Monday, January 21, 2013

Book shelf 2013

Month

Titles

Jan

China Airborne           

Feb

Looking Beyond the Runway

Mar

A life in full flight

Apr

The 49ers

May

Fields of Air

Jun

Buying the big Jets

Jul

Stormy Skies

Aug

Foundations of Airline Finance

Sep

Aircraft Finance

Oct

Fault lines

Nov

Romancing the balance sheet

Dec

Banking book

 I hope to be able to read the following books this year. Of these, the only one that I do not currently have with me is Paul Clark's Stormy Skies.

Friday, January 04, 2013

My Bookshelf in 2012

 

 

So, here's how my bookshelf looked in the year gone by:

Land of Naked People- Encounters with Stone Age Islanders

This book on Andaman Islands completely changed my thinking what 'development' on the island should mean. Madhusree Mukherjee has done a commendable job (she has also authored another book called Churchill's secret war). Corruption amongst this Union territories administration was an eye-opener. I still believe responsible tourism in some parts of the Islands can co-exist with saving the tribal population on them but the means to get to this end is something that must see a radical shift. Mass tourism of the sort at say Phuket, which is close by, is not for the Andamans. Instead Maldives could be a role model for its development. The Airport at Port Blair (interestingly built by the invading Japanese during the Second World War) must be built up further and made into an International one.

The Racist guide to South Africa

This is apparently quite a popular book in South Africa, only I did not know about it until a friend urged me to read it and even provided a copy. Stereotypes versions of each race are explored and the book is just a delight to go through. Surprisingly, it is such an excellent guide for a foreigner to understand South Africans and their prejudices (and pride), much better than reading the politically correct 'Culture shock' guides. I even made a personal note to someday attempt a similar racist guide to India- one thing is for sure, it won't short of material.  

The Checklist Manifesto

Atul Gawande is a well known surgeon in the US and he writes as well. The year before this, when my daughter was born, I read through his first book: Better- a Surgeon's notes on Performance. I didn't need to read it to value checklists, but it just enhances one's belief in what systematic functioning could achieve. It is a good book to give to youngsters and I did give it to a young interning doctor at the hospital where my daughter was being operated, which is not to say it is only meant for medicos. It is equally useful for others.

The Real Heroes

This book is an offshoot of the TV program of the same name aired on CNN-IBN. It tells you of the life of ordinary Indians who, against insurmountable odds are something to make a difference to change status quo. Again, a hugely inspiring book and this is where I first learnt about Mary Kom, the boxer. Also about another 23 remarkable people, who inspire to act, to do something to change status quo and not just passively accept it. And those who think Indians don't love sport, read it to believe to what extent some of us have sacrificed.  Only for want of better resources these efforts haven't yet produced world champions.

The Tiger that Isn't- Seeing through the world of numbers

This is a fantastic book and the authors also had a popular BBC show. A good read for Journos who have make sense of number and do so in as little a space as possible. One sample: 'Average does not mean middle'.  

Adapt

Tim Harford is back. While this book disappointed me, I stuck through it. Worth a read.

The Great Arc- the dramatic tale of how India was mapped and Everest was named

This is John Keay's classic that I looked for 5 years before I found a copy in a seconds' bookshop, as the book was out of print. Imagine creating a GPS like system by physically measuring the Earth's surface in an age where they were no computers and all records were physically kept. This was such a remarkable feat and the effort it took was so humongous that it took decades to complete. Ironically, the man who started it all was not only forgotten, even his grave was remained unknown until the author discovered it. What a pity. The other thing that caught my attention while reading this book is the story of Radhanath Sikdar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanath_Sikdar), a Calcutta based mathematician who is much lesser known than Ramanujan for example, perhaps because he never stepped out of India. But he was known as the Computer in the Trigonometry survey of India program and he was the first one to calculate the height of Mount Everest. In an independent India, Mount Everest may well have been Mt. Sikdar. But George Everest, the one after whom the peak is named and was by far a more well known personality having stuck through the progress of the survey for years.     

Sway

This is a book on why sometimes, even the best trained amongst us, act in irrational ways. It is a remarkable book in the genre of the recent books on psychology.

What the Dog Saw

Malcolm Gladwell is by now a celebrated writer. This is his first book that I read- there are great chapters describing various things- of which how dogs interpret body language and hence the title. Definitely recommended reading for those uninitiated on Gladwell.

The Great Indian Middle Class

This is an old best seller by Pavan K. Verma that I picked up once again despite having read it before. It is still too early to say whether Middle class is changing its political behavior as to bring about real change in the Indian society, but we can definitely see churnings even as I write this. This book provides a great understanding of the Middle Class in the political sense and someone who expects to follow Indian politics must read it. For me, what was compelling was the parallels I could draw with whats happening in the South African society today and how the Black Middle Class here, although it does yet realize this, much less exercise it, has the power to change the politics of this country.

Butter Chicken in Ludhiana

This too was a bestseller released in 1995 and Pankaj Sharma's first book, he has gone on a long way, but this book, luckily for him, coincided with the time India was seeing its first real consumer culture. He managed to capture what this had done to the towns and cities across India in a very real way- in other words this is just a UAI (Usage, Attitude, and Image) study minus the marketing speak. If you want to understand the psychology behind the consumer in small town India, this is the book to read.  

Lucknow Boy

Journalism has boomed in India – there are 100's of me too TV channels as there are print magazines, so I thought it will be a good idea to read about the media. There is a lot of gossip, which has no purpose except keeping the reader hooked and but there is also a good sense one gets of how a publication functions and the balancing act its editor must perform despite pressures.  

That was it. It was a surprise to go through this list myself- not one of these books were on my planned reading list for 2012, but then I never let my plans overtake my instincts. 

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Connecting the Heart of India


Take a large map of India and spread it across the boardroom table to accommodate all of it. Next, take a black marker and draw a line beginning from the North in Kashmir across the middle of the landmass, through peninsular India close to the 82.5 degrees Indian Standard Time Meridian, down to the extreme South till you reach Kanyakumari, as if to dissect the country into two vertically equivalent halves. Chances are that the line will either go through or fall close by the cities of Delhi, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Bangalore in that order. 
Nagpur is widely considered the geographical center of India, as it is equiv-distant (about a 1000 km's) from the 4 major metros of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. It will be another half a decade before Nagpur gains some traction but go right ahead and mark it (unlike the politicians, who have largely ignored it), perhaps by drawing a small circle around it. Now draw a huge cross across the map such that the lines intersect each other at Nagpur. Think of it as a model of an hourglass. 2 Hourglasses in fact, placed at right angles to each other. Try and count the number of cities that fall inside these 2 hourglasses and have usable Airports. 
In 1962, a young 18 year old Yale student wrote a paper for an economics class, outlining overnight delivery services in a computer information age. He had chanced upon an article on the Indian Night Air Mail Service that was started in 1949 to deliver mail overnight in one of the world's first hub and spoke operation. Under this system, the four main cities of India also happened to form each of the four corners of a diamond- New Delhi to the north, Bombay to the west, Calcutta to the east, and Madras to the south. Connecting these cities was a central location at the city of Nagpur. He based his paper on this design and went on to found a company in 1973 that is called FedEx. His name is Fred Smith. Fed Ex rose to flourish but Nagpur, the very place that formed the basis of its idea, fell onto bad times with a decrepit, dilapidated Airport that saw fewer and fewer aircraft with every passing year. Soon it was part of the dusty bowels of India which only saw some action in an election year.
Meanwhile, Mahindra, an Indian auto-giant went on to buy an Australian aircraft company called Gippsaero. Gippsaero is much past its prime but does have a stable of small aircraft that are being revitalized with this new investment to serve the sub-20 seat aircraft market that many believe can take strong roots in India and revive Air taxi type commuter Aviation. For one, Mahindra Aircraft are tipped to cost one-third of their nearest rivals such as the ubiquitous Cessna's and Twin Otters and others.  Can Nagpur see its old glory days once again once these aircraft make it to the market in 2014-15? 
Have you counted those Airports inside the hourglass yet? I once counted more than 3 dozen usable airports within 1 hour of flying distance from Nagpur. Many of these are not in a good state and length of their runway is a limitation even for an aircraft like ATR-42 but Mahindra's GA-10 and GA-18 can easily negotiate these. 
First, the Airports need to be revitalized- not just the runways and the non-existent passenger terminals, but also the basic navigational equipment, equipment for passenger operations such as screening, security and other Airport staff needs to be mobilized. Most Airports in the region don't have any fuel storage facility, nor have any night landing facilities that negatively impact a passenger operation. There are several limitations but a completely new aviation market will open up if this happens.
The cost of operations are so high, that with a sub-20 seat aircraft, any company would need to have at least 20 aircraft before a sustainable scale could be achieved to continue its existence (despite the low set up costs with Mahindra aircraft).  With enough incoming traffic from metro cities on larger airline companies coming to Nagpur, a feeder that connects most of central India, can most definitely thrive. There are several examples of small feeder carriers (such a Cape Air) in the US. And Mahindra would need to ensure an eco-system that supports and nurtures this- for example, it simply can't expect to come and sell aircraft right away- because such an eco-system does not exist today, it will also have to invest in training facility for the pilots, engineers, technicians, mechanics, taking the burden off from a company that will operate its aircraft. 
This is not a new approach at all. Although Nagpur is "Hot and High" (Temperatures here reach a staggering 49 degree Celsius in the summer months and Nagpur is at the elevation of 310.5 meters) that makes operational efficiency of the aircraft suffer, conditions are slowly developing for it to be tapped as a feeder Hub for the North-South or East-West traffic flows that are large enough, to reconsider such a network design.