McDonald’s to start offering specialty coffee counters at 14,000 US locations as a challenge to Starbucks. McCafe’s coffee drinks will also cost less than the competition, by at least 60 cents.

This is a great move by McDonald’s and could seriously take a big chunk of Starbucks’ customers, especially the ones who are also McDonald’s customers. McCafe’s could also draw price conscious customers, who are affected by a declining US economy. But, most Starbucks customers might not be the kind who would want to be seen coming out of a McDonald’s, so the hit to Starbucks might not be that hard either.

Personally, I no longer eat at McDonald’s nor drink coffee at Starbucks, but if I still did, being frugal I will probably switch to McCafe.

Tata Nano, a car for the price of a high end laptop, the People’s Car. Now that’s making the impossible possible. Yesterday, Tata unveiled the world’s cheapest car, The Tata Nano, which will begin selling at 100,000 Rupees ($2,500). This is a car that has all the potential to change the lives of the common Indian. This is revolutionary kind of thinking and will definitely produce some interesting cars from competitors in the near future. There are plenty of reviews out there already, and all kinds of opinions about the Nano, and the news has been creating quiet a buzz everywhere.

What really caught my attention was the concern of environmentalists, and their concern that a car this cheap will eventually result in more cars on the road, and hence add more pollution to India’s already polluted cities, plus more clogged up roads. Now, if cars were to sell like cell phones in India, then they are probably right, the future for India might be, worst case, a country of billion cars, and Indian roads may never be the same again.

But, in reality things might not be as bad as the pundits and environmentalists like to predict. For one, we are talking about a country which is already full of highly polluting and less efficient vehicles. If anything, a car this cheap, less polluting, and more efficient, would replace some of the older vehicles, and get them off the streets. The net surge in number of vehicles might not be as bad as people like to think, plus by replacing more polluting vehicles, there could be reduction in pollution. Tata has set the standard with the nano, and the competition will try to out do and better that mark. Which means, look forward to more efficient, and less polluting smaller vehicles for the Indian market.

On the other hand, there are only so many cars Tata can produce, with 250,000 to start with, and then upto one million a year. So, you are not going to see a billion cars on the streets overnight. And if it does get to those number, then the road systems in Indian cities, cannot support that many cars, and so no one will be driving them anyway. Either way environmentalists have nothing to worry about. They should probably spend their time more efficiently getting those big SUV’s off the streets.

The bigger concern is when ox carts get replaced with Tata Nanos. The potential for non polluting and less polluting vehicles being replaced by the Nano, can be considered a bigger concern, and can definitely put more cars on the streets. But, I wouldn’t worry too much, when companies like Tata start thinking of better solutions for the Indian Market, that’s a good sign. Instead of thinking of building a SUV for India, they thought of building the right car for India. That tells me that, the future is sound. When we face higher traffic and polluting problems in the future, we will not only think different to solve those issues, but also find solutions that will work well in India.

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Even though cricket is known as the gentleman’s game, there are enough controversies in cricket to prove otherwise. Form match fixing to sledging, there are plenty of examples of cricket not being as clean as it is made out to be. But it’s also a game where great players have set extraordinary examples of sportsmanship, the famous of which being when Courtney Walsh gave Salim Jaffer a second chance.

Today’s Australian victory against India in the second test at Sydney has taken cricket to a new low. Here a few thing I noticed and my thoughts:

Umpiring
First thing which stood out was how horrible umpiring has gotten in cricket. There are umpiring errors in any sport, but from Tennis to cricket, technology is used to not only minimize umpiring errors, but also to improve the accuracy of umpiring. But, cricket seems to have a very vague protocol for the use of technology in terms of the third umpire. It has come to a point where an umpire asks a fielder if they caught the ball, that’s like asking a thief if he robbed! Why the BCCI does not take a stronger stance against this is baffling?! The whole Test Match was lost because of this.

Sportsmanship
The second thing which stood out was the lack of sportsmanship. Now, my initial reaction was to blame Australia for bad sportsmanship, but then given some thought, it occurred to me that good sportsmanship is no easy feat. It’s a rarity in any sport, because good sportsmanship can get in the way of victory, which is the only goal in any sport.

Australia’s hunger for success is a stronger force than the desire of other teams to deny them that success
BBC Sport’s Oliver Brett

Even though India came out looking the better team in terms of playing with the spirit of the game, Australia came out looking the smarter team. However bad it might look, the Australian’s took advantage of the flaws in the game to carve themselves a nice record setting victory. Australia also played to win, while India played to draw, that kind of attitude difference can impact gameplay tremendously. One plays aggressively while the other plays passively. In this case, aggression won.

Sledging and Racism
The verbal exchange between Andrew Symonds of Australia and Harbhajan Singh of India, resulted in the Australian team lodging a complaint of racism against Harbhajan Singh. Well, the verdict is out, Harbhajan Singh is banned for 3 tests for calling Andrew Symonds a “Monkey”. Evolutionarily speaking, what’s wrong with one monkey calling another monkey, “monkey”?! Now, what I am interested in is what did Andrew Symond’s say to provoke such a reaction from Harbhajan Singh?

Joking aside, sledging and racist comments are seriously out of control in cricket and I am sure far worse things than calling someone a monkey is said on the field. It is time cricket introduced on field penalties, like having players sit out in a penalty box for smaller incidents, and expelled from the match for more serious incidents. Unless there are more immediate in match penalties, sledging is both going to go on, and get worse.

In the end, the rivalry between Australia and India is growing, and probably will soon trump the India-Pakistan rivalry. This is good for cricket, and like the test match in Sydney, it makes for entertaining cricket, and can only make it more popular.

Sibling Excess, a great article on Tehelka which takes a look at how the sibling rivalry between the Ambhani Brothers, Anil and Mukesh, has hurt no one, and how it has benefited both investors and India.

Who cares if the brothers are fighting, the markets are growing because the two are trying to outdo each other.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram

Due to a small act by my mom, I have a great example of this turn around of the Reliance empire. So this is how the story goes. My grandfather, a freedom fighter and an INA soldier, used to get a substantial pension from both the Central Government of India, and Kerala State Government. Back in 1992, he was bedridden after suffering from a stroke, and my mom used to take care of him, and manage his pension. It was also the year I turned 18, and as an 18th birthday gift from my grandfather and her, she bought some Reliance stock in my name for Rs. 6000, which was money left over after expenses, from my grandfather’s pension.

A year and half back, when Reliance was split up between the two brothers, all those Reliance shares got converted into stocks for each of the companies created at the time of the split. Today, I still have those stocks, and they are worth over Rs. 86,000. That’s approximately an amazing 1300% gain, with most of the gain coming in just the last two years.

With India still growing economically, this sibling rivalry is no where from over, and there is still a lot more to come. So, as an experiment, I am going to hold on to my Reliance shares longer, and post it’s performance every few months.