The NRIs are suddenly back in demand, now that their dollars translate to more rupees. From relatives to luxury brands, everybody wants a slice of the NRI action. N Srinivas Reddy wrote in to Faking News from Seattle, where he works for Microsoft:

The new rupee symbol was supposed to give it strength

“It is unbelievable. The last time I went to India I carried a pack of Ferrero Rocher chocolates. When my cousins saw the box, they merely rolled their eyes and offered me the tastier, imported Toblerone chocolates they had bought from the grocery shop down the street. I cried myself to sleep that night and didn’t go to India for the last five years. Today I got a call from my sister who was asking when I am coming next. She even added coyly, ‘don’t forget those yummy chocolates.’ I feel so special! This time I’ll carry Godiva.”

Shopkeepers and beggars in Delhi’s Janpath market too have changed their strategy with US Dollar getting dearer. Not only are they luring the easily identifiable NRIs (wearing expensive shades, a bottle of mineral water in the hands, men wearing shorts, women with funny haircuts, and a horde of scruffy beggar kids chasing them around), they are now accepting dollar bills.

“Earlier they weren’t worth the trouble with cops and Western Union, but now we easily get 40 rupees for a dollar after ‘cuts’. Enough to get two Pizza McPuffs from Mc Donalds,” said Raghubeer, a beggar kid, flashing his US dollar.

Raghubeer claimed that NRIs have started giving dollars to beggars after Paris Hilton did the same earlier this year.

A security guard manning the Delhi’s T3 terminal’s arrival gates had the last word: “Over the last few weeks, all international flights are running full. They come with bags full of gifts, and return with household supplies.”

“Arbitrage”, he added knowledgably.

“You should see the warm welcomes they get these days. Paisa bolta hai saab (it’s all about the money).”

He looks away woefully, perhaps wishing he had sent his brother to work at Atlanta airport when they had the chance 6 years back.

While things do look rosy for NRIs in India, there have been reports of Indian bodyshoppers blocking salary increments for desi folks back in the US, attributing it to the strong dollar. Allegedly, some firms have been quoted as telling employees that the 14% rise in dollar value translates into a much larger pay raise than what they would get otherwise.

(written by AmreekanDesi, who blogs here)

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“We were left with no option, nothing seemed like working,” Dr. D Subbarao, RBI governor said. RBI has increased key policy rates 11 times in the last 16 months, the latest increase announced on Tuesday.

Sources suggest that RBI had liked Baba Ramdev’s idea of doing away with 1000 rupee notes, but the central bank preferred totally taking them away from people’s possession instead of replacing them with notes of lower denomination.

“We need to send a strong signal to the economy and we thought this could be the strongest one,” RBI governor claimed. RBI has decided to hire strong and sturdy men between 25-35 years who would make sure that there was not enough money in the market that could push the prices of goods further up.

These RBI goons will be placed in all major marketplaces across the country and they will make sure that nobody spends too much.

“All the security guards at multiplexes will be replaced with our goons or trained to become goons,” RBI governor informed, “They will frisk all the entrants and their wallet will be checked. Any amount of cash in excess of 1000 rupees will be confiscated then and there.”

Similarly goons will be positioned at eateries such as McDonald’s and KFC, who will not allow a person to buy more than one burger or chicken wings for himself. Women will not be allowed visit beauty parlor more than once a month, and people would be randomly robbed off at traffic lights.

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has welcomed the move by RBI and called it “aggressive”, while Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has predicted that more such steps would be taken in future to control inflation and make lives better for aam aadmi.

RBI governor has clarified that anyone resisting the latest ‘monetary policy’ could well be beaten up by the bank goons, and he will subsequently be prohibited from spending above a specified amount on medical bills if injured while doing so.

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This is the first time an economic reshuffle has been declared publicly though the rearrangement has been taking place for generations since India gained sovereignty and independence.

“The middle class is more middle class now,” Prime Minister informed the most important change in the reshuffle, though did not explain what “more middle” meant. However he did clarify that it was a “promotion” for the middle class.

“They had always wanted ‘more’ – I still remember the Pepsi ad when I was the leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha, and I knew that BJP and NDA were going to lose the next elections because they didn’t give them more and more,” Dr. Manmohan Singh claimed.

A middle class family, apparently celebrating the change in their official status over the years.

“However during the UPA regime, they became more and more middle class, more middle than ever,” he added, “This is a promotion of course, just like Jairam Ramesh was promoted to a cabinet rank minister earlier.”

Prime Minister, a man of fewer words, refused to elaborate beyond this point but experts picked up from there.

“I guess middle class is more in the middle now because the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer; the middle point in the economic spectrum is more prominent than ever now, hence ‘more middle’ class,” an expert opined.

However others disagree, with a few claiming that the lower class had inched up thanks to Bhaarat Nirmaan initiatives like NREGA causing the middle class to become ‘more middle’ as nothing had changed for that group. While some believe that the middle class too had inched up as it could afford higher prices of LPG and Petrol, hence definitely ‘more middle’ than earlier.

“I don’t know what it means, but since it impacts the middle class, clearly it’s the most important fallout of the economic reshuffle,” editor-in-chief of a leading media house said, who attended the press conference where the economic reshuffle was announced leading to a change in the economic status of BPL families as well, however the news was considered relevant enough.

“This definitely is not the last reshuffle before the next elections,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued a final clarification before winding up the press conference.

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Confirming the development, Mr. Sharma, the placement chairperson of WIM, praised the lads for their lateral thinking in trying to solve the myriad problems that society today faced, the chief of those being what to do with all those MBA students during those 2 months between the first and second year.

Talking exclusively to Faking News, the trend setting students shared their experience.

“Every year, all of our fellow MBA students occupy so much space in corporate offices, drink gallons of coffee, cause the AC system to generate another ton of greenhouse gases and give already overworked middle management personnel the really enriching but also tiring task of cooking up something to keep us busy. At WIM, however, we have always been encouraged to challenge status-quo and think out of the box,” remarked Gaurav, in his impeccable Raymond suit.

Suraj, his classmate and project partner, had an altogether different take on the issue: “Corporate Social Responsibility is another area of focus at WIM. Unless we create real change at the bottom of the pyramid, India cannot shine. If we, the top brains of the country do not contribute to this, then who will? Therefore, we decided to catch hold of somebody who would really do with some help from us. A stint with an auto-rickshaw wallah seemed like a good idea.”

“The changing scenery would also alleviate boredom and stimulate creative thinking. Considering the state of Mumbai’s roads, the risk of falling asleep in office in the afternoon was also negated, a common problem faced by many of our batchmates,” he added.

Initially the MBA grads had an idea of working on a summer project of converting an auto-rickshaw into an eco-friendly one, but later settled for a project on livelihood finance.

Pratik, the third partner, no longer being able to control his annoyance at being denied precious airtime, pitched in: “We decided that the auto driver could well do with some improvements in his top and bottom-line. Unfortunately, he was already heavily leveraged due to the considerable support that he extended to the local liquor business. Therefore, we needed to find a solution which was not very capital-intensive. With the RBI hiking lending rates every week or so, how could anybody afford to get more debt? What we proposed was a result of an intense session of pot, err, I meant brainstorming. We decided that the best way for the fellow to make more money was to sell umbrellas!”

“Umbrellas?” this curious reporter asked with a sinking feeling that his inferior mind would not quite be able to fathom the brilliant logic behind the suggestion.

“Oh, it’s really simple. It was clear that he had to diversify. Rickshaw services are a commodity, and he just had no USP. In a situation of perfect competition, he could do nothing with the market demand curve. His price was market given. Diversifying into a completely unrelated market was the perfect solution. Plus, selling umbrellas is a cyclical business. After all, even a third-grade MBA student knows that a cyclical and non-cyclical mixture of businesses creates a healthy portfolio. In addition, his existing business ensured that the marginal costs involved in selling umbrellas would be zero,” Pratik explained.

The students also handed out an implementation plan to the auto-rickshaw wallah at the end of their internship period.

“The core of the business is based on fundamental consumer behavior – the tendency of passengers to forget umbrellas in autos. All that the auto driver has to do is to only choose customers carrying umbrellas, and he’d have a fine selection by the end of the day. Once he had plenty of variety, he would simply have to start choosing passengers who weren’t carrying umbrellas, and sell them one on the way. It’s a simple model, really, with no working capital and a hundred percent profit margin,” students explained.

Speaking to Faking News on the condition of anonymity, a partner at McKinsey & Co. confirmed that they were deliberating making offers to these students:

“We have a rare mixture of talent and humility here, exactly what we look for in future McKinseyians. These boys have created real change, and we’re really excited at having them on board. In fact, we might even work with them on extending the scope of the project. I don’t think we currently have anything in the not-completely-public-but-something-like-that transportation space anywhere in the world. It creates value for all stakeholders.”

A placement committee member from one of the lesser IIMs declined to comment on the impact of McKinsey recruiting from a non-IIM while steadfastly refusing to visit their campus for placements year after year. “All our students get their choice of roles and industries during placements and are extremely satisfied,” he maintained.

(reported by Harshad Karandikar)

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“Since India is growing at a rate of at least 9 percent, we are hopeful of at least one McDonald’s outlet in each urban Indian city soon,” Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission said after undertaking some complex mathematical calculations, “Clearly McDonald’s would need more employees and we thought it was a perfect opportunity for us to join hands.”

If a person alive in India can afford this Tikki, and only this Tikki and nothing else for the whole day, he is not poor.

As per the agreement between the government and the fast-food restaurant chain, McDonald’s will be given a list people living below poverty line in the vicinity of an outlet, and the restaurant will then employ them gainfully for a salary of one McAloo Tikki™ a day. Since the market price of one such Tikki is at least 20 rupees, the employee would thus no longer remain poor in the eyes of the government.

Sources at McDonald’s confirmed the partnership and expressed confidence of employing all such urban poor at their outlets.

“Anyone not earning even 20 rupees a day is surely quite hungry. We can easily give such a person a job of cleaning the leftovers,” a McDonald’s official said, “We get a lot of urban rich at our outlets who order more than they can eat.”

The official clarified that US based McDonald’s would never get into such an arrangement with the US government as the poverty threshold in US was at least 30 US Dollars per day and non-cash benefits were not counted as income while measuring poverty.

“But India is not US; even the government here has clarified it many times recently,” the official pointed out.

McDonald’s could launch this employment scheme at their Colaba outlet in Mumbai next week. An intensive manhunt to find a person earning below 20 rupees per day and alive in the area has been launched by the CBI for this purpose. No success was reported till reports last came in.

But the government has dismissed such issues as teething problems and hopes to kick off the partnership in other cities soon. Post this arrangement, government is hopeful of bringing down the number of urban poor to levels matched by those in developed countries, thus paving the way for India to become an economic superpower.

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“Osama had taken loans worth billions of dollars from various banks by pledging his Abbottabad mansion as collateral,” Iqbal, an executive with Citibank Pakistan told Faking News, “Apart from that, he had various credit cards that he used to fund his own and possibly his organization’s expenses. I myself had sold him a Gold Card with his clean shaven photo and some fake name on it.”

Osama was money to many in Pakistan

Although Banks in Pakistan are not coming out in open like the Pakistani army over their association with Osama, sources inform that the financial institutions are having late night meetings to find out ways to save themselves from an impending financial crisis.

“We could face a severe cash crunch,” said an official of Habib Bank on conditions of anonymity, “We had thought that we could recover some cash by acquiring the Abbottabad mansion and turning it into a pilgrimage spot, but to our horror, we found out that at least a dozen other banks had the same security for loans they had issued independently to Osama.”

Sources say that the banks didn’t bother to check the details of the borrower (in this case, Osama) as his mortgage loan applications always had names of some “influential people in the establishment” as guarantors. This caused the credit rating of Osama to be upgraded to “triple A” status, with more banks queuing up to lend him money.

“Many of these banks had securitized the loans and sold it off in the market, which led to a real estate boom in Pakistan,” pointed out a market watcher, “Now the imminent default by Laden and destruction of his collateral can create domino effect and create similar scenes in Pakistan as was witnessed in the US some three years back.”

Sources further inform that Osama had never defaulted on his payments earlier as his guarantors enjoyed guaranteed cash-inflow through some foreign funding. But with Osama reported dead, the guarantors themselves are clueless.

“They can’t even claim for the 25 million US Dollars reward that US Government had announced for anyone helping catch Osama,” a banker rued.

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The scheme is the brain child of a leading economist cum journalist turned politician who is very close to the Congress high command.  Explaining why the scheme can be the most effective poverty elimination scheme designed yet and a game-changer in the electoral arena, he said, “This does away with the problem of identifying the eligible BPL households, which could otherwise take several months under the AADDHAR program of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).”

The economist claimed that direct cash transfers by dropping money bags from the sky was “self-selecting” as it automatically excluded many “non-deserving” segments of society.

“The salaried classes with day jobs are constrained from going out in search for money bags. Well-heeled members of the leisure class have better things to do with their time. Many economists who believe that it is futile to look for a one rupee coin on the sidewalk because it would already have been taken can also be eliminated from the consideration set. That leaves only the labor class that has to toil away to earn subsistence wages. A few hours of physical labor in search of money bags will now yield economic rewards and help this lot live a life out of poverty,” he explained.

An artist’s impression of things to come

A social activist involved with scheme design told this reporter, “The poor rural farmer/laborer used to look up to the skies for a normal monsoon.  Going forward, he will look to the skies for showering wealth on him. He will literally hold his head high going forward.”

The scheme has the support of the influential National Advisory Council that, amongst other things, advises Smt. Sonia Gandhi on issues concerning social welfare, though there are some voices of concern. “The modalities of implementation have to be fine-tuned. For instance, will the aerial drops happen during the day or at night? Nocturnal drops will disproportionately benefit the 20 something partying class – which is usually active at night – and lead to socially regressive outcomes. Also, the intensity of air drops should be proportional to the degree of poverty prevalent in the region. We only have poverty head count ratios at the State levels but not at the district and block levels. So it is better that the implementation of the scheme be preceded by block level poverty estimation surveys. The quantum of money transferred through such a channel also needs to be inflation indexed for which appropriate legislation needs to be passed. Also, in some very backward regions with a low degree of monetization of economic transactions, the transfers need to be in kind and not in cash,” a member of the NAC told this reporter.

A party insider revealed that the scheme has caught the fancy of the party high command and also Rahul Gandhi who is keen that the scheme be launched by the first quarter of the new fiscal. If it comes down to an eye ball to eye ball confrontation between the PM and the Congress President, the PM may well have to blink and give in to its implementation.

According to a party insider, the scheme will be called the Moti Lal Nehru Lakshmi Barsaat Yojana.  The party high command had sternly rejected the idea of naming it after Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi since there are already 500 extant schemes named after any one of them.

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“I couldn’t stop myself from noticing that instead of the usual newspaper wrap, I was given samosa in an A4 sized paper wrap,” Faking News reporter Deepak, who decided to become a political reporter as he loved the canteen food of Parliament, described how he unearthed this breaking news.

A “normal” paper used to wrap samosa and pakora, but the Parliament canteen is using Union Budget speech copies for the same.

“I was habituated of eating samosa on newspaper chunks carrying news like poor children eating mud, but this was a new experience as the new paper had no mention of food at all; instead it talked about LCD TVs and taxes,” Deepak recounted, “I decided to take a deeper look at the paper wrap and immediately found out that it was Budget speech.”

After handing out a 500 rupee note to one of the canteen workers, who then agreed to become a whistleblower, Faking News found out that the Parliament and government had decided to “dump” all budget documents the same evening Union Budget was presented in the parliament i.e. on Monday evening.

“They said the documents were not needed anymore,” our whistle blower “Aam Aadmi” disclosed, “Later many other copies were also found littered on the floor of the house, which were given to us by the housekeeping staff. Guess they were given to MPs from all parties to read and understand the budget proposals.”

“Aam Aadmi” informed that he had been collecting budget “garbage” all these years but for the first time he and his colleagues decided to make some use of it by making paper pouches out of them.

“Are we doing anything wrong?” our whistleblower asked with a little concern in his tone, to which Faking News replied, “Never mind!”

Meanwhile an MBA student from a well-known management institute in India has claimed that he has understood the meaning and implications of each and every proposal in the Union Budget.

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The filial relationship between the father and son turned into financial one when Venugopal, following a zealous reading of one of Mohammed Yunus’ books, decided to give his son Rs.50 per week as “microcredit” at 18% interest. Normally known as pocket money, Venugopal termed this amount as the “official development assistance” package offered to his son Vijay.

Vijay’s first “loan” of Rs.50 was granted two months ago for the purchase of some colored pencils, which was deemed “a productive investment” by his creditor. But since then Vijay has been unable to earn revenue from his drawings of the family dog, which were dismissed as “having sentimental value only” by Venugopal.

Consequently his debt has spiraled and the 6 year old has resorted to bonded labor to repay the debt to his father. In the past month he has been forced to walk the dog fifteen times a day (at Rs.5 per walk), fan his father during load shedding and even mark some of his father’s pupils’ papers, which has at least given him the opportunity to utilize his red pencil.

Through such simple diagrams, Krishna Venugopal has been trying to teach simple economic concepts to his son that could help his drawings find a market, but of no use till now

“I refuse to give handouts,” said Venugopal, defending himself, “look at Africa! I’ll be damned if I’m going to finance his consumption smoothing.” His son should have “invested the funds productively”, he claimed, “It is not my fault that Vijay lacks the entrepreneurial spirit. He gets that from his mother. She couldn’t sell fish to a Bengali,” he concluded.

The defense, the mother of the accused, claims that Venugopal did not carry out due diligence before granting the loan.

However, the prosecution denies this, claiming that he advised his son to use his newly purchased “assets” to produce Diwali cards to sell to neighbors. Faking News asked what would happen if all 150 children under that age of 10 in his colony did the same.

“Well, there would be a short term supply surplus,” he admitted, “but people… um…er… like cards… so, the market would find a solution. Creative destruction… more competition… more effort! The market would decide.” He then pointed out that Vijay is well used to a “domestic market system”. Since 2004 Rs.3 has been taken out of his weekly pocket money to cover the cost of the Cesarean section. “Always an awkward child,” he added.

Vijay’s debt has plunged his sibling into a “credit access crisis”. His father insisted on a group lending model, which means that Vijay’s 5 year old sister, Divya, will not be “loaned” any pocket money until Vijay’s debt is repaid. “Such a shame! Vijay’s recklessness has created a ‘missing market’ for credit. We had higher hopes for her too,” said Venugopal, “her drawing is much better, but at this rate she won’t get credit until 2050.”

“He always brings his work home with him,” said the defense, “my children are my children, I don’t care what he says, they are not our ‘human capital’ and I don’t care what our ‘household productivity’ is and I don’t know why he says it’s 34.56%! Well, I’ve got ‘assets’ too, a broom for one, and he’s going to get it round the head if he drags Vijay to the court again.”

Faking News called the Chennai Court to ask for access to the proceedings, but we were told that no court room had been booked. “Is this that Venugopal chap?” the receptionist asked, “He just brings the kid here to make him cry. Last week he brought that boy here because he wouldn’t ‘declare his assets’… something about hiding chocolate in his room.”

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“Bullfighting is one of the major industries of Spain and currently it’s going through some rough phase due to legal problems,” Spanish finance minister Elena Salgado Méndez informed, “We can put horns of the bulls on fire, thank god, but unfortunately some forms of bullfighting are now banned in some areas. We thought we could outsource them.”

In the proposed scheme of things, Spain has offered to transport its bulls to New Delhi so that the Jat community doesn’t have to bother about bringing their bovine-stock to the national capital. Spanish bulls are also believed to be accustomed to seeing overcrowded areas and traffic jams, which might otherwise prove frightful for the rural cows and bulls of Haryana and Punjab.

This could be witnessed in the streets of Delhi this Sunday

“Once our bulls are there, the Jat community can indulge in bloody fights with them,” the Spanish minister further informed about the outsourcing proposal, “It will cause considerable trouble to the Delhi residents and the administration and would also attract internal media coverage; something that the Jat community leaders are looking for.”

It’s not yet known how Spain would benefit from this arrangement, but it’s believed that the country might try to sell television broadcast rights of the Jat-bullfighting event or could try to “brand” the bulls before transporting them to India e.g. Red Bull energy drink could become one of the advertisers on the rampaging bulls in Delhi roads.

There are also rumors that the Spanish King Juan Carlos I is trying to convince British Queen Elizabeth II to include Jat-bullfighting as a Commonwealth Games event.

Back in India, Boochar Tau, a popular Jat community leader, has welcomed the Spanish proposal and has expressed confidence that the roads of Delhi would be full of bulls on 3^rd October and the central government would be forced to give OBC status to the Jats.

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“These self-styled ‘satirical journalists’ have benefited from the games just as much as the contractors and bribe-taking officials,” said Gautham Dutta, a poet, “these tellers of half-truths have wallowed in the failures of the games preparation by tapping out ever more hack articles on their grubby laptops and thinking they are cleverer than everyone else.”

The games provide little inspiration for “proper writers”, he claims, “Journalists report truth, novelists and poets search for truth, but these literary adolescents find truths and turn them into lies.”

The pre-games “satire boom” is a “bubble”, claims economist Raju Bhatt, “similar to the US housing market or Japan in the 1980s. Basically, it’s an unsustainable growth model which is bound to crash once the games are over. They won’t have a clue what to write about.”

Very few companies, like Amul, would be able to survive the current boom, experts predict

Delhi’s satirists are aware of this, says Bhatt, and are capitalizing on the short term opportunities by knocking out as many CWG related articles and jokes whilst they can.

Delhi’s satirical output has grown by an average of 9% per month in the past year. Experts estimate that CWG related satire accounts for around 8% of this growth, the remaining 1% stemming from stories about how rubbish the Pakistani cricket team is nowadays.

“We’re set for a crash,” explains Bhatt, “satirists will be shocked and clueless for a while, then the will most likely return to their former low-level equilibrium of mass produced man-bites-dog stories and semi-skilled pun based satire. Without their main source of material around 25% of Delhi’s satire writers will leave the sector and return to youtube, wikipedia and looking at photos of people they kind of fancy on facebook.”

“Any talk of a decline is rubbish,” counters an un-named reporter at Faking News’ South Delhi Office, “the CWG has been wonderful; like Christmas, my birthday, and the day when my flatmate left half a pizza in the fridge, all rolled into one, but we’ve taken precautions.” Pausing to adjust his dressing gown, he added, “we’ve been jotting down innovative ideas for weeks now; we now have a list of 56 words which sound similar, we’ve identified the Pakistani cricketer who looks most like a girl and we recently noticed that Sheila Dikshit’s surname sounds kind of rude in English. The future is bright.”

Faking News contacted the Commonwealth Games organizing committee for their comments, but we were told to stop calling.

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Historically India has been using INR/Rs while Pakistan has been using PKR/Rp respectively to denote their currencies, called as “rupee” in both the countries, but recently India unilaterally decided to make their currency join the elite club of Dollar, Euro, Pound, Yen, et al to reflect their apparently growing influence on the world economy. The decision has not gone down very well in Pakistan.

“This reminds me of Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998. These guys had joined the elite nuclear club all by themselves forcing us to rush in to join the same thereafter. Why do they shamelessly keep on gate-crashing and joining clubs when no one invites them?” wondered Sohail Tanveer, a Pakistani cricketer who was upset with India’s decision.

“Hinduon ki zeheniyat hi aisi hai toh bas unhone kar diya jo bhi tha.” he added, accusing Indians, whom he terms as Hindus, of being deceitful and triggering a symbol race in the subcontinent.

Sohail has supported the demand for a unique symbol for Pakistani rupee but has rejected the currently most popular choice for it, which resembles the word “ruu” in Urdu and has attracted over 35,000 ‘likes’ for a page created in its support as soon as the ban on facebook was revoked in Pakistan earlier this month.

The most popular currency symbol choice for Pakistani Rupee resembles a lot with Chinese Yuan

“No way, it looks so similar to the Chinese Yuan symbol. Those buggers (Indians) will again accuse of us passing Chinese stuff as our own.” Sohail argued calling for more options and a public vote on them.

Many others too support Sohail, though not necessarily agreeing with his Hindu logic. The teenagers who created the facebook page in support of the symbol say that the current currency abbreviation PKR was not SEO friendly.

“If you run a google search for PKR, all you get are results about online poker games, except for a forex rate result by google finance. What crap! INR is much better optimized for search engines.” informed Tariq, a 15-year-old internet addict, who supports a new symbol for Pakistani rupee.

But people like Sohail and Tariq could face stiff opposition from some religious groups that consider such demands haraam.

“Why do we need to have an image for the currency? The kaafirs in India even worship currencies and use pig shaped boxes to store their money. How can we follow their steps? This will encourage imagery (sic.) and idolatry.” protested Maulana Mushroom Azahar of a pro-Taliban group called Jashn-e-Jahiliyat.

With the civil as well as the uncivil society divided over the issue, the Government of Pakistan has decided not to comment over it, but sources indicate that the diplomatic talks between India and Pakistan could see discussions on this as nothing spectacular was expected from the talks anyway.

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“My product matrix was looking the same for many years now and I wished to change it. There was no scope for a forward integration in tea or cigarettes business as I was pretty much at the end of the value chain, whereas a backward integration would have meant getting into tea or tobacco farming, which is usually controlled by mafia. The only choice left was to diversify into other products and services.” Rambhai explained the rationale behind his decision.

But since any diversification, or for that matter any business decision, should be backed by sound logic and PowerPoint presentations to prove that the step would lead to lower risk and higher yields, Rambhai decided to engage McKinsey.

“I have seen students cross over the road to eat omelet and Maggi. They can buy it from my stall without undertaking the risk of being run over by a vehicle while crossing the road. In fact, that makes me eligible to charge a risk premium; but I won’t do that.” Rambhai provided a sound logic, but expressed helplessness to make a PowerPoint presentation.

“That’s where McKinsey will help me.” Rambhai said.

Something similar will help Rambhai in going ahead with his decision

McKinsey & Company, usually very secretive about their clients and services, have confirmed the deal and have expressed happiness to serve Rambhai, who has earlier served many of their leading consultants when they were MBA students at IIM Ahmedabad. Achal Gupta, a senior consultant with the firm would be the on-site manager for the project.

“Given that India’s GDP is poised to grow at 8% over the coming years, the outlook for egg-based pancakes and its value-added variants is promising.” Achal said, agreeing with the logic of Rambhai, adding, “Maggi too is a good idea, but we have to take into consideration the brand loyalty and elasticity for noodle consumption among the potential consumers.”

Achal would be staying at Fortune Landmark Hotel and would be making daily visits to IIM Ahmedabad to collect primary data such as number of students and probability distribution of eggetarians and noodlephiles among them across future batches, number of competitors, secondary reports on IIM Ahmedabad campus life, forward exchange rates of USD, and carbon emissions from cooking omelets.

“All these will help me analyze the whole business proposition from a wider perspective. It would also help me estimate and forecast the demand for omelets and Maggi and suggest quantities of eggs and Maggi packets that Rambhai should order daily, and also the price at which he should be selling the omelets and Maggi to realize an optimal return on investment.” Achal said.

Achal refused to divulge if the consultancy fees charged by the company would be considered as a part of the investment and would be to be recovered from the consumers through the final suggested price of the products. He also denied the possibility that the project could become untenable on grounds of a prohibitive final price.

“The client is ready to invest and has made up his mind. Our job is to work on numbers and presentation and help him with his decision. We can always find a way out.” Achal expressed confidence of the project adding value to Rambhai’s decision.

McKinsey will make a final presentation to Rambhai on 1^st May at IIM Ahmedabad’s auditorium.

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“As a society we have to be more inclusive and tolerant to other people’s needs and natures. We realized that there are people suffering from constipation who spend a lot of time in toilets in anticipation. Similarly there are people who love reading, thinking and analyzing issues while seated on toilet seats. Our society have been losing vital productive hours by ignoring these set of people, and hence we came up with the idea of WFT jobs.” said Shital, CEO of Wecruit Consultants.

Experts believe that a lot of people are being discriminated against for their toilet habits

Shital says that WFT jobs can be found in each sector and this could just be the next big thing in the recruitment industry, for more and more people were multitasking in toilets these days.

“A lot of people read magazines and newspapers only in their toilets. Obviously, a person, who knows how it feels like being in a toilet, can write better articles for such people. I believe a lot of writing and journalism jobs could fall into the WFT category.” said Shital, requesting all the newspapers to find out what percentage of their readership was toilet-borne.

“I can say for sure that a leading brand of newspaper in India is read only in our toilets, and they would do better if they made their journalists work through WFT mode.” Shital added, refusing to name the brand.

Apart from writing and journalism, IT-sector was also indicated as one of the potential big recruiters of the WFT candidates. Many of the management consulting jobs, as well as jobs of an analyst in investment banks, are expected to fall into WFT category as per Wecruit Consultants, who are coordinating with various corporate houses to come up with the inaugural list of WFT jobs.

“No, not because these jobs are akin to passing shit, we never said that.” Shital quickly disagreed with the wisecrack of our reporter, adding, “An employee working in a toilet can concentrate better on his work and can finish the job quickly. I’m pretty sure companies would like the idea.”

Wecruit Consultants are also planning to lobby for policy changes to force employers to advertise for WFT jobs under equal opportunity employment laws in various countries.

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“Wow, that’s 16 lakh rupees per month, almost four times what my father earns in the whole year.” said Vikash (name changed), whose father works in the electricity board in Indore. Vikash would be working as an Associate with a leading investment bank in London.

An IIM student is expected to earn millions of dollars, if he can’t, he is a loser

Vikash is planning to buy a new house, five new air-conditioners and a new car, and would soon be proposing to that girl from his school, who is now studying fashion designing. He’s confident of leading a dignified life with his head held high, as he believes that he can soon earn an amount that will be sufficient for his family for an entire lifetime.

“Sorry HDFC, I don’t need your plans.” said Vikash, referring to the plea of HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company to insure life or leave back so much money after death that a person’s family can use it to meet their expenses and not worry about any other source of income.

But Vikash’s confidence and calculations have started worrying his friends and authorities at the IIM. They believe that Vikash has got carried away after being interviewed and reported by various media channels.

“We are really worried now. He might go into depression when he realizes that London is way too expensive city and and his salary includes non-cash, non-payable, variable, and one-time components, apart from an insurance component in his case which he is frowning upon. And then he has to pay taxes. Every IIM student knows it; don’t know what happened to him in the past few days.” said the placement coordinator of the concerned IIM.

Attempts by friends and authorities to dissuade Vikash from such massive future planning have come a cropper for the time being, but they are hopeful of pulling things back in time.

Meanwhile reports about Vikash bagging such prized job have instilled hope in many other IIM aspirants to rewrite their destiny.

“Clearly economy is recovering and jobs are back with huge salaries. I am so happy.” said Samir, a salesman attending evening classes to get into top b-schools.

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“It was awesome! I always thought that no one in the parliament understood a thing about Budget, because I always saw people sleeping during the previous speeches. But boy, don’t they know what is being talked about?” said Ravinder, a final year MBA student at FMS Delhi.

The move by the opposition parties has also come as a pleasant surprise to many other people, who thought that budgetary and financial matters were beyond the ken of parliamentarians, and such decisions were taken by bureaucrats and technocrats. But parliamentarians have disapproved of such points of view.

“Yes, there are some things that we don’t understand, for example, I have no idea how does finance ministry budget for non-planned expenditure, when they are non-planned by definition. But we understand things like petrol and diesel. We also understand sugar.” said a walked out BJP Member of Parliament.

But many members of the parliament were candid to admit that Budget remained a mystery to them.

“I thumped the benches whenever I saw someone like Chidambaram or Madam Gandhi doing the same, but honestly, I don’t really know what does all this mean.” said a Congress MP on conditions of anonymity.

Not only MPs, many people outside the parliament too thought that they never understood a thing about budget, maybe with an exception of income tax rates. Others thought that the whole exercise was meaningless.

“We too make plans and budget for our company and within a couple of months everything goes for a toss. How can they plan for the whole country?” said 37-year-old Karthik, who runs his own toy manufacturing company, adding, “some news channels are saying that toys will cost lesser; no way I’m going to lower down the prices.”

A solar rickshaw that will cost lesser now is being seen as the vehicle of development

Meanwhile a lot of peopled searched for images of solar rickshaw after the budget speech, as they are supposed to cost lesser and bring relief to the common man among rising prices. In an exclusive interview to Faking News after his budget speech in the parliament, Pranab Mukherjee was kind enough to explain the rationale.

“A rickshaw peddler would need lesser muscular energy to drive a solar rickshaw. We want all rickshaws to be converted into solar powered ones, so that the demand for muscular energy, which is derived from nutrition and food, goes down. This would mean lesser demand for food, which will bring down the rising food prices.” said Pranab Da.

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“No, it’s not the cow farts that we are talking here; It’s the fart created by human beings that we realize has to be controlled for the sake of our climate, economy and our overall well-being.” Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clarified, adding, “Global warming is a very real threat, but global fart too has been increasingly becoming unbearable. We have received a lot of complaints from professionals and younger generation and we deem that the threat is real.”

Mr. Pachauri further informed that a “Global Fart Index” would be maintained by the IPCC to measure and monitor the level of global fart created by different societies, based upon which the nations would be asked to curb their fart creating activities on a regular basis. Pachauri refused to divulge further details and asked the journalists to wait till 18^th December for the joint-statement, but the news has set off a barrage of speculations.

Corporate meeting for taking business decisions are often accused of creating global fart

“I guess the steps (to curb global fart) will impact both the public as well as the private sector. The worst hit could be the consulting companies across the world. In India, I believe the government will have to go slow on creating more IIMs and the frequency of corporate meetings would also need to go down. I’m sure these factors would be accounted for in the Global Fart Index.” Ankit Padnis, a green consultant said.

Experts believe that the number of conferences and summits on various international issues like climate change, human rights, poverty alleviation, nuclear disarmament, economic recovery, etc. could drastically go down in order to cut down global fart. Experts also believe that a market could emerge around the global fart activities on the lines of the carbon credit emission markets.

“It would be ironic that an attempt to cut down on global fart could actually temporarily increase the activities adding to it. I can foresee financial instruments like Fart Futures and Options up for trading in emission markets. I just hope there is no Global Fart Crisis due to defaults on these instruments.” Padnis said.

While experts are busy debating the possibilities, common people have received the news with unmatched enthusiasm. People hope that they would get to breathe in a cleaner environment and have a clearer picture of most of the things around them once the nations take effective steps to cut down global fart.

“My life can become far better if I get lesser fart and more substance, but not shit mind you, from my boss and our government. I just hope this thing is for real and not just a global fart as well.” Vijay Godyal, Global Business Manager in HCL hoped, as he rushed back to finish a report, to be submitted to his boss by tomorrow morning, on consumer behavior of unemployed housewives while playing computer games.

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Talking to reporters Subbarao said “Ever since I can remember – people have stopped using the one-rupee coin and small businesses across the country have been giving people toffees instead of actual change. We had to wake up to the reality that no one cares about the one-rupee coin anymore – not small businesses, not coin collectors, not even beggars! When was the last time a beggar actually accepted a one-rupee coin, and why should he? At least with toffees, underprivileged people can provide their children some form of nutrition.”

RBI has notified that a toffee broken into two parts won’t be two 50 paisa coins

Since the announcement – Cadbury’s global stock prices have jumped dramatically – leaving companies like Kraft, which had launched a hostile takeover bid recently, running for cover.  Cadbury CEO Bharat Puri welcomed the announcement, “We at Cadbury are very excited to have the Éclair as the official replacement for the one-rupee coin. We believe it is an act of common sense given that the production cost of the Éclair is much lower than the actual one-rupee coin. Besides it is lighter on the pocket and has nutritional value unlike the regular coin, which has been unfortunately getting swallowed by our children for a long time now.”

Common people have welcomed the step as they can now rightfully give back the toffees their shopkeepers had handed out to them to pay for other stuff they actually want to consume. In fact, by the evening, most of the grocery stores and FMCG stores in the country were brimming with toffees.

Some however were not so pleased. Amol Sharma of the ISB (Indian School of Beggars) expressed his disappointment at the change. “Our entire curriculum since the past few decades has evolved around our students asking for spare change. Now with this action, all that we will have is decayed teeth.” According to reports, ISB students could demonstrate in front of the RBI tomorrow opposing the proposed move with placards reading “no worms in our wallet”.

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“Look dude, I know all those government data and statistical figures suggest that the economy is rocking, but I’ve been putting up with this bullshit for just too long now and I can’t take it anymore. I am hardly receiving any orders for business and nobody is ready to invest in my business. My wife has gone to her parent’s house, my car has gone to my debtor’s garage, and yesterday my dog ran to my neighbor’s house to eat Dog Chow and even barked back at me when I tried to call him back. This is just too much and now I can’t take it anymore.” a seemingly exhausted and frustrated Vijay said.

A devastated Vijay reminisces about the days bygone, when he had a dream

Vijay had taken up the path of entrepreneurship post his MBA degree after he attended a rather vague and ambiguous lecture of a successful businessman who had come to his B-school SPJIMR for a guest lecture. Vijay couldn’t understand much of what was said but he fell in love with the word “entrepreneur” as it sounded too cool when compared with banker, salesman or consultant.

To make things worse, Vijay went on to win a first prize in a business plan competition organized at IIM Ahmedabad that made him a darling on the campus. Vijay started believing in his business plan, which was about selling personalized and custom-printed underwears through a bidding website, and decided to pursue the same business post his MBA. He even raised a loan of 12 lakh rupees to get the required capital to start the business, which was supposed to grow to become a 48.98 million USD business as per the discounted cash flow projections in the original Excel Sheet of his business plan.

“My father wanted me to take a job but I told him that I want to create jobs. I even hired three guys who had just finished their college. All my SP Jain batchmates, who took up jobs, used to ‘like’ my status updates on facebook whenever I used to tell them how my business was shaping up, and I felt I was doing really good even though it just meant changing the layout of the website. I even got married as I remembered that successful businessman had told that initially he had survived on his wife’s salary. But then Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and I started facing some serious problems in my business and my family.” Vijay recounted his experiments experiences.

Vijay went through some real hard times and gradually found that none of the actual figures related to his business were matching the figures in the Excel Sheet. He even upgraded to the latest version of MS Office as he suspected that there could be a bug, but there was no improvement in the figures. Vijay was devastated and finally decided to give up today morning.

Although he’s quite depressed and disillusioned, Vijay claims that now he’s got a sharp focus in his life and he’d do just about anything that pleases his parents, wife and his dog. Vijay is deeply pessimistic about any economic recovery happening in India or worldwide, and wants the government to help him out.

“I might have erred in my own projections but I also have been fooled by economic projections and false hopes given out by the people in power. They must recompense me and pull me out of this situation. I don’t want any more reassurances as I’m sure that the economy is going to be even more unpredictable in coming times. Come on man, they gave a Noble Prize in Economics to a woman, what more proof do you want?” Vijay said.

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“We have never published any full page advertisement in any newspaper, but due to this being a matter of national importance, we have decided to issue full page color advertisements that would clarify our stand. We are no match to IIPM and there can’t be any comparison at all. At a time when we were worried about placing our students due to recession, IIPM was planning parties for their students with Shahrukh Khan. They are really special while we are just another government institute.” IIM Ahmedabad director Sameer Barua said.

"he he he" - Arindam Chaudhuri

IIM directors took this decision when they met earlier today to discuss the issues like pay hikes, fee hikes and more autonomy for the institutes. IIM Ahmedabad had already given the Human Resource Ministry a one-month ultimatum to accept its demand for world-class pay for the faculty members. IIM directors concluded that they would need to fight a long drawn battle with the government to get their demands accepted, and in order to fight this battle, they must close all other contentious issues to conserve energy and focus.

“We hope IIPM will now stop publishing ads claiming the obvious. There is no point if Pizza Hut comes up with a full page advertisement announcing that they have pizzas in their store. I hope ours would be the last full page advertisement in newspapers containing the name of IIMs.” IIM Indore director Ravi Chandran said.

IIPM founder and director Arindam Chaudhuri has welcomed the decision of IIMs and called it ‘historic’, although he didn’t guarantee that IIPM will stop using the tagline “dare to think beyond the IIMs”. He demanded that all the bloggers who had earlier cast aspersions on IIPM should be put behind bars now.

But IIMs may run into trouble for issuing full page color advertisements at a time when the government was championing austerity in public life. Experts warn that the move could further strain the relations between the premier institutes and the government. Experts have suggested the IIMs to either wait for four more days if it was too urgent, or a little less than three months to be absolutely safe.

“The message that IIPM was beyond IIMs could be embedded in the birthday greetings of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that falls on the 26^th September. The IIMs could issue full page greetings with the embedded message to wish the PM a happy birthday. They may escape the government fury this way, but to be absolutely on the safer side, I’d advise them to wait till 9^th December, which is the birthday of Sonia Gandhi.” Biju Bijaikar, an independent consultant and expert on various issues, suggested.

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