Top 10 Indian bestselling business books of 2011! - From http://trak.in

Top 10 Indian bestselling business books of 2011!:

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A list of the top 10 bestselling books of 2011 in India would typically include the well known names of Chetan Bhagat, Amish and their likes. But a list of bestselling books in the business category is rare. Let’s take a look at the Top 10 business bestselling books in India in 2011, with a few picks from the Business Standard list of the same title.

The Winning Way

By Harsha & Anita Bhogle

A famous sports commentator (who is himself an IIM-A grad) and his IIM-A grad wife join forces to write a book about how businesses can take valuable lessons from sports about winning, loosing, combating and rising above from failure. Interestingly this book also marks 300 training workshops for ‘The Winning Way’ that the Bhogle couple have led.

ISBN - 9789380658322

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Corporate Chanakya

By Radhakrishnan Pillai

The last few years have regenerated an interest in ‘Arthashastra’ written by the great mathematician, administrator and statesman Chanakya. R Pillai has presented his version of the simplification of the sutras, mantras and trade secrets that Chanakya has explained in his original epic. More like a corporate guide, Pillai’s simplified version gives tips on management, leadership and training.

ISBN - 9788184951332

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The Habit of Winning

By Prakash Iyer

Here’s one more IIM-A grad who has jumped on the bandwagon of penning experiences based on his 25 year corporate career in which he sold everything from soaps to diapers. ‘The Habit of Winning’ is a mix about inspirational stories and real life incidents. From the Cola Wars to Michelle Obama’s brand management, these stories aim to inspire you to be a winner in everyday life.

ISBN - 9780143068280

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The TCS Story & Beyond

By Ramadorai

It’s amazing to read a book written by a man who has maneuvered his way through an organization for almost 40 years. From the days of Y2K when TCS expanded its client base to the IPO of TCS in 2004 to the potential merger with Tata Burroughs to the large scale recruitments drives that TCS is now undertaking, Ramadorai narrates a great journey that you ought to be a part of.

ISBN - 9780670084906

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I Have a Dream

By Rashmi Bansal

An MBA graduate from IIM-A herself, Ms. Bansal has already authored two bestselling books on entrepreneurship previously. While her first book talked about MBA graduates who jumped on the entrepreneurship bandwagon, her second book talks about non MBA graduates, her recently launched book ‘I Have a Dream’ talks about 20 idealists who become the change they want to see in the world.

ISBN - 9789380658384

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Unusual People Do Things Differently

By TGC Prasad

This book makes for an amazing read because it collects the success stories of 65 varied and interesting people – from famous people like Azim Premji and Mother Teresa to a common realtor, a CA, an attorney and a sports coach amongst many others. The common denominator that Prasad points out in all these people is their ability to think out of the box and accomplish extraordinary things.

ISBN - 9780143416753

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Uncommon Ground: Dialogues With Business And Social Leaders

By Rohini Nilekani

A philanthropist and a social activist by profession, Nilekani has penned this book based on interactions between business magnates and social leaders. Based on a TV show which she hosted in 2008, the book explores 8 major themes of polarization between business and voluntary social sectors. Capturing rare conversations between industry giants, Nilekani helps her readers realize that social and corporate developments inadvertently go hand in hand.

ISBN - 9780670085620

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Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

By Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Co-written by MIT professors, Poor Economics answers questions of whether a billion hungry people really exist or not, why the poor who don’t have enough to eat end up buying a TV, how having more children directly relates to poverty and so on. If you want to learn more about the economics of poverty, pick up this book which is also the winner of the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

ISBN – 9788184001815

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Thorns To Competition

By Arindam & Rajita Chaudhuri

Although IIPM and its founders have undergone a lot of controversy for their institute offering MBAs, this book remained popular in 2011. With none less than SRK launching this book, the main theme is about the hard selling strategies of modern day marketing. Formulating an acronym for THORN (Target It Right/ Hit Where It Hurts / Obsess With It / Reinvent It / Nail It / Sell It), the book pretty much maintains aggression in marketing as its central theme – sounds familiar to what IIPM is doing, isn’t it?

ISBN – 9788125951940

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Steve Jobs: An Exclusive Biography

By Walter Isaacson

Although this is not an Indian book, it has been a bestseller in India particularly because of the unfortunate death of Jobs, of course. Not much needs to be said about this book except that it is an absolutely stirring narrative of this creative genius. This book sold a little over 14,000 copies in its first week in India, compared with a massive379,000 in the United States.

ISBN - 9781408703748

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Justice V G Sabhahit Dies in his Court Chamber

 Senior Judge of the High Court of Karnataka Justice V G Sabhahit died in his chamber at the court, following a cardiac arrest on Monday.

Justice Sabhahit, who returned to his chamber after completing court proceedings in the evening complained of chest pain. His staff immediately called the doctors who arrived at his chamber and suggested that he be shifted to the hospital at once. However, the hospital authorities declared him brought dead.

Justice Sabhahit, who was suffering from heart problems, had suffered two heart attacks earlier. Justice Sabhahit was born on November 26, 1955. He enrolled as an advocate in 1979 and practised in the High Court before he joined the Karnataka Judicial Service as district judge on April 18, 1988.

He was promoted to the cadre of district judge (super time scale) on November 22, 1995.

Sabhahit was appointed as additional Judge of the High Court of Karnataka in 2000, and was made a permanent Judge in 2001.

Several legal experts have expressed their condolences over the death of Justice Sabhahit. 

Incidentally, Sabhahit’s father, G N Sabhahit, also a judge of the High Court had died in his chamber at the court.

Justice Sabhahit’s order pertaining to the disqualification of Ninge Gowda under the Panchayat Raj Act is considered a benchmark for disqualification cases.

News Source - http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=124518

 He was third in seniority among judges in the High Court of Karnataka.

Justice Sabhahit was in the limelight when eleven BJP MLAs had rebelled against B S Yeddyurappa in 2010. The dissident MLAs had approached the High Court of Karnataka where a specially constituted Bench consisting of Chief Justice J.S. Kehar and Justice N. Kumar heard the pleas of the BJP MLAs against their disqualification. The Bench heard their pleas and gave a split verdict with Justice Kehar upholding their disqualification while Justice Kumar was in favour of setting aside their disqualification.

The matter was then heard by a third judge, Justice VG Sabhahit who upheld their disqualification. Justice V.G. Sabhahit held that it was clear that the contents of the letter given to the Governor by the MLAs would lead to the inevitable inference that the intention of the petitioners was to voluntary giving up membership of the BJP.

Source - http://barandbench.com/brief/2/1904/karnataka-hc-senior-judge-vg-sabhahit-dies-of-cardiac-arrest-in-his-court-chamber

http://karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in/bio_data/sitting_judges/vgsj.htm

While Justice V G Sabhahit died after a cardiac arrest in the Karnataka High Court on Monday, his father, a former HC judge, too died while performing duty.

Justice Sabhahit’s father, G N Sabhahit, was a judge during Justice P C Jain’s tenure as the Karnataka chief justice (1986 to 1989). He had a heart attack while conducting proceedings and died in his chamber in the High Court.

Last year, Justice V G Sabhahit’s gunman Pandu died of cardiac arrest while on duty.

Justice Sabhahit hailed from the coastal town of Idugunji.

Justice Sabhahit was honoured with a state funeral on Tuesday with several dignitaries, including legal luminaries, paying their respects to him.

http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/10/201112132011121323205276453ea26c8/HC-judge%E2%80%99s-father-too-died-in-court.html

Incidentally, the annual Late Justice G N Sabhahit Memorial Trust Lecture, was to be held at Karwar, in connection with which Justice V G Sabhahit had visited Karwar on the preceding Sunday.

Rich tributes were paid to the departed Soul, and native of Karwar district, by the Judges, DC, Advocates, and members of Karwar District Bar Association, at Karwar on Tuesday.

Are we a soft state?

Are we a soft state?:   'via Blog this'

It’s been three years. The scars of a 60-hour-long terror siege which scripted a gory tale in blood are very much visible.
The unprecedented terror strikes on multiple targets across India’s financial capital -- carried out by ten trained Pakistani jihadis, executed by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) inside Pakistan -- snuffed out the lives of at least 166 innocent people and wounded more than 300.

Mumbai Police, Rapid Action Force personnel, Marine Commandos and National Security Guards performed their duties with remarkable bravery and professionalism in their battle with the terrorists. Fifteen policemen and two NSG commandos sacrificed their lives in the counter-offensive.

On the third anniversary of Mumbai terror attacks, let’s pay tribute to the unsung heroes and the victims.

Zero progress by Pakistan

Dossiers after dossiers were sent to Pakistan. Date after date was set for action against the perpetrators of Mumbai attacks. But, three years after 26/11, there is zero progress by Pakistan to bring the perpetrators to justice.

However, has India failed to bend Pakistan internationally? If so, blame it on the UPA leadership. Don’t forget this government shocked the nation by delinking terrorism from Indo-Pak composite dialogue in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2009. Early this month Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went on to describe his Pakistani counterpart “a man of peace”.

26/11 terrorists are having a field day

Three years after 26/11, Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive is still facing a death sentence. The Bombay High Court upheld his death penalty, awarded by a special court in Mumbai. Last month, the Supreme Court stayed execution of the death sentence “to facilitate due process of law”.

The cost of keeping Kasab alive is as much as Rs 100 crore and counting.
a still awaits access to 26/11 plotter David Coleman Headley and his accomplice Tahawwur Rana, who are in FBI custody.

Hafiz Saeed, founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the mastermind of 26/11 attacks continues his anti-India rhetoric from inside Pakistan. However, Pakistan maintains that there is not enough evidence against him.

How prepared we are to tackle terror?

26/11 had laid bare an abysmal intelligence and a spineless security, which helped the terror siege to succeed. Three years on, is India alert and prepared to thwart future terror attacks?

After 26/11 attacks, there were six major bomb blasts in different parts of the nation. Compensations for the victims were announced. Probes were ordered. Sketches of the suspects were prepared. However, the investigative agencies are struggling to find a “conclusive lead” in most of the cases.

Terrorists come at their will, kill innocent people and disappear into their cubby holes. But so “efficient” our intelligence agencies are that they do not even find clues of their whereabouts! And hunt for the suspects goes on....

The intelligence agencies utterly fail to read the changing modus operndi of the terrorists. They fail to gather inputs to thwart future terror strikes. They are unable to prevent one attack after another. But what are the reasons?

There are serious problems in India’s intelligence matrix. First, the multiplicity of its structure leads to confusion. Second, there is lack of co-ordination between agencies. Third, a sizable chunk of intelligence and security officials are not professionally trained and equipped to carry out their tasks. Fourth, there is a gross disconnect between the Centre and the states in tackling terror. Fifth, there are huge vacancies in security and intelligence agencies which have not been filled for years.

The apex organisation for India’s intelligence is the Intelligence Bureau (IB) which has a cascading bureaucratic structure. The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), on the other hand, deals with India’s external intelligence and works under a “cloak of secrecy”.

Several states have set up Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) to fight terror. All these intelligence agencies rarely share inputs, perhaps considering them as “highly secret”.

In the aftermath of Mumbai terror attacks, India has set up National Investigation Agency (NIA). This is supposed to be central agency to combat terrorism. But the agency is yet to build its capacity.

The proposed National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), which aims at facilitating information sharing by security agencies and law enforcement agencies to combat terror remains a work in progress.

The National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) which is supposed to gather “highly specialised technical intelligence” is almost defunct.

The National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTS) -- modelled on United States -- the “nodal agency” for counter terrorism with representation from all security and intelligence agencies is yet to take its shape.

In that case, undertrained and poorly equipped state police machineries are often being used to investigate and respond to terror attacks.

Time and again several ideas were floated, various recommendations were made to revamp India’s security architecture. But nothing has changed. India’s intelligence and security agencies remain in their moribund condition, giving an edge to the terrorists.

This is in sharp contrast to the countries like US which succeeded in uprooting terrorism by enhancing their already organised security system. Post 9/11, America has set up a separate ministry called Homeland Security and enacted USA PATRIOT Act, helping the country to intercept and obstruct further terror strikes. So did Europe and Israel. But we couldn’t.

Surge in home grown terrorism

This is not to dispute that terrorism in India is emanated from across the border. But the cross-border terror networks work in tandem with the local terror elements.

In the last one decade there was a surge in home grown terrorism. More interestingly, the local terror elements are getting political patronage.

Lack of political willpower

The Congress-led UPA government’s track record in tackling terror is abysmally poor. At present, India does not have any proper anti-terror law. It was the UPA government which repealed Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act (POTA) in 2004 perhaps “to protect the rights of the terror accused”.

Remember, the government shamelessly went on to justify its move saying, “A tough law can’t prevent terror attacks”. But after 26/11, the government woke up from its slumber and amended the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, incorporating some provisions from the POTA. But the UPA so far has failed to explain to the nation why it is reluctant to bring a separate anti-terror law.

The immediate priorities

India is vulnerable to terror attacks. To fight terror, the country needs to strengthen its security and intelligence. The need of hour is to revamp border security, maritime security and aerial security. The nation needs a complete recast of its intelligence mechanism. There is a pressing need for stringent counter-terrorism policy and its implementation. In order to weed out terrorism from its roots, India needs to terrorise the terrorists and their sympathisers.

In the end, the one pertinent thought that resonates years after the 26/11 attacks is – Does human life count for even a little bit in India?

The government should act and that too fast.

First Published: Saturday, November 26, 2011, 21:17 in http://zeenews.india.com

Issues relating to pending cases not projected properly: CJI - Hindustan Times

Chief justice of India S H Kapadia on Saturday said the issues relating to pendency and arrears of cases have not been projected properly giving a "totally wrong impression that there have been millions of cases pending". "The pendency and arrears of the cases have not been to the extent as projected," the CJI said on the occasion of the Law Day celebration.

He said he wanted to put the records straight and gave the figure of 56,383 matters as pending in the Supreme Court till November 1 this year.

Kapadia said arrears in high courts and subordinate courts are to the tune of 3.19 crore in which 74% cases are less than five years old.

The chief justice, who lauded the efforts of the apex court in the last one-and-half years in disposing of the cases, said there was a need to make distinction between the pending cases.

He said delay in the disposal of the matters was because of several factors like failure to remove the defects and objections by the advocates.

He said at present there are 40,000 cases which are pending in objection and some of them have been since 1994.

"There are 71% of the cases in which services have not been completed or defects have not been removed and they are not ready for hearing," the CJI said.

He said there are only 8710 matters which are ready  for hearing.

However, he said even the ready matters cannot be taken tomorrow and "you have to give some time to us" as on an average 710 days are taken to complete one matter.

He said serious attention was needed for disposal of matters in High Courts and Subordinate Courts where 74% of cases are less than five years old.

source - http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/774251.aspx

India’s Business Most Foul | GroundReport

India’s Business Most Foul | GroundReport:

'via Blog this'

All those who are taking keen interest in anti corruption campaign in India must watch out the two high profile cases relating to Maran brothers; Kalanithi Maran and Dayanidhi Maran, sons for late Murosoli Maran, leader of the DMK party and nephew of DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi.


While Kalanithi Maran runs the Sun TV, one of the largest media outlets in south India, his younger brother Daynanidhi Maran is into politics. He stepped into politics following the death of his father and was Union minister in the successive UPA government.


Daynanidhi Maran who held the telecom portfolio had to resign for his involvement in 2 G spectrum scam in which his successor A. Raja, is now behind bars for a considerable period of time.


Raja, who had succeeded Maran as the Union minister, is said to have favored Swan Telecom and the latter’s promoters had in turn given Rs 200 crore to DMK-controlled Kalaignar TV.


The same case has led to the arrest of Ms Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK patriarch, M Karunandhi, as headed the Kalaignar TV. The case is sub judice and trial is going on in the court of law.


Coming back to Maran brothers who have amassed huge fortune in just twenty years, their crime and corruption cases are a potboiler. The first case pertains to acquiring investments in the family business using political clout as a telecom minister 2005-06.


Mr. Dayanidhi Maran during his tenure as a minister ‘deliberately delayed' to provide letter of intent to telecom operator Aircel. In turn, he favored the takeover of the Aircel Company by the Maxis Communication, a Malaysian firm by clearing seven license and spectrum deals with the Maxis Communication.


It’s alleged that as a part of the deal, the Maxis Communication through its sister concern, Astro Network, made an investments of 550 core into Sun TV, owned by the Maran family. A FIR is registered by the CBI in this case and the matter is sub-judice.


Now its tussle between a business house having political clout and law enforcement agencies. The arguments and the counter arguments are being made in the court of law and one has to keep a watch on this story how it will play itself out.


The second case is much more interesting, where political clout was used to dupe the government’s exchequer to the tune of crore of rupees. Lo and behold Mr. Dayanidhi Maran after becoming the telecom minister, created a ‘virtual’ telephone exchange at his residence installing 323 residential lines at his home.


These telephone lines were taken in the name of BSNL General Manager and were connected from the minister’s residence to the office of Sun TV, owned by his brother Mr. Kalanithi Maran.


The connection was made through a dedicated underground cable for facilitating SUN TV’s special needs such as video conferencing and transfer of huge volume of digital data to other ports outside the country.


In the normal course, such services may have come for a heavy price, that has to be paid by the consumer to the government owned service provider, but it was almost free for Sun TV, because the lines were operated from the residence of the telecom minister.


Again, an FIR is registered in this case and the matter is sub judice. One has to keep a watch which on this story as arguments and the counter arguments is being made in the court. The two cases are well laid out, and it remains to be seen will it result into conviction of the accused.


There is much to dig into the business deal of the high profile political business house of South India. One of the most noticeable development was the acquisition of the Spice Jet, public carrier by the SUN TV. This happened so after Mr. Dayanidhi Maran became the telecom minister of India.


The allegation is that the huge money that was made to promote the idea of the license permit raj, was ploughed into the purchase of the aviation company and diversifying the business of the media outlet.


It’s obvious that the ledger books will tell the story of clean business operation, but those watching the developments from the close quarters do not rule out a possible scam.


Then the SUN network off late has also entered into the business of production and distribution of Tamil films. The business was run with the help of political clout and it was made a case of survival of the mightiest and all those into this business before had to vacate the scene because of such dirty business practices.


After the change of the government in Tamil Nadu, things are now looking up for better. The new regime has taken cognizance of the high handedness of the SUN TV, and cases are slapped on operational head running this business.


This business model of the Sun TV extended to having monopoly over cable business in Chennai. In order to have the monopoly, the cable business of the SUN TV used its political clout to subdue all the competitors.


Previously, the Rahija group controlled a part of the cable business in Chennai, but it had to give up, because SUN TV used all foul means, literally fighting a turf war to control this business.


After having the monopoly the SUN TV cable operator charged very exorbitant amount of money for airing new TV channels, discouraging them from doing from doing business.


After the new government has come to power, the situation is now changing on the cable scene. A It state run cable operation system is brought in to break the monopolist situation, but its having a tough time because Sun TV refuses to be part of this cable network.


This story may remain incomplete without the mention of Kalagnar TV, that was launched in the wake o of tussle between Maran family and M. Karunanidhi family.


The tussle broke out on the issue of the prices of the shares of Sun TV to the Karunanidhi family. The Maran bothers offered a very low price for the shares to Karunanidhi family who had substantial stakes in the Sun TV.


This led to the antagonism and a complete breakup between the two families. This led to the formation of Kalagnar TV, which is owned by Karunanidhi.


Even this was not tolerated by the SUN TV. Mr. Sharat Kumar who owned Gemini TV, a Tlegue channel, in partnership with SUN TV, was hired to head the Kalagnar TV, was physically assaulted allegedly by the Sun TV goons.


A case is registered and is pending the courts and it’s another story that instead of Maran bothers, Mr. Sharat Kumar is behind the bars in the 2 G spectrum case.


The other side light into Maran’s tale is the DTH service operation in India. The TATA sky had already git the license to do DTH business, but the telecom minister, Mr. Dyanidhi Maran opposed becoming a TATA’s a player in the DTH business.


A war of words broke out between them and it was reported in the media. Since, TATA’s had bigger financial clout and all India operation to run, the ambition of the regional player had to eat a humble pie.


Even though the acrimony faded into oblivion, it did led to the formation of another business the SUN DTH.


There is much to dig into the business operations of Maran brothers as they have many other hidden businesses not known to the public but it would suffice to say that this is not an isolated business model in India.


There are many business conglomerates who have charted out similar course of action to become and become rich, richer and richest.


For the theoreticians of business practices in India, there are two business models operational in this country.


One is to acquire business interest by fair and foul means and then acquire political power to protect the business and make it grow. The other model is first gain political clout and then become a corporate entity and flourishes under the political umbrella.


The two models are simultaneously at work in India. This is reflected in the ever growing number of Crorepatis MPs in the Indian Parliament. A cursory look at their profiles suggests that either they have taken the political route or the business route to amass such huge wealth.


Geared by Marxian ideology, to travel the distance in phases to achieve the goal of a utilitarian state, the politician after crossing the stage of acquiring political power get into the domain of building huge economic wealth. Similarly, businessmen after accumulating substantial wealth, get into the domain of accruing political clout. In this way they can get away with all their gory deeds and keep their business operation afloat.


However, the rule of the game is quite different. The businessmen normally take the protection of the political bosses by funding them and flourish in their businesses.


The political bosses on the other hand keep away from business activity because they have easy flow of cash. This arrangement seems to be working fine but is now becoming a slightly outdated for business practices in this country.


With change in business practices, the changing character of the Indian democracy is quite glaring. This development stare us on our face as we see the other side of India that lives on less than a dollar a day.


The conclusion drawn out of this discussion is the gap between rich and poor is becoming unbridgeable in this country.


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Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba@yahoo.com

Source - http://www.groundreport.com/Business/India-s-Business-Most-Foul/2942718

Reading habit

Gandhiji, during his days in England for his bar-at-law course, meets a person called Fredrick Pincutt. This meeting is sought by Gandhiji himself to ascertain his readiness for practising law. In Pincutt's evaluation, Gandhiji's general reading was very meagre. He says every Indian should know Indian history in detail. He also tells Gandhiji that although this has no connection with the practice of law, he ought to know this because knowledge of the world is a sine qua nonfor a lawyer. This will help him read a man's character from his face. Pincutt was also surprised that Gandhiji had not read about the First War of Indian Independence. Gandhiji immediately realises the importance of what Pincutt said and humbly accepts that he has not had much supplementary reading.

When I acquainted him with my little stock of reading, he was, as I could see, rather disappointed. But it was only for a moment. Soon his face beamed with a pleasing smile and he said, 'I understand your trouble. Your general reading is meagre. You have no knowledge of the world, a sine qua non for a vakil. You have not even read the history of India. A vakil should know human nature. He should be able to read a man's character from his face. And every Indian ought to know Indian history. This has no connection with the practice of law, but you ought to have that knowledge. I see that you have not even read kaye and Malleson's history of the Mutiny of 1857. Get hold of that at once and also read two more books to understand human nature.' These were Lavator's and Shemmelpennick's books on physiognomy. Link

The reason for highlighting this incident from the Mahatma's autobiography is to emphasise the importance of cultivating the reading habit at a very young age to be successful in life.

Murali Pasupathy  - http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article2622218.ece

Public Law Symposium at NLSIU, Bangalore

The National Law School of India Review, the flagship journal of National Law School of India University, Bangalore is pleased to present the first NLSIR Public Law Symposium to be held on 10 December, 2011 at the National Law School campus. The theme of the symposium is "Adjudication of Socio-Economic Rights by the Indian Supreme Court", an issue which has seen significant legal developments in the recent past. The symposium will be attended by renowned legal luminaries including Justice Muralidhar, Mr. T. R. Andhyarujina, Mr. Shyam Diwan and Mr. Arun Kumar Thiruvengadam, amongst others.

The discussion will be divided into two sessions. In the first session (scheduled between 10.30 A.M.-12.30 P.M.) the panel will discuss the substantive adjudication of socio-economic rights undertaken by the Supreme Court concerning questions of the ever-widening ambit of Article 21 and the content of the new rights so evolved. The changing nature of the relationship between Part III and Part IV of the Constitution due to such expansion will form an important part of the session. The second session (scheduled between 1.30 P.M.-3.30 P.M.) will focus on the manner in which the Supreme Court has enforced these rights and consider the variety of procedural innovations employed for the same, including PILs and continuing mandamus.

The registration fee for the symposium is Rs. 500 for professionals. There is no registration fee for students. All those interested are requested to register their attendance at the following link: <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEdkRTJua21BY2R5Snh1UWl1QXRCREE6MQ>.

For any further details regarding the symposium, please contact Krishnaprasad K.V. (Chief Editor, NLSIR) at +91-9916589670 or Ashwita Ambast (Deputy Chief Editor, NLSIR) at +91-9986478265 or email us at mail.nlsir@gmail.com.

Googling Kent Walker By Martin Kuz

Life as Google’s top lawyer is a crucible filled with extraordinary demands. He couldn’t be happier

Learning of Kent Walker’s duties as general counsel of Google requires little effort. Just Google “Google,” click the News tab and scan the headlines:

“China renews Google license amid censorship row”

“Google defeats Viacom in landmark copyright case”

“EU examines Google antitrust complaints ‘very carefully’”

“Google Faces Probe By States For WiFi Breaches”

The reports appeared over a three-week period in early summer and pertained to only a fraction of the company’s legal affairs, many more of which drew coverage in countless other articles. Few mentioned Walker. Yet while his name seldom surfaces in the news, he is one of the executives charged with upholding Google’s guiding principle: “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” As he tells it, there’s nowhere he would rather ply his trade, largely because to work for Google is, in effect, to work everywhere.

“I find this a fascinating place to be,” says the 49-year-old Walker, who arrived at the company’s Mountain Viewheadquarters in 2006 after a three-year stint as eBay’s deputy general counsel. “We’re dealing with important issues with smart people in a way that we can have impact. That’s my definition of heaven. That doesn’t mean things are always calm and peaceful, but Google is in the middle of a really important and interesting discussion. It’s like the most interesting law exam you’ve ever taken—every day.”

His daily exam covers myriad practice areas: copyright, trademark, patent; privacy, defamation, obscenity; antitrust, competition, contract. The list goes on and wraps around the planet as Google confronts legal quandaries in countries from Australia to Austria, China to Chile, Turkey to Thailand. The company’s ever-widening presence obliges Walker and his legal team to deal with foreign regulators and courts, attempting to locate common ground between Google and governments in the digital frontier.

“There’s one Internet and 200-plus countries, each of which has its own rules,” he says. “We’ve been fairly strong [in asserting] that while a country may wish to impose some rules on content that’s provided locally, no country should be able to dictate the content of the global Internet. And this has been a point of friction with some countries that have been concerned that content they find objectionable is available anywhere on the Net. So that’s something we’re constantly trying to work through.”

No more so than in China, whose tense relationship with Google has attracted considerable media attention. In March, to bypass the government’s censorship of search results, the company began automatically rerouting users of its China-based site to its unrestricted site in Hong Kong. Chinese officials disapproved, and by late June, as Google awaited the Chinese decision on renewing its Internet content provider license, speculation simmered about who would acquiesce. The New York Times weighed in with an editorial, arguing that to allow censored search results “would make Google into an accomplice of China’s repressive government.”

In the end, the sides compromised. The company had its license renewed after changing the China-based site—its services are limited to music and product searches and text translation—so that users need to click a link to go to theHong Kong page. The truce enables Google to stay in China, the world’s largest online market with almost 400 million Internet users and counting, while still offering a portal to unfiltered searches through the Hong Kong site.

“People think of it as a China issue but it’s really a global issue,” says Walker, who describes Google’s approach to data availability as a three-way balancing act. “We’re trying to do the best we can to triangulate between making information universally accessible and allowing people to have free access to the Internet, the need to comply with local laws, and the need to keep our people safe and out of jail.”

So far, at least, the company’s employees have avoided incarceration, though some have endured questioning abroad, and in February, a judge in Italy convicted three of its workers of privacy violations, imposing six-month suspended sentences. (Google has appealed.) Italian authorities faulted the company for waiting too long to remove a video clip that showed a group of teens taunting an autistic boy even though Google took it down after receiving notice from law enforcement. Elsewhere, regulators preemptively blocked access to Google and its various sites, including YouTube, when they deemed certain content offensive. In the past few years, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Syria and Thailand, among others, briefly suspended Google’s services. Iran, Libya and Turkey belong to a small list of nations with active bans.

Overseeing the attorneys who protect Google’s interests across every time zone makes for an around-the-clock job. “You turn off the laptop at midnight and turn it back on at 7 in the morning and you’ve got a full inbox again,” Walkersays. He extols the company’s free-thinking, “bottom-up spirit” instilled by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, with whom he has frequent contact on all manner of legal matters. “I’ve seen engineers in their early 20s come into a senior management meeting and turn around the direction of the meeting because they had the right side of the argument or had an insight that no one else in the room had,” Walker says. “That’s a really exciting environment to work in.”

The ubiquity and deepening cultural influence of Google can obscure the fact that Brin and Page launched it only 12 years ago at Stanford University; true to the Silicon Valley startup mythos, their enterprise took root in a residential garage before expanding to offices. The company has since grown to 22,000 employees worldwide; one-third of them work at the so-called Googleplex in Mountain View. The Times once likened the expansive office park to “a bucolic and extraordinarily well-financed theme camp”—an effect enhanced by the prevalence of young engineers in T-shirts, jeans and assorted open-toed footwear.

A Palo Alto native who lives there today with his wife, Diana Walsh, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, and their three children, Walker grew up reading the science fiction novels of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. The books appealed to him “not so much for the gee-whiz [factor] of things blowing up or action chases in space,” he says, “but because of the visions of how technology was creating interesting societies.”

He graduated from Harvard in 1983 and headed back West to attend Stanford Law School, where he co-founded the Stanford Law and Technology Association. The group’s initial purpose, Walker explains, was to delve into a question whose answer remains somewhat murky more than two decades later: “Is there such a thing as technology law?” After earning his J.D., he helped run the successful state Assembly campaign of Ted Lempert, a San Mateo Democrat, and clerked at the Howard Rice firm in San Francisco before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office there in 1990. During his five years as a federal prosecutor, he co-founded the office’s high-tech crime unit and handled scores of cybercrime cases, winning the conviction of notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick, whose illegal exploits inspired the 2000 film Takedown. In 1995, as the early strains of Internet fever spread through the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, Walker jumped to the legal staff of AirTouch Communications, a cell phone firm. His tech buzz intensified after he signed on as Netscape’s deputy general counsel two years later. “There was a sense of mission, excitement, newness that was intoxicating,” Walkersays of the company he remembers as “a magical place.” He stayed until 2001, when he joined Liberate Technologies, which had begun as joint venture between Netscape and Oracle to bring TV to the Internet which he wryly calls “a great idea—about five or 10 years too soon.” In 2004, following Liberate’s demise, he went to eBay, to a position that prepared him for the global legal practice he now manages at Google. (He declined to talk about ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman’s bid for governor.)

If Walker’s lean, clean-cut appearance and polite manner lend him aspects of a Boy Scout leader, in conversation he comes across as a polymath. He cites Henry Ford and former President Theodore Roosevelt while talking about business innovation, discusses the theories of German sociologist Max Weber and Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, and offers his thoughts on The Rational Optimist, the recent book by Matt Ridley, a former editor with The Economist. He shows a similar far-ranging interest in sundry areas of the law.

“Kent gets excited by the complexities and nuances of issues,” says Donald Harrison, Google’s deputy general counsel in charge of its corporate and competition groups. “He would dive into every issue if he could, and I think sometimes it tears at him that he can’t. But he does a good job of finding the balance between giving people the tools they need to succeed and giving them the space they need to work.”

A business with an annual revenue of $25 billion tends to keep its legal counsel occupied. As Google brokered détente with China in early summer, authorities in the U.S., Europe and Australia began probing whether the company violated privacy laws by gleaning personal data from wireless networks while its Street View vehicles mapped roadways. (Google has stopped collecting Wi-Fi data and pledged to cooperate with investigators.) The company received better news when a federal judge in New York ruled in its favor in a $1 billion copyright suit brought by Viacom over the posting of clips from TV shows on YouTube. The judge agreed that Google complied with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by promptly deleting the videos when notified by Viacom. Walker believes the decision, which Viacom has appealed, reinforces the protection of free expression online.

“If the ruling had come out the other way ... it would be like saying that the phone company was responsible for communication that went across its lines,” he says. “You would have created a regime in which companies had to vet and preview content before it was allowed up in a manual way”—a potentially crippling burden for YouTube, given that users upload in excess of 20 hours of content to the site every minute.

Facebook, eBay and Yahoo led an amicus brief on Google’s behalf in the case. Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s general counsel, has known Walker since his days at Liberate, and on occasion, as in the Viacom litigation, their respective employers find common cause. Yet even when opposing one another—Yahoo has objected to its rival’s efforts to establish a global digital library with its ongoing Google Books project—Callahan has appreciated his counterpart’s work. “What he brings to the table is raw intelligence, experience in a lot of different areas, and a very low-key, level-headed approach,” Callahan says.

The two attorneys were on the same side in 2008 as Google and Yahoo negotiated a limited search-advertising partnership. Pressure from U.S. Department of Justice regulators who saw the proposed deal as a step toward a monopoly compelled the companies to scrap it. Since then, as the company has expanded through its acquisition of mobile advertising firms, social search engines, online databases and other services (and in light of its proposed Net neutrality deal with Verizon), industry and government scrutiny of its business practices has intensified. Some competitors, notably Microsoft and AT&T, suggest Google has skirted antitrust laws. Earlier this year, the European Union opened an inquiry in response to allegations that the company, seeking to harm its rivals, lowers their rank in search results to deter online users from visiting their sites.

The criticism of Google runs counter to its mostly shiny public image and unofficial motto: “Don’t be evil.” Walkerregards the flak as a natural result of growth, and he characterizes the company’s contact with regulators in the U.S.and overseas as “very positive.” As for the complex algorithms that govern Google’s search rankings, he adds, “There’s never been any evidence that we let advertising results influence search results. ... If you want to rank high on Google, have higher quality content.”

Stanford economist Gregory Rosston, who specializes in antitrust and competition issues, credits Google with recognizing that with size comes skepticism from competitors and government officials. “They seem to be doing things in an open way,” he says. The strategy contrasts with that of Microsoft, perhaps Google’s most persistent detractor, which sought to impede regulators in the 1990s when they investigated the Seattle-based company for anticompetitive tactics. “Google seems to realize that the government isn’t just going to go away,” Rosston says.

Walker knows as much from his years as a federal prosecutor, and he exudes earnestness when he says, “I’m really committed that we’re doing the right thing here and helping people create, share and access new forms of information, entertainment and knowledge.” At the same time, while conceding Google commits mistakes, and despite those who doubt its motives, he considers it a force for global good. “The north star of what we do is to try to make things better for society,” he says. Or as one of his heroes, Theodore Roosevelt, said of those who cast aspersions: “It is not the critic who counts. ... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”

Source - http://www.superlawyers.com/california-northern/article/Googling-Kent-Walker/a0fa051d-d7cf-40da-a063-25e015f9afd7.html