The following lists important questions for MBL 1 Paper “Industrial Relations Law” as of 2012 – this is not a complete list of questions which can come in the exam, but in the past 3-4 years most of the questions have come from this set. I do not claim to be the original author of this information – I got it from the different study groups and the thanks should go to the people who pain painstakingly collected this.

1. Explain an Industrial dispute and also when an individual dispute becomes industrial dispute
2. Critically examine the limitations on Managerial Prerogatives under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.
3. Critically examine the appropriate Government’s power of reference through case law. Is there any need to continue with such power in the era of liberalisation and globalisation?
4. Define ‘Industry’. Explain in brief with the help of decided cases.
5. Examine the scope and the extent of immunities of registered trade unions with the help of decided cases.
6. Explain the pre-requisites for effective collective bargaining. Also examine as to what extent they are present in the Indian scenario
7. Explain the procedure for forming Trade Unions and also the procedure for registration of Trade unions.
8.  ”Dispute resolution machinery in the Industrial Disputes Act is suppose to be speedy and effective, but there are many hurdles imposed by the Statute itself”. Critically examine this statement.
9. Explain how registration of Trade Unions is different from recognition of Trade Union.
10. Explain the reasons for weakening of Trade Union Movement in India.
11.  Analyse the definition of ‘workman’ in the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 with the help of case laws.
12. Explain in brief different methods of resolution of Industrial disputes as provided under the Industrial DisputesAct, 1947.
13. Explain the definition of ‘Strike’ under the Industrial Disputes Act. Also explain how Strikes are regulated under the Industrial Disputes Act.
14. Explain Conciliation process under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. Also explain the powers of a Conciliation Officer.
15. Funds of a registered trade union
16. Unfair labour practices
17. Outsiders as office bearers of a registered Trade Union
18. Difference between lay-off ,lock-out, retrenchment.
19. Strike as a weapon of Collective bargaining.
20. Political funds and General funds of a registered Trade Union
21. Certification procedure for Standing Orders.
22. Picketing and immunities
23. Industrial employees standing order
24. Protected workmen
25. 3 types of Industrial dispute

The following lists important questions for MBL 1 Paper “Environmental Law” as of 2012 – this is not a complete list of questions which can come in the exam, but in the past 3-4 years most of the questions have come from this set. I do not claim to be the original author of this information – I got it from the different study groups and the thanks should go to the people who pain painstakingly collected this.

1. Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991
2. Bhopal Disaster
3. Bio Medical waste rule 1998- occupier
4. Conservation of biodiversity-legal regime
5. Coastal regulation law
6. Bio diversity act
7. Wild life protection act, 2002
8. Pollution control board chairman, power & function
9. Precaution
10. Polluter pay
11. Forest conservation act, 2002
12. Environment protection act, 1986 & rule
13. Doctrine of public trust
14. Constitutional concern for environmental management
15. Environmental impact assessment rule
16. Geographical indication of goods act,1999
17. National environmental tribunal act, 1995
18. Municipal solid waste rule, 2000
19. Land acquisition act,1894
20. ISO certificate
21. Industrial sitting
22. Air (prevention & control of pollution) Act 1977
23. Pollution control : common and criminal law
24. Environmental audit of industries
25. Agreements of WTO
26. Hazardous waste rule 2000
27. Plant variety farmer right act, 2001
28. Indian environmental regime

This paper is special in the sense that some topics outside the study notes are also at times asked and some really important topics are listed below – its always good to understand what are the topics discussed in the contact classes to be updated on the recent conferences/other topics that could be asked

1.  Kyoto protocol on climate change
2.  Trail smelter arbitration
3. Noise pollution
4. Rio conference, 1992
5. Oleum gas leak case
6. Indian forest act, 1927

The following lists important questions for MBL 1 Paper “Banking Law” as of 2012 – this is not a complete list of questions which can come in the exam, but in the past 3-4 years most of the questions have come from this set. I do not claim to be the original author of this information – I got it from the different study groups and the thanks should go to the people who pain painstakingly collected this.

1. Banking Ombudsman Scheme
2. Non Performing Assets.
3. Opening Minors Bank Account
4. Cheque crossing and types.
5.  Foreign Banks and regulation on India
6. Banker Book
7. Evidence Law
8. Bankers Lien
9. Debt Recovery Tribunal
10. Legal status of Passbook
11. Consortium Lending
12. Concept of Securitization.
13. Holder and Holder in due course
14. RBI Power and regulation on different banks in India
15. Collecting and paying banker
16.  RBI control on Inflation
17. Specialised Banking
18. Bank Nationalisation
19. Narasimhama committee Report .
20. Define Banking in legal terms  - Capital Adequacy Ratio.

The following lists important questions for MBL 1 Paper “Contract Law” as of 2012 – this is not a complete list of questions which can come in the exam, but in the past 3-4 years most of the questions have come from this set. I do not claim to be the original author of this information – I got it from the different study groups and the thanks should go to the people who pain painstakingly collected this.

Law of Contracts

1. Breach of Contract: All kinds of legal implications & all aspects & related Case laws
2. Enforcement
3. Compensation for non-compliance of contract
4. Validity of agreement & burden of responsibility
5. Non-performance of Contract & its several implications
6. Auction Sale (s)
7. Performance Guarantee (s)
8. Surety’s Liability (s) & Surety
9. Implied Acceptance
10. Promissory estoppels & Proprietary estoppels (s)
11. Right of Minor in Indian Contract Act
12. Common Mistake & Unilateral Mistake
13. Voidable contract & discharge of contract
14. Wager & Contingent Contract
15. Doctrine of Impossibility
16. Quasi Contracts
17. Fraud & misinterpretation
18. Lotteries (s)
19. Agreement in restraint of legal proceedings
20. Intention to create legal relations
21. Unilateral & Bilateral Contracts
22. Past Considerations & Executed Considerations (s)
23. Communication of acceptance in Indian & English Law
24. Free Consent & related case laws
25. Acceptance of agreement
26. Consideration
27. Bailment & Pledge
28. Auction
29. Contract of Indemnity & Guarantee
30. Bank Guarantee & Performance guarantee
31. Implied agency
32. Sub Agent & substituted agent
33. Liability
34. Limitations on specific relief
35. Standard form of contracts
36. Tender
37. Violation of contracts
38. Promise
39. Public policy
40. Co-ercion
41. Digital contracts
42. Emergency power of Agent
43. Undue importance And its impact upon the contract
44. Obligation
45. Mistake of law
46. Invitation to treat (s)

The following lists important questions for MBL 1 Paper “Corporate Law” as of 2012 – this is not a complete list of questions which can come in the exam, but in the past 3-4 years most of the questions have come from this set. I do not claim to be the original author of this information – I got it from the different study groups and the thanks should go to the people who pain painstakingly collected this.

CORPORATE LAW

1. Steps for incorporating a Company (both public & private)
2. Public & private company & their differences
3. Different companies & their features
4. True & Fair view of the State of Affairs of a company (s)
5. Buy Back of shares & its legal position
6. Special Resolution & Special Notice
7. Extraordinary General Meeting (s)
8. Law governing “managerial personnel” & Director’s liability
9. Lodgement & revocation of proxies at general meetings (s)
10. Winding Up
11. “proper purpose” rule in relation to duties of Directors
12. Prospectus & all of its legal implications with special reference to ‘mis-statement & mistake’.
13. Foss v. Harbottle case
14. Royal British Bank vs. Turquand case & the exceptions
15. Provision for the minority shareholders’ in the Companies Act/shareholders’ protection under the Companies Act
16. Lifting the Corporate Veil (s)
17. Conversion of public into private company (s)
18. Non-liability of Auditor (s)
19. Doctrine of Ultra Vires (s)
20. Debentures carrying voting rights (s)
21. Doctrine of indoor management & constructive notice & their relation
22. Corporate personality
23. Transfer of Shares & transmission of shares.
24. Responsibilities & mismanagement by Board of Directors
25. Illegal association (s)
26. Statutory Meeting (s)
27. Auditors  & associated legal aspects
28. Difference between nature & effect of reduction of capital, cancellation of shares, forfeiture  of shares & buyback
29. Dematting
30. Fiduciary duty of directors
31. Promoter (S)
32. Limited liability partnership & proprietorship
33. Window dressing of accounts
34. Subsidiary companies & its provision
35. Company Directors & legal provisions governing their appointment
36. Voting through proxies at general meeting (s)
37. Scope & Ambit of Sec 45 & 542 of Companies Act, 1956
38. Significance of Table A articles of  Schedule I
39. Preference Share
40. Diversification of business & its various legal provisions
41. AoA & MoA
42. No Conflict Rule (s)
43. Squeezing out minority(s)
44. AGM & EGM

As I have focussed on the same, I have come to realize that there is definitely a lack of information to help the average person prepare for MBL without support from the community. I hope to bridge part of this by setting up the  “MBL Study Guide Page” in which I hope collect all the information that I have on the subject in a manner that people can access it quickly.

Why a legal degree with a MBA/Marketing?

I have been a strong believer that the best marketers are ones with the ability to generate consumer and market insight, ones who can see an opportunity where others can’t see it and then convert it into actionable project plan to nurture and growth the insight into $’s. With my exposure to  so called “Big Data”  , and I still stand amazed to the ways in which analysts can dissect it to generate insight , I have learned pure math part of it but have also realized the folly of mistaking the map for the real world. The cautionary tale that my former CEO tells about how pure analytical RoI models lead to unsustainable overstaffing in Pharma industry in US is one of the key insight that I took from my innings there.

Quite contrary to that,  in my current role looking at some really exciting and varied B2B markets, where data is scant, if not available and one relies more on gut feel I have been able to appreciate more the softer side of the equation. This, in fact, has been a bigger challenge for me as it totally opposes my “one problem one solution approach driven” in by my engineering background and strengthened by my time in marketing analytics.

And here is where I have started appreciating the need for a rigorous course in something completely different – law is a perfect choice as the industries that I operate in are highly regulated and an understanding of the basic legal issues goes a long way in not getting lost when talking to the legal department – a conversation that happens more often that I imagined. There is also the “Green” angle and the IP angle to most of Novozymes solutions – which is something very close to law.

As I have started doing the course, the other benefits that stem from taking a subject quite different from your normal comfort zone has become more and more evident – the networking opportunities in a completely different circle, heighted sensitiveness to the legal side of business propositions – one which was both baffling aspect before as well as a real hindrance in really wrapping my head around problems , getting exposed with what is definitely an educational centre of excellence in our country and what have you.

So here’s to hoping that information that I collect will be useful to the student community for MBL in India.

Being a completely new field, I have spent the larger part of last year learning this fascinating industry (..ies). The industries are so interlinked and I am looking at a wide range of end markets that it’s both daunting and fascinating.

I hope to start collecting information on the industry and slowly talk about my views on how the different industries will evolve soon.

To start off I am bookmarking this excellent blog The Green Chemicals Blog.

Though the blog has a much larger coverage area than my immediate industry, it’s an excellent source to keep updated on the various happenings in this crazy network of allied industries.

Looking at updating my blog more frequently now…

I guess blogging is just one of things where the momentum has a huge part to play and once life gets in the way, you need to fight harder to get back to it. Anyhow…

You are pregnant!

Recently, I have had some really interesting discussions about the topic at hand and had the good fortune of standing on both sides of in different discussions. Though it isn’t a new topic, especially for someone involved in marketing analytics, this article caught my eye in my news list suggested by Linkedin. Similar issues were discussed in two different podcasts I follow, TWIT (This week in technology) and The Psych Files. The written article discusses the case of Target being able to predict, with astounding accuracy, the probability of a particular customer being pregnant and stage of pregnancy before her father even knew about it. They did this by building a pregnancy score function linked to the pattern of purchases common to an expecting woman. Based on this, they were  able to customize the offers delivered to these particular customers via direct mail, email etc – much to the disgust of the father.

The Marketer’s Glee

Target, being primarily aimed at women customers (Thanks Raman for this info), it’s not hard to see the *awesome* advantage that Target can achieve in today’s crowded market place with this kind of directed marketing.  The US population growing at ~1%(2008 estimate) , that’s potentially an early identification of ~3mn highly valuable targets every year. The allure with pregnant woman for retailers\marketers is that they are customers who can’t defer their purchase, highly emotional and probably the most willing in their life to pay a premium for “pregnancy” related goods and services. On top of that, the customer\ household has been effectively captured into a segmentation parameter (kids age) that can last potentially at least for 10 years (-9 months to +9 years). [Heck there is even a whole specialized retailing concept around just this customer base.]

The Customer’s Dilemma

The customer has reasons to be both outraged and delighted at the same time. The fact that the company is able to track this (and other) aspect of a customer’s personal life touches a raw nerve for most people. At the same time, if the offers coming to the customer are made relevant to them in this age of advertising clutter, the customer has reasons to cheer. In this particular case, The father was initially outraged that Target was advertising pregnancy products to a teenager and later, on getting up to speed,  was embarrassed and apologized for the initial ruckus he created.

Targeted Marketing taken to a new level

This kind of targeted marketing has been going on for a while for eg. the fact that there are ads of chocolate and toys on Saturday mornings and Hosewife-y \HouseHusband-y products advertised on weekday afternoons. Marketers have been always looking for more and more ways to churn out increasingly targeted ads\promotions.  And in this battle – analytics is the new “Brahmastra”

With most kind of targeted marketing promotions of the past, anonymity existed to level that “you are a 3-14 year old child who is interested in cartoons” etc. But when combined with web (and seen in light of Google\Facebook’s increasingly dicey  privacy policy changes), where not just you purchase patterns but your other interests can be tracked as well, analytics of the new age seems to be the Crystal ball which can predict your next need\purchase better than you – but one that is in the marketer’s table rather than your own closet. So you become a “12-13 year old boy (say, based on you past buying of books\cloths) who is interested in Superheros (based on your Facebook likes) currently looking for a cycle (based on recent searches) who is from a family that earns between x and y annually (based on past purchases). This helps the crystal ball predict the product that you are most likely to buy and maybe even the price range that you will be ready to shell out. To the marketers – Awesome! To the Customers – Scary!

Who has the Remote Control?

As highlighted about the location of the crystal ball, the another big problem today is the control over whether or not you want the crystal ball to help you (and the Marketer) understand what you need better and , if so, the level to which you want them to understand.  You cannot “opt-out” of analysis of your purchase as it’s tagged to your credit card nor can you easily opt which products to include in this “virtual profile” of yours and which not to. (You can of course do that by using different cards or paying by cash etc). In terms of online privacy rules and how your online data is used, the rules of the game are still getting evolved but left to their own (without consumer activism) it seems like moving increasingly to a state of less and less of Opt-in to more and more Opt-out or no even no option to Opt-out

Filter Bubbles

Another important aspect to this and other analytics driven solutions is that you are always going to get “more of the same”. If you have been checking up mostly on football recently – all you ads, suggested news items, etc is going to be football related. And depending on the limited information that the different engines have about you, you are going to get straight jacketed and be living in a very narrow “filter bubble” beyond which you will not be exposed. Now this is kind of similar to saying that if you live in tier 3 or tier 4 cities of South India, it’s unlikely that you will get exposed to North Indian culture. Considering that, this probably seems light, but what is to be factored in is that unlike in the latter case where it’s a practical limitation that it’s hard to get exposed to North India culture in South India , the filter bubble is a “feature” that we are adding to the web from its current non-discriminating, bubble free environment.

This kind of stereotyping can also promote segment “traits” among constituents of the segment who might not have developed the same other wise. This goes into making the society more polarized and synthetic and from a marketing point of view , possibly, unethical - Like a teenage girl being bombarded with ads for beauty product ads can make her conscious about something she never even considered important in the first place. This is in line with the ethical debates in marketing like “whether beauty product ads promote a previously non existing aspiration about exposed girls to be slim and fair” etc – where the marketing is driven by exploiting a hidden insecurity and reinforcing the same.

We are just doing it better!

An argument from most Marketers is that they have been doing similar segmentation for years and it’s just the next step. This line of thought holds less water in my opinion as it’s inherently fallacious in saying that what is done is the past is correct. More importantly, the level to which this targeting can be done has increased to never-dreamed-before levels, which probably brings in the need for a rethink and potentially regulation –self or 3^rd party.

Parting Thoughts

Marketers have long possessed the ability to manipulate people and thoughts (but then again they are not the only one). So there falls a responsibility to the marketer that can be summed up in what is (was?) Google’s motto -: “Don’t Be Evil”. My take is that here the self regulation has to come in 3 aspects

• Data Security and Anonymity – Who has access to the data and how anonymous it exists in the form that it can be accessed.
• How the data is used – Once the segment is identified, it is equally important that the marketer does not take “undue” advantage of the segment. The way to probably look at it is that the marketers should consider how comfortable he/she is, if tomorrow the customers get to know how she/he is using this information. Also, part of it will probably get taken care of as competitors develop similar capabilities. Amazon’s case and the usage of analytics in Casinos are cases worth looking into. But there will always be shades of grey here.
• Non Intrusive use of data – In the particular case of the pregnant teenager, what outrages public the most is probably the very evident and intrusive nature in which the information is used. The article goes on to detail how this was solved by adding back some noise into the communication in the form of non pregnancy related product ads.

A leaving though to consider (discussed in one of the podcast) that got me pondering was regarding the control aspect. If you are able to determine what kind of info is stored and used to profile you and you can help improve it by giving more relevant information about you, the targeting could be better done, avoiding the pitfalls of both an analytical engine driven segmentation and other ethical issues. This can be opt-in for the people interested, which can incentivise the marketers to give relevant and good offers to these customers as a reward for allowing to be segmented without which such an effort would fail. And of course for everyone opting out there are always those nice Saturday morning ads.

If so then how many times has he traversed it and shouldn’t he remember the other previous traversals?

Or is the argument that in a lifetime everyone has to go start from his first traversals himself and since this is a feat too exhausting for the human mind, we never reach beyond our 1st or the 2nd?

Can he accelerate it through culture? Or does culture just act as an initial booster which then kills his ability to go beyond a point for art is like a crutch that can only take you through an already travelled part and any point beyond that is just unthinkable for a person who has come till there on crutches…