SHOBHIT PANT OFFICIAL

There's a well-known story of a passenger in queue for South West Airlines, the world's largest low-cost airline. He pushes his way to the front and when the woman at the counter says she cannot serve him because he jumped the line, he bellows, menacingly, "Do you know who I am? "The airline attendant, unruffled, calls out to the other passengers, "Does anybody know who this gentleman is?  He says he doesn't know who he is. " This urge to throw one's weight around and drop names, to seek special privileges, then flaunt those privileges to show others how ordinary they are, to jump red lights in red - beaconed cars -all this has been standard practice in India for too long. Not just MPs, but judges, famous Supreme Court lawyers, media honchos, celebrity God-men who preach spirituality and simplicity are guilty of strutting in VIP mode at airports, greatly inconveniencing other passengers. Even I am guilty of it. And I've seen airline CEOs doing ...

Millionaires is perhaps more accurate, but billionaires has a ring to it -  Bollywood 's billionaires! Getting to the point however - the event was the ' Saifai Mahotsava '. The patrons -  Mulayam  Singh Yadav and his cabinet entourage, sans those on a 18 day foreign junket euphemistically called a study tour.  Madhuri Dixit  gyrated to her most popular numbers, music director duo Sajid Wajid pelted out their chartbusters and keeping them company were a string of stars like Soha Ali Khan, Ranveer Singh and Hindi film industry's eternal heartthrob and hero to Madhuri in many a super-hit film -  Salman Khan . He who runs the non-profit charitable foundation 'Being Human'. Regretfully, there was nothing human or charitable about the latkas and jhatkas of this Bollywood contingent's night out in Saifai. Dance as they did to Mulayam's tunes, barely a few hundred kilometers away, in the same state, 40 children had died and about a lakh or so victims of the hor...

JUGAL BANDI When Bismillah Khan plays the shehnai and NG Jog the violin, the violin does not become the shehnai nor the shehnai the violin. Thus, when the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress stand on the same side of secularism against the BJP's communalism, it does not make the AAP the Congress or the Congress the AAP. Much like any jugalbandi, sometimes the two instruments are in consonance; at other times, they are contrapuntal.   In the case of the AAP-Congress jugalbandi, it is almost always contrapuntal. In season, and mostly out of season, AAP leaders and spokespersons vilify the Congress, paint it black to portray themselves white as driven snow. Notwithstanding weeks in office, abuse and slander remain their stock in trade. And now that they are in government, to abuse and slander they have added threats. As for policy, it largely consists of empty gestures: dithering over forming the government and pretending to have this decided by opinion polls; turning up for the swea...

If Five Personal Branding Tips for Solopreneurs  you are a solopreneur--whether you are a service provider, information marketer or coach--you are a company of one by definition. Your personal brand and your company brand go hand in hand. Personal branding is critical because the product that people are buying is YOU.   My bike mechanic is a knowledgeable and trustworthy guy who brands himself as the Bike Doctor and has a unique market position as the bicycle mechanic who makes "house calls." I remember who he is and his unique value. Why don't more solopreneurs do the same? To succeed in branding, you must identify the single most important thing for you to be known for--and brand around this consistently. Then, you need to "bake the cake, then ice it," my metaphor for branding. The cake is your rational or functional value--your expertise and experience. The icing is your emotional value--your personality, style, likeability, and trust factor. Just like...