India Unbound

I recently read a book by Gurcharan Das, called India Unbound. It is a classical textbook for any one wishing to know why the state of the Indian economy is, what it is. The author has very nicely covered the journey from pre-independence days to the year 2001. However much has happened on the scene since.
However the book is not just about matters related to the economy, but several factors which affect it like social, political, and cultural too. A must read.

P.S. He also has a blog- http://gurcharandas.blogspot.com/

50

Mukesh Ambani's journey with Reliance as he turns 50.

Simply brilliant...

CSE

If the Bombay Stock Exchange is too sophisticated for you, and if you are looking to play around in stocks, worry not. For, with the coming of the Cricket World Cup a group of students from IIM and IIT have come up with a unique concept. In their online 'Cricket Stock Exchange' (CSE) people can buy and sell stocks of their favorite cricketer, or if you or too financially erudite, a cricketer who will give you the best returns. The game is played with play chips to avoid controversies and also since this is only invented to enable people to know how a stock market works. So if your interested log on to cricstock.com since the IPO is already over.
Read about this on FE.

Mukesh Ambani's big plans

Mukesh Ambani talks about his plans for retail, SEZs and education. Really enlightening thoughts, and very fascinating business logic expressed in this.

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Some advice for Dr. Singh

Good editorial in the Indian Express. Read here.

Snow and Ice

It is that time of the year, when it has snowed and the snow has not gone away. At this point you know that the snow is here for the next six months. Also with daytime saving kicking in (whatever is the logic behind this concept), and when it starts getting dark at 5 PM, the depressing cycle of the year has just begun.
Neways this is a thing which happens only at the begining and the end of winters. During these times, when the temperature swings across the freezing point; the SNOW melts when the temperature goes positive, and when the temperature comes back in the negative, the melted snow freezes back to form ICE. This ICE causes people to slip and skid all the time.
Note, the differnce between these two words, ICE and SNOW. Snow is soft and crystalline, when you put your foot in a pile of snow, it goes right in. On the other hand there does not even exist nething called a pile of ice. Ice is amorphous and slippery.

What prompted me to write this post was that, the two words 'ICE' & 'SNOW' dont even exist in Marathi OR Hindi. There is only one word for it 'barfa' , 'baraf'.
Do these words really dont exist, or I am just not aware of them? Or is it possible that they do exist in Kashmiri perhaps?

PhD comic (pilead higher & deeper)

Really cool comic strip I came across, based on life of graduate students!

Destiny....

Everyone today acknowledges Amitabh to be the biggest and greatest flim star in India ever. But little do we know that there is a lot of fate involved in making of this star. A lot of permutations are involved in any one's success.

You can read here, about his initial few years in bollywood. Apparently, after his long line of initial flops he had planned to return to Allahabad if his movie Zanjeer hadn't worked. When in the beginning the movie didn't do well, he went down with a fever, but after the first week when it started doing very well, his fever became even worse, as he couldn't believe that he was finally a superstar.

Also I didn't know the fact that he was at a certain time known as a tall idiot actor!!! Truly amazing.

China will be ready. Will India be?

Here is an interesting article, I came across. While this only gives the story from just one side, I hope our foreign policy and defense strategists are aware of the possible machinations.

Vande Mataram

India's national identity is drawn from its culture and symbols of nationhood cannot be completely devoid of cultural overtones.

Quoting from a recent article by Sudheerendra Kulkarni in I.E.; "As for the Leftists’ claim that the “the national ethos” of post-1947 India should be “only civic and territorial in nature”, and that it must have no cultural underpinnings and overtones — because that would make cultural nationalism as the basis of India’s nationhood — its sheer inanity is mind-boggling. By this logic, our Motherland would be reduced to a mere civic entity, cleansed of all its rich cultural-spiritual ecology, and the Republic of India, with its proud legacy of a living civilization that is over 5,000 years old, will have to be replaced by the Municipal Corporation of India."

In the following articles he also with rational arguments explains why singing Vande Mataram shouldn't be a problem to anyone by giving an analogy of Naguib Mahfouz in Egypt, and citing Nehru. There is no need for a disclaimer, if u read the linking articles.

I hope the readers are mature enough to not misinterpret the context.

Part 1. Part 2.

Andaz Apna Apna

One of the most poular movies in Hindi Cinema has been Andaz Apna Apna. But after watching Dumb And Dumber, I realised that it might have a lot of scenes ripped off from D&D. Like the one in which after Aamir Khan adds some stuff to Salman's food, and then he has to keep visiting the restroom. D&D has the exact same scene.

But a little bit of googling tells me that D&D released on 16th Dec 1994, whereas AAA also released in 1994 (dont know the exact dates) but also that it took five years to make the film, because Aamir and salman didnt get along too well. This probably implies that D&D got the inspiration for the scene from AAA! If they indeed did, I don't know how that was possible because of the short time span between the two releases.

Outsourcing- Beat this!

While having a conversation with Chris and Adam one friday afternoon about everything from the UN, world economies to US and outsourcing, I distinctly remember Chris saying, "Can we just outsource the war in Iraq to India?"

Looks like it is pretty much happening. You can read it here. Also the big question is What Next?

Mogambo khush hua !

I came across this article in the Mid Day. Being an admirer of Amrish Puri, I was surprised to come across facts about him which I did not know earlier. His interaction with Spielberg and also the fact that Sanjay Dutt is his nephew was interesting.

Power of Blogging

In the wake of the recent attacks in Mumbai, the Indian government has blocked ExposingTheLeft .Blogspot.Com. Not going in the nitty gritty of this issue (regarding the ethicalness of it), one thing is clear that bloggers have power which can upset governments.

With the flow information and news lucified by the internet, every individual in the world has access to pretty much all that is to know about the happenings around the globe first hand. Hence no longer can governments and the tradional media fool and misguide masses.

Recently a lot of the people are of the opinion that NDTV and CNN-IBN are biased. Although NDTV has a very capitalistic outlook, they are extremely soft when it comes to reporting on the Left front. Wanna know why? Perhaps not many people are aware that Pronoy Roy’s wife Radhika Roy (she calls the shots in the organization along with Mr. Roy) is sister of Brinda Karat, a senior leader of CPI-M and wife of CPI-M General Secretary Prakash Karat.

A few years back when the NDA government was in power, Murli Manohar Joshi (who is considered to be BJPs Arjun Singh equivalent), had introduced a change in the fee structure in the IIMs. NDTV had very harsh criticism lined up for him, when not a single soul was protesting on the streets. Recently when the whole of India was outraged about Arjun Singh's policies, surprisingly NDTV didn’t find much too wrong with, if you compare it with the former. Radhika Roy is allegedly close to the Caucasian female.

CNN-IBNs Rajdeep Sardesai has also very serious allegations about being biased.

In a nut shell, what I mean is, people can always read newspapers and listen to news on the television, but they can now also access the situation first hand and come to their own conclusion, and also publicize it (through blogs). Hence they have a new found power which if used ethically can serve for the betterment of the society, and not just believe what the traditional media have to say.

Pope scared of hawking?

According to this article, Pope John Paul 2, asked scientists at a conference not to study too much about the beginning of the universe since it was the work of God. Probably he might have been gravely concerned about science exposing the theist fallacy.

I really wonder if the religious leaders do know that they are misguiding the common folks. Their whole life is concerned with God, I am sure the rational ones on questioning themselves must have realized how wrong every one is about god. If each one of us had never been told of the concept of God, we would have never imagined it on our own.

But we are so used to this, having been told about this since birth, that we have never questioned this belief, which really amazes me.

Also Stephen hawking is quoted in the article saying, "We are getting closer to answering the age-old questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from?"

How close are we?
This is a question that even Mr. Hawking may not be able to answer. But I hope to know it in my lifetime.

Probably God can answer it. What an irony !

Questions by a fellow atheist

How do you justify your existence?
I am wondering how many of you out there wonder about your existence? What on earth are you doing here?

I always get amazed when I think about the complexity of the life forms....for instance...all complex life forms have almost perfect design for seeing things around - eyes? similarly for hearing?...for that matter any part of the body......and humans have outclassed other species with...complex network of neurons...which helps them to think ahead in future!!

And more amazing is the fact that all these evolution occured begining with random aggregation of molecules to start with and..life kicked itself into action....the aggregation that survived the hostile environment..what Darwin would say....'survival of fittest'....replicated further....and aggregated further...and continue to evolve.....over millions of years....to what we are today.....and so it continues....the battle of survival...which including humans inherently indulge in every day...as proved by the way humans would try to outclass/compete other peers, find a better mate, etc....

It appears all life forms are survival machines designed to take advantange of different environment/living conditions to do one thing best....survive!....ensure the propagation of their design....which is embedded in the genes!!

So what are we, biological survival machines - biological robots ??
[courtesy: ORKUT]

WHAT I HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT.
I have thought about it, and continue to think about it, futilely though, this is the biggest reason why humans thought of the concept of god in the past, currently people are too ignorant to question themselves. probably some day scientists will answer the question. hopefully in my lifetime.

An International airport at Pune?

Sadly not so soon.

Yet another Rahul in the news

As if news created by Rahul Mahajan was not enough, Rahul Bajaj decided to jump in the scribes too. Ironically his being in the news has a lot to do with Pramod 'so many skeletons in the closet' Mahajan. The rajya sabha seat vacancy caused by the soap opera like episode, had to be filled, to which Rahul Bajaj was nominated by NCP, and backed by BJP-Shiv Sena. The congress had fielded its own candidate for it.
This caused so much tension between the NCP and the Congress that there were rumors of NCP allying with BJP.

So Bajaj's nomination for the Rajya Sabha post almost split the NCP and the Congress. This is so very ironic. Ironic because the Bajajs over last few generations have known to be congress loyalists. Jamanalal Bajaj was follower of Gandhi, and was sort of adopted by him. He was also very active member of Indian national Congress then. Rahul Bajajs father was treasurer of the Congress party after 47. However Rahul Bajaj is not exactly following their foot steps. In the Walk the Talk interview, he was queried by Shekhar Gupta, if he is more inclined towards the BJP.

Well if the Congress and NCP do split, and the NCP allies with BJP, the Shiv Sena will surely split with the BJP (as they threatened to do in the last lok sabha elections, when there were speculations of Sharad Pawar allying up with BJP). Congress and Shiv Sena can never be allies and Raj Thackeray will never ally with Shiv Sena. Raj Thackeray allying with Congress also does not seem possible. So a Raj/BJP/NCP can indeed be a winning combination.

A lot of Iffs and Buts, but will surely be interesting in the next elections.

Disney Theme Parks in India?

Yes, soon that could be a reality!

Juggernaut

Was having a conversation with an Indian guy in my university about Indian words being absorbed into mainstream English. The common ones I knew were verandah, jungle, mantra, pundit, karma and a lot more.

While studying for GRE I as told that, if I go to the US, I shouldn't be supprised if a professor asked me to go out for shay (written as chai, but pronounced shay in the US), as that is nothing but desi tea. I had initially thought that this might be the case in really upmarket places in New York, were investment bankers might be fascinated with the fancy exotic stuff. But was suprised to find shay in my own University Campus!

Neways, I will finally get to writting, what I intended to, in the first place. I had first heard the word Juggernaut, when Navjot Singh Siddhu, had used it for his team, in the fantacy cricket program on ESPN Star Sports. I didn't learn the meaning as, 'irrestible crushing force', untill later. But wasn't aware of the origins of the word even then, which was really really shocking.

Would you believe that the origin of the word, comes from the Jaggannath Yatra in Puri. Read about it on Wikipedia, they will get across the point better than me.

Did ya know about this stuff? If you did, how naive am I?

The Code.

Saw the Da Vinci Code, a long time back. But two posts on karname of Mr. Arjun Singh, and then an instinctive one on Pune Traffic mean that I couldn't write on it until now.

Previously I had written about the book, that I had liked the facts more than the fiction. The facts about pi were most fascinating. The fiction part (or was it really fictitious?) was very audacious and shocking for me to read initially. But several dozen documentaries on Discovery and The History Channel later, it is all I remember from the book.

The movie is really bold, with Sony Pictures not giving a disclaimer about the stuff being fictitious. Again the ending was a bit modified in the movie. With Sophie mockingly trying to walk on water, and then joking about the wine thing.

Just before the climax, she asks Langdon, whether she should reveal to the world, the truth about Jesus's Bloodline, and hence his mortality. To this Langdon cites, that as a kid he had once fallen in a well. Being raised as a Catholic, he yelled and hoped that he will be rescued by God. Eventually someone helped him and he was rescued.

And thus he implied that, although he thought that God does not exist, the faith is necessary for people. So in a way the makers of the movie almost re-endorsed Jesus's mortality and hence him being non Divine.

I seriously agree with this; if we think rationally, all of us will realize the prophets being not divine. We should accept them as great men, after which great 'Books' were written. The divine force was just an attempt by people to explain non understood phenomenons.

In any case I do wish to visit The Louvre, Church of Saint Sulpice, Templar Church, and Westminster Abbey, the sites mentioned in the book. And that too now, pretty soon, and not when I am fifty and ugly!

This says it all

Somehow I never wrote about the reservation controversy, but this pic from expressindia.com says it all.

SEZ

Driving to your job or to your college, I am sure each one of us has been fed up, at some point of time, by the traffic on Indian roads. Crawling ant like vehicles which have developed an intimate understanding of the movements of vehicles around it, find their way through traffic, with amazing efficiency. If you can drive on these Indian roads you can drive anywhere!

But at some point you might of wished for a sparkling tram, which could take you to work, passing through spaced out high rises and cool greenery too.

Looks like this might happen soon near you.

The new mantra for growth in India has been special economic zones (SEZ's). Under these, special zones are identified, they are provided with world class infrastructure, flexible labor laws, and this will be used for export based industries. This is the exact way that China has achieved it's economic growth, and now India is banking on it. Incidently the first SEZ in India was before that of China, but subsequently, we lost the path. There are around 100 applications for SEZ pending before the government.

The biggest SEZ in India is planned near Navi Mumbai, called Maha Mumbai, by Reliance and the Maharashtra government.

(open the linking article, when you really have the inclination to read it, cause it's really long)