TRYST WITH POETRY

Dreams a path to reality,
Reality a path of Agony,
Agony a path to pleasure,
Pleasure the ultimate treasure.

Walk the life uncared,
Care the most scarred,
Pain when it rains,
Rains when it pains.

Track your moves,
Move your tracks,
Get into the grooves,
Groove into the hooves.

Life gets sick,
Its easy to pick,
The ultimate niceties,
But pick the vagaries.

Dream on,
Until dawn,
Wake the soul,
Let the body full.

Your heart like blood,
Water like the flood,
Sling the mud,
Damn this world.

Sorry for the agony you might have gone through but this piece of crap was test of my poetry skills written at one shot without any sense, stop , revision, just all the English you bloody know at one go.

BOOK REVIEW: POSITIONING

The marketing gurus “Jack Trout and Al Ries” are back with a masterpiece this time. In cinematic terms it would be called a “remake”. Actually it is modern view of their earlier concept about Positioning. It’s a 1980 classic about how market dynamics has changed from the “product era” of the 1950s to the current “positioning era”. It talks about the current overcrowded market where the consumer is bombarded with a whole lot of advertisements and information that it is hard for a corporation to create a space or “Position” itself in the minds of its customers. It is essentially a brand management book and takes an inside view of how successful brands made it to the minds of the consumers and the rest simply melt away. Loads of examples in almost every industry have been given, right from the bottling giant “Coca Cola” to Proctor and Gamble’s different FMCG products. It has given many success stories where a well thought out and simple names can work wonders for the product. On the flipside it also criticizes major corporations for not concentrating on brand and logo management and losing out market share to those who do. Its perspective ranges right from the huge corporations like GM, Ford to the smaller ones like Avis and even gives a broad strategy on how to take on the “big fish” in your own industry.

It has even given excellent ways where marketing yourself in your career could do wonders to your career. How to go up the corporate ladder and how to make a name for yourself and get credibility for all the hard work you put in. Out of around 18 laws the most interesting that I found was positioning of a ladder where a product establishes itself on the first, second or third rung of a ladder. It also warns about how major companies fall into the line extension trap, complicate their product names, prefer initials over full name of the company, and concentrate on producing already established products. It advises companies to go for niche market segment which they call as finding a hole, that is at any given time each market has a segment which has still not being explored. They also give various ways to discover that hole and stamp your authority on it. The good thing about the book is that it has been written after exhaustive research and analysis. Hence after you read the book you are bound to think over the daily products that you use in marketing sense.

Although the book is excellent in presentation with interesting facts and figures to keep the reader hooked but there were some follies in it too. Although you have be highly critical to criticize this book, but it simply does not explain the rise of General Electric which is a major in around 12 market segments. Further the examples sometimes get too repetitive and because the concepts overlap, many times you are left to wonder if you are reading the same things over and over again. Anyways a good book to read if you are seriously considering marketing as your specialization. But even if you are not its self marketing concept is worth giving a read for future success in career. The authors other best selling books are “The Horse Sense”, “The 22 immutable laws of marketing “ and a few others. All are worth giving a go.

Litigation free India

An interesting article by the economic times has caught me thinking ( a difficult task to achieve). It was the fire at the Indian Oil Corporation which raged for more than a 100 hours. It said that how litigation protected our country was. After 100 hours of constant fire and so many deaths and I don’t know how much ppm of pollution , still no organization or a single person has come forward to actually ask compensation. An interesting observation if you might say. Because for the past two years I have litigation filed for each and everything. Like the average movie producer is the worst sufferer. You have people taken to court for movie title names which for strange reasons have been hurting people’s sentiments. “Billu Barber” is a case in account. Interestingly this fire was one of the best opportunities to cash on some heavy rewards from the Fortune 500 Company if I am not wrong. But sadly like the 5th one day international against Australia it too went begging.

An American counterpart would have been sued heavily by those affected directly as well as indirectly. I think that is why companies in U.S. have such strict code of conduct more from fear of judiciary wing rather than the ethical code. I think that is the reason U.S. companies prefer to work around in India due to such lax laws that prevail in the Indian regulatory system. IOCL in fact responded by hiking their oil prices in all of their franchisees, a strategy which could dangerously hurt their reputation. Moreover the “loss by fire” for major oil companies is mostly insured heavily hence I don’t think there is a problem over there. This also shows how we all the time for the silly things in life for suing film makers to change their titles and stop hanging dolls as marketing strategy but if fire rages for more than 100 hours encircling a city and endangering my lives it is always “the other’s problem”. Again here the rage of stupid journalism played their part to perfection, which has been a constant cause of concern.

Another thing our religious belief often clouds our judgment because we tend to believe that God is superior to the gift given by him “human life”. Again this is main reason why we fail to come so many problems in our lives just because we label them as other region, the neighbor’s problem that is his lookout. When this is the same things that come full circle and cause obstacles in our lives too. Hence we can bear human tragedy but we cannot surely bear religious or Godly tragedy. A person killed near a Gandhian statue will be watched upon but someone throwing stones at the statue of a dead political leader will be killed and buried there and there. Moreover the miscreants destroy public property on account of this and police becomes a mere spectator in that case.

The Demise of ODI

A current wave is flowing among the cricket experts and non cricket experts about discussing the death of the ODI. Now that is a pretty stupid thing to discuss first of all. Come on now how many times would the ICC change its stance or bring circus like innovation to the gentleman’s game to attract spectators. Now firstly I totally disagree with the killing of ODI, no matter what T20 will do. First of all the talks about the demise of ODI is entirely based on stadium revenues. Yes it does play an important part in generating revenue and giving the sponsors good value for their money, but again here we are looking at a very small part of the picture or we are being forced to look upon that small part of the picture. Sponsors and organizers always want a large share of the smallest part of a business unit, no matter what and if they find that another unit is giving that large share of the smallest part it is better to discontinue the current business.

Now take the case of ODI it is true that stadium revenue are low for the ODI games but we do have high TRPs for them. That means viewing is not quite affected due to the longer version of the game. On the other hand for T20 the stadium revenue has huge chunk which maximizes their profit to a large extent. Here is fact to support, the champion’s trophy is slotted to have a higher TRP than the champion’s league although the Champions league is said to have been the event of the year. Moreover CLT20 has done a poor business in terms of viewing revenue even though it was slotted for a higher than 10 TRP.

Another problem with killing ODI is that people do not watch it because they are bored of the long schedule of the match and today in this fast paced world no one has the time for watching all these stuff. But an interesting statistics will show the danger of treading such path. The TRP of last year’s IPL was much higher to this year’s one. Even though some of the biggest stars were roped in to counter balance the losing interest. With the sponsors adding the strategic breaks the pain was turned into agony. This shows as people have lost interest in the ODI format people are getting bored with the T20 format, then we will have cries for Hong Kong Six over games, but then will the cricketing world yield to this also. This could to demise of the pajama cricket itself. All we would be watching is people selected on power and agility and killing the art form of the game. This is more of the American form of playing a particular game.

VENKY THE NOBEL FALL GUY

As the news of the nobel laureate Venky comes in about his irritation towards people contacting him for networking purposes. It is not quite surprising that people now want a piece of the action hence professors , teachers and students which are “so called “ are trying to contact the great just to show off or snob off. Considering the simplicity of the man who used to cycle to work and a mere layman existence is flooded with attention of superstar its indeed asking too much to cope up with. Even after such flooding of adulation he quite modestly was back to work and complaining about people’s email flooding his mail box daily, he said he spends minimum of an hour cleaning his junk mails( hasn’t he heard about unlimited storage).

But that shows what is it like if you are famous and on top of it you are Indian, you will have so many fans just because of the sheer size of the country. They will praise you like hell which if you do something which is good according to their perspective but on the contrary they will hammer you if they find you evil in their perspective. Yeah everybody has experienced it whether its Sachin Tendulkar of Rahul Dravid or even for that case the prince himself Sourav, you had during the world cup his house being painted black but during exclusion from the national side you had riots and violence everywhere. That is what we have as Indians that we think with our hearts, have a very short term memory and tend to act on it quite impulsively.

Another thing is that why do we get excited when somebody of our origin excels using resources of some other country because its like the caretaker is more important than the one who has given birth. We have many Indians using foreign shores to excel in fields and why is that whether it is Sunita Williams or Kalpana Chawla or any other artist. We should be ashamed of ourselves that our country does not have the back up or resources to retain local talent , that such talented individuals have to leave shores to excel in their respective fields. Then these guys do well all we do clap for them after they have achieved their goals through sheer hard work we do not support them when they require us the most and after they have done their thing we are there to shower false adulation just because it is cool to do that.

BOOM IS BACK

After a long hiatus of ongoing recession we are atlast seeing some signs of recovery. The market is getting up like a tiger dying down before rising up again. With exactly one year since the prediction of end of capitalism we at last can see it is not that easy to kill capitalism atleast for this time. I think recession or slow down is a necessary evil, something which like a nagging mother pulls back to the ground saying that money is not something to be squandered around. Anyways after seeing some positive growth we again have a slew of IPOs listed back on the bourses but this time people are careful and not getting carried away by the sudden jump in growth rates and the positive mood. Come Diwali and I think we can expect more of the same as we could just looking for a bloody bull run.

A positive impact really has a great rub on effect on other sectors too. Like we could see a great increase in blockbusters during such times even crap movies do well on just the buyers sentiments. People start buying crap even if they do not need it giving a rise in the retail industry. Wallets become highly volatile getting thicker and thinner by the day. People start preferring computers over mechanical, suddenly the worker in them becomes technorats. Suddenly people will choose finance over marketing in MBA , because the finance sector is doing well. I don’t know the exact pattern but yes the mood around really affects decision making. You have people with no accounting sense predicting rise and rise of companies. You have passports for U.S. increasing because the mama nu motel is doing really well. You have people throwing parties for no particular reasons. You have suddenly a slew of crap channels being launched and a slew of series being launched just to do a quick business. You have mobile phones giving endless features schemes and policies to confuse you with a shit load of data.You have production houses being started up again to do a quick business. All this happens so fast that you simply do not have the time to note the movies let alone the production houses. You have your relatives sons and daughters ( avoiding gender bias) getting picked up by top MNCs or sent US to get trained at something which he already knows.

All this happens until a pessimist like me forsees another debacle another slew of tight monetary policy and another game of allegation and counter allegations. Well that is how the cycle works believe it or not.

Life's Ironies

Recently I have noticed bow life is full of ironies, (he most common way to start a post but sadly I have to start it this way whether you like it or not ). You would have often noticed that as students we have to bear the brunt of the most psychopathic individuals that have laid foot on this earth. But the irony is not that, it is how a particular subject can very much mould the character of a person. I think experts who study human behavior according to environmental change will agree to my following theory. A subject or a course which a particular person teaches very much moulds his character, his life-style, his dressing, his walk and talk, his attitude towards life etc.

To let me prove my point let me cite a few examples ( cite not give , you will know the difference if you have studied chemistry ) . Ever notice your physical instructor at your school and by schools I mean most Indian schools. Because I do not know much about other countries who have NFL players as coaches to students or ex-basketball player who was caught doing drugs during his career and has been relegated to this position by life the great teacher. But here in India you will find the physical instructor to be the most unfit person in the school , he chews tobacco speaks bad or broken , disjoint, disparate English, flaunts a family super saver pack and beats you like a local hawaldar if you do not listen to his broken , disjoint, disparate English. While on the playground he would probably tell a student to get a stool for him to sit and tell him to run otherwise he would beat the crap out of him. He perches himself like Buddha under the shade of tree with a whistle in his hand. And any kind of misbehavior on the ground leads to severe punishment like lifting him from his stool getting beaten up by him , he beats the crap out of you just to get the blood flow going in his body.

Then you will have your math teacher a guy who most probably will have receding hair line. This increases his ability to think better as his head is an open book. He will usually be the most unorganized, confused person in the world and will make math for you as confusing as it possibly can be. He loves the number but will keep forgetting your name hence you will be probably be known by your number like a jail kaidi . Then he when the math gets heavy will probably dish out cold number jokes. Like 2 times Reena (roll no 2) is equal to 1 Suresh ( roll no 4). If you put A (roll no 6) in a square you will get B (roll no 36)

Then you will have your biology madam because subjects related to medical and paramedical are preferred mostly by the ladies. (They simply love cramming). They are like Matrix’s Keanu Reeves who like a hard disk stores anything and everything. The ultimate irony is that they hate violent movies but they absolutely like cutting human corpses and studying them for the sake of it. They cannot see a bird dying but they can work at a morgue with a damn dead body. They should be featured in the most dangerous jobs in the world show on NatGeo . They like to cut through intestines, spleen and don’t know what else stuff. They make friends with the dead corpses and call humans as subject, specimen or a sample (how cold).

I think in a way I have proved my point here. Of course this theory is open to discussion and can be contributed with better examples like the history lecturer being the most boring of them, literature professor being the most abstract of them but come on now I am writing a post here not a book.

The I-DAY RUT

Independence Day or the I-day, the hippie likes to call it is here and gone by the night. Yet does it hold a special day for us Indians, especially for our generation who have seen a free India since their birth. Well going by my experience it is nothing but a routine holiday for us where we like to enjoy the day off. Well do not consider me to be any anti- Indian guy because lets face it that’s the truth. We only know the names of the Kranti-veers because we are forced to remember it during our history lessons in school. Its nothing bad because we have not experienced their struggle or shared their passion to see free India. All we have heard is that “"Angrezo ke zamane mein yeh hota tha or woh hota tha par kya hota tha who baad me jaye” Yes that’s true and we have to live by it.

Let me share with you the typical day an average Indian family goes through during the I-day. First of all the father gets up grumpy because he has to send his bloody kids to school for flag hoisting. He hates it because this MNC guy has just got his probably only leave for the year. Why do bloody school people have to open the schools on this day. Probably because they get summer and diwali vacations hence they do not know the value of a holiday . Damn this lazy Indian education system and damn entire academics sector who do not prepare their children for the real world which I am now experiencing.

The child gets up thinking “Shit why do I have to get up on a holiday and why did the bloody principal declare a holiday on this day when they are being called on this day. The kid is right technically. He has to get up go to school on a holiday. Now if you take the typical Indian school I-day you will see grumpy parents taking their kids to school who on this day have to stand like jerks for two hours in the hot sun just to see the flag unfurl (I could do this at home). The two hours at school is total punishment even if you are MNC guy. You have to see your most boring teacher giving the mother of all boring lectures on Indian history, culture and Krantiveer and all that stuff. And if you notice this most damned and unanimously hated lecture is to be given by the most boring monotonous teacher of your school. Then you have some chief guest who would be most probably be a school alumni and who like a college student being ragged wants to inflict the same pain and agony that he had experienced during his school days. He is applauded at his every momentary silence, cough or any sign of emotion or exhilaration that he shows which suggests that he is nearing the end of his lecture. He even points out that he understands that you are bored but somehow he is enjoying your situation.

After the chief guests sits down you have the class topper reading some verses of Khurran, Bible or Gita depending on the level of torture, it has to be just right or else you might die. Moreover adding insult to injury he explains that stuff to you. Then adding injury to your insult you have your parents comparing you with him. After all this you have two words from the principal vice principal the secretary the treasurer the clerk which extends the two hour torture to a agonizing four hour one. You get restless you start making moves , sounds , howls then eventually screams, but to no avail” bolne aaya hoon to bolke hi rahunga” This is where the average Indian starts learning to disrespect other people and starts to strive to be the worst human the world has seen.

After this four hour ordeal, there comes the mother of all ironies. The bloody chief guest gets to hoist the flag. Come on now we are the martyrs here we have spent our blood sweat tears to make this event possible unlike our Lok Sabha members who stage a walk out during such situations. We are the Krantiveers not the damn chief guest, Anyways we are just too happy to revolt like in 1857 so now we are good to go.

SWAN FLUE

After a long time an epidemic has hit India. Last time it was SAARS if I am not wrong and this time it is the swine flu which very intelligently pronounced as Swan flu in India’s regional languages. I think the pronunciation was deliberately done by some meat eating maniac who just could not see the plight of some swines getting killed by some activists especially PETA. This similar phenomenon had happened during the chicken flu days when all the infected and non infected chickens were killed in the name of the chicken flu, or was it Avian flu anyway these days so many flus or should it be flues are coming up that it is hard to keep note of.

Again we have news channels donning the hat of Sherlock Holmes picking up the microphones and blaring out in your T.V, set that Swine Flu is here and it is here to stay. Atleast the BMC (Bombay’s Principal Culprit ) doesnot get the blame and for once the poor drainage system is not crucified by the news channels because they are all too busy investigating the rates of masks that have shot up due to the ongoing swine flu. All and all Rakhi Sawant would be quite sad because all publicity is going straight to the swine instead of her.

I personally think that this is natures backlash. For years man has eaten chicken , goats ,beefs ,swines or pork I don’t want any swine to sue me for the derogaratory use of the word swine ( oops there I go again). Now it is time for the us bad guys to have a taste of our medicine KGB style. KGB because all the swines have picked among themselves a group of suicides swines who poison themselves with the H1N1 virus and when they are eaten by us we get killed as the suicide swines are martyrs in their won right dieing for a cause of their existence.

But vegetarians do not rejoice because you too could be in for a scare. What if the methis and the caulis decide for a suicide mission then even you could end up in doldrums . Why don’t plants and vegetables eat sleep and and respire like me. (ME, because I perform only these primary functions during my entire day and still after meeting an expert botanist I was certified a living organism). So where does it leave us not eating plants like cows and not eating animals like animals hard to say but just think about it.

The Bull run

Now with the world economy steadying a little, its time for small investors to again look at the sensex with lust. Yes it had last to last year been an object of desire as it went on a roller coaster ride which had started by breaking the 15000 mark and then it never looked back and cruised to about 22000 in no time. The bulls were thrown out of Dalal Street by welcoming the statue of the Bull in front of the NSE building Wall Street style.

But sadly the joy ride did not last much longer and the stocks fell like the Great Indian batting line-up, in procession one after the other. This was largely due to the SLR crisis that had been waiting to burst. Now after around two years we again flirting with the 15000 mark and again hopes have been raised of small time investors to wet their hands in the moving water (It’s a phrase ). Again people with Obama at the helm are hoping for change in the market economy and rubbing their hands for what could be another joy ride in the coming. You could sense the optimism with the current Adani Power IPO which was actually to be launched a year ago but was withheld due to lack of interest in the market. However this time around it has been different with the scrip already being overpriced around 4.5 times people are expecting a boom this time around. Its price band is around 90 to 100 and is expected to launch right from the opening bell.

But what would be fresh from memory is the last time such kind of hoopla had been created and the Reliance Power scrip started losing from the very first few minutes of its birth. Considering this around the case would be different as last time the Reliance Power had indicated an end to the boom time and a start of the bloodshed. Similarly we are expecting that Adani Power would indicate the end of the slump and the start of the boom. But that depends how does the market react to the Adani Power share.

Again considering that the FIIs might have turned their heads back to India as their favorite destination this could be quite a good time for the Sensex.. However investment experts have advised people to not throw caution to wind and invest wisely a thing that we hardly consider when we ride into the boom time. Overall it could be predicted that by mid next year India would be chugging back into its growth path. For that to happen we must look into our manufacturing sector much more closely otherwise we would miss this opportunity to China which by then would be recording double digit growth rate.

MTV OVERDOSE

MTV as of sorts is in the race of breaking records. No it is not competing for the most watched channel on the Indian television but it is aiming to be the biggest churner of reality shows of late. I think it has taken the path that is being currently run by the Bollywood films of producing over 300 non-sensical crap movies within a year and then selecting the best among the crappiest and sending that to the Oscars and praying Indian ishtyle thinking yes we can win this time too. But sorry folks we need to do better.

Coming back to MTV a channel which has transformed the culture of many a countries has now been bitten up by the reality show bug. If you see right from Roadies 1 now to Roadies 6, then you have Splitsvilla then you have “the fast and the gorgeous” then the teen diva , all with shitty sequels, then you have the latest “connected” . Then you have the “Stunt Mania” ,” the Rock Band’ and you are left to wonder how rich is Rann vijay. If you see none of the shows have that high TRPs but you still have contestants crying spilling beans washing dirty linen and all that kind of stuff on national television. You are then wondering how does MTV get all these samples. Is there a biological laboratory with MTV samples written on it that produces such things.

First of all the Roadies is still the most watched show on MTV. But if you see it has become repititve with Raghu trying to do the unexpected but even a kid knows what he is going to do next. And yeah we donot need Airtel digital to know who would be eliminated next. With Raghu trying to play mind games with the contestants but he ends up mind boggling our minds. Three seasons for any show is enough (except if it’s the Simpsons) otherwise what ‘s the point in dragging a show just so that you could give your unemployed brother , Rann Vijay and Nikhil Chinappa some work. Then you the latest game show that is Connected , where everything happens twice I think they should even air it twice show advertisements twice because no one is going to sponsor them. It lacks quality and content. You have contestants doing some silly tricks and the only requisite is that his partner should do it in the same way. That is MTV ‘s way of determining how connected two people are. Move away all astrologers and HR executives because MTV is the man. If there is sequel to this show it should be called Connected 4 because the first one happened twice ( got the logic ) I think a hollywood script writer and Mahesh Bhatt should be on this show because strangely their stories match they are the most connected.

Then you have Splitsvilla a show where love is war. You have contestants trying to prove who is the dumbest among them all. The first show had such poor TRPS that instead of four winners the winners had been narrowed down to two and even the prizemoney was halved. Moreover the airtime that the winners got on MTV even that flopped due to poorly managed content .They really think that we audience are really dumb. Then we had teen diva who nobody watched and nobody could watch.

Fast and the Gorgeous a show which selects the pit girls for the Team Force India is another such futile attempt . It is quite similar to the one adjudged by Ganguly to select the cheer leader for the KKR. Sadly KKR were so poor in the IPL that the cheerleaders started to cheer other teams like Indian politics. Similarly our Force India team is so poor with Adrian Sutil and Fischella that during the race the force India team doesnot get that much airtime leave alone the pit girls. You have a force India car either crashing and burning or reaching the finishing line when all the other drivers have reached home.

Not learning from all these MTV has started yet again brought Stunt Mania .God knows who will watch this when all have YOutube. Anyways whatever might be the case I think one thing is for sure the MTV Tickr is going to be voted the most watched tickr in history because of such shows it is getting food for its tickr even when you don’t have a Jacky Bhagiani or a Govinda film out.

PERSPECTIVES OF A DANGEROUS MIND

The human mind has generally three perspectives to a singular situation. It could be a positive perspective, a negative perspective or a practical perspective. I would like to quote a very famous aphorism “I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist but I am a realist”.

Now lets leave all that aside and concentrate on the human psychology alone. Whenever the human mind takes up something like a task to be done or a work to be done it goes through all the three above mentioned perspective. The transition that takes place among the different perspective is what makes this post worth reading. Let me give illustration to explain my point of view or POV as it is called. These are day to day situations that we lazy species on the face of earth face and how we citing these three perspectives start accelerate and end up doing things.

Instance 1

Optimist: I am going to hit the gym the first thing from tomorrow.

Realist: Working out in the morning is not that fruitful as survey shows that evening work outs produce quicker and better results.

Pessimist: Working out in the gym consists of lifting weights and endurance training which leads to the body bulking up hence running and skipping is the way to go I am going to run tomorrow.

Instance 2

Optimist: I am going to run from tomorrow and I have set my eyes on Usain Bolt he is my inspiration.

Realist: I have knocked knees, flat foot and don’t what hence running can only aggravate my problems. (Man you should be a lawyer)

Pessimist: Running could lead to exhaustion and that affects my performance at work hence from its dieting for me.

Instance 3

Optimist: I am going on a diet from today.

Realist: But it would not be a instant one as it could lead to amnesia and sometimes unconsciousness

Pessimist: Dieting is dangerous to health and it can cause the swollen arteries , hence it could cause low blood pressure hence I would say to hell with dieting. I am going to gym from tomorrow.

And hence the cycle continues…..

ZERO PRODUCIVITY

Zero productivity work, an entirely new concept discovered by me while I have nothing productive to do. Now some people might wonder what actually is zero productive work. Some might even argue how can work yield zero productivity. But actually its definition is quite simple. When you work and you do not gain anything by doing that work either physically emotionally or meta physically or alpha biologically or gamma chemically or theta mathematically ( it was meant to confuse) then we call such kind of bullshit a zero productivity work. Let me discuss a few instances with you on this entirely strange concept.

1. Blogging. This is the first and most useless thing that almost every Joe takes up with a singular selfish motive that is to earn money. Now although we all are aware of the fact that we all are dumb at writing stuff and that even trained and professional writers do not earn much. Still we have that Shakespeare in us who tells us to write or not to write. They all take heart from the great Labnol, thinking they can make it big too. Sadly in just a few months the Shakespeare in us becomes a shaken spear. I have seen way too many blogs which starts with great posts then after a while due to dryness of ideas they turn to time.com or news.com do a CCP (Cut Copy Paste) of the first page along with the photos and shamelessly promote plagiarism on their blogs. If the guy still has some originality left in him then he starts posting about what he did from Monday to Sunday from morning to evening and other silly stuff. Now if you are writing it has to have a target audience, what is the point of letting other people know that you cut out newspapers and make shapes of dogs and monkeys out of it. You are making a monkey out of yourselves by doing that. Then you have people cooking something and putting pictures of that on their blogs. I had seen a guy putting photos of burgers on his blog. Wow! Burgers that is indeed a divine cuisine!. If the guy is still more lazy to write then he starts posting posts containing the photos of nearby post offices to public toilets to I do not know what all stuff. You have camera phones so freely available that you have “Click when you talk policy” (IDEA ad ). He keeps on clicking all the useless stuff and then posts the entire shit collection on his blog.

2. Social networking sites. Now this is the greatest and the dumbest thing that people today are hooked to. Now it makes sense that you might have joined any one of the social networking sites because you need to catch up with your friends after college or after school or who lives abroad but what is the point in joining and registering a whole dozen of them . Like you have orkut, facebook ,MySpace which are quite famous. But then you have a lot of useless other networking sites like the newest craze Twitter, Bebo, Lobo, gikeo, chambu , damphas, and I don’t know how many of them. And you have your inbox of your only email id full from your silly friends who constantly poke you tweet you treat you beat you murder you expunge you decimate you tag you from all the different sites that they might have joined. Don’t they have other better stuff to do , you are left to wonder. Even then you accept their invitation and join such sites because you are afraid you might get left behind. If such sites are not enough then you have crazy application that they run on their sties. Like lets measure your brain size or The Elvis presley test or the Hollywood test in which you have score of different guys being posted on it. You start to compare it then you are sure that you too have joined in the rat race.
Anyways I have no special grudge against any of these networking sites or blogging because I also belong to that elite class of technocrats (as they like to call themselves) but think about it is worth it?

SPORTS-A-MANIA

Now its that time of the year when nobody has really anything interesting to do. Its July and you have all the sports coming to a halt. All the seasons whether it is NFL,NHL, PHL or FA League everything has come to a grinding halt. You have people especially sports buffs like me and having nothing more important to do asking for more. The cricketing season has just shifted gears onto the test mode where all the nations are busy playing the purest form of cricket . After six months or so of pyjama cricket some sanity has prevailed. You have two big transfer deals almost complete. That of Kaka and Ronaldo. Amidst so much sports one cannot help but miss the Confederstion Cup. You almost would have missed the Wimbledon was it not that Federer would have reached the finals and gotten through. You had the poor American Roddick getting thrashed quite gracefully by the great man. You had almost everyone in the tennis world present there to witness the greatest man ever to play tennis . Before this you had India defending the T20 cup as though they had been forced to do so. Before that you had the IPL spanning almost 40 days. With this edition not generating the same fanfare as before.

Just when you thought that cricket was over we have the Ashes where Australia had some extra practice on English conditions following their early exit from the tournament. After Ashes it’s the Champions Trophy following which there is Champions League T20, followed by IPL again and then another T20 World Cup. Really ICC should do something about it, otherwise how will John Abraham give us more horrendous expressions from his usually docile face.

August is the beginning of the EPL , the Spanish premira and the Italian league followed by the world cup of soccer next year. Boy I am sweating as I write this . As you come out of this in between you have the AustralianOpen followed by the U.S. and then the French and the Wimbledon where Federer would win his 16^th Grand Slam. If between this you are considering the F1 race that is around 18 then you better not switch your Television off . With so many sports channels working around , you just cannot take your eyes off. If hypothetically you consider the eight F1 teams break-off and create their won Ivy League then again you have another 18 races with some of them held in India.

So if you are a sports fan my advice to you would be shut the hell up and cut your cable televisions otherwise you just cant take your eyes off this one.

RECESSION BLUES

Now at this moment of time you have the whole world talking about recessions,take-over,bankruptcy etc. But the problem is how do we know that recession is around. We don’t watch CNN neither we work at GM. We have no company to take-over nor a company to be taken over by our poor Indian government. We have just voted for a long standing government and we believe that it will take care of the recession in India as we have its leader a lecturer from Cambridge in economics. For us whether India is doing well or not depends on how our stock markets are performing and an occasional glance at the GDP. That too we only know its good if it is around 8% as China maintains that. So how do we the insolent, ignorant people, rustic from the backwaters of a Third world country know it is recession. Well do not fear cause the expert is here. Here are signs if you notice this around you know it is recession.

1.Your daily rag-picker carries a Satyam, Wipro, Cognizant, TCS identity card. No he is not flashing a style statement nor is he emotionally attached to the company. But he is actually a recruited guy waiting for his appointment letter.
2.You find a General Motors or a Satyam hoarding in your garbage. Or you might find your son using those hoardings as stumps during gully-cricket.
3.You find I luv GM,I luv Satyam coffee mugs, flash-drives, T-shirts at Sunday Bazaar, Revdi Bazaar, Mohammad Ali Road, Chor Bazaar and don’t know how many other Bazaars. Caution : The above listed products will not be found at Big Bazaar because Big Bazaar is one of the items kept for sale at Chor Bazaar.
4.You will find people writing more posts on blogspot. They have no useful thing to do.
5.You will find scraps from those guys that have never scrapped you or poked you or tweeted you , I don’t know what those mean but suddenly such occurrences increase and you say Whoa! Duggu, he still remembers me.
6.You find that your resume cannot be accepted at any of the company websites because their server is overloaded with them.
7.You find some guy coming in the night and knocking at your door and asking “Walk-ins chalu hai kya?”. This is insane.
8.Suddenly you find that there are youngsters working in all the kirana stores, mom and pop stores, grocery stores (sabzi mandi ,I had to be subtle), hair saloon (hajaam ki dukan, again I had to subtle) etc. You think the trends of the western countries are picking up in India where children for their education but one more look at the person at the grocery stores and you say “Yeh to wahi ladka hai jisne IIT clear kiya tha” And you are left to wonder.
9.You will find parents of engineering students exclaiming that “Mene kaha tha ki Mechanical engineer mechanic banta hai, electrical engineer electrician banta hai aur computer engineer dono bante hai i.e.(mechanic and electrician).
10.Sadly the author cannot find the 10th sign because he is a computer engineer and on the keyboard he cannot the find the number 10.

ESPN STAR COVERAGE

Its cricket season again and we have some of the best tournaments coming this year. We all see our stars on the television performing their hearts out against different teams and they do entertain us.
However one unsung hero who goes unpraised often is the media coverage which brings such live action right into our homes, with some flavours added on their own to entertain us even more. One thing however that I noticed was that not each and every channel is able to maintain high quality viewing to us viewers. For e.g. the ESPN coverage is the most optimum and they have set a benchmark which other channels should dream of achieving. We have Set Max's coverage of the IPL and the world cup upto 2010. And I have to say their coverage of the game is the worst. With prematch and post match analysis populated by the "so called" celebrities rather than proper cricket pundits. You have experts like Ian Chappel ,Gavaskar bewildered by the discussion going on during the prematch analysis. Like what does the astrologer say about the match analysis. is there some rift between the senior and the junior cricket members. One other day I heard cricketers were not able to concentrate on their matches because of their faces being used on the advertising boards. All this tamasha just to degrade the purity of the game. You have Laxman Siva RAma krishnan sliding down some slides while a four or six is being hit. You cannot see what happened to the last and the first ball, because of silly ads being thrown in. You don't what happened to the last ball of the match and hence have to wait for the limca girl to stop hopping and dancing around to know the result of the game. Steve Waugh a legend once commented that Indian coverage of the game was unwatchable.
However one can be assured of the quality offered by the ESPN coverage with ball by ball replay with greats like Wessels, Shastri, Gavaskar,Hadlee in com-box talking serious cricket instead of fake celebrities.

Pakistan old script new cover

Last week with the release of the Lakshar-e-Toiba chief Sayeed, Pakistan has once again shown how indifferent it can be on its set of policies. Even after so many attacks by the militants in Lahore and other major Pakistani cities, still it has not learnt the lesson. And the lesson is to stop sheltering terrorism on its homeland. And as it stands the attacks that have been made have been on religious shrines and other such holy places. Just yesterday a bomb blasts in Lahore killed around 40. Capturing of training cadets was another incident of blantant disrespect to law and order. All these attacks are again reinstating that Pakistan as a state is failing. Yes such chaos in a country states its on the verge ending its life.
But does such a state of affairs affect any of the world administration. Already we have U.S. drones attacking the Pakistani SWAT just to flush out the terrorists. The FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) are not in favour of such a move, because in the name of flushing out of the terrorists innocent victims are the one being hit.
Even in such state of affairs Pakistan is releasing international terrorist for lack of sufficient proof. Such blatant disregard to the constant efforts by the Indian government to nail such terrorist are another chapter in Indo-PAk deaing with terrorism.
Instead of looking at this grave situation and the turmoil being built by them, they are more concerned with India's hand in shifting the Champions Trophy from Pakistan and into India. I think they are forgetting the attacks on the Sril-Lankan Cricket team just recently. All and all if such state of affairs continue then it would be not long before we see Afghan like Pakistan.

BING VS GOOGLE :WOLFRAM ALPHA

The name suggests it and it is quite right that BING is not Google.Bing the newest search engine developed by the evil Microsoft Corporation who intend only to do evil Yeah that is right MS has again tied quite shamefully google’s method of earning money that is placing no advertisements on their homepage of bing. It has done nothing new to enhance searching capabilities of Google. It is the same thing it is like you are seeing two same results on both Google and Bing. Yeah there is no difference between the search results of Bing and Google. I think that Bing has a provided a Bing like interface with some really poor design and behind that dirty interface they have secretly kept a Google link. By seeing its results by the search engine it seems the same. Again Bing has added some really stupid features to prove its genuinity first of all it has added in the images section the history or extra details for the search term. Then the maps is almost the same. One another thing that I noticed about Bing is that it takes an awful lots of time to get loaded. I don’t what is the reason behind it but the coders forgot the slow modem testing thinking that it is an extinct variety.

After Bing another new and recent opening is the Wolfram Alpha the computing engine. Basically people have mistaken this for another search engine. But actually it is a search engine with some serious computing power and huge amount of statistical results. For e.g. if you want to know the population of a country then in Google we get the link to the particular information, but not so in WolframAlpha,it directly gives you the required information. By the way its name suggests it to be some Nazi secret project but actually it is of its creator. It has awesome computing power where you can get anything related to numbers done. You can enter equations get conversions, graphs and other sort of mysterious information required by high end experts I suppose.

T20 Analysis-Team Australia

The Australians could be the surprise underdog in this years T20. Not that the Australians are ever labeled as the underdogs in any tournament but a quick look at their team formation and we can see that they are not the favourites that they are always so used to. First of all they have not found a potent opening combination since the departure of Hayden and Gilchrist. Although they have found some respite in Haddin and Clarke. But both are essentially middle-order specialists whom I doubt would be as successful as their previous kings. Haddin is essentially a straight down the ground hitter who is good in clearing the in-field during the power-plays.Clarke will essentially play the anchor role with others. Then comes their real strength their explosive middle order, here is where the tournament will be won and lost for them. They have classy Ponting to begin with,followed by the explosive Andrew Symonds who is already looking in ominous form during the recent IPL. They have the Hussey brothers who can manuoevere and use the handle to good effect.Then comes their selection dilemma between Watson and Hopes.Both are equally destructive and chances are that both of them will be played at the cost of mostly David Hussey,the Victorian bomber. Then comes their bowling line-up which is mostly uni-dimensional and pace oriented. Except for Bracken all the others are fast and furious who can hit the deck hard without too much lateral movement ,which could be a case of not exploiting the English conditions to the full. Lee has struggled on the English pitches because of his failure to use the Kookaburra balls. Moreover Johnson would be their only potent attack,who too is relatively inexperienced. The major problem that Australia faces in the bowling department is absence of a quality spinner. This could be a chink in their armour as far as I am concerned. As we have seen that spinners even part-timers have an important role to play in this format. Last year when Yuvraj went on a rampage against them in the semi-finals the absence of a quality spinner hurt them, as Yuvraj was pulling their hit-the-deck hard kind of bowlers over midwicket with relative ease.

Although the Australians do seem to be an underdog, but in T20 format it is not bad to have that tag, because as we have seen from our past experiences that it’s the cup of the underdogs.Hence this could be a blessing in disguise for Ponting and his men who would be in real pressure situation this time around, because the Australians don’t like their trophy section to seem empty.

BARACK OBAMA MR. PERFECT

Its been more than 100 days for the President of USA and we have found out that the guy is impenetrable. Not that he boasts of some of the best security in town.But he has a certain demenaour with him that makes him a strange man to talk about. The reason I am saying this is that after so many days in the office not many have been able to make fun of him. Yes that's right try hard think hard and tell me the last time that Obama was made fun of. Not that America consists of some guys with the dryest sense of humour,but yeah its true that its hard to make fun of the President.

If you see during the Bush era everyone was taking potshots at the President. He I think was the most made fun of guy in the entire U.S. presidential legacy. I think some of the comedians earned their living by making fun of Bush. I think along with recession these guys are also facing hard time. That was because Bush was the most unpredicatable caricatture that a cartoonist named God could ever draw. No one can know what he was upto at the very next moment. At the very extreme is Obama, he is the boring, perfect kind of a guy, whom political satirist hate.He is very much like the common man who leads a boring well planned life with his pension secure.

They say its hard to rob an honest guy,similarly its the most difficult thing to amke fun of a simple dwon to earth guy who knows what he is doing.

Australia's racist turn

With the recent attacks on Indians on Australian soil one has to wonder why the hell are the Indians being the constant targets of racist groups. Whether it’s the English, Americans, and now the Australians. We are the butt of so many jokes which are not taken seriously but still if there is a joke, there is some feeling of resentment that is hiding its ugly face inside. I think now it’s the time that the Indians instead of holding silly peace rallies in foreign countries and ranting same old reasons for attacks like we better than the foreigners and they being jealous of us, look ourselves in the mirror and give ourselves a dress rehearsal to ourselves.

If we are so better than those foreigners then why do we leave India in the first place and work for those racist pigs. If you are so brilliant then use it in India you will earn far more respect in India than all those dollars can ever buy. Today if a guy prefers to work in India he is called a rustic, a man who does not have the guts to leave his home a man who is afraid to leave his house and who thinks small. If that is the case my dear friend if you are so enterprising, daring and extrovert why don’t you choose to set up a company of your own and make an acquisition of a foreign firm instead of licking somebody who thinks that all Indians know is to set up a damn shop in corner and all he can do in his life is cook curry and get married at the age of 25.

If red tape is the reason which is stopping you from setting up your firm then stay in India and vote damn it instead of flaunting your green card of H! visa own a Indian voter ID first. Even if it’s a small step at least it’s a positive one. Why do you point your crooked finger at the Indian system instead of accepting that you are too afraid to compete in India because of the large amount of guys who think that Indian education is no less than a foreign degree? If you think that India is run by Babuism then you are the only one who is leaving it to die at their mercy, instead of changing the system we try to run away from it. If its reservation that is stopping you in getting into a college open a college of your own who is stopping and stop reservations and others will follow suit. It is far better than cleaning foreign college toilets just to pay the fees of your college. It is far more easier to open a burger chain in India than to serve burgers at Burger King and much more rewarding, don’t worry about failure ,it is better than getting fired from Burger King. It is better to walk on the unpaved potholed roads of India than paving one for the foreign guys.

However we guys are used to taking shit from the colonial days so it does not matter to anyone what the hell Baljinder is the one who got hit ,I am not that unlucky. Okay man then try your luck.

India defends T20 crown-Analysis

With India reaching England where the men in blue look to defend the title of T20 champions on English conditions. Starting from the first match against the New Zealand, then against the Pakistanis ,we could well say that the Indians are well on the way to defend the title this time around. But think as it happened to Manchester United last week the law of averages will catch up with Team India.

Lets look at the Indian lineup, On paper India looks like a world beater.But as we know cricket is not played on paper but between the 22 yards. It has explosive opening pair in Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag. Both have done well in all forms of the game. And especially both can be devastating on their day. Although gambhir has become a touch conservative but more effective than he ever was. For Sehwag he is the belligerent himself. I think this is the first time since the Ganguly Sachin duo that India is going into the tournament with a steady opening pair. Then comes the middle order with Suresh Raina the natural choice and him being in the most dangerous of the lot.Moreover his bowling exploits in this year’s IPL has made him all the more potent. India surely missed him in the last year’s T20 cup. Then comes the batting God that is Yuvraj Singh.God because on his day he can make hitting seem simple one of the cleanest striker that the game has seen since Gilly. Then comes our Captain Cool MS Dhoni with his uncanny knack of playing crucial knocks at the end and finishing the game with surgical precision. His captaincy has been the most talked about aspect about his game. A canny operator with him at the helm one can feel that India is never out of the game. He has a certain degree of Australianness to his game , is innovative and thinks on his feet which is the most important thing in T20 rather than letting things shape up he shapes things up for the opposition. Then comes the most dangerous finisher in this year’s IPL Rohit Sharma and he like Raina has found his bowling boots on this time and with his much talked back lift could give a real whack to the leather. The middle order ends with Yusuf Pathan as the big hitter taking hitting to another level but should be promoted to No.3 if not too many wickets have fell and less overs are remaining.

In the bowling department we have Zaheer Khan leading the attack not sure about his fitness, but if he plays he can be very steady in his attack.And moreover he absouletly loves England ,here is where he reinvented himself as the bowler that he is today.Then we have Ishant Sharma who is young but I think he enjoys the bouncy wickets more than the swinging English conditions where he would have to pitch it up. I think Irfan Pathan would have been a better choice due to his clean hitting but that’s upto Dhoni to decide whom he takes the gamble with. Then we have two spinners Harbhajan and Ojha vying for the single spot but I think the spot would go to Harbhajan with his new found technique in T20 and of course his habit of hitting the balls in the strangest areas in the field.

So unless India presses the self destruct mode I don’t think it will that much of a problem in retaining the trophy. However the law of averages might show its ugly head again. And one more thing please don’t give the silly excuse of burn-out in International stage ,these guys are professionals and not some 19 year olds to talk about their fitness.Moreover its their only job and I don’t think anybody can say tirdness is a factor in your job.

Life cycel of a software project

The life cycle of a software project which is built by two master minds both expert in goofing things up in the extreme is quite different from the software development lifecycle in actual. I would like the compare the two different life cycles in two very different perspectives. The two perspective that I would like to bring forth are one an IBM software project manager known as Ben and other of the two masterminds combined known as ajni no, its not a short form of Gajni.

Ben; The standard requirement gathering of a project that is why we need the project and what purpose will it serve to the company.
Ajni: Requirement gathering which includes knowing whether we have any idea about the project ,ever heard of this name, is there another prototype available on the internet.(Notice how the author uses the subtle ,scientific term prototype for shameless plagiarism). Does the team beside you have any idea about the project, the tools required and is he an expert at coding (cause at the end its his damn project and not ours). Only after such minor details are covered do the two master minds accept the project.

Ben: After knowing the problem statement we start designing the project. the architecture of the project the user interface of the project , the database design of the project etc.

Ajni: After the problem statement has been forcefully given to the master minds after rejecting many other projects and threatening to be removed from the organization and throwing tantrums by the project guide ,the master minds set to look-out for any similar projects available on the Internet, by typing simply the name of the project on Google, wikipedia and other such search engines.

Ben : After having designed the application the coding of the software begins by the team members indulge in some rigorous coding and developing of the software creating loops and nested loops and constructs calling and uncalling of the functions ,passing variables and bugging and debugging the code.

Ajni: After knowing that not everything can be found on Google harassment of the team beside you begins by rigorously putting them under undue stress so that they can code our application instead of doing theirs ,giving them temptation of gaining valuable experience of doing two projects at once and knowing the pressures of corporate world.

Ben: After coding comes vigorous black box testing and white box testing and other testing and if many errors are found the code is sent to the development phase again to recode it.
Ajni: After the team beside you completes your project you start to wonder whether you should have taken up the course in human psychology instead of computers. Breaking two software professionals is not easy.

Ben: After testing the code is implemented on the client system. eliminating the legacy systems.
Ajni:After the project is completed the snapshots are taken and put up in the slideshow to show that the code is not exposed by the company.

FISHY POLITICS

As we come to terms with the end of the massive Indian election which is synonymous with the Great Indian Weddng where there is a massive amount of people involved ,in which everyone is waiting it to end and nobody where its going.However funny things do happen in politics but some patterns do remain same. First of all the UPA government inspite of all the recession stuff and bding led by the a weak minister stilll came through with startling results. Secondly the end of an era for BJP supremo L.K. Adavani and the failute of Modi magic.

UPA came in with some very good results because of some very clear ground work done by them.They stuck to their pro poor agenda and it really worked. They projected a dual campaigning policy in which they formed different faces to address to different places to different masses and different demographics. And it clicked. On the contrary we have our BJP counterpart relying first of all too much on Modi magic. It was like the Rajasthan Royals relying too much on the Warne magic and doing very little themslves. Modi was given the resposibility of around 52 seats allover the country inlcuding states like Goa and Southern Indian states. Not only he failed to get important votes from such places but also failed to get a convinving victory in his homeground. In gujarat Congresss took about 15 seats which by Congress mesaures is more than good results ,this is where they were expected to get thumped big time.

But due to his tour duty and a little over confidence Modi took Gujarat to be granted and boy did the Gujaratis reply .One thing is for sure they don't like to be taken for granted. Secondly an interesting trend shown in Gujarat was that most of hwom who had voted for Modi in the State elections voted for MANMOHAN in the General elections. This trend was a major factor in knowing two things that the peoplw donot want Modi to leave them even if he is good for the country but he is even better for the state.

Secondly BJP fell short in all major cities of India ,where we can see that the modern Indian is not a fool and chooses wiselu although voter turn out is a cause of concern but still those who do turn out do it wisely. Anyway there are lessons to be learnt for BJP firstly it has shake of thier cobwebs of age old policies of Hindutva ,it has to get some new faces into its team, it has like the South African cricket team come out of the Cronje era and appoint thier new Graeme Smith which will take time but ultimately can beat the Australians on thier own soil.

EPL VS IPL

AS we move to the final stages of the UEFA champions League we find that an increasing dominance by the English teams have taken charge of the championships.Take for example since Liverpool had turned the tables on AC Milan on that eventful day at Istanbul when their talismanic captain Steven Gerrard had taken the coveted trophy that had eluded them for so many years.Yes the English had it in 1999 when United beat BAyern Munichen but that was it.This time again last year we have seen an increasing number of English teams clearing the league stages quite easily and securing the semifinal and final spots.But what is the reason of this sudden increase of English teams performance in the Champions League.

One major contributor could be the money involved in the game.It seems unlike the past years where you got star players in mostly a Real Madrid or a AC Milan.Now there is a slow but a very definite shift in power between Europe.You can see top players want to wear the English club jersey come what may.England too instead of taking their old and conservative stand have welcomed players from abroad with open arms.It could be very evident from the RooneyCristiano Ronaldo issue.Moreover Ronaldo staying at ManU dropping Real Madrid,Robinho's concern over Real Madrid,defines only one thing that England is now the strength of European football.However coming to today's tie between Manchester United and Porto ,given the momentum that Man United are riding on they should quite easily put this out of the window.Even though they had survived a scare against Villa last week ,but that in itself shows the confidence that the team is riding on,and of course not to mention the character it has shown during crucial times in the past.

Seeing the success of the EPL over the last few years and the success of it in attracting mass coverage around the world,there is a lesson to be learnt by the IPL,the Indian Premier League that is.For years the ICC has tried to reach out to the other world countries to spread cricket in the even the remotest of areas like Papua New Guinea.But what they are missing here is that they have an excellent opportunity at hand now.They have the most spectacular bonanza that cricket has ever seen starting from April 18,so they could make use of it in a much more efficient.I think one rule that the ICC has to scrap is the 4 foreign player rule.I think unlimited number of foreign players should be allowed to participate in a team,so that teams would go out that extra mile in buying players from lesser known countries but are quite talented.This will lead them toexposure to the international level and such players when they go back they can show a determined fight in the World Cup.Lets face it no country like their players to lose no matter how inconsequential the match is.The case in hand is our national football team.Football is largely not famous because we have not won a major tournament since ages and people really
dont like losers.So if we give the IPL franchisees to take up players from lesser known countries they will learn a lot and will come back stronger and better.Once these teams start giving a tough fight in International tournaments then their respective countrymen would start taking them seriuosly and gradually interests would start growing insuch countries which would take cricket on a different level altogether.

ASSAM BOMB BLASTS

The recent bomb blasts in Assam has proved one thing that India is not liked by any of thier neighbours.India still is being diplomatic about anything and everything.I think India now has to take a stand.A stand against cross border terrorism,against infiltration,against our neighbours,against Pakistan.In the past one year how many times have we heard about bomb attacks,suicide bombers etc.We have heard it so many times on the news that now we dont even care.We are now so used to such things that we flip news channels when we hear such things.I think its time our so called vote friendly stopped giving subsidaries,false promises,and ensuring free T.V sets to voters.Instead its time to become bold.I think a strong concentrated military attack should do the needful.Our forces are ready.They have taken this for too long.Its time we show our prowess and pickup Islamabad.Its time we stopped thinking short term.Its time we stopped hiding behind the fake lame excuse of recession.Because once its done we can have much safer place to live in .Still so many Indian soldiers die just because of cross border terrrorism.They now know that India are not going to attack,and with this confidence they kill with gay abandon.

Taking a cue from the attacks on Hamas by ISarael.Just look at the country and the resilience shown by it.Israel is a country which is surrounded by the Arab League.Once it was even attacked from all its sides ,still is had the guts to stand up to them and fight for something that was rightfully or wrongfully theirs.The whole world knows about the terrorist activities that take place in Hamas.So Israel took the initiative and went for an all out air strikes which crippled Hamas to the core.They didnot listen to the U.N.,not even providing them with the facility to transport food and medical aid to the needy in Hamas.Such bottleneck was created by Israel.People may say that it was politically motivated ,but at least it had a motive ,it had decision and it had action without any excuses.Ther were no threats,no talks,no sittings.That should be the mode of operation that India should follow.Has India not talked enough,sat enough,threatened enough.Its time that U.N. goes to hell and take some serious military action against erring nations.Then and then only will the terrorism will take India seriously.Otherwise now we have people threatening to kill ministers,netas,beauracrats and I dont know who.

The fall and fall of Pakistan

As we move towards the G20 summit we have a grave problem at our hands.The existence of pakistan as a state.What is pakistan as a state trying to do.Let me go through the sequence of events that has led to this pathetic conditions.First was the toppling of the democracy led by Nawaz Sharif.While the former president was on flight under his nose his government had been overthrown and the Musharaff era had begun.He brought in the military rule.From there on the real downfall of Pakistan as state began.Nothing went right from there.He stoped free elections converting himself from a General to a dictator.But only this dictator was not as strong as people thought.He was a pupppet in the hands of Taliban.He was sandwidched between the Taliban and the U.S..

Then under extreme pessure he had to give up his regime.But he made sure that the right person,Benazir Bhutto didnot come to power.Her husband Zardari took power and he also like other ministers didnot last long.Back came Mr. Nawaz Sharif who was on exile and started the long march to throw away the government(dont know why the elections are held).At the same moment days after a terrorist attack on a mosque .The police training centre was attacked.All this has a grave effect on Indians and their neighbours alike.With no end to this mockery of democracy insight,its time that India took some strong military actions,because already India has been attacked numerous times at multiple locations.This is not doing any good to national security.I think that this year the General Elections campaigning would be a lot easier.One just has to promote an attack to Pakistan that's it.Ultimately you have the people's vote .Instead of beating around the bush holding talks,meetings,faking mobilization of the army,take the initiative like Israel and attack.I am sure that the Indian army is capable enough to conquer the Pakistanis.

Because this is the limit we have had enough.Lets not hide behind the lame excuse of recession and not do what we have to do in proper time.This is the time attack Pakistan and let that be a statement to both U.S. and China that India has arrived,who under the veil of friendship supports vehemently the Pakistani armed forces.

OIL AND POLITICS

Oil the black gold of the world today stands at a crucial juncture. No I am not going to blabber about the emptying or the replenishment of the same. But I would like to state its importance in world politics today. For example today just recently Russia had hit a big oil reserve round about the Siberian region. It is more popularly known as the Sakhalin project. Of course it has on its own lead to much controversy. First of all Vladimir Putin’s bold decision to state that Russia would not let anyone have its piece of cake no matter what. That Russia’s in mood to enter into a trade agreement with any of the states. But one thing that Russia forgets here is that for refining the crude oil it has its centers in China, Japan and other such countries. However with Russians planning to get into the Refining business it would be costly decision that Russia has to take, because of the capital intensive market that oil sector currently is.

Coming to India with its nuclear agreement on the right path its time the government took some measures to get into oil sector and sort out the long standing controversy of oil with its neighboring states. First of all India comes after China in terms of oil consumption. Its the sixth largest consumer of oil all over the world.Still India has grave problems regarding this sector which is leading to huge economic losses. First of all the long standing pipeline from Yemen and Turkmenistan which if laid will go a long way in resolving India’s major chunk of problems. But India’s not so good relation with Pakistan leads to a failure of laying the pipelines from Afghan till India through Pakistan. Even though India is ready to pay something around $500 mn in transit fees Pakistan cannot guarantee the transit of the pipelines. The other option that India has is to go around the Pakistani state from the Arabian Sea and enter into India. But that too is a costly affair, which would require huge capital investments which at present would not be feasible.

On the left of India lies the oil rich Burma, but that too being China friendly doesn’t do the situation any good. Even if they do agree there is a problem of Bangladesh flexing its muscles to stop India from getting the crude? Even though an agreement of $125 mn been offered as transit fees were made as an offer, Bangladesh is keener on being China friendly. China on he other hand is on its way to creating a string of pearls all alon from Nepal to Pakistan and back to china.This would be major blow to India ‘s chances of being the Asian supremacy.Anyhow right now with the U.S. nuclear deal being signed chances are there that India might just get to sniff oil after all.