A kwik post..

I think Gaurav's resignation from Lenovo/IBM which has already been discussed to death on the blogosphere was a very brave thing to do. Would I have taken the same step - nope - I would have made our boys and girls burn their laptops. Maybe their desperate cry for attention towards a mainstream media non-issue might have brought them some publicity. However, as Codey pointed out, unless the lazy IIM boys (OK, one lazy one) at the Times Insight Group got hold of this (and then persuaded their bosses to write against a Rs 30 crore a year advertiser and space buyer), a tech illiterate writer would have bought the Eye Eye Pee Yem bullcrap and served up some delightfully unaware article - which would have made desi bloggers look like a bunch of idiots. However, in retrospect I think this entire mob mentality business that overcame Indian bloggers was a bit silly. When I wrote my first post on the whole Eye Eye Pee Yem versus Gaurav and Rashmi business back on Saturday evening, I was led to first post by Desipundit. The entire matter was funny, and we all had a good laugh about it. I just pointed out that, hey most B-School surveys are rather dubious or have dubious antecedents (not the survey that my publication does - whose only flaw is that the sample size could be bigger - however even a ten percent increase in sample size adds a huge amount of complexity - so actually right now, our survey is about the right size, the methodology is rather foolproof - heck, I spent two hours on a flight reading it once). When I returned to work on Monday (being new to Bombay, I don't have a computer as yet) the entire thing had snowballed into something unimaginable and by virtue of being one the first to write on the issue - traffic stats were going through the roof. In fact, I even got calls from people to see what was going on.
But first back to surveys.
Almost every survey of anything, particularly in India is suspect. I'll give you an example, while I was in my previous job I was sent a survey of telecom users which made some rather wild claims - a colleague who had a propensity to the definate article 'the' (a typical line of his would read - the Anil Ambani met the Prime Minister, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee etc...) got damn excited by some of the claims, went to the News Editor with the survey and said 'Boss, this is the survey.' Then, a stupid Editorial Trainee, (me) saw this survey had been done with 50 respondents. Now, while I do not want to say that the work done by agencies such as IMRB and TNS-Mode is flawed, but 50 respondents is too small a sample size. As is a survey done even on 500 people for that matter - and we know how dishonest respondents are - because the India Today survey on Women's sexuality threw up this statistical impossibility - wherein only 69% of all adult single men in India mastrubate - I don't know even one single male friend of mine who doesn't make love to his right/left hand at least once a week since the age of 15 - and this survey expects me to believe that 3 in every 10 Indian men don't jerk off? Get my point?
Anyway, I doubt the last word has been said on the Eye Eye Pee Yem versus Indian Blogdom matter. If you are a regular visitor here - I would suggest you keep checking Desipundit for the updates. I will continue to post the occasional post on the matter, but there are hundreds of disparate threads out there. What I will do is urge anybody important who reads this blog (and according to some people there are some rather high-powered individuals who do read this blog) to help support a free-speaking man and a magazine run by a great person.
On another note, back to what this blog is all about actually - the recent flood of people away from the 'Pinkest Paper' towards Fidelity Financial Services is a bit puzzling. I'm still wondering why Mumbai's most experienced real-estate reporter (who not only lives on Marine Drive but also once waged a mssive war with Jain&Jain management to keep his job and won) who had a job with one of the country's leading channels chucked it in the air and went instead to this firm which is on a media hiring spree - they have picked up the person that the Birla paper thought would take over their corporate section - leaving that section still rudderless. Much to the amusement of the Birla papers' Delhi business head. I believe that HT is by far and away the best looking paper in India - but my god its content is pitiful. ToI would be well advised however to clean up its layout and design which look like a throwback to the 70's (only in full colour). Anyway, I am in the midst of an interesting story and have a telephonic scheduled at 5.30, which is the time right now, so see ya' later.