CPI and CPI(M)

Whenever I read some news related to elections and politics I just wonder what is the difference between these two left parties. One is Communist Party of India (www.cpiindia.org) and the other is Communist Party of India (Marxist) (cpim.org).

To my understanding CPI(M) is quite influential in politics and is currently heading three state governments. It has been un-interruptedly in power in West Bengal since 1977, in Kerala and in Tripura. On broad level both the parties are leftists in nature and has influence from Soviet. CPI being the oldest was born in 1925 in India and CPI(M) was born in 1964. Popular known leaders from CPI(M) are Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, EMS Nambudripad, HS Surjeet, Sukomal Sen and BV Raghavulu. And in CPI, the national secretery is AB Pradhan, and more known names are Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy, D. Raja and Gurudas Dasgupta. I have not explored further at a micro level what seperates CPI from CPI(M).

Tata-Ford deal

Tata Motors has paid 2.3 billion USD for two luxury brands that Ford acquired in one in 1989 (Jaguar) and other in the year 2000 (Land Rover from BMW). Ford has paid much more than what Tatas have paid now to acquire these two brands. From Ford's point of view, I think it is straight forward why did they want to sell these two luxury brands. Ford has been struggling to manage these two brands in domestic as well as overseas markets and there are not enough profits generated from these brands. But, it will be interesting to hear the story from Tata's side. Without looking into the books looks like Tatas did smart shopping considering the fact that they paid almost half of what Ford paid to acquire these two brands. It is not new for Tatas to manage global acquisition more so a British one. It is also not new for them to manage post acquisitions. Ford labor unions preferred the proposal from Tatas post takeover. As Tatas have already mentioned, they are going to leave Land Rover and Jaguar as independent entities. I think it is in the best interests of Tatas to keep them independent for sometime (for about 2 to 3 years). This gives enough time for Tatas to get sufficient learning opportunities to understand and manage these brands. They could then start experimenting with leveraging on Supply Chain capabilities, like getting steel from Tata-Corus (I am just guessing that they supply steel for cars), then on the collaborative design process, co-innovation, managing luxury brands and then look at synergies from India interms of domestic sales or auto components or Indian management in productivity. Tatas have already started introducing a good amount of features in their Dicor series of Safari vehicles. Its a good start and they are on this challenging journey ahead.