Zero Balance Sheet
Its not just about profit...
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Burning the track - A critique on F1 in India
This blog is really badly timed. Folks must be taking their coveted F1 tickets out of the vaults by now and gently caressing them, getting ready for the vroom vroom action kickstarting tomorrow. Wet gasoline dreams are finally coming true for those who have avidly followed the sport usually played out in Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Hong Kong, Monaco and everywhere else the roads are smoother than butter. F1 in India! Woohoo! Straight up, I’m sorry for bursting your bubbly with this piece, I hope you have a great time and are able to fully maximize the pleasure you derive from those expensive tickets.
I wouldn’t be too bothered about F1 coming to India if it weren’t for a couple of grinding truths. Firstly, India is going through a major energy crisis which is triggering hole in the pocket inflation. We import close to 70% of our crude oil requirements and up to 60% of our coal. The Government got rid of the oil subsidies earlier this year which left Indian state owned oligopolist Big Oil firms (who were posting ridiculous profits even when the subsidies were in place) with no choice but to raise the retail prices of petrol and diesel. Fuel price hikes lead to the rise of goods transportation and logistics cost of everyday items ranging from agricultural produce, building material to cosmetics. If the price of logistics goes up, so does the retail price of a single onion. As if India didn’t have enough supply chain problems arising from crumbling roads and supply chain fuck ups (40% of India’s agricultural produce rots away due to a virtually non existent cold chain compounded with the amount if time it takes to get something from farm to shelf), expensive fuel is the icing on the cake. For those living on less than INR 50 ($1) a day, every paisa counts and the problem is that the value of a paisa is being sucked dry on a daily basis. Close to 400 million people in India live below the poverty line and life is getting tougher for them, due to oil price linked inflation.
An average F1 car, regardless of which team it belongs to, consumes close to 100,000 liters of fuel (fuel efficiency of 1.2 km/liter) and emits 19 times more carbon dioxide (approx. 200 tons of carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere, in one season, compared to what a regular petrol car does, in an entire year. Even though this is a staggering amount, I’ll be honest, thats not the real source of my beef with F1. In the sport’s defense, any team that is serious about winning an F1 race has to address several engineering challenges in order to improve engine efficiency, i.e. aerodynamics, chassis weight, re-channeling the energy lost during braking from 200mph to 50mph in 3 seconds into rapid acceleration, as all these measures eventually lead to engine & fuel efficiency. In fact, the sport is all about driving engine efficiency research and development and F1 is getting more stringent, they are talking about reducing the F1 car engine size from 2.4 liters to 1.5 liters in 5 years, publicly declaring it as a top priority in order to reduce its carbon footprint.
However, the real emissions and excessive fuel consumption lies in F1 logistics and transportation, which is rarely talked about by media and aptly deflected by F1 public relations. Every F1 car, its spare parts, spare cars, mobile garage and crew are flown to destination. All in all, it is estimated that each team has a carbon footprint of 460 tons of carbon dioxide per race, excluding the amount actually emitted by the F1 car in one race (approx. 200 tones as mentioned earlier). Why can’t the cars and all the paraphernalia (pit girls included) be shipped? (shipping is also a major emitter, but not as much as jet logistics) Is time a constraint? Well maybe they should organize the F1 schedule in a way that venues aren’t that far apart or follow a logical/economical world travel pattern, similar to what budget travelers do. No one in their right mind would travel from London to New York via Dubai, unless you’re Paris Hilton (and thats not saying much). We live in a word of Six Sigma and operational process efficiency, come on people!
Secondly, India has the worst road safety record in the world. Close to 130,000 people died on Indian roads in 2010. Most of these deaths were speed related. Simply taking this particular fact into consideration, hosting an F1 race in India is the epitome of irony. Its almost as if the Rich Brat Sports Car Association (RBSCA) of Delhi took its grievances complaining about pot holed roads to the Central Government and lobbied hard for a place where they can burn their rubber, other than the red light district, and brag about the size of their engines to each other. Rumor has it that someone lost their Bentley Sports Coupe at a farmhouse Diwali cards party a couple of days ago… but thats another story.
Thirdly, considering the Herculean task of organizing an F1 event coupled with the billions invested in developing a track from scratch, the INR 8500 and upwards cost of a day ticket can be justified. That is close to what a farmer earns in a month. Sorry for hitting below the seat belt on that one. Lady Gaga is performing at the star studded glamor party at the circuit later in the evening, some from the RBSCA are paying INR 40,000 for an invite. Thats close to what some farmers earn in a year. Airbag in your face.
My intention is not to rain on India’s parade as it revels in it 8% per annum growth and gets drunk on its emerging superpower position. Those who have made it big want to party like its 1980’s coke fueled America, rightfully so, I’m sure their daddies have worked very hard. I simply ask, why host an exuberant and glamorous event like F1 this in a country that is energy deficient, has the worst road safety record in the world and the widest gaps (like continental drifts) of income disparity?
There is still a chance for inclusive and conscious economic growth in India, growth that is celebrated with humility and awareness of the fact that there is still so much to do. We are not THERE yet. Buying up farmland for cutthroat prices from farmers who are happy to get whatever money they can get their hands on and then developing a multi billion dollar F1 track is not development, its a swindle. Televising an event where cars accelerate up to 300 km/hour to people who can buy a license and can’t read is not entertainment, its suicide.
Finally, please enjoy growth as it is important to celebrate milestones, but its even more important to read those milestones or risk running down those who stray onto the track as you get closer to an over-populated area.
The track is burning.
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Legalize it!
When you reach a breaking point and you’re just about to shatter, a deep thought resonates, that thought being the truth, the acceptance of a reality in which you live. Crash!! What just smashed into billions of pieces is your idealism, your naiveté and your innocence.
Bitching about what i’ve had to go through in the past couple of months will sound like a baby who’s diaper isn’t being changed every hour. There are sections of society out there who are enduring so much more, who don’t have access to the financial resources I do, and yet they don’t feel like the system owes them a damn thing. Not going into specifics, I have come to believe that the anti-corruption movement is a stunt, glorified by folks who started off with honest intentions but became hungry for attention after unanticipated fervent fan following and media publicity. Also, the movement seems to have been highjacked by the equally corrupt opposition party that is filled with limp dick Hindutva dinosaurs. All of a sudden everyone has woken up and has an opinion about corruption, look at me, I care about this rot in the system and I have a cure for it. Piss off. The rot is so deep that nothing that you or I intend to do will make a difference. To prove this point, try to get any kind of work done from an Indian Government (Sarkari) office by following the stipulated guidelines and rules.
The golden rules of process virtuosity - Don’t offer a bribe and don’t give a bribe when blatantly asked for one. See what happens. The positive, the wannabe agents of change must be rolling their eyes by now and raising their righteous fists - Nitin, the path of truth is difficult, it takes time, you must persevere, the job will eventually get done, you have to have patience, meditate upon it, pray to Zeus, but don’t give in to the easy route of paying a bribe. Really…. be patient? Wait for months on end for something that I am immediately entitled to is just fine? This is India? This justifies every single inefficiency that every ordinary citizen has to bear to be granted their entitlements?? I’m sorry, but no, I will not endure the humiliation of waiting for hours, weeks, months, and then be told to come back next week because they can’t find my case in the mountains of dusty files sitting behind them (the irony lies in that the Indian GDP is bolstered by the growth of BPO and IT industries). Scratching his balls and picking his ears with his scooter keys, you can hear the hollow thoughts of the government midget. ‘Go away, you ordinary citizen, you are insignificant, your parents lied to you, you are not special, you are just another number in this country where everyone waits in chaotic clusters and pushes through, out of necessity, to get their work done. I’m the man, you need me, i don’t need you. Look around you, you insect, what are you? What price will you pay for being treated with respect? What price will you pay me so that I can pay off my karmic debt that predestined me to work in this cesspool?’
If I had a choice, I’d kill you now to free you from your life of misery so that you default on your karmic repayments and end up in the devil’s torture chamber, as his gimp. But I’ll settle for shoving a 500 Rupee note down your throat so that your glutinous belly is satisfied. Take it, relish it, rub your nipples and take joy in knowing that you have broken me and my western values that have been marinated in the expectation of getting something in return for the taxes I pay. From now on I will use the best middlemen that money can buy, they serve a purpose. They are the small cog in the locomotion, they make it move like a gorilla on heat, without them, nothing works. I have finally come to terms with this reality. Middlemen will be my best friends. I am going to corrupt with all my might, to prove that the system works. You win. Hands up.
There is just no cure for corruption, you cannot cure greed. Setting aside all the negative connotations attached with the word, we must accept the fact that greed is embedded deep in the source code, an algorithm that speeds up our decision making in the atomic age. We want things yesterday, we are not satisfied with what we have, we compare ourselves to classmates from college and siblings. How much is he earning now? How did she get the money to travel the world? Why am i not as successful as he is? Is there something wrong with me? Maybe i need to get another job….. or maybe i need to fuck the system in some way to get my piece of the pie. Or maybe i just need to make someone else’s life miserable. Greed and sadism are siamese twins.
Please don’t lecture me after reading this, it won’t mean a thing to me and it won’t change a thing. I support the legalization of corruption. Include middlemen/brokers into the formal system, they have informally been a part of it for centuries. You cannot get rid of them. Grant them licenses (can they be bought?). If people want their Sarkari work done faster, they pay a fee, a Tatkal. That Tatkal or pool of money can be shared equally amongst the babus and office peons at the end of each month to supplement their meagre incomes. This is not a cop out, this is a real solution, an acceptance of who we are, which is essentially………. impatient and corrupt.
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Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood by Leon JO
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Everest’s ice is retreating as climate change grips the Himalayas
Mention melting and Himalayas to almost any glacier expert working in the region, and they will instantly plead for caution: please do not repeat the mistake of thinking all the ice will be gone in the next few decades. “It was just nonsense,” said Alton Byers, the scientific director of the Mountain Institute. “It’s absolutely staggering when you look at some of those high mountains. They are frozen solid, at minus 15 or 20 degrees, and they are going to remain that way.”
At lower elevations, it’s a different scenario, Byers acknowledged. Low-lying glaciers are melting, and far more rapidly in the past 10 or 15 years than in previous decades, scouring out new landscapes and creating a whole new realm of natural disasters for countries that are some of the poorest on Earth. (The Guardian)
Photo: Glacier AX010 in Shorong, Nepali Himalayas. (Koji Fujita/Nagoya University)
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A Veil of Smoke
In this piece….. I take on tobacco.
Yes how very predictably contradictory of me. But anyway, what really triggered these bio-chemical reactions in my little peanut are the annoyingly covert yet extremely tactical strategies being implemented by one of the largest tobacco companies in India, inspired by the multinational ones I’m sure. I’ll try my best not to name names, I don’t want to suffer the legal wrath of doing so. Instead I’ll be as cryptic as Zero Balance Sheetly possible.
Various tobacco control laws came into effect back in 2002 which prohibited the Smoksters from using traditional advertising mediums to showcase the phenomenally cool effects of smoking. I do miss Jackie Shroff (a well known but appalling Indian actor who was our version of the Malboro man) running a parkour marathon, kicking an entire gang’s ass and cooly sparking a 555. He inspired a generation of Indian men to aggressively resolve their disputes, have a smoke to calm down…. and repeat. Following the laws being passed, Indian Big Tobacco resorted to the shadiest and most mind numbingly influencing forms of advertising and branding: Business Sustainability/CSR, Brand Stretching & buying out Industry Associations and NGOs. This should not come across as a thesis so i will be as brief as possible, not throw out accurate stats, and yet attempt to point you in the right direction for you to seek the truth yourself. Go make up your own hazy minds.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become the bane of my existence, not only because it is most certainly a perfect front for the most offending corporates to stay operational and mitigate the impact of their unforgiving business plans, but also because it is my profession which is completely misunderstood where I spend all my time preaching about what it could be. CSR, or investments in social development projects like the e-choupal, have an underlying purpose of branding and have been thoroughly exploited by fag firms. CSR, in its early stages of conception and theory was meant for the corporation to find its true social and environmental purpose, enabling it to make money in a responsible manner by innovating their product and service suits. CSR was supposed to shape and define the corporate strategies of the 21st century. Unfortunately, it has been relegated to PR and Green Marketing, a simple hammer like tool that has been hijacked by every single business sector in order to generate goodwill amongst the target audience and bang away degenerative business plans. There is one Indian tobacco company that is actually carbon neutral, water positive and bettering the lives of millions of farmers. I guess that justifies that fact that their primary business is to process, package and distribute death.
Brand stretching is one of the most innovative business strategies adopted and implemented by tobacco companies (not to mention alcoholic beverage manufacturers). Brands and sub brands can be reused to launch products in alternate industries. W*#ls lifestyle and John Pla@#rs are fine examples. For those who don’t know, these are extremely popular clothing brands (with some fairly forward thinking and intriguingly innovative designers on board) launched by some of India’s foremost tobacconists. Wi1ls Fashion Week, as the name of the event suggests, is the largest fashion event in India. Bollywood superstars, maybe unwittingly, are brand ambassadors of these tobacco clothing brands, whilst hosting TV dance and talent shows, using every goddamn opportunity to advocate a clean and healthy living. Fair enough, when millions of sponsorship Rupees are flashed in front of your eyes, you can let the morals slide down the toilet. The cancer stick posse has even moved into processed/packaged foods (Bi%go Chips), Real estate (Laburn^m, Gurgaon) and Hospitality (They have LEED Platinum rated green buildings!). Okay, so they are diversifying and arguably trying their level best to move onto greener pastures, but the fact of the matter is that up to 80% (sorry, i broke my promise of not getting into stats) of their revenue portfolios are made up of cigarette, gutka (chewing tobacco) and sheesha tobacco sales.
The most interesting strategy of them all, which i believe is the ultimate checkmate, is the sponsoring, partnering up with and corrupting the most reputable Chambers of Commerce/Industry Associations to form Centers of Sustainable Business Excellence and placing agents into senior/Director level positions. These joint ventures/centers act as powerful lobbying fronts, influencing government policy and further entrenching the sustainable reputation/perception of the tobacco company in the industrial, political and consumer landscape. These Centers then donate funds to multinational NGOs to get them on their good side. Here i cannot provide links, just do some digging yourself.
Government can be accused of being in bed with Big Tobacco since a ridiculous amount of tax money from ciggies sales fill up the coffers, but i don’t think it’s fair to make that assessment mainly because the Government spends a lot more in free healthcare, healthcare that is provided to folks who suffer from a range tobacco related respiratory diseases and….*drum roll*…. cancer (Indian Government Hospitals are diabolical, you pay/bribe to get the bare minimum service and walk out with your life. Indian public sector corruption will be taken up in another blog/rant). So Government income from tobacco is somewhat balanced, if not overshadowed, by expenditure of healthcare. My point is that if the Government was earning more from tobacco than it spends on healthcare, you could fairly deduce that Dr. Manmohan Singh is Mogambo, Chidambram is Daga and Pranab is Teja. For those who haven’t seen Mr. India: Mogambo, Daga & Teja are straight up cult Indian cinema gansters that operate from some obscure Island off the Bombay coast (Elephanta?) and have access to nuclear weapons (sorry for the divergence).
If we carry on with the ridiculous yet entertaining Mr. India Conspiracy, then you could also link the excessive profits earned by the Pharmaceutical Industry, which pathetically attempts to cure cancer and other tobacco related diseases, to the Shady Big Tobacco and Government nexus. So there you have it, Big Tobacco is linked, albeit indirectly, to Big Pharma. I just thought I should throw that thought out there, its your mind, stretch it out as far as you want to.
There is one final itch on my lower back for you to ponder over, but not me, I’ll just scratch it. Apparently one of the small number of business sectors to have been least affected by the global financial crisis is….*tabla roll*…. the tobacco industry. Click here for the story. If we make money, we smoke cigars, if we loose money, we smoke cigarettes, if we have no money, we smoke beedies (indian rollies). So the moral of the story is, keep a Zero Balance Sheet to breath in some clean air (in urban India, yeah right!) and take a peek from behind that veil of smoke. Sorry for ending this on a smug note ;)
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Thank you for your answer on my post about the paper I had to write. Thanks to your tumblr I enden up writing 700 words :|
Asked by confusinglaughs
No problem at all. If you need any help again in the future regarding climate change and global warming, feel free to hit me up.
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A Google for your thoughts…
For the first time in its relatively short yet dominating history, Google disclosed its total electricity consumption and therefore, its carbon footprint - 1.5 million metric tons of CO2!!
To stay continuously operational, Google churns enough electricity to power 200,000 homes. Each search consumes 0.3 watt hour of electricity where an average user would be burning 180 watt hours per month, as calculated and sounded proudly by the carbon management/public relations/marketing & corporate communications team at Forza Google. This disclosure puts to rest all the crazy rumors that started spreading like wildfire, about 2 years ago, which claimed that each search burned as much juice as a kettle, to boil 1 liter of water! Thanks for the misinformation Blackle! I am now going to believe everything the goliath search engine’s propaganda machine is finally throwing out into the public sphere. Click here to read the whole story.
Why does Google burn so much coal and wind power (which could be used for powering homes instead)? Its quite simple, to give you and me a gazillion results for 1 search, in 1 millisecond. On deep retro and introspection, i don’t really need a billion results for 1 search, i’m okay with 3 pages (even though i never go past the 2nd page because the results start resembling the abstraction of my dreams). Also, i don’t mind getting my results with a 2-3 second delay. Life needs to slow down anyway.
Okay, some will argue that Google comes out with some quality searches. I believe this is debatable and needs to be further explored, so i am going to use Yahoo for a week and compare my levels of satisfaction. Its time to break Google’s monotonous mould and give the Yahoo folks some much needed business, before they sack another CEO.
As for you, do think about your contribution to Google’s carbon footprint. Indirectly, it is the footprint of humanity’s impatience in the 21st Century.
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The Polar region could be unfrozen in just 30 years!
Things just get easier and easier for oil and gas exploration companies.
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This is a poster of my new exhibition… enjoy!!
In a world twisted by the pursuit of all that holds monetary value, this is my little space to explore all else that lies in between and adds value to our existence.
