Indicast Podcast Network - Mother Feed

In the first Bizination episode for 2010, we bring you a list of top 10 Business news of 2009 that made waves in India. Tell us if you agree with our list!

Born in India, having spent a major part of his life in Australia, and having worked on building Indo-Australian ties both on the government and business level, We can think of no one better than Mr. Neville Roach to shed light on the current state of affairs between India and Australia. The latest and a significant addition to the already enviable bio is his recent appointment to the Indian Prime Ministers Global Advisory Council of Overseas Indians.

Sidin, the Managing Editor of LiveMint.com joined us to talk a bit about his forthcoming book, Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese and a bit more about the Chetan Bhagat controversy which has found a lot of newspaper space lately. This podcast was free-flowing (uh another way of saying that we were all over the place). We spoke about how beautifully the Indian Hockey Federation is handing its hockey players demands by breaking new records in unprofessionalis

The last episode and week of the year 2009 and infact the decade was full of controversies and dejections. Starting with Sheila Dixit and her prayer for a successful CWG to 86 year old Governor beging serviced at Raj Bhavan. Any case, keep listening in the upcoming decade.

If anyone can come close to playing God today, then it's unargubaly Google. In its latest move it is contemplating on charging its users (virtually all of us) for accessing news online. We cant blame Google for this since this demand has come from folks like Murdoch and the likes who claim to be losing tons of money by inviting readers to browse stories free of cost. In India, Bajaj has taken a bold (but predictable and emotional) decision to discontinue its scooters.

One venue: Copenhagen. 192 countries. One goal is to reduce carbon emissions which isnt doing any good to the climate. The Copenhagen accord was reached after rigourous debate among representatives of 192 countries. What's it all about? You tell us if you have figured it out so far. Back home in India Congress has sanctioned the formation of a new state Telangana and in Gujarat, the Panchayat elections will now be made compulsory. In cricket, India and Sri Lanka give each other a run for their money in the ODI series.

25 years after the biggest man made tragedy and the victims are still on the streets fighting another tragedy the government. The Bhopal Gas tragedy completed 25 years and people out there are still hoping to receive fair compensation for the genocide that was caused due to a gas leak from a Multinational company. The absenteeism in the parliament is at a new time high. In soprts, India are world number one in cricket and Tiger woods beats all records off the field this time .

An adorable experience. A drama-free which by definition includes melodrama-free execution. Super-witty dialogues that are timed superbly. And a plot that flows smoothly. What more can we ask for?

A film that invokes thoughts on varying subjects from single parenthood, rare diseases to politics. And it does so successfully. As if that werent enough it is all put together in a relatively unusual plot and has one superb performance by Amitabh Bachchan which overshadows brilliant performances by the rest of the cast too.

AMD and Intel are the fiercest of competitors. And we've been taught that almost all is fair in love, war and the corporate world. Intel took it a bit too far and had to cough up 1.5 billion USD to AMD for uh cheating. This is what they call out of court settlement. In News from India, the government is on a gold buying spree from the IMF. Toyota, the Japanese auto major has put its papers in F1. We sign off this episode by talking a bit about Inflation waking up after a rather prolonged period of hibernation.

For the last decade or so, Dubai invoked awe and admiration for the pace at which it could lead a creative growth which was not limited to building sky scrapers, but other garnishing like man made islands, artificial arctic like winter, etc. All these developments were funded by the Government through its investing arm, Dubai World which announced that it could not pay off the $59 billion loan to the banks. The stock markets came crashing down. While that happened, we also talk about the companies from India which are raising money to carry out their expansion activities. The recovery has begun.

Some would say 17 years is a long time for a report to be publised especially if its a judgement coming from the Supreme Court for a genocide like a riot which killed 2000 people (reported figures) in the Babri Maszid riot (read: pogrom). 26/11 is one year old now and Maharashtra has set up a Special Task Force called Force 1 for combating any terror strikes. In another news, pilgrimage places are becoming sex hot spots. The biggest exam in town, CAT goes online and sends servers crashing.

When two Sachin fans get together to talk about Him, you might expect a rather one sided conversation, but Aditya surprised me with his take on the recent unintended controversy that Sachin kicked off in the midst of his 20 years of international cricket which was spiced up a little bit with his seemingly innocent and matter of fact remark about Mumbai being a part of India and that it belongs to everyone equally. In other news, in the assembly elections, MNS MLAs beat up Abu Azmi for not taking his oath in Marathi. In Bihar, relief cheque from the state government to certain mishap victims bounced.

A poet, a journalist, a sportsman, a publishing editor of Indias premier newspaper, a photographer, a traveler, a film maker - all in one lifetime and still going strong. If this were a quiz question, one needn't require any options to choose from. The name that comes at the top of one's mind is that of Pritish Nandy. In this point blank chat with Aditya, Nandy gets candid on his colourful career so far right from his schooling days where his poems would get him plaudits from accomplished writers and female fans to his stint as a successful producer of cult films like Hazaron Khwaishein aaisee.

'Shashi Tharoor Jeetega Zaroor' was the campaign slogan that his supporters chanted when a precocious Tharoor was running for the president of his college union. He won then and three decades later, in 2009, Dr Shashi tharoor won again, this time as the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and a member of the Indian Parliament from the Trivandrum constituency in Kerala. In this podcast, Dr Tharoor talks about his experience as a diplomat at the UN and the eventful transition to Indian politics. In his beautiful and typical story telling style, he shares anecdotes about how he not only connected to the masses on the Internet but more importantly went the extra mile to win the hearts and minds of the labour class. He also shares his views on the unintended controversy that Twitter gave birth to.

Scams are back. Three guys from the 1983 batch of Wharton Business School have been accused of orchestrating one of the biggest hedge fund scams in a long time. This is a text book case of Insider trading. But not all news is sad news on the Wall Street. Most companies have posted Quarterly profits. In India, Lakshmi Mittal, the CEO of Arcelor Mittal threatened to quit all his projects from Orissa and Jharkhand. Ritika has strong views on the whole issue of land allocation for such projects which causes a lot of friction between the locals and the state government. In some sad news, Ranjan Das, SAP India head died of a massive heart attack.

The General Elections results are out and Congress is back in power in major states. Aditya describes his experience of watching Rahul Gandhi deliver a speech in Adityas home town, Panvel. In other news, Rajdhani Express was hijacked by Maoists but the only relief was that no one was hurt. In education, Kapil Sibal makes it even more difficult to get into an IIT college in India. ISRO and IAF are fighing a healthy battle to send a representative into outer space.

Happy Diwali Folks. In this unusually lighthearted episode, we talk about Adityas voting experience in the recently concluded state elections. Then we move on to talk about a very serious issue of Obama winning himself an Oscar. Or was it a Nobel? In Sports, Serena Williams posed nude for the body issue of ESPN magazine. Somewhere in India, a couple was asked to tie a rakhee because the Village Panchayat did not approve their love.

This episode of BiziNation is dedicated to the Internet. Lately, social networking sites are showing signs of finally making some money USocial, an Australian site is selling friends to companies who can send targeted messages to its audience. On the Operating Systems front, Microsoft launched its new OS with an a very questionable but an effective ad campaign. Yahoo! is spilling $100 million on advertising in the traditional media, a sign of growing desperation. Google on the other hand has launched an ad exchange program on the web much like the stock market in the physical world. Also, back home, an IIT entrepreneur launched Phokat Copy, a service which subsidizes photocopies for students in India.

What can bring china's internet to a screeching halt? - Lesbians or just the myth about a lesbian city. In other topics we talk about Kindle coming to India, Microsoft, Paypal killing a user account, Microsoft office - Starter Edition and snow leopard eating up user data. This week's news update include EU giving a go ahead to Microsoft's browser ballot solution.