Cyclone Hudhud

Live: Cyclone Hudhud crossing Vizag coast - The Hindu

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Bulletin on Hudhud - 1

Bulletin on Hudhud - 2

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Cyclone Hudhud is an active tropical cyclone currently threatening the eastern coast of India. Hudhud is the strongest tropical cyclone of 2014 within the North Indian Ocean. The storm is expected to make landfall near the port-city ofVisakhapatnam on October 12.

Hudhud originated from a low pressure area that formed under the influence of an upper-air cyclonic circulation in the Andaman Sea on October 6. The system drifted westward and intensified into a depresion and subsequently into a deep depression the following day. Owing to favorable environmental conditions, Hudhud intensified into a cyclonic storm on October 8. Its convection consolidated in the following hours, and Hudhud became a Severe Cyclonic Storm on October 9. The following day, the storm developed a microwave eye feature and was upgraded to a Category 1 tropical cyclone by the JTWC and to a Very Severe Cyclonic Storm by IMD. Hudhud underwent rapid deepening on October 11 and was classified a Category 3 tropical cyclone while it developed an eye feature.

The name Hudhud, suggested by Oman, refers to the bird Hoopoe.

reference : (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Hudhud)

Does Advertising create artificial desire?

A very basic criticism faced by any marketer or an ad agency is that Advertising creates artificial desire. To explain artificial is lack of information given by the advertisement itself or making people feel unpleasant to sell products.

To explain it better let me give you few examples.

Automobile companies run Advertising campaigns without sharing information on the risk of the product. Automobile companies do position their brands without giving details of the safety issues and standards of their products. The Automotive Industry Standards (AIS) are the automotive technical specifications of India. AIS have been slammed for not enforcing passenger safety norms. As a result, vehicles sold in India often do not meet safety requirements, Some of India's best-selling small cars have failed independent crash tests conducted by a global car safety watchdog -Global NCAP. This shows the gap in advertising communications run by leading advertising agencies in India. India is the world's sixth-largest car market but India is also the country with the highest number of deaths due to road accidents in the world. So the question asked for it is - Is it not the responsibility of these automobile companies to warn us about their safety standards?

Another major issue raised is the Advertising campaign of fairness creams. These campaigns also become a point of contention when it comes to artificial demand creation by these campaigns. These campaigns makes the person with dark completion  feel unpleasant by promoting bias against those who are not fair, resulting in a artificial desire for the fairness cream.

In modern civilization brands are part of our life.  Our relation with brands is growing all the time. Brands engage with us and us with them. The brands we care about are invited into our lives, facebook is one of many. So it is fair that we question these brands. Today social media and even traditional media stand as a watch dog. My writing this blog explains this. The impact of social media has changed the way brands communicate. People have more than just legal mechanism to voice their concerns. With social media everybody can have their opinions and more importantly make them public.

There are top agencies with big brands involved so are these advertising agencies really at fault in each of these cases?

It's important to give advertising agencies an equal opportunity. Reputations are built over years, but can be destroyed by some hasty or irresponsible comment by opinion leaders. Negative news travels faster than positive.

We have to understand that these advertising agencies are part of our society and people working aremuch like the general public. Messaging work is by Indians for Indians - even if adapted. This has its own effect on the work produced that is the advertisement produced has social shades in it with social sensitivity. These agencies have log term goals and want to stay in the market for long. So they do not want to create controversies as they need to be stable and be in position to serve there customer for long.  Short-termism can hurt them; they are, thus, very conscious of it. They also have strong legal and commercial departments, which ensure everything is done cautiously. No one wants negative publicity or legal action.

We must understand that advertising is a indicator of culture. Much as marketing and advertising talk about shaping consumer attitudes, beliefs and behaviour, they most often ride on something that exists in culture and society. 

The continued existence of the desire for fairness in Indian society cannot be attributed to fairness creams and their promotion. It comes from a deep cultural indoctrination of "fair is beautiful and good" and "dark is ugly and bad". For example, consider our mythology and the way it is communicated in Indian society. It is either through comic books such Amar Chitra Katha or through the oral tradition of grandparents telling stories to grandchildren. Shakuntala is shown and described as fair and beautiful; the rakshasi (female demon) is dark and ugly.

It is agued at times that the fairness creams are actually providing a solution to this deep-seated bias and helping to build a colour-equal society. This does not mean that advertising should continue to drive colour discrimination.

Now for the safety standards it needs to be balanced with the evaluation of the safety standards maybe at times local products that often are much less safe.

the car example mentioned branded and marketed products need to meet up to standards laid down by the law of the land, and this could evolve over time. Making false claims is wrong; but making the product pluses exciting is the job of marketing and advertising - and that right needs to be protected.

As society evolves, marketing will get more aggressive; messaging and brands will become more omnipresent.

Most professional marketers - big advertisers - are sensitive to cultural. Hurting consumers is not going to benefit them in the long run. So we must take advertisers perspective in mind. 

Indian bank's vulnerability - Rising share of non-performing loans in total advances.

Indian economy is at a dangerously critical period. This is post economic restructuring in the last decade (2000 -2010). Very clear reflection of this vulnerable situation is in the share of non-performing loans in total advances.

So… !!  What is 'Nonperforming Loan - NPL'?

A sum of borrowed money upon which the debtor has not made his or her scheduled payments for at least 90 days. A nonperforming loan is either in default or close to being in default. Once a loan is nonperforming, the odds that it will be repaid in full are considered to be substantially lower. If the debtor starts making payments again on a nonperforming loan, it becomes a reperforming loan, even if the debtor has not caught up on all the missed payments.

It is surprising to hear this even when I am saying it is after the economic reforms. You may get more surprised if I tell you that these reforms were meant to check and correct the problems or weakness and correct remove the problems leading to more NPLs.  The Idea behind these reforms was to have freedom over financial prices and financial activity for banks and have less control from the state. Bank resources where pushed towards priority sectors of government and it was felt that this may restrict banks to chare more from their customers and restrict their growth. An obvious priority sector for the government was Agriculture. It was also considered and assumed that agriculture being “weak” sector will result into more NPAs. So the advocates of reform movements advocated against and were able to get banks greater flexibility and autonomy in deciding what they did with the resources they mobilized. However, the share of credit required to be lent to sectors categorized as priority remained at 40 per cent of total advances. This gave rise to the notion that NPAs in the banking system have been rising because of the pressure to stick with priority lending. Advocates of liberalization assume markets to be efficient and allocate resources best and that deficient or inferior economic outcomes are the result of policy measures such as subsidies to the poor and priority sector lending.

C. P. Chandrasekhar in his article in ‘The Hindu’ states this from a number of features of the vulnerability of India’s banks revealed in answers to parliamentary questions tabled in the December 2013 session of Parliament.

The first (revealed in answer to parliamentary question no. 283 tabled in the Lok Sabha on December 6, 2013) was that between the periods ending March 2011 and September 2013, the ratio of gross NPAs to gross advances in public sector, old private sector and new private sector banks put together, rose rather sharply from 2.4 per cent to 4.3 per cent (Chart 1). Further, an overwhelmingly high share of the increase in absolute NPAs was on account of NPAs in public sector banks. While the share of the public sector banks in the increase in advances between end-March 2011 and end-September 2013 was 76 per cent, their share in the increase in absolute NPAs was 96 per cent. The ratio of gross NPAs to advances even declined in the case of the new private sector banks. This seems to strengthen the view that it is the state-controlled public sector that is the problem, requiring disinvestment in addition to financial reform to correct it.

 He further argues - Is the use of the public sector banks to deliver more credit to agriculture and the medium and small scale industries or to push priority sector lending in general responsible for this tendency? The evidence says it is not. More than 80 per cent of the increase in the ratio of non-performing assets to advances is on account of NPAs located in the non-priority sector. While there has been some increase in NPAs in advances to agriculture and the MSMEs, these are small in comparison (shown in the Chart below).

Was the problem the flexibility and autonomy given to public sector banks managers under liberalisation that they were unable to handle? Here too the answer seems to be no. One of the notable features of bank lending has been the sharp increase in the share of advances directed to the infrastructural sector. In fact (according to figures from answer to question no 1584 tabled in the Lok Sabha on December 13, 2013), even in the short period between March-end 2011 and September-end 2013 the share of lending to infrastructure in the total advances of public sector, old private sector and new private sector banks put together rose from 13.2 to 15.7 per cent. Moreover, public sector banks account for as much as 86-88 per cent of the advances of the three segments of domestic banking to the infrastructural area.

But he says –

On the other hand, there is evidence that many infrastructural companies are not delivering the revenues and surpluses that they were expected to yield resulting in defaults in payments of interest and amortisation due on bank credits, leading to debt restructuring and subsequent default. As at the end of March 2013, 23 per cent of all debt restructured under the corporate debt restructuring (CDR) mechanism was to infrastructural projects.

So what is the problem here and what is the real reason and the issues for rising share of non-performing loans in total advances. It was definitively not this priority landing. The major problem was the landing to various capital intensive projects which are more risky and more illiquid government wants to promote private entry into the infrastructural area, either independently or under the PPP framework, it has been pressurising the public banking system to support that process. The result has been much higher public, when compared to private, bank exposure to infrastructure.

Gross NPAs to advances by bank groups (source:The Hindu)

Public Sector NPAs by sector (per cent of gross advances) (source:The Hindu)

TABLE B7 : BANK-WISE AND BANK GROUP-WISE GROSS NON-PERFORMING ASSETS, GROSS ADVANCES AND GROSS NPA RATIO OF SCHEDULED COMMERCIAL BANKS - 2013
(Amount in `. Million)
Banks / Bank Groups	As on March 31, 2013
	Gross NPAs	Gross Advances	Gross NPAs to Gross Advances Ratio (%)
	(1)	(2)	(3)
Public Sector Banks
State Bank of India	511894	10785571	4.75
State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur	21195	584737	3.62
State Bank of Hyderabad	31860	920231	3.46
State Bank of Mysore	20806	459805	4.53
State Bank of Patiala	24530	754598	3.25
State Bank of Travancore	17499	683885	2.56
State Bank of India & its Associates	627784	14188827	4.42
Allahabad Bank	51370	1309363	3.92
Andhra Bank	37145	1001378	3.71
Bank of Baroda	79826	3328113	2.40
Bank of India	87653	2929679	2.99
Bank of Maharashtra	11376	763972	1.49
Canara Bank	62602	2439358	2.57
Central Bank of India	84562	1762337	4.80
Corporation Bank	20482	1193540	1.72
Dena Bank	14525	664569	2.19
Indian Bank	35655	1071559	3.33
Indian Overseas Bank	66080	1643665	4.02
Oriental Bank of Commerce	41840	1301862	3.21
Punjab & Sind Bank	15369	518434	2.96
Punjab National Bank	134658	3152440	4.27
Syndicate Bank	29785	1494227	1.99
UCO Bank	71301	1315691	5.42
Union Bank of India	63138	2119111	2.98
United Bank of India	29638	697081	4.25
Vijaya Bank	15329	705135	2.17
IDBI Bank Limited	64500	2001347	3.22
Nationalised Banks $	1016834	31412861	3.24
Public Sector Banks	1644618	45601688	3.61
Notes : $ Includes IDBI Bank Ltd.
Source : Department of Banking Supervision, RBI.
TABLE B7 : BANK-WISE AND BANK GROUP-WISE GROSS NON-PERFORMING ASSETS, GROSS ADVANCES AND GROSS NPA RATIO OF SCHEDULED COMMERCIAL BANKS - 2013 (Contd.)
	(Amount in `. Million)
Banks / Bank Groups	As on March 31, 2013
	Gross NPAs	Gross Advances	Gross NPAs to Gross Advances Ratio (%)
	(1)	(2)	(3)
Private Sector Banks
Catholic Syrian Bank Ltd.	2109	89760	2.35
City Union Bank Ltd.	1731	153429	1.13
Dhanlaxmi Bank Ltd.	3803	78963	4.82
Federal Bank Ltd.	15540	451946	3.44
ING Vysya Bank Ltd.	1214	318916	0.38
Jammu & Kashmir Bank Ltd.	6438	398537	1.62
Karnataka Bank Ltd.	6389	254165	2.51
Karur Vysya Bank Ltd.	2859	297059	0.96
Lakshmi Vilas Bank Ltd.	4599	118923	3.87
Nainital Bank Ltd.	673	21746	3.09
Ratnakar Bank Ltd.	259	63952	0.40
South Indian Bank Ltd.	4339	320140	1.36
Tamilnad Mercantile Bank Ltd.	2145	163661	1.31
Old Private Sector Banks	52098	2731197	1.91
Axis Bank Ltd.	23714	1989007	1.19
Development Credit Bank Ltd	2150	67530	3.18
HDFC Bank Ltd.	20481	2413061	0.85
ICICI Bank Ltd.	96078	2984164	3.22
IndusInd Bank Ltd.	4578	446416	1.03
Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.	7581	489186	1.55
Yes Bank Ltd	943	470869	0.20
New Private Sector Banks	155525	8860233	1.76
Private Sector Banks	207623	11591430	1.79
Source : Department of Banking Supervision, RBI.
TABLE B7 : BANK-WISE AND BANK GROUP-WISE GROSS NON-PERFORMING ASSETS, GROSS ADVANCES AND GROSS NPA RATIO OF SCHEDULED COMMERCIAL BANKS - 2013 (Concld.)
(Amount in `. Million)
Banks / Bank Groups	As on March 31, 2013
	Gross NPAs	Gross Advances	Gross NPAs to Gross Advances Ratio (%)
	(1)	(2)	(3)
Foreign Banks
AB Bank Ltd	57	638	8.93
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank Ltd.	0	5199	0.00
American Express Banking Corp.	446	17230	2.59
Antwerp Diamond Bank	503	8106	6.21
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.	281	24048	1.17
BNP Paribas	163	77536	0.21
Bank of America	0	76230	0.00
Bank of Bahrain & Kuwait	523	7215	7.25
Bank of Ceylon	15	1014	1.48
Bank of Nova Scotia	579	77890	0.74
Barclays Bank	5543	88793	6.24
China Trust Commercial Bank	522	3019	17.29
Citibank N.A.	13587	526288	2.58
Commonwealth Bank of Australia	0	1652	0.00
Credit Agricole Bank	6	24048	0.02
Credit Suisse	0	4550	0.00
DBS Bank Ltd.	5820	141111	4.12
Deutsche Bank	1544	224999	0.69
FirstRand Bank	237	2831	8.37
Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd.	6408	362305	1.77
HSBC Oman S.A.O.G	0	51	0.00
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China	0	3372	0.00
JP Morgan Chase Bank	244	53689	0.45
JSC VTB Bank	0	885	0.00
Krung Thai Bank	0	160	0.00
Mashreq Bank	0	547	0.00
Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd.	1253	55565	2.26
National Australia Bank	0	1636	0.00
Rabobank International	0	5899	0.00
Sberbank	0	370	0.00
Shinhan Bank	0	12062	0.00
Societe Generale	7	17576	0.04
Sonali Bank Ltd	15	199	7.54
Standard Chartered Bank	38801	648317	5.98
State Bank of Mauritius Ltd.	350	8380	4.18
The Bank of Tokyo - Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd.	0	68395	0.00
The Royal Bank of Scotland	2796	127770	2.19
UBS AG	0	9741	0.00
United Overseas Bank Limited	0	358	0.00
Foreign Banks	79700	2689674	2.96
All Scheduled Commercial Banks	1931941	59882792	3.23
Source : Department of Banking Supervision, RBI.

Evolution of the human race – mutation of DNA in modern times. Is our DNA changing?

By Rudresh Pandey

DNA can be put side by side to a language, and particularly a written language. DNA enables the information to be transferred on, from one generation to another but interestingly there has been no noticeable change in human DNA, brought about by biological evolution, in the ten thousand years of recorded history.

It is also important to note that the amount of knowledge handed on from generation to generation has grown enormously. This is an information age and with internet there is an information and knowledge expulsion in past few years.

How is this age of knowledge and information of human race related to DNA of human beings?

The DNA in human beings contains about three billion nucleic acids. However, much of the information coded in this sequence, is redundant, or is inactive. So the total amount of useful information in our genes, is probably something like a hundred million bits. One bit of information is the answer to a yes no question (or a on or off light bulb this is how our digital information works).

By contrast, a paperback novel might contain two million bits of information. So interestingly a human is alike 50 Mills and Boon romances. A major national library can contain about five million books, or about ten trillion bits. So the amount of information handed down in books, is a hundred thousand times as much as in DNA.

Even more important, is the fact that the information in books, can be changed, and updated, much more rapidly. It has taken us several million years to evolve from the apes. During that time, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, is about a bit a year.

By contrast, there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information, here too, is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA.

This has meant that we have entered a new phase of evolution. At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information.

In the last ten thousand years or so, we have been in what might be called, an external transmission phase. In this, the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage, has grown enormously.

Some people would use the term, evolution, only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes. We may be no stronger, or inherently more intelligent, than our cave man ancestors. But what distinguishes us from them, is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, over the last three hundred. It is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race.

Possibility of life in universe. Are we alone? Are aliens real?

By Rudresh Pandey

If the argument about the time scale for the appearance of life on Earth is correct, there ought to be many other stars, whose planets have life on them.

Some of these stellar systems could have formed 5 billion years before the Earth. So why is the galaxy not crawling with self designing mechanical or biological life forms?

Why hasn't the Earth been visited, and even colonized?

Is it possible that we humans will come across any aliens?

Or we already have aliens, ETs and UFOs visiting our planet?

To me answer to the last question is simple with a very simple logic. Ay visit by a UFO, any ETs or any aliens from outer space would be much more obvious, and probably unpleasant.

If you buy this logic the obvious question, which must be answered to support this logic, is –

What is the explanation of why we have not been visited?

One possibility is that the argument, about the appearance of life on Earth spontaneously, is wrong. Maybe the probability of life spontaneously appearing is so low, that Earth is the only planet in the galaxy, or in the observable universe, in which it happened.

Another possibility is that there was a reasonable probability of forming self reproducing systems, like cells, but that most of these forms of life did not evolve intelligence. We are used to thinking of intelligent life, as an inevitable consequence of evolution.

But it is more likely that evolution is a random process, with intelligence as only one of a large number of possible outcomes.

It is very important to understand if intelligence has any long-term survival value. Bacteria, and other single cell organisms, will live on, if all other life on Earth is wiped out by our actions.

There is support for the view that intelligence, was an unlikely development for life on Earth, from the chronology of evolution. It took a very long time, two and a half billion years, to go from single cells to multi-cell beings, which are a necessary precursor to intelligence. This is a good fraction of the total time available, before the Sun blows up. So it would be consistent with the hypothesis, that the probability for life to develop intelligence is low. In this case, we might expect to find many other life forms in the galaxy, but we are unlikely to find intelligent life.

Another way, in which life could fail to develop to an intelligent stage, would be if an asteroid or comet were to collide with the planet. It is thought the collision of a rather smaller body with the Earth, about 70 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. A few small early mammals survived, but anything as large as a human, would have almost certainly been wiped out.

It is difficult to say how often such collisions occur, but a reasonable guess might be every twenty million years, on average. If this figure is correct, it would mean that intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no major collisions in the last 70 million years. Other planets in the galaxy, on which life has developed, may not have had a long enough collision free period to evolve intelligent beings.

Another possibility is that there is a reasonable probability for life to form, and to evolve to intelligent beings and develop themselves to inter planetary travel but at that point, the system becomes unstable, and the intelligent life destroys itself. We too may end up with a nuclear war or something similar.

Maybe there are other forms of intelligent life out there, but that we have been ignored. This part of universe is like an African desert which gets very few tourists.

The most important part in this debate is not if there is any life out there. We should really think, Should we be look forward to meet a more advanced civilization?

Don’t forget what happened to people of America meeting Columbus.