In Hyderabad

Hyderabad has been calm and free of news for a few days now due to critical By-Elections in Bobbili and Karimnagar. Karimnagar is critical to both Congress and TRS since TRS leader termed it as a referendum on Telangana.

Interesting concepts have emerged since I have experienced elections many years ago. Cricket Kits for Youth, Money and Liquor for the poor seem to be making their way from all parties to the constituencies. Think about it, if each candidate / party is spending atleast 25 crores to win an election, how will corruption come to an end in this Great Democracy. One interesting issue in karimnagar, where there is a large Bidi making workforce seem to be the removal of the Large Skull that now adorns every bidi pack. No one seems to pay much attention to other things, at least from the news I watched, its mostly about Bidi’s.

Intelligence wings seem to be a new concept in elections now a days. Each party giving out camera cell phones or handycams to their party workers to capture their opponents buying othe votes through distribution of kits and money. The idea is to capture this info about the opponents and give the video to the election commission.. I dont get it, if the party is spending so much on buying votes, cant it spend a little extra to buy the EC ?

India’s GDP grew at 9.2% in the 2nd Qtr [ Jul - Sep ]. Manufacturing grew 11.9%, Construction and financing at 9.8% etc. Agriculture again showed a dismal 1.7% in growth creating concerns across India on the long term issues around Food Security for India. With the explosion in Real Estate around Hyderabad, many small time and medium sized farms have given up the production of fruits/vegetables etc. This is a repeating occurrence across the landscape near every developing city and towns.

Reliance Fresh, a retail concept of Reliance that only sells vegetables, fruits and other related items opened its doors a month ago as a pilot in Hyderabad. These stores have been a great hit and have been attracting crowds. Prices are reasonable since they eliminated the middle men who were making the buck.

Metro [ A sams club like concept ] Opened its doors in Hyderabad. I didnt get to visit this place but from what I have seen in newschannels, it looks as big as SAMS and is by membership only for small, medium and large businesses. Its kinda like a combination of SAMS, OfficeDepot etc., serving all the needs of the small and medium businesses.

Reliance and Metro are already causing an imbalance in the economy that was owned by the mom and pop shops. On the employment front, its raining jobs and people are having no trouble finding low skilled jobs in Hyderabad.

15 mins are up.. more later