New Business Models to Curb Black Money

Now that Swiss Central Bank has declared the total liabilities of Swiss banks towards Indians in the tunes of $2.5bn, will anti-black money brigade believe the data?  I don’t consider myself part of anti-black money gang, but is Switzerland only safe destination for money laundering.  I will not question the authenticity of this data but is this data point sufficient?  I learnt from my macro-economics professor that black money is a parallel economy by itself.  If this is the case what can be done at policy level (not just by Finance Ministry but by other ministries too) to fix loopholes to curb the growth of this parallel economy. 

I feel that cash transactions are major culprit of growing black money in the system.  In real estate transactions, more than 50% of amount exchanged is cash transaction, which is not recorded anywhere.  For grocery shopping at local kirana stores, most of the transactions are cash transactions and grocery store owner declares hides most of the income leading to increase in black money in market.

Can the new banking infrastructure be created or existing one be upgraded to include 100% of Indian population and ensure all the transactions are banks transactions rather than cash?  Can the new business models like mobile money, micro payment and virtual money help reduce the cash transactions? 

Inception

I promised to write regularly but somehow in the middle of so many things, I was not able to blog.  Last weekend I watched Inception (I don’t know why I didn’t watch it till now) and I was blown by plot of the movie.  It is one of the best movies (of course after Matrix Trilogy) I have seen in recent past.  The concept of extraction was difficult to comprehend for me and Cobb executed inception.  Beauty of the movie was the detail of each and every step that Cobb and his team planned during inception of idea to Mark.  Three levels of dreams (Cobb eventually ended up going to fourth level) were mind-blowing.  What intrigued me more was how Nolan was able to conceptualize such brilliant plot.  A big salute to Christopher Nolan’s plot and direction!!! 

This movie left me in a hangover for more than one day and left few doubts in my mind.

·         In the end, was Cobb still in a dream or in reality?
·         Was the whole movie Cobb’s dream?  Cobb was in limbo for a long time and he might have created projections to keep himself busy.

My opinion is the Cobb was still dreaming and he didn’t come back to reality but there are different opinions about this on other forums.  I think I will have to watch this movie again.  Moreover I need to have the collector edition of this movie.

First day of tie at office

Today the Tie season started at Infosys.  It was good to see people wearing different kinds of tie - thin, broad, short, long, with top button open, etc.  I loved wearing tie today and it was a good feeling.  So for the next 9 months, I will have to wear tie on first 2 days of the week.

Movie Saturday!!!

If Friday was heavy dose of beer, Saturday couldn't have been better with heavy dose of movies.  I asked the movie library  manager to send me Inception but just because it was in circulation, I asked him to send some good thrillers.  He sent me Chloe and D-13 Ultimatum.  I verified if they are good thrillers and he said these are very good movies (after watching these movies, I will never go with his recommendations!!!).
On Saturday afternoon I started watching Chloe and it was one of the worst movies, I have ever seen.  I have huge respect for Liam Neeson but I hate him when he chooses these kind of movies.
D-13 Ultimatum is out and out action flick.  Bullets, Fights, Chases and spider man kind of stunts were the main attractions of this movie.  Fast paced movie with lots of bad guys and few good guys too.  Given a choice I would not like to watch it!!!
After these two back to back movies, I went to watch "Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap" with my family in the night and that completed heavy dose of movies on Saturday.
Any predictions for Sunday.  I bet on heavy dose of shopping!!!

Bbuddah Hoga Tera Baap

My wife has been insisting me since last 2 weeks to watch a movie.  This week Amitabh Bachchan's action flick (I would call it total entertainment flick) got released and I thought it is a good choice because I can even watch it with my 2 year old naughty son.
This movie was out and out Amitabh's movie.  He had larger than life character and nobody in the movie had role for more than 10 minutes while AB was there on screen all the time.  His wore bright floral shirts in most of the scenes.  His actions scenes reminded of angry young man of 70s and 80s.  His intensity in action scenes was as good as ever.  Movie had good dose of comedy too.  Some of the scenes in the movie like climax were very hilarious.  His comedy timing is impeccable.  I feel that movie could have been edited little better and some characters like Raveena Tandon, her daughter and landlady could have been eliminated.
All in all this movie is good for one time watch.  I am sure you will not be disappointed.

Jimi's Beer cafe

Three of us (3 idiots!!!) from IIMA met at Jimi's Beer Cafe on Friday.  It is a cool place to have beer.  In case, you want to have anything else, this is not a place for you.  The ambiance of the place is appealing with bean bags and low height tables.  Strongly recommend for a beer party.
I feel that they had very limited options to eat.  Only good thing we found was chicken tikka and that was also slightly uncooked.  But 3 towers of beer made up for everything.  Now I realize, why was I feeling so light!!!  On an average each one of us had 3.5 liters of beer (Almost five 650ml bottles).  These stats are making me dizzy again!!!  If my personal trainer reads this, he will quit working on me :)
Even though I lost my PAN card over there, it was a good experience.  I reached back home at 11 and directly went to bed.  Got up with a bad hangover but timely breakfast helped me get over it quickly.
Amazing start of the weekend!!!