one, there is no guarantee that its suppliers, customers, even employees won't write about it online). Threatening to sue people is a bad PR move. Not having anything to hide seems the best bet.

Right For The Left

Karat: When I say no, I mean no

With 61 seats in the 14th Lok Sabha, India's Communist parties, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) wield considerable power. They support the reigning United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 'from outside', a term popular among politicos and the mainstream media in India that may be roughly translated into: lots of authority, no responsibility. The Left, as the Communist parties are referred to, are opposed to most things: the dilution of the government's stake in public sector banks, labour-reforms, the disinvestment of the government's stake in public sector enterprises (make that profit-making public sector enterprises; the Left has no problems about selling off lemons), FDI (foreign direct investment) in retail, and just about anything else. Under a new head, Prakash Karat, the General Secretary of the politburo of the CPI-M, the party has actually become even more strident than it previously was, in its opposition to economic reforms. So, how should the UPA react?

This magazine believes the Left brings a unique set of skills to the table, one that the UPA should leverage to its, and the country's advantage. Here's why: over the years, the government of the day in India has been quick to sign multilateral agreements. For instance, India was among the earliest entrants to the World Trade Organization (it signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947); China entered the organisation only in September 2001, wringing from it several concessions that were pre-conditions to its entry; and Russia has stated that it is in no hurry to enter the WTO (it is likely that it too will extract its pound of flesh). India was among the first countries to sign the agreement over the adoption of Basel II norms in banking, norms that enforce stringent capital adequacy norms on banks (the European Union accepted these recently, and the us is yet to do so). And when India decided to move to a product patent regime in pharmaceuticals in January 2005, it did so with retrospective effect, effectively recognising patents filed since 1995. So, where does the Left fit into all this? Put simply, no one says no as well as the Left does (nor does no one say no in as many ways as the Left does). Put the Communists in charge of multilateral negotiations and India will eventually get a great deal (as evident from China's experience with WTO). That would be the free-market kind of thing to do.