Hussain's Pain India's Gain

A section of the intelligentsia is troubled by M F Hussain's acceptance of Qatari citizenship, a situation supposedly aggravated by our government's disinterest to bring him back. They feel we have lost a great artist. Whether Hussain deserved the kind of backlash for his paintings, and whether the methods of the protesters were legitimate is not the point of this post. My point is rather pragmatic. What did we lose?

So Hussain will continue to paint from wherever he is, and if he is the master painter they proclaim him to be, he is sure to attract attention and awards and whatever it is that painters are honored with. With the threat of the so-called Hindu fundamentalists out of the window, he can confidently push his envelope and paint Gods, Goddesses, Demons, Angels, maybe even humans in whatever manner, and by the simple rule of probability, one of them is bound to hit the bullseye. Should that happen, our media will promptly claim credit highlighting his Indian association, for he learnt and practiced the art here. This is more than what can be said about certain other artistes in whose success we brazenly bask. The most recent instance being a website that has proclaimed that Desis have taken international TV by storm. Notwithstanding that "Desi" is generally used in derogatory sense, none of the actors featured in this list have ever lived or practiced in India, to the best of my knowledge. Its not too far fetched to imagine that the media will claim credit for a novelist, who on a flight from Shanghai to SF, happened to scratch his behind at the precise moment that the flight entered the Indian airspace, and went on to write a bestseller. If thats a stretch, what about the coverage of Amla's Gujju connections following his brilliant performance in the test series?

The way I see it, Hussain will now paint all he wants, and by extension, will come up that one odd monstrosity which will thrill the art world while we will sit back and rejoice that India has produced a master painter. What am I missing?

I mint?

Great ideas sound exactly like foolish ones - until they work that is. That's my favorite Scott Adams' quote.

The thought occurred to me when I saw the ad for imint on the back of a bus. It is a rewards system where you earn points every time you spend, which can be later redeemed for gifts or vouchers. Nothing radical about the concept itself. Credit cards have been doing this for a long time now. But here's what puzzled me. Is there an opportunity for a third-party to make a business out of it?

I dont know for a fact how imint works, but my guess is they have consolidated the rewards system of some retailers and cards so that the customer is able to get points for all transactions in a single "currency". So no more 100 points with ICICI, 250 points with HP, 50 points with Jet with none of them sufficient by themselves to do anything. Now, we get 450 imint points that is good enough to get a mug or something.

I guess imint adds some value thru the economies of scale it gets by consolidating the rewards system. So that explains why ICICI, HP and Air India have hopped on. Their points now make some sense to customers. But how would imint get new customers? For instance, why would HDFC or Jet sign on? Its destructive to both HDFC and ICICI because their customers wont see any difference in using either card, thus resulting in mutual cannibalization. In fact, I wont be surprised if ICICI has an deal that prevents imint from signing on competing financial institutions.

So how can imint grow? Well, by encouraging customers to spend more. That I think, personally, is a friggin stupid model to run a business.

Credit card fraud

Enough has been said about the less-than-clean practices of financial institutions that perpetuated the housing crisis. Mortgage lenders have been accused of predatory lending practices and selling home loans to people that could afford them in the first place. Yet, the people running the mother of all scams continue to mint money.

The business plan of the credit card business would sound hysterical if it werent true. Create a card that lets people spend money they dont have, then charge banks for issuing these cards and merchants for accepting them!! Sounds villainous, but you have to give it to the ingenuity of Visa and Mastercard. They have managed to drive the world's largest economy into a trillion dollars of debt. In some ways, the credit card culture can be blamed for the reckless nature of US homeowners in taking on loans they knew nothing about.

If the idea was just convenience, couldnt they have just created a card that lets people spend their own money? I realize I am giving the impression that the top guys at Visa and MasterCard went on a strategic retreat for a week and racked their brains to come up with this fraud, which is probably not the case. Most likely, the card started out with the noble cause of offering convenience, but we took it to a totally different level. Of course, the debit card is ubiquitous today and is outpacing credit cards, but thats only 'coz we have realized our folly.