Two Reasons to Celebrate...

As I write this post, there are several reports suggesting the death of LTTE supremo Prabakaran, and complete decimation of LTTE and it's vicious leadership. This is the news I (and several of my countrymen) have been longing to hear for 18 years since the murder of one of the greatest leaders India has produced. Of course one could argue back and forth about what the motivations for LTTE were, for what it did. However, one fact should be clear as daylight for any observer of this and other conflicts in the recent times-'Everything comes back around'. India aided and abetted the LTTE in the beginning of the conflict despite the knowledge of their subversive activities against innocent civilians, and we paid the ultimate price of losing a great leader and several others to their terrorist attacks on our soil.

Interestingly, United States decided at some point to dabble with terrorists by encouraging a group of rugged fighters calling themselves Taliban, to fend off an aggression by USSR. Fast forward a decade,they lose two standing symbols of capitalism and thousands of their dear sons in war-after-war fighting the very forces they helped create.

Lesson: There is a beautiful verse in Tamil:

பாம்பாட்டிக்கு பாம்பால் தான் சாவு

(Approximately) The one who rears a snake, dies through the snake.

The second reason for celebration? The Indian voters, in a display of incredible clarity decided to dump the commie bullshit-wagon TOTALLY...See this and THIS-both fantastic news. This is especially heartening in the context of the current economic crisis and attempts by the leftists to paint the entire gamut of capitalism as bad. Hope Congress gets the message and opens up more sectors for reforms rapidly so people can see the results within the next five years.

Related Post Here.

Hats off to the Wise Aam Aadmi of India!

UBS Bows to US Pressure: Are Indian Regulators listening?

Something very significant happened yesterday. For the first time in history, a Swiss bank (UBS) came out of its shroud of secrecy and agreed to provide the names of 250 account holders to the US government authorities. Here is the report on it.

This should be a wake-up call for Indian tax authorities as Indians are rumored to be the second largest investors in these Swiss secret bank accounts. In fact all countries should start a concerted effort to dismantle this veil of secrecy around the Swiss banking system, so that the next best option for a criminal looking to offshore his loot becomes some unstable country like Cayman islands, thereby reducing the incentive to send money offshore.

I have always wondered why on earth a democratic, civilized country would open up its banks for all sorts of criminals to load up, with a stupid tradition of maintaining customer privacy. Who knows, eventually we might even find accounts linked to Al Qaeda in these banks.

CNN's Selective Reporting...

All the top headlines in Google News yesterday were screaming about the death of more than 50 Palestinians in Gaza (around 19 of them civilians) and when I opened CNN I find telling photographs...

• An Israeli woman being treated for "shock" after the attacks
• An Israeli soldier helping a wounded comrade
• Palestinian protesters burning tires and throwing stones
• Israeli soldiers firing at the protesters

And the headlines read "Israel attacks Hamas headquarters", "Palestinians suspend peace talks with Israel", " Gaza fired at least 25 rockets into Israel on Sunday; 2 civilians injured" and the very last line casually mentions " More than 70 Palestinians killed in Gaza since Friday"

20 civilians have been murdered for chrissake! And all CNN cares to report are "shocks", "protests". I am not taking sides here, the Palestine militants might have fired rockets that started the whole thing-but murdering civilians who had no direct involvement is not effective retaliation and that should at least be reported if not condemned!

Does the CNN take all Americans to be so naive that they could be led into condoning Israel for what its deputy defense minister warns will turn into a "holocaust" for the Palestinians?

Crass Marketing....

"Thank You Aunty...Thank You Uncle"-rings the sweet voice of a kid when a lady picks up a Saffola (hope I got the name right) oil packet, and the announcer declares that for every packet of Saffola bought the company would donate a rupee to Children's Heart surgery. Somehow I was revolted by the idea of selling a product on a sentimental value instead of any value-add to the customer. It was like saying, if you pick up any other brand you would be ignoring the voices of these children. If the company wants to do charity it should go ahead and do it. It is very cheap to make charity a selling point! Also I firmly beleive that any product should be sold on the strength of its value to the customer, and the differentiation it offers from other brands...but this add never talks about any of that...it just says you buy our oil and we will do charity in your name. Disgusting.

Then again there are those who argue that there are a hundreds of companies which do nothing about charity, atleast here is one which is trying to help and wants to make a buck on the way so it could be a win-win. I still cannot buy that argument.

Lebanon-A lesson in Nuclear Politics

I used to really doubt whether a nation really needed a nuclear arsenal, I believed that the Pokhran explosions and the subsequent minimum deterrent we built were unnecessary provocations. But now I think I understand the dangers of being or atleast appearing weak. The continuous bombing in Lebanon by Israel with scant regard to human life is a case to the point, had Lebanon been a nuclear power the equations would be vastly differen!

Undoubtedly anyone who has followed the events of the past weeks would agree that Israel has defied every international convention with complete impunity. But why? Because they are strong, because they have the US president wagging his tail in their courtyard, I am not mincing words here, the US has done absolutely NOTHING to prevent this from happening, they send Ms. Rice over, but not to press Israel for a ceasefire because they know Israelites wouldn’t listen, but to bulldoze Lebanese government into reigning in Hezbollah. And understandably she has failed. It is undeniable that Hezbollah is a major threat to the region and its act of mounting attack on Israeli territory was nothing short of declaration of war. But that just doesn’t give Israel the right to bomb civilians indiscriminately with the hope of terrorizing Hezbollah into surrender and as an added benefit show other nations including Syria and Palestine who the boss of Middle-East is.

They have killed UN observers, women and children and the heart-rendering scenes brought from Lebanon speak volumes of how low a nation can stoop!

One of the offshoots of this war (which would not be apparent in the immediate future) will be the mass recruitment of the survivors of this tragedy, into terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. Infact reports from South Lebanon talk about how Hezbollah is working to provide relief for the civilians.

I am not half as enraged by Israel as I am by the United States of America, Mr. Bush, who goes around the world talking of bringing lasting peace to Middle East, has done nothing but watch from the sidelines. This war has exposed the double standards that he adopts when the “terrorists” are not some Islamic fundamentalists hiding in caves, but bomber aircrafts from Jerusalem blazing the sky killing innocent civilians! His reaction to yesterday’s bombing in Quana village (killing 37 children among 57 civilians) is classic, does our joker call for complete ceasefire and cessation of Israeli hostilities? Nope, all he says is-"(Yesterday's) actions in the Middle East remind us that the United States and friends and allies must work for sustainable peace," The Middle-East would be better-off if you go back to fending cattle in your Texan ranch Mr.Bush!

All we can do is pray for the people of Lebanon, who through no fault of theirs are held up in such a treacherous impasse! May there be peace in middle-east!!

PS: As I am publishing this I see news feeds that Israel is continuing its air-strikes despite the “two-day ceasefire” it had declared for civilians to flee, thanks to a loop-hole in their commitment-so much for human life!

On Reservations...

I once saw a Tantra T-shirt in a showroom whose caption read-"I love India as long as I dont have to live in it". At first I was revolted...but now I think I will go and buy it.
Disgusted.

A ray of hope in TN at last...

Some heartening news from home...
http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/28/stories/2006022818150100.htm
TN High court has struck down the governments ill-conceived attempt to abolish Entrance exams and just use the State Board marks for admissions to professional courses. The State Board exams, if any are a test of memory and recollection capabilities of the students and in no way identify students that can successfully compete in the academic rigor of a professional course. In addition to that seperating since large number of students get the same marks (read 100%), it would be a herculean task frought with pitfalls to rank them. Am happy to see that there is some authority that uses logic in arriving at judgements.
There will definitely be appeals and exploration of other ways of "rescuing" the students...but the government would do extremely well to stipulate one entrance exam for ALL admissions and improve the standard of that exam so students dont face the hassle of preparing for one exam after another.

Prudence-the need of the hour...

The incident that happened with the employee of HP Bangalore has left most of the IT fraternity shocked. The repurcussions could be felt in my city as well, as most of my female teammates have added reaching home by 8pm to their list of new-year resolutions and I have been receiving email forwards on the importance of being "safe" and tips to avoid mishaps. Every time an incident like this happens we suddenly awaken to the fact that we are not living in a safe world.

I would not make the mistake of trying to be a judge here of who was wrong in letting this happen. But I am definitely reminded of one incident which puts things in perspective. I had to work from my company's Bangalore office one day and was waiting for a cab there for home-drop at around 8pm. There was one lady with me and the cab arrived after a wait almost 15 minutes and patience not being one of my virtues, I goaded the driver to start immediately. His reply was_"Sir, we have to wait for the escort". I was shocked-why the hell do we need an escort at 8pm in a bustling city like Bangalore. Anyway since it was decided that way we had to wait for 30 full minutes before the burly guy with an ominous stick in hand entered the vehicle and we were ready to go and before this there were so many formalities like the coordinator nothing down each vehicle's passenger details, driver's name etc.

When I think back about it, all of it starts making sense. I somehow think it has more to do with the culture of the organisation-whether it is being thorough in every detail and every aspect of the employee's work-life. I can bet my salary on finding atleast 10 other companies in Bangalore which have never paid attention to this detail. It is just that one of them is involved in this unfortunate incident. Now I am sure there will be a flurry of safety activities in each of these companies and things will improve-but at what cost? Reminds me of the road near my college in Chennai where the divider was built after a lot of non-fatal accidents when a student finally lost his life on the road in one of the most horrible ways imaginable!

If you are reading this and are an employee of some company, start asking yourself what things could go wrong with the system that is present in your company and raise your voice before something goes wrong-dont think it is too much to ask-it is your right! Though you might not get the credit, you could end up saving a life!!

The Immaculate Americans

Ever since I visited the US I have dropped many of my misgivings about the country and its people. Ofcourse the fact still remains that I think Bush is the biggest enemy to world peace next only to Osama himself. But what I am talking about here is the people side of it. I have come to hold them in very high regard for a few reasons. I will talk about one reason which holds a lot of relevance to India;

Outsourcing-this is one word that has generated more heat in the 21st century that anything else and I should say I am truly impressed by the way Americans have accepted outsourcing as a fact of life: it is painful today, but ultimately it brings a level of competitiveness to their companies and hence to their economy which will be really difficult to be surpassed by anyone in the foreseeable future. Trust me, operating on a global scale with countries like India (with a 12 hour time difference) is not an easy task-and the American companies have just begun to master it. There have been huge layoffs-in the order of tens of thousands of people. There were ofcourse loud noises-that is natural-but the point is that there were no draconian "populist" measures to pacify these noises. The politicians were still able to “sell” the idea that outsourcing is good for the Americans and the people accepted it-this is true democracy-where leaders don’t look for the impulses of the people and be carried away by that-but are able to think long term and “lead” their people to success and prosperity.

Well, just imagine this scenario-some time in the future an "Indian" company in Mumbai is laying off five thousand people to stay afloat amidst tough competition. What do you expect would happen the next day? My guess is atleast 10 buses will burn the next day. The communist parties would be marching all the way from Kerala to 10 Janpath, from Kolkata to Mumbai, creating havoc disrupting public life. Newspapers would highlight the fact that this company could just as easily closed down its branch in Kenya (which was by the way operating at half the cost). Then all public attention would have been diverted to the fact that the evil Kenyans were ultimately responsible for all of these. Then the government would chip-in and make laws which prevent any company from opening divisions in Africa-just protecting the locals they would say. Then the communists would hail it as a victory and parade it in the next elections to come back to power now to include along with Africa, other parts of Asia as well in the list of “prohibited” areas. Soon these businesses would be chucked out of competition by smart American firms who have by now established a firm foothold in Africa and Asia. And our communist babus will be flying in airplanes (as cabinet ministers ofcourse) to US and other countries begging them to establish centers in India-all the while wondering what was so wrong with this country that noone wants to invest here!!!

This might be a bit far-stretched, but this is not very far from reality-I bet in another 25 years we will be facing something akin to that-will we be mature enough by then?

God is subtle, but he is never vicious:)

I decided looong back that I will have this status message on Yahoo,the day the High Court delivers the verdict quashing the dim-witted fancies of the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu-rendering entrance exams obsolete purely for electoral gains uncaring for either the students nor the universities who are the actual stake holders. That day is today. I will write about my experience in driving an opposition to this (which I felt was the right thing to do) in some other entry. As of now, anyone who cares to ask me will get an icecream treat today:).

Reservations

This was a mail I had sent to my group in reply to a mail on the subject of reservations in private sector and I still hold these views.

Hi,

I have always believed that our constitution makers were great people with a very high degree of far-sightedness and insight. But the only issue where I felt they slipped (or should I say misjudged...) was in this reservations issue.

One fact have to recognize and accept with a pinch of salt is the inevitability and indestructability of having a caste system( I wonder how many of us, "progressive people" would dare to marry an "outsider"...for instance!!!). At the point of independence the caste system was much more stronger. We know the stories of untouchablity and cruelty people inflicted on the so-called "lower castes". (The sad part is that we still keep hearing such incidents after 55 years of "independence").

Now to break this kind of a jinx our constitution makers(CM) had no choice but to accord them special treatment. This is because at that point of time even if our CMs had opted for reservations based on economic status they would have run into two problems- 1. Putting in place a fool-proof system for judging economic status is in itself very difficult. 2. The so-called higher-castes held all the important posts in all the administrative bodies and they would have ensured that their position was not compromised by issuing false certificates or by any other fair/foul means. To avoid this our CMs envisaged this caste-based reservations.

So all along they have been doing the right things...where did they go wrong? The only mistake was in misjudging the role of a politician. They believed that a politician was a person with high moral standards who has sacrificed his life for the cause of public-service and they gave the powers of this reservation systems to the politicians. What actually they must have done is to give these powers in the hands of an independent commission formed in the model of the Election commission or the Judiciary. But now we find politicians coming to power and clinging to it by openly giving promises of reservations. Secondly, we find that people who enjoy the benefits of reservations form a chain. The father takes the benefits gets a good government job, settle down well, the son again uses the benefits gets an engineering seat settles down well..his son again....the story goes on while there are thousands of so-called low castes who still do not know that there are reservations available for them and they can make use of it. They are probably too busy waiting in queue outside the loan-shark's house for a paltry sum to save his crop without knowing that he is pledging his life on it. This is ridiculous..a family should be allowed to enjoy the benefits of reservations only once...say once for a college seat once for a government job and probably once for an MP/MLA seat!!!

Privilege once give can never be withdrawn. So the reservation system which was supposed to be phased out in 25-40 years has grown and taken deep roots in our society. Now we hear about reservations in private sector...well I can only say one thing-"Long Live Democracy...Longer Live the Bloody Politicians..."!!!
Yours,
Arvind Sharma.

GK wrote:

Hi everyone,
Having discussions to make the grps lively is a good
idea but mere participation of 2-3 people wud be an
argument rather than a discussion.

Rather than discuss about the earlier topic which is
sure to have no ending, why not dicuss on the
reservations which the UPA government headed by left,
sorry ManMohanSingh is planning to implement shortly
in private sector too.

This was the topic of last week's BigFight too in
NDTV.

Infy chief Mr.NarayanaMurthy, Bajaj grps, Godrej ,
Proctor & Gamble all have protested against it.

Reservations of anykind shud be opposed. Whats the
need of reservations? Does it mean that all those who
get preference are very poor and those who doesnt very
rich. If at all there need to be reservations, it shud
be based on economic status of people , which albeit
is difficult to implement can be done.Such a thing can
bridge the economic disparities in r nation.Morover
physically challenged people can get reservations.
Worst of all seculars like Mulayam and Karunanidi
spoke about reservations to minorities before the
Lokshaba polls.Such a thing will only spark communal
tensions. If reservations are totally banned there is
no need for either religion or caste in r
certificates.

Dr.Ambedkar while framing r constitution has given
provisions for reservations only for a time period but
r political parties has used them as their poll weapon
and want to continue for eternity.

My aim is not to offend any particular community.

Urs,
S.G

How to make the maggi better...

In the recent times there has been a barrage of criticism against Ganguly for his poor form, the most popular one being the Maggi joke, where the maggi is supposed to be cooked by the time he returns to the pavillion. I was a strong voice in favor of these critics, forwarding this endlessly to my friend who is a die-hard fan of Ganguly (for his cricket and his looks!!:)).

Considering that this set of criticism included a Hindu editorial (which I respect to quite an extent except when they write on "communal" parties and "secular" front) on why he should be removed from the captaincy and why we should set the Australian standards of "each person plays for his place in the team" formula, I was pretty much biased against our captain.

Well, I happened to read one more email coming out strongly in favor of our captain and hence had to rethink. The most interesting argument of the article is this-"When players like Sehwag, Harbhajan and even Dravid were struggling with their form early on during Ganguly's captaincy, he supported them and included them match after match, until they started performing. Now why can't we extend the same courtesy to Ganguly?" Makes sense, right?

Secondly, why I think the Australian model works in Australia is because they have an abundance of international talent-mark my words here-"international" talent-I am not talking about rookies who have played on placid wickets in front of a small crowd (mostly including their parents and family). I am referring here to a rigorous county cricket and professional cricketing academies where kids are taught to bowl at the age of 7 or 8!! Where they can afford to have two distinct teams-one for tests and one for the one dayers. Our guys have come from the "gullys" so to say (and that ofcourse makes them more robust).

More importantly our Indian work-culture is more Japanese so-to-say;we don't hire and fire, we trust and build great teams on that foundation. I really appreciate Ganguly in this respect. I can recall that people were out for Laxman's blood and Dravid's head at different times, if he had let them go, we wouldn't have had the feast at Culcutta (follow-on followed by win) .

It is time to let the captain know that he can play his natural game and take his time while the team will stand behind him. I hope each team-member would come out to him and give him that confidence, boy...he is severely in need of that. All it takes is one dazzling innings, doesn't it? Lets give atleast that for the captain with the best overseas record, who has been the martinet patriarch of the team for so long now.

P.S: I might have gotten some facts wrong here as stats has never been my forte. People, feel free to correct.

Of sellers and buyers....

Is it possible to sell Nonsense? This is the question I have been pondering for a while now. Well, there are quite a few interesting aspects to this question-what might be considered as nonsensical by one person might make perfect sense for someone else. I remember seeing an interesting TV show in which there are two people walking around a pole holding a white placard and shouting "We Protest" and when onlookers enquired, they said they were protesting the excessive wages their employers were paying them...soon there was a small crowd gathered in the place...one half was watching the proceedings and incredibly, the other half was circling the pole shouting with "We Protest". The anchor concluded the show saying, if you say something and say it long enough there will be people to beleive it!!! That line is really captivating...isnt it? "Saying something and saying it long enough....". I guess thats what most advertisers have been doing since time immemorial to us;). Here I would add one more requirement to doing this-KISS-Keep It Simple and Straight-forward. Let me give you even a greater proof which will prove to you beyond doubt that nonsese sells like hot cakes. At the beginning of this entry I was going to write some real crap and make sure that people read it....and here you are at the last line...and why do you frown when I say "Nonsese Sells".

PSUs-A boon or brunt?

There has been an endless debate on whether PSUs today serve the purpose for which they were formed-serving the public. Recently I read an article in Business World criticizing Nehru for building these "flawed" temples of modern India. I beg to differ in this. The author argues that Nehruvian philosophy of serving the public with the profits from PSU has led to this sorry state that most of them find themselves in. It is true that they have degraded in stature and value, but it is we who are to blame for having let things go haywire, not the system in itself. At that time, of independence, one must remember, no individual or industrialist had the financial muscle to build what the government built. The only forces which could have afforded the Air India or IOC, for instance would have come from foreign nations and we would have successfully freed ourselves from one rule and landed in another-an even more sinister one-for our entire economy would have been controlled by these forces. So Nehru's vision was right-the implementation probably got screwed up somewhere along the way.



It is definitely true that there has been a severe degradation in the quality of service and products that these PSUs have churned out and I strongly beleive that the few which are doing well are doing so just because of the fact that they have been there forever. Take BSNL for example. People were amazed at the number of cellphone customers they were able garner within the first few months when compared to Airtel which has been a player for a long time. But think of the backbone that BSNL has. When BSNL enters the market with that kind of a customer base (in landline ofcourse-but they are more than willing to become mobile) and that kind of an all-India presence, I would say "Kudos Airtel, for staying in business." and they have continued to do really well after all.



On the other hand there are really sick PSUs which are (forgive me for the analogy but couldn't resist it;) nothing but sacks of money thrown into the fireplace, never to be seen again-no value addition to the economy except for the fact that the people who work in these places make a decent living out of it. Allow me to digress a little here...what makes these PSUs fail miserably inspite of the funds that flow in almost ceaselessly? Well the answer lies in the question there...ceaseless flow...of funds, of life, a security beyond doubt. When a private company becomes complacent, it goes out of business, crushed by the market to preserve the sanctimonious law of survival of the fittest. Well, PSUs,? I will say no further. But one thing is true for sure-No economy can expect to grow by going against the laws of nature and economics and we have been desparately trying to disprove that for 55 years.



Now all that might have appeared to be a scathing decree against PSUs. But it is not. Infact this leads to a very interesting scenario. On one end of the spectrum we have PSUs like LIC and BSNL which have been doing extremely well despite entry of competetion. On this end we have...well you know what. Now what would a keen businessman do in this situation-continue burning money on one end compromising the little value that was gained on the other-Never. Lets rise above political compulsions and sell off the sick ones. Yes, you read it right-sell off every sick unit and let the rest go back to the rightful owners-the public. Lets disinvest the profit-making PSUs not by selling it to foriegn buyers, but by selling it back to the public. The government should be a minority shareholder (it is still going to be the biggest shareholder anyway;). Let there be an impartial board which oversees that the right things happen and over time, these might turn out to be the most valuable assets the government ever parted with the public..



It is high time the government got back to its business,which is framing laws and serving people's needs and not running companies-India has got enough businessmen to do that.



Any comments on this will be highly appreciated.