Indicast - All Podcasts

For the last decade or so, Dubai invoked awe and admiration for the pace at which it could lead a creative growth which was not limited to building sky scrapers, but other garnishing like man made islands, artificial arctic like winter, etc. All these developments were funded by the Government through its investing arm, Dubai World which announced that it could not pay off the $59 billion loan to the banks. The stock markets came crashing down. While that happened, we also talk about the companies from India which are raising money to carry out their expansion activities. The recovery has begun.

AMD and Intel are the fiercest of competitors. And we've been taught that almost all is fair in love, war and the corporate world. Intel took it a bit too far and had to cough up 1.5 billion USD to AMD for uh cheating. This is what they call out of court settlement. In News from India, the government is on a gold buying spree from the IMF. Toyota, the Japanese auto major has put its papers in F1. We sign off this episode by talking a bit about Inflation waking up after a rather prolonged period of hibernation.

Some would say 17 years is a long time for a report to be publised especially if its a judgement coming from the Supreme Court for a genocide like a riot which killed 2000 people (reported figures) in the Babri Maszid riot (read: pogrom). 26/11 is one year old now and Maharashtra has set up a Special Task Force called Force 1 for combating any terror strikes. In another news, pilgrimage places are becoming sex hot spots. The biggest exam in town, CAT goes online and sends servers crashing.

When two Sachin fans get together to talk about Him, you might expect a rather one sided conversation, but Aditya surprised me with his take on the recent unintended controversy that Sachin kicked off in the midst of his 20 years of international cricket which was spiced up a little bit with his seemingly innocent and matter of fact remark about Mumbai being a part of India and that it belongs to everyone equally. In other news, in the assembly elections, MNS MLAs beat up Abu Azmi for not taking his oath in Marathi. In Bihar, relief cheque from the state government to certain mishap victims bounced.

A poet, a journalist, a sportsman, a publishing editor of Indias premier newspaper, a photographer, a traveler, a film maker - all in one lifetime and still going strong. If this were a quiz question, one needn't require any options to choose from. The name that comes at the top of one's mind is that of Pritish Nandy. In this point blank chat with Aditya, Nandy gets candid on his colourful career so far right from his schooling days where his poems would get him plaudits from accomplished writers and female fans to his stint as a successful producer of cult films like Hazaron Khwaishein aaisee.

'Shashi Tharoor Jeetega Zaroor' was the campaign slogan that his supporters chanted when a precocious Tharoor was running for the president of his college union. He won then and three decades later, in 2009, Dr Shashi tharoor won again, this time as the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and a member of the Indian Parliament from the Trivandrum constituency in Kerala. In this podcast, Dr Tharoor talks about his experience as a diplomat at the UN and the eventful transition to Indian politics. In his beautiful and typical story telling style, he shares anecdotes about how he not only connected to the masses on the Internet but more importantly went the extra mile to win the hearts and minds of the labour class. He also shares his views on the unintended controversy that Twitter gave birth to.

Scams are back. Three guys from the 1983 batch of Wharton Business School have been accused of orchestrating one of the biggest hedge fund scams in a long time. This is a text book case of Insider trading. But not all news is sad news on the Wall Street. Most companies have posted Quarterly profits. In India, Lakshmi Mittal, the CEO of Arcelor Mittal threatened to quit all his projects from Orissa and Jharkhand. Ritika has strong views on the whole issue of land allocation for such projects which causes a lot of friction between the locals and the state government. In some sad news, Ranjan Das, SAP India head died of a massive heart attack.

The General Elections results are out and Congress is back in power in major states. Aditya describes his experience of watching Rahul Gandhi deliver a speech in Adityas home town, Panvel. In other news, Rajdhani Express was hijacked by Maoists but the only relief was that no one was hurt. In education, Kapil Sibal makes it even more difficult to get into an IIT college in India. ISRO and IAF are fighing a healthy battle to send a representative into outer space.

Happy Diwali Folks. In this unusually lighthearted episode, we talk about Adityas voting experience in the recently concluded state elections. Then we move on to talk about a very serious issue of Obama winning himself an Oscar. Or was it a Nobel? In Sports, Serena Williams posed nude for the body issue of ESPN magazine. Somewhere in India, a couple was asked to tie a rakhee because the Village Panchayat did not approve their love.

This episode of BiziNation is dedicated to the Internet. Lately, social networking sites are showing signs of finally making some money USocial, an Australian site is selling friends to companies who can send targeted messages to its audience. On the Operating Systems front, Microsoft launched its new OS with an a very questionable but an effective ad campaign. Yahoo! is spilling $100 million on advertising in the traditional media, a sign of growing desperation. Google on the other hand has launched an ad exchange program on the web much like the stock market in the physical world. Also, back home, an IIT entrepreneur launched Phokat Copy, a service which subsidizes photocopies for students in India.