My journey with podcasts!

Indicast and Bizination

I had my first brush with podcasts in 2007 and 2008. I had just moved to Singapore and this podcast called  'Indicast - Indians on India' caught my eye. It was a podcast with two guys  - Abhishek Kumar and Aditya Mhatre - just talking to each other about news and happenings in India at the time. I found their style really relatable and for most part I thought it could have been me talking to my own friends. I remember listening to episodes about India's 2007 world cup performance and Pratibha Patil becoming India's first woman president, so I suppose it must have been in late 2007 and throughout 2008. 

Through Indicast itself I was introduced to their sister podcast - Bizination which was a discussion about business news in India with one of the hosts of Indicast and another lady whose name I now do not remember.

As a 15-16 year old, I did not particularly enjoy Bizination much but I do distinctly remember that it was on Bizination that I had first heard a discussion on the WTO and the Doha round of negotiations. It is testament what a disaster the Doha round has been, that more than eight years later when I was 80% through with my law degree and attending a summer school on WTO law organised by the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and the World Trade Institute, Doha round negotiations and compromises on agricultural subsidies were still current and relevant topics of trade law and policy.

In any event, I do not know why but I seem to have stopped listening to Indicast, Bizination or indeed any podcasts sometime in 2008 because I started attending Meridian Junior College in 2009 and I do not recall listening to any podcast when I was there. I hear that Indicast went off the air for four years but has now relaunched in 2020. I haven't tried the new episodes 

 Extremities

In 2019, I began spending a lot of time watching stuff on Youtube. Mostly on weekends, but also often during the commute to and from work. So much time infact that I even subscribed to Youtube Premium. Yes, really, I pay to watch the same videos which are available to everyone for free, I just get them ad-free and with the ability to play Youtube in the background if I do not want watch the video and just listen to it instead. 

No idea why (probably because the recommendation engine just keeps recommending stuff similar to what you have watched before) but I watched a lot of short informative / documentary style videos on Youtube. Many of these videos were from the channels - Half As Interesting and Wendover Productions. It was here that I saw them promoting their new podcast called - Extremities. 

It was around this time I had decided to make most of living in Bandra and made up my mind to go on morning walks at Bandstand or Carter Road everyday and I realised that listening to a podcast might be better than listening to Youtube videos play in the background without actually watching the video. 

Honestly, the decision to try Extremities was a fantastic decision. Extremities has three seasons of 5-6 episodes each which take you on a journey to three extremely remote places - Pictarin Islands, Svalbard and St. Helena. The episodes elaborate on just how remote these places are, their fascinating histories (shipwrecks, revolts, imprisoned emperors, international shipping routes, international treaties  and what not), the present challenges these places face and their unique economies. 

I absolutely loved every episode of Extremities and I would highly recommend everybody to try it. Just make sure you read the episode notes and listen to each season in the correct order.  My favourite episode was the second one in the series about Pictarin Islands titled 'Pitcairn's Beginning, Boat, and Bureaucracy'. 

2 THE PiNT!

I just heard episodes two through four of this podcast yesterday. This is really a podcast that I should have listened to much sooner because the host is none other than my close friend Gaurav Palkar. If you are that lone person who has been reading this blog for more than seven years, he is the person who appeared as Mr. GP in this post when we ate Emu Kheema. It has been a long time since then and today he and his cousin are the men behind 2downbeerco which has been turning heads by winning two jury awards at Tapped, one of India's biggest craft beer festivals.

 

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A post shared by 2 Down Beer Co. (@2downbeerco) on Jul 13, 2020 at 12:16am PDT

2 THE PiNT is the podcast where these Beer Bros educate us about beers. I used the word educate here only because I learned a lot from the podcast, the podcast itself is nothing like a lecture. It is an engaging conversation about a different style of beer in each episode where they cover its history, variations and interesting anecdotes. My favourite episode is Episode 3: "I like Wheat Beers" which explores the style that is extremely popular in India's growing craft beer scene. I particularly enjoyed the story of origin of Hoegarden as well as the etymology of the word dunkelweizen. It is also the only episode on the podcast (so far) where the Beer Bros are joined by a guest.

If you are more interested in drinking their beer rather than hearing them talk about it, you can order it here. I highly recommend the Basil Blonde and Dark Matter.

Personal Finance - Paisa Vaisa and the Capitalmind podcast

You probably know about Paisa Vaisa if you live in India and are even remotely interested in podcasts. Anupam Gupta, more popularly known as @b50 (which is his handle on twitter) is the best podcast host in the country and the podcast has been crowned  'best business podcast' at the Asia Podcast Awards. Every episode is Anupam talking to experts about personal finance issues. Over more than 250 episodes so far, he has covered practically every aspect of personal finance ranging from pensions, insurance, mutual fund investing, stocks, real estate and more recently crypto. His conversational tone and style of questioning makes each episode very engaging. The episodes which I have enjoyed are - the series on Fixed Income, episodes with Nithin Kamath, the one on behavioural aspects of investing and many others which I cant recall right now. One note of caution though - there are many episodes which are essentially founders talking to Anupam about their companies and products. If you are listening to one of those, it is advisable to verify and research further yourself. For instance, Minance which is now accused of some unsavoury and possibly illegal dealings was featured on the podcast. Separately, on an episode released on 29 Apr 2019 (as per Google Podcasts), the founder of Finzy touted how their platform had no NPAs (defaults of more than ninety days) when some borrowers were clearly on the verge of being NPAs by then, as is clear from finzy's public disclosures which disclosed 2 NPA accounts just 12-13 days later on 10 May 2019.  

 

The other personal  finance podcast that I really enjoy is the Capitalmind Podcast where Deepak Shenoy, the founder of Capitalmind, discusses a host of personal finance and macroeconomics issues. He also occasionally does episodes on topics making headlines such as the PMC Bank debacle and the launch of Bharat Bond ETF. While he also has guests from time to time, my favourite episodes have been the ones in which he is talking himself. I think Cpaitalmind's episodes titled How to buy a Mutual Fund? and Should you buy a house?

are great guides for beginners but the one on Stubborn Cost of Capital in India would be my favourite. It was quite eye opening for me.

Wondery Podcasts - Business Wars, Scandal and Sports Wars

During the initial days of the Covid-19 induced lockdown in India, the only time I got out of my house was to walk around the building for exercise. Walking several rounds of the same less-than-200m path was rather infuriating and drove me to find some podcasts that I could listen to while walking.

I was hoping to find something similar to Extremities but I finally stumbled across American Business Wars from Wondery where over every 5-6 episodes we hear a story of an epic business rivalry. The episodes super well researched and very well produced in a manner that the story is not only narrated but some parts are actually acted out as dialogues between the narrators. I loved the Starbucks v Dunkin series and the Nintendo v Sony series and there are also many others that I intend to try. Listening to this also took me down the rabbit hole to many other Wondery shows. Particularly interesting are Sports War which is on similar lines as Business Wars (I liked Serena v Venus and Brady v Manning) and American Scandal which tells the stories of outrageous scandals. I particularly liked their recounting of the Exonn Valdez oil spill and the fraud at Enron.

One warning though - all of Wondery's shows on any podcast streaming site are full of ads for their other shows and these ads can get really annoying after a while. It is all a part of their plan to get you to subscribe to Wondery Plus, their ad free subscription service. So far I have been able to resist.  

Ex Machina

With his columns in the Mint and the book on privacy, Rahul Matthan has always been at the forefront of the public discourse on the intersection of law and technology / privacy in India but what sets the podcast apart and what I particularly love is the various stories that Ex Machina has told about the adoption / development of technology in India. The episode 'Platforms for Society' had Pramod Varma, the Chief Architect of Aadhaar narrating the tale of early decision making regarding Aadhar. The most recent episode 'A Delicious Irony' has some fabulous stories about how Indian government once had a 'science plan', how India had an unimaginable lead in the field of statistics and finally about the circumstances which unwittingly gave birth to India's massive IT services industry, none of which I knew before. However, the most fascinating of all was the story of  the 'Simputer', a personal computing device developed in India and intended to be a shared device which featured in the episode 'The Sharing Solution'. 

Listening to podcasts

During my first brush with podcasts in 2007-08, the way to listen was by downloading episodes in iTunes on my laptop. It was only sometime in 2008 that I got a third generation iPod nano and could finally listen to podcasts on the go. And by on the go I mean having transferred the downloaded files from iTunes in the laptop to the iPod using a cable. 

Things have changed so much now that I literally cannot even remember when was the last time I transferred any audio files from computer to any device using cables. This is ofcourse the age of streaming and I listen using Google podcasts. Spotify seems to be the app of choice for several other folks that I know. Given that I do not subscribe to Spotify for music or even use its ad supported version, I do not see the point of downloading and using it just for podcasts. So far, choosing Google podcasts over the more popular Spotify and Apple podcasts apps has not been a problem because till very recently, all podcasts have been platform neutral and available on all podcast players. However, the recently launched "Michelle Obama Podcast" is a Spotify Exclusive. Techdirt makes a good case that 'We Shouldn't Call Michelle Obama's (And Joe Rogan's) Proprietary Exclusive Audio From Spotify A 'Podcast' Any More' if it is not platform neutral. Spotify's exclusive shows are likely a consequence of its new Streaming Ad Insertion technology which may allow it to play personalised ads rather than hardcoded ads which are a part of the audio files across platforms. Whatever the reason, there seems to be a real risk that podcasts / audio shows going exclusive to a platform like Spotify may down the line lead to a situation corresponding to the Netflix - Prime - Disney situation in streaming video and we may have to get two or three subscriptions to be sure that our favourite show is at our fingertips. I am not  looking forward to that.

Book Review: The Undeserving Boss by Hasina Saiyeda

 

The Undeserving Boss by Hasina Saiyeda
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had such high hopes from this novel. The blurb speaks of a "a scam so profoundly integrated into the company’s system that if neglected, could bring her father’s reputed business down to its knees" and promises "riveting corporate drama". The cover is interesting too!

I was expecting a scam of epic proportions. Something more outrageous than accounting frauds at Enron, Satyam (and Wirecard more recently).

I was outraged but not at the purported scamsters. I was outraged that the novel has no 'riveting corporate drama' whatsoever. Forget about a boardroom showdown, the novel does not even mention the words board of directors or shareholders because the so called 'company' in the novel is some sort of proprietary concern with not more than 5-6 employees. Also the scam, is just a case of theft. I seriously wonder if the person writing the blurb has actually read this novel or indeed any corporate thriller at all.

While this was bad enough. I wish I could report that atleast the plot and writing is interesting. It is a story of Ella, the narrator who takes over her dad's business, uncovers rampant theft and resolves the mystery of who the thief is while also falling in love in the process. It has been written as if the author wanted to write an amateurish detective novel. The narrator's sidekick does indeed refer to himself as Watson a number of times as they try to solve the mystery of the scam / theft. There is also some family drama in the narrator's life which the book could have done without.

The writing does not involve any sort of detailing and is almost comically vague, imprecise or just wrong at times, like when the narrator guessing a password and opening a hidden excel file is described as 'hacking'! Similarly all descriptions of how business is conducted at the company seem like they were written by a school going kid who has the most rudimentary understanding of how businesses are run. It wasn't even remotely comparable to how any other business thriller (or any other book for that matter) which I have read.

Did I mention that the resolution of the mystery only happens largely by chance and only in the last 10-15 pages of the novel? While the plot continued to disappoint, I hoped that a book set in Calcutta would atleast take me on a ride through the city describing its sights, smells and unique approach to life which is unlike any other Indian city. However, no such luck either. The characters drink cutting chai, have naan and chicken, and there is simply no reason why the book is specifically set in Calcutta. Lastly, the book has been poorly edited and has sentences like - The tea arrived. It was smocking hot. I felt the smoke coming out of hot terracotta mugs. - I really hope that the author gets a good editor for her future novels.

The only saving grace is that some (not all) of the interactions between the narrator and her best friend seem relatable and I guess cliché enjoying romantics may find cute, the dialogues between her and her love interest.

All in all, please avoid this book at all costs.

Click here to view my other reviews on Goodreads.

Book Review: India's War by Srinath Raghavan

India's War: The Making of Modern South Asia 1939-1945 by Srinath Raghavan

AN AMAZING READ! I have always been fascinated with the second world war history but always felt that many documentaries and books, the Indian Army, the largest volunteer force did not get its due. So I was really looking forward to this book and it did not disappoint at all.

Of the military aspects, it was very interesting to read about the East African campaign and how the experiences in Eritrea affected the troops and the commanders who later went on to fight in other theatres. Another interesting aspect I did not know about previously was how much back and forth happened in terms of the planning for the operations in Burma and the American-Chinese angle to those preparations.

To my mind however, what makes this book a must read is not the account of the campaigns but the detailed account of the political context and happenings in the political sphere including attitudes of various leaders and their reaction. It was interesting to read about the 'empire of the raj' i.e. the British Indian government's views of its strategic interests around the world as well as the tussule between New Delhi and London on issues of financing the war including the sterling balances. The book also opened my eyes to the outsized influence which American public opinion and Roosevelt had on Churchill and the India office during the war years. Lastly, ofcourse the chapters about the war economy and those which elaborate on the thinking of the Indian nationalist leaders at each of the stages i.e. declaration of the war, Cripps mission and the post war cabinet mission as well as Indian representation at Bretton Woods and UN, are also interesting.

All in all, make sure that you read it if you have slightest interest in the history of the Indian Army and the political developments during the war years in South Asia. 

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

View all my reviews on good reads.

Transactions in India - truly SIMPLE!

Earlier this year, this tweet from 'Simple' the new age bank, popular amongst millenials in the United States caught my eye.

How many checks would a checkbook check if a checkbook could check checks? Well, 25 checks to be exact. What does this mean? It means paper checks are officially here!! Get yours for $5 right in the app or online. pic.twitter.com/EsdPkyU4Gc

— Simple (@simple) May 7, 2019

I had a good laugh. US$5 sounded like a ridiculously excessive charge for 25 cheques. Every single bank account I have ever had in India, yes even the one I had as a student with miniscule minimum balance requirement, gave me 25 cheques every quarter for no extra charge at all. Though I must admit that I have only ever used cheques to cancel them and hand them over to financial institutions, schools or employers as a means to share my bank account details. I have not yet exhausted the initial set of 25 cheques I got from my bank for my newest bank account that I opened in 2016.

This made me wonder whether anyone still uses cheques in India and if so for what purpose. My very unscientific Instagram based survey yielded the following results.

Just as I suspected, more than 65% of the respondents reported not using cheques at all in the last six months while of those who do use cheques, more than half use it for rent payments and to share bank account details using cancelled cheques. 

This prompted the question why was a new age bank in the United States offering cheques to its customers? Surely no one in the land of the silicon valley would have any use for cheques - or as they would spell it - checks, right?

Turns out that Simple's move to offer paper cheques was coupled with it discontinuing a service called 'bill pay'. A startup bank not allowing you to pay bills? Something does not appear to be quite right. Ability to pay bills online is a service which even the public sector banks in India offer despite being (in)famous for not-so-great online banking portals. The mystery was unravelled when I found out what innocuous sounding "bill pay" actually was -

We know it may seem like we are taking a step back in time, but when you use online bill pay, you are technically sending a check to the recipient. Paper Checks will put you in control - we will make sure your funds are safely tucked away, and ready to use via Expenses. ^RC

— Simple (@simple) May 19, 2019

I kid you not. When a customer selects "bill pay" online on a bank website or application, the bank (including until recently this new online only bank) writes a physical cheque and sends it by snail mail to billers who then presumably take that physical cheque to their own bank to deposit it.

I could not in a million years have imagined that the utilities and banks in the United States would be using a system so primitive and inefficient. However, it so appears that the entire payment ecosystem in the United States is no match for what we have in India. On Instagram, 104 of my followers reported paying bills by truly online modes (such as UPI, wallets, net banking) as opposed to just 1 who reported paying by bills by cheque.

Be it for payments to merchants or to friends, today I have atleast three digital options in India - UPI, wallets and NEFT - all of which are free to use. Further with UPI (Unified Payments Interface) the transfer is instantaneous and can be initiated quickly not only online but also at any local shop due to the now ubiquitous payment QR codes.

If I am paying a friend, I just input his/her UPI ID on my UPI app (I use GPay but my friend could be using any other), I initiate a transfer, I enter the authorisation password and that is it. Within less than five seconds I get an SMS saying that the money is deducted from my bank account and my friend gets an SMS saying it is deposited into his/her. Though I feel silly typing this out, I just want to emphasise that instant in India really does mean instant.

Compare this with Venmo, which arguably is the most popular payment tool in the United States. While Venmo to Venmo payments are instantaneous, sending money from Venmo back to a bank account takes 1-3 DAYS! You would think that it is a great development then that this August, Venmo has started offering an 'Instant Transfer' option ...

...but "instant" for Venmo means thirty minutes and for that privilege you need to pay Venmo a massive 1% fee which seems absolutely ridiculous to my Indian brain used to truly instantaneous and free transfers.

Infact, with the tremendous competition between UPI service providers like GPay, and PhonePe, the Indian consumer is spoilt for choice with not just free transfers but expectations of cashbacks. While there are many fair criticisms of venture capital funded cashbacks, the basic premise that the user should be rewarded for using a digital payment method rather than an administratively cumbersome cheque or MDR heavy debit card or credit card, is a sound one.

I also hear from my friends living in the United States that merchants or outlets accepting digital payments such as Venmo are nowhere as ubiquitous as in India (or atleast Mumbai) where nearly every shop and restaurant has a QR code allowing UPI users to scan and pay directly from their own bank account to the merchant's bank account.

So it is time now to add 'great payment systems' to the list of awesome things in India that are unheard of in the United States (other items on the list are water in the toilet and requiring a permit to buy a handgun).

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Parting thoughts 
1. While UPI will never kill the credit card because it does not offer credit, it is entirely likely that UPI may make debit cards obsolete. If this State Bank of India initiative succeeds I think other banks could follow soon.

2. I hope NPCI takes Rahul Matthan's advice and makes UPI international. Not only will it be able to provide truly instant transfers to the Americans, it would have the added advantage of stopping Facebook's Libra in its tracks.

3. The simplest justification for the United States not having sophisticated digital payments systems is that nobody there wants to pay using anything other than physical plastic credit cards / debit cards. But even for cards, the systems used in the United States are incredibly primitive. See this video for a simple explanation.

House of Cards Season 5 Episode 1 No-spoilers Review

Anticipation

Since its debut in 2013, each successive season of House of Cards, has always been very eagerly anticipated by millions of fans. The show has been the most talked about political drama series over the last four years.

One of the key elements of the last season's finale was an investigative article on possible crimes committed by the president being written by Tom Hammerschmidt and published by ‘The Washington Herald’, the  leading daily newspaper of the House of Cards world. Upto the last season, Frank Underwood had the unparalleled ability to shock us with his unethical ways, thirst for power and seemingly unconventional or unstatesmanlike behaviour. This year however we are in the Trump era. Just five months into the Trump presidency we already have Washington Post articles about his unethical behaviour while his statements and tweets are often far from usual standards expected of world leaders and always very dramatic.

How to be more dramatic than what is being shown on the daily news cycle and whether to draw parallels to the Trump presidency was always going to be a challenge for the House of Cards Season 5. 

The season 5 trailer, released earlier this year did manage to add to the excitement in the run up to the season premiere.

Action

The episode picks off from the previous season finale, making it very clear that ICO (House of Card world's equivalent of ISIS) is going to remain a focus in this one as well. A significant part of the episode is about the search for the ICO terrorist. One of the iconic lines of season 4 finale was Frank saying  “War. Fear. Brutal. Total.”  and in season 5 we have Underwoods implementing their strategy of fear by ruthless manipulation of the events around them to fit their own objectives. 

The other theme which carries over immediately into the second episode is the fall out of Tom Hammerschmidt’s article on Frank’s alleged crimes and Frank’s attempt to keep the story from expanding any further. We are treated to scene of Frank tossing away the copy of the Herald with that article which was featured prominently in the season 5 trailer as well.

Analysis

Much of the fourth season was about an embattled Frank trying to cope with the crises facing his presidency and the election campaign. The manipulative Russian president, his extremely good looking opponent with a picture perfect family, and Claire’s increasingly ambitious demands were all situations Frank was forced into. What feels fresh about the opening episode of season five is that once again we have Frank setting the agenda and doing things his way. This also seems to be the way in which the writers are distinguishing themselves from the Trump administration which is lurching from crisis to crisis. However, the episode does include a sort of a travel ban which seems really familiar.

Having become the vice presidential candidate already, Claire also seems to be aligned with Frank’s objectives in season five and playing a key role in his plans. In that way the episode brings back the memories of the initial seasons especially when Claire and Frank go on to the White House balcony for the final scene of this epsiode.

There is also much to reflect about after watching the episode. Art afterall so often mimics reality. It made me think of the extent to which political leaders closer to home are using fear and nationalism to further their own agenda. Frank Underwood encourages the sort of sentiment which is on the lines of ‘’Either you agree with me or you are an anti-national”, throughout the episode.  Eerily familiar, isn’t it?

Watch the House of Cards Season 5 premiere on Zee Café and let me know what you think about it! #HOConZCafe

Frank Underwood is coming to India with the television premiere of House Of Cards Season 5 on Saturday, 3rd June, 5 PM onwards, only on Zee Café!

This post is a part of Indiblogger.in's Homecoming of Terror activity.