No more watching Cricket

I still remember those days at Nungambakkam, Chennai when I used to get up early in the morning along with my Grandfather and my cousin to watch the Cricket World Cup held at Australia in 1992. For the past 17 years Cricket has been an integral part of my life, just like a typical Indian kid one of the activities for which I have spent a major portion of my life time is cricket. I have been so mad and passionate about the game in my life so far, I have faked stomach aches as early my III standard to watch Sachin play, cut my classes to see Dravid forge a beautiful century in Australia, sacrificied a lot of things to watch and play the game.

The moment I open my web browser,my hand involuntarily will type www.cricinfo.com, though I am not a great player of the game I was a kind of nerd in cricket.

Then why suddenly stop watching the game which has been so close to my life?

The thing which made me take this decision was India teams act of playing in Sri Lanka, a land which a genocide has just taken place. I was disgusted to see that Indian team choose to play over there at this situation, it's money which counts and not anything else.

A few of my friends considered me stupid and told me that the decision is not in the hand of cricketers, I do agree that. But if they had refused on moral grounds, a lot of people would have sat up and noticed the carnage which goes on. And all the more there was one tamil player in the who didn't expressed anything about what's going on there.

I don't know why people never think in these lines, why are they not sensible.

Some do question me that I am overflowing with emotions just because I am a tamil, for those I would like to strongly state that I am a human. I have spent lot of slepless nights thinking about the plight suffered by thehardships faced by people in Kandhar, Darfur, Gaza, North West Frontier province, Eelam, North Eastern India, Kashmir, Gujarat, etc.

I am more attached to Eelam because I have seen many who have been affected by the problem. Also if I can act with proper determination and sensibility I bring a change to their lives. Though I have to admit with guilt that I have not done it properly so far.

Thats why decided against watching cricket and do something useful during those times. Sometimes it is tempting to watch it, but so far I have been able to restrain myself. I have not visited Cricinfo's website once I came to India is going to Lanka, however watched a few portions of Lanka Vs England match when they were watching it in my room. But certainly determined to stop watching cricket.

When we ramble about change, these people are working hard for it.

I am one among the thousands who ramble about the evils and ills which are dragging down our country. Whenver something bad happens, we feel bad about it in our minds, some discuss it with friends and some scrabble something somewhere.

We say that in our country change is not possible. We feel that whatever we set out to do will encounter a blockade somewhere by a politician or a bureaucrat or the police or the local rowdies. We do cite many examples of persons who had tried and failed, but rarely we see people who make a good try. In more simple words, we try to shift the blame to some one.

The IT boom has indeed bought some changes, people have started to earn more at a very young age. And among them there are some who can really see the ills of the society and a few of them tend to act towards it. Thats why I believe you can see the sudden spurt in the number of Non Profit Organizations working towards the betterment of education, Bhumi, Anavi, Nanmai, Saaral, Disha, Vidial to name a few. There are many more orgainzations and each of them is trying to something from their side towards the betterment of the society.

The question which constantly arises in my mind is, "Are these organizations enough to bring a substantial change in the society?"

My answer is a strict no, the reason are,

• The rate at which these engines work certainly cannot keep in pace with the factors which detoriate the society.
• A government can easily collapse an organization like this in a matter of days.
• Education, the area which almost every organization concentrates, is one of the the pancea and not the only one.

We certainly need more organizations which jump into the political arena and fight for the injustice, evils and make sure our society head towards in the right direction. The bitter truthis these kind of organizations are very hard to find. People hesitate to enter this avenue mainly due to fear, fear of their career getting derailed, fear of something happen to themselves or their family, fear of financial insecurity and a lot more. Thogu some fears are true, some of the fears are imaginery, hypothetical. We need accept the facts humans are selfish brats.

Lot of us would love to do something of this sort but are not doing them. We may not jump into the arena, but we can atleast recognize and support people who do it, correct?

I consider myself lucky for getting in touch with such a set of people. On 8th February, 2008, I attended, Thesathirku Thool Kodu an initiative by Shanti Ashram at Coimbatore organized every year with an objective to Gather people & Organizations who are inclined towards the betterment of our society. In that meet I meet Sundharmoorthy na from Vavipalayam, near Coimbatore. Sundar na was representing Sidhanai Sirpigal, an organization which he co-founded, which had bought about significant changes in Vavipalayam. (Google it and you can see the difference they have made, BW had an article a long time back).

Nandhakumar na, representing Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam (Dr.M.S.Udhayamoorthy's organization), was one more intresting person I met there . Nandha na working in a software company had resigned his job to do research and work for the improvement of the Panchyat raj improvisation. Seeing a person who was just a few years older than me who had given up his job to pursue something which a lot of us hesitiate to dream about was something which gave me goose bumps.

Both Nandha na & Sundhar na were active at Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam, operating from the North Avenue road, Thiruvanmayur. I was infuriated by the fact that I haven't noticed it despite walking on the road several times. From June, till I came here to Delaware in Jan, I used to visit them consistently and be in touch with them regarding the happenings they are doing.

To eloborate a bit about MSI, they were an orgnization who were working towards bringing about social and political awarness to the people. They are doing a monthly magazine titled "Nambu Thambi, Nammal Mudiyum" and working different avenues like Panchyat Raj, Education, improving the Governmental activities, agriculture, Prohibition, Corruption. At MSI, I came in touch with Senthil na, Siva Ilango na, Prabhakar na, Mohan na and a lot of more other people. (Think I can devote a post to each and everyone of them).

Their commitment towards bringing a change was something which awesturck me and the results they produced were also good. They were a pretty determined lot and were working hard. I had a chance to take part in some of their discussions and found them to be very productive.

Last month, they formed a political political party called Makkal Sakthi and contested in the Bargur by election. Ilango na contested the elections and came third.

I got a mail from Senthil na, regarding the vote details.

Vote details and analysis:

DMK - 89481

DMDK - 30378

Makkal Sakthi Katchi - 1985

CPI - 1640

BJP - 1482

OTHER INDEPENDENTS IN BARGUR:
- RAJESH - 3482
( THIS IS A DMK SPONSORED CANDIDATE, WHO FOUGHT IN BASKET(KOODAI) SYMBOL WHICH IS LOOKING LIKE DMDK'S DRUM SYMBOL..HE WAS SPONSORED TO SPLIT THE VOTES OF DMDK.. OFCOURSE, THE CANDIDATE IS DMK CANDIDATE'S OWN SISTER'S SON!!!.SO THE VOTES HE GOT IS NOT REAL VOTES.. THOSE ARE VOTES THAT SUPPOSE TO GOTO TO DMDK!!!..Read about this symbol confusion @ http://thatstamil.oneindia.in/news/2009/07/15/tn-dmdk-candidate-files-case-against-basket-symbol.html)

- MAHESWARI ( KONGU YOUTH PARTY ) - 946
- PADMARAJAN - 852
- SAKTHIVEL - 694

THE RESULT SHOWS THAT

- PEOPLE ARE READY TO ACCEPT AND VOTE FOR NEW PARTY TOO, IF WE APPROACH THEM PROPERLY.. OUR DOOR TO DOOR CAMPAIGN WORKED WELL.

- ELECTION COST IS NOT A BIG DEAL. OUR TOTAL CAMPAIGN EXPENSE IS LESS THAN Rs.50,000 only. With this itself we were able to do a decent campaign.

As soon as the party launch press meet is over, we came to Bargur. So, not able to communicate effectively to all our email network. Sorry about that. As soon we return to Chennai, we will update our website and will call for a meeting to brief you about our policies and strategy. ( At present you can download the pdf version of our policy doc @http://www.makkalsakthi.net )

CHANGING 'VOTE BANK POLITICS' INTO ' POLICY BASED DEVELOPMENT POLITICS' IS A VERY BIG TASK... WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN AND SUPPORT THIS INITIATIVE.

I am really happy and proud about the way the are heading. Wishing them all the best.

Hats off to you all.

PS: For hardliners who say that Lok Paritran was not supported by people, change will not happen overnight, it will take some years. Their intentions was good, but the apporach was fatally wrong.

Don't blame the girls alone......

This is just another blabbering of mine, but think it's worth a moment to think about it.

Yesterday night was a typical bachelor's Friday for me. In the evening I played tennis for a decent amount of time, the first time in my life I served an ace, phew it is real. (After that came a game in which I had just 3 double faults). One set of friends wanted to go to Kaminey,

though I was a bit enticed to see Priyanka Chopra on the big screen, I decided not to go due to variety of reasons, budlight lime being one among them. We made some Rava Kichadi for the night and had some Breadsticks and buffalo wings from Domino's.

As it happens in the life of any bachelor, after a drink and nothing to do on a Friday night, a topic came in for vetti pongal. Sometimes these topics are of very great intellectual quality, which normally doesn't strike our mind, or things which we don't gave a damn about due to the various entertainments available around us. I love to be in discussions like this which give me an opportunity to realize how I think, what's my attitude, etc. (Provided you don't booze too much, if you do so, then it's a different story altogether).

Let me came to the topic, recently back in my company they banned wearing Casuals on Friday. The topic stated with the discussion of why did they ban the casual attire (to be read as Business casual, that's what they call so)? My friend told that one of the primary reasons is because of certain section of the girls wearing pretty indecent attire. It is certainly one of the reasons, I have seen certain girls whose costume will take your mind for a wild ride. But that doesn't rule out the boys who do wear a round neck T-Shirt with a glaring design, a jean with n number of pockets and sometimes which is torn at some places. Wearing what they like is an individual's right but when you are representing an organization there are some lines which should not be crossed, this was the reason why the Business Casuals were banned.

The argument from my friends perspective was that it was because of the Girls the Casuals were banned. My side of argument was though it was one of the primary reasons, I couldn't place the blame on them. I am articulating my argument as below,

"Every male or female (in most cases) tries not to be a common person. They want to stand out from the crowd in one way or another. Out of these some section want to attract the opposite sex, a section which will have a smile maybe not on their lips but in their hearts to see members of the opposite sex turn around and say a Phew at them. And many try to make faces turn by dressing beautifully, the problem comes when we are defining "dressing beautifully". A pretty good Churidar, or a decent top and a jean can project a girl beautiful for sure, but not everybody thinks like that. Some tend to think that dressing more sexily will make heads turn around. As everybody knows a Man's mind more easily sways and he will turn for sure.

Men don't (need) dress like that, it is not common to see men wear sleeveless tops or a top which shows their hip. The reason is a woman's mind doesn't get swayed like that, their definition of good looks is different from a man's mind. Hence men don't dress like that, had it been a case where women start liking a man showing his hip, you would see the streets swarm with guys dressed like that.

So my take is don't blame the girls alone.

PS:

1. For me beauty is something which is not determined by external looks.

2. Time to have another budlight lime, don't know I love it pretty much.

I believe the best way to fight draught is inspire people

You know during tough times it is always tough to do things which we do normally. It is even tougher to do things which are bit harder. Uttar Pradesh has been affected by a draught and people facing tough times. However you can't leave stones unturned because of a draught, actually you need to work more to overcome the situation. So how to make people work hard during this, Mayawati has come with an innovative plan which costs Rs.656 crores. Check it out, hats off Maya.

14 Years in Prison for a joke - isn't it absurd?

You would land up 14 years of imprisonment if you pass text a joke on Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari.

Is Pakistan a democracy? don't know. But reading this news made me laugh my heart out.

No more Chest Pain please, its time we get a change.

I am trying to recollect the first instance of a Politician getting a Chest Pain immediately he / she got arrested due to some wrong deed of him / her. (Believe female politicians are also not exempt).

The rampant abuse of this option I believe started in mid-90s.Or maybe I started noticing them in mid-90s, as it was the age where I started to think a little. I believe we need to applaud them for the fact that they never even seem to hesitate to act like that, even though it is a clumsy, silly act which can be clearly seen by everyone. Even when I used to cut my school / college I used to think of more creative ideas, despite that I used to get caught occasionally. Whenever somebody notices my clumsy lie, I used to be ashamed of myself and never again used that again.

But these guys don't give a damn about that. Whenever they get arrested, they complain about a chest pain and get admitted to the hospital.

The case of TDP legislator T V Rama Rao, reported in Times of India, is one of the clumsiest I have ever seen. He was arrested for harassing a girl in a Nursing institute run by him. And as usual he complained of chest pain and was taken to the hospital.

The doctor, who examined him after the tests, said his condition is stable adding "he has no heart problems."

Don't know whether he has been moved to a jail or he is still ensoying at the hospital.

Whatever be the case, Guys no more chest pain please, its time we get a change.. As a responsible citizen who elected you, we need at least this privilege.

PS: I have a doubt since TDP's rival Congress is in power, the doctor mentioned like this.

Happy to share this Joyous moment.......

There are some days in which you feel truly joyful, a sense of satisfaction prevails in your mood and you will be looking forward to do some good things in life. This is one of those days. Want to ask me what makes me so elated? Certainly I have not found my girl, if I had I would screaming at the top of my voice and would have been busy talking instead of blabbering something in this weird blog of mine.

Just now I wrote a post summarizing the success of 4 persons, who had worked hard to get a job and got transformed from a beacon of hope to a person who leads from front for their families. The thing which makes it special is that Vidial had the opportunity to support them to a decent extent in their journey. And thing which makes it more satisfying is that I was extremely close with one of those persons, Suresh for the past 3 years. I had a tab on the remaining 3 persons to some extent. I am extremely happy for these 4 people.

I would also thank Vidial, a group which I accidentally stumbled into, which gave me this opportunity.

Do read more about it in this blog post of Vidial.

Hindu and N.Ram are blatant liars

As I grew up, like many of the kids in South India, I was taught that 'The Hindu' is one of the best newspapers in the land. Whatever it reports were supposed to be correct and I lived with the same opinion till a few years ago. I even used to revere it.

Till my final year in college, it never caught my mind that it was just passing news, just like a RSS feed aggregator. I was not able to see any series which were exploring socio-political, economic and other active issues in depth.I don't know why never did it occur to me that Hindu never concentrated on Active Issues of the society.

Apart from the Indo - US Nuclear deal covered in detail by Siddarth Varadarajan, I feel no other matter (One more which comes below) was pursued seriously as by it. There aresome good journalists like Sai Nath, V.R.Krishna Iyer, but I believe neither of them are bound to Hindu alone.

I lost my respect for Hindu after seeing the way it is covering the Tamil Eelam issue. It has always painted a rosy picture of the Sinhalese. One blatant example how partial Hindu is can be seen in the below article,

http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/04/stories/2009070457542000.htm

When the entire world is concerned about what is happening in the Concentration camps,

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6676792.ece

the way Ram has written is a violation of the basic principles of journalism.

There are lot of peoples who have been questioning the condition of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The autocracies of the Rajapakshe and his Government were blatantly bought into light after the assassination of Lasantha Wickramatunga, a person who was not afraid in expressing his views against the Government's action against the innocent people. Do read Lasantha's editorial, that throws light on the scheme of things in Sri Lanka, which was published after his demise. Lasantha knew that he would be murdered sooner or latter for his anti government stance, hence he wrote the editorial in advance and asked it to be published after his death.

I am proud and happy to see people like Lasantha, who are the embodiment of journalism. I don't know how people like N.Ram have the heart to do such false propaganda. To my knowledge Hindu has never published anything which says Tami people where killed or were hurt by the Sri Lankan Army. Is it not comical to say that in an operation of such a vast magnitude, an operation which was carried out mercilessly didn't hurt any Tamil?

I don't hesitate to call N.Ram a b*******. A interesting bit of News, Sri Lankan government awarded Ram, the Sri Lankan Ratna, the highest civilian in honor that is conferred by Sri Lanka in 2005.

Certainly we are living in an Orwellian world.

Lot of times I used to ask myself this question. Are we living in a world which just gives the impression of being rational? Where was this rational when Africa and Asia were colonized, their natural wealth ravaged, their resources replenished and their people harassed, murdered, basic rights crushed. Didn't it all happen until 50 years back the impact of World War II made colonization a burden

Though I despise war not just it is violent, but the damage it leaves, the trauma it gives to lot the soldiers, people who were involved in the war for no reason of their own, that too in a war which is of no direct or indirect consequence to them. I would certainly tell that in the past 1 century more than 75% of the wars which we have seen are because of the selfishness, foolishness and cleverness of the people sitting on the top. George Orwell had precisely explained this in 1984. I would recommend everybody should read the book, one of those which change the way you see the world.

I am blabbering something else than coming to the point of this post. The recent happenings in Iran and the way Western Governments and Media has handled it reminds me of the Iran in 1953. At that time also we had precisely the same situation which we are now in.

Iran was headed by Mohammed Mosaddeq, a person who was democratically elected as the Prime Minister of the Iran. The crisis began in 1951 when Mosaddeq decided to nationalize the Oil resources of Iran. This came as a severe jolt to the British Government as it had the exclusive control over the Oil Industry. A war against was on Cards which was averted because of Truman's didn't budge. It is quite comical indeed to see a country not able to decide what to do with its national resources. Don’t know what does Sovereignty mean?

Luckily Truman didn't budge or else we would have seen another war, which history would have recorded as a War against the acts of the evil Prime Minister Mohammed , a tyrant paying no heed to the welfare of people. The two decades after the World War II were full of covert operations of the Two Blocs (especially C.I.A. & K.G.B.) in overthrowing the Governments which didn't agree with them either ideologically or economically. I believe Iran was the first stone on either side to fall for a covert operation.

When Eisenhower came to power in 1953, one of his first action, was to authorize C.I.A. to proceed with Operation Ajax, an operation whose goal was to overthrow Mosaddeq and install in a favorable government for the block led by USA. CIA trained, funded and armed SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence wing of Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. After the coup, Pahlevi was installed as the head of the Government and was in power till Iranian revolution in 1979.

A coup which removed a democratically elected Government by a dictator, the democracy western world is shouting about now.

After all this things do you want me to still believe that U.S. and U.K. are shouting for democracy in Iran? Absolutely not. There must be some motive behind this, don't know what exactly it is. Oil is a primary reason; one more reason is that Iran was planning to start a trading exchange for Oil, that too in Euros.

Everywhere I see the news that Iran Opposition is complaining about alleged misappropriations in the election. But if they are able to blog continuously, give photos of police beating the youth, why can't they give some solid proof of the alleged fraud in elections.

There might be something wrong in Iran and they way certain things are happening in Iran are not pretty good, especially woman rights and an individuals freedom. But certainly something of the magnitude which press and the governments are describing is not happening. Whatever maybe wrong with the internal politics of Iran, certainly they are not killing innocent civilians in their own or some other country for a threat whose odds are more than one in a million.

Why can't the western Media criticize Israel’s activities in West Bank and Gaza Strip? A country called Palestine which existed before 1947 is no more. All its inhabitants are subjected to ills which I believe nobody should ever get again.

Why didn't they talk a bit when Sri Lankan government crushed the rights of Tamils, and did Genocide? Not even a single gruesome picture came in the mainstream media during the past one year.

Certainly we are living in an Orwellian world.

Google now crawl flash files too

Read in Google's blog that it's search engine can now crawl flash files and index the external sources which a swf file might use. I would be really happy to know how it really happens, need to spend some time on it.

Saina - First Indian woman to win a Super series

Saina Nehwal beat Lin Wang(W.No: 3) of China to win the Indonesian open title at Jakarta on Sunday, June 22nd. It is the first victory for an Indian woman in a super series.

Saina is currently ranked 8th in the world and it is nice to see this 19 year old making constant stride. Lets hope time is not far when this 19 year old goes on to become the world number 1. It has to be noted that Saina's performance has been consistent, her World no: 8 ranking is a standing proof of the same.

See all articles related to Saina's victory here.

Isn't this queer?

I noticed this report in IBN-LIVE's web page.

Vinita Devi has requested the Post Mortem report of her husband Gajendar Singh, a NSG Commando, who was killed in the operations during the Mumbai terror attacks last year.

This comment by Vinita Devi took me aback, "I never got any post-mortem report of his death but it would be consoling if I had one. I have the desire to see it. What i know (the cause of his death) is what was reported in the media. I will ask the NSG in this regard".

It is pretty amusing to see the fact that the kin of a miltary person who died on duty didn't get any official report regardind the death.

Yet another illustration of our media's responsibility.

I was just browsing through NDTV's site now. I noticed that the bomb blasts in Lahore has got a higher precedence than the Cyclone in West Bengal.

Worst Still, in case of CNN-IBN Deccan Chargers arrival was considered more important.

Don't know where this is going to end.

The primary aim of modern warfare

I am currently reading George Orwell's 1984. As I am reading I have two thoughts about Orwell

1. He had a mind which could conceive what would happen in future.
2. Or the world has not changed pretty much, except for technologies, since his time.

I believe the second statement is more true. I will put in a detailed review of the blog sometime sooner. For the moment, I couldn't resist putting this quote,

"The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society."

Sainath on the f******* Indian Media

During my college days, I slowly understood that mainstream Indian media, both print and television, never even show interest in addressing the vital issues which needed to be addressed for the development of our country and our civilisation(I believe, we still have some). 

Media is one of the most important tools to make people think and our media certainly failed in this. All that grasped headlines and attention of the media were topics which are of little value when looked in a macro perspective, a cine artist's private life gains more attention than the the sucide of our farmers. Rarely they do give attention but in the most stupid way possible just as it happened during our Mumbai terror attacks, when each planned operation of our commandos were explained and analysed so that the terrorists can easily counterplan. 

Had the issues like Poverty, Narmadha Valley, unrest in North Eastern states,  the Naxal movement, Indian government's role in Sri Lanka and a lot more gained proper attention and scrutiny, lot of lives would have been saved and lot of people would have lived happily. 

All over the world, Media is the one of the best way of making sure that our rulers turn their attention towards what really mattered and required action. It is no denying the fact threat Neoliberalism has slowly gobbled Media also. 

Sainath, clearly points that out here. 

Change must come from within.................

26th of November was yet another day which was of no use to myself or this world. As the day was drawing near the end, I was trying to do something useful for the day by attempting to read Stephen Hawking's "A Briefer history of Time". My room mate was surfing the TV when he saw the militant attacks at Mumbai coming as flash news, though he got excited, I dismissed it as another series of bomb blasts which our country had learned to live with and tried to bury myself in the book. As the clock ticked towards midnight we could figure out that this is not a bomb blast but an extremely well planned operation which is going to cause a major outrage in the world. We went to sleep around 1.00 clock still unsure of what was exactly unfolding in Mumbai.

In the morning when we switched our TV sets we saw that it had been a sleepless night for thousands of people. The whole world was watching as terror unfolded its clutches across the Mumbai, there was little anybody can do. The army was pressed into action and even their seasoned NSG commandos were finding it tough to flush the militants and save the hostages, it has been almost 48 hours since everything began but still the battle to save people is going on. 

Yesterday (Nov 27th), it was raining cats and dogs here at Chennai, our house at Velacherry had had more odds of going under water. The previous night we had a small warning with the water reaching our veranda and bathroom at the back. The fear of water flooding into our house and the terrible situation in Mumbai had me in an awful state of mind and I decided to take the day off. I was alternating between Times now and NDTV to track what is happening in Mumbai till 11, but I got pissed off with some of their predictions and decided to watch a movie instead. These days our media houses are all about reporting and TRP ratings, it is really rare to see good journalism, seems with quantity has traded for quality. 

I was browsing through my room mate Pannai's collection of movies and picked Batman Begins to watch, the recent admiration of Christopher Nolan's Dark Night made me to watch the movie though I had watched it earlier. I found myself enjoying the movie which I didn't when I saw it almost about two years ago, seems laziness and prejudice has slowly crept inside me in every walk of life. As I was going through the movie I felt what Bruce Wayne had felt in Batman, the grudge against the people who are responsible for the chaos prevalent in our society. I wished there would be a person for our country, the world to save it just like Batman did it for Gotham, though it was not pragmatic, I slept off with such a dream. 

The situation was still pale at Mumbai when I woke up, but it was turning worse in my room with water slowly starting to seep in through the back door. Myself and my room mate had an intuition that this was going to worsen, hence we just shoved all the things lying around (usually too many in a bachelors room) into shelves and prepared a backpack to go somewhere. The waters level rose at alarming rate and as we left more the level was more than a feet. Wishing the situation would turn around quickly I left for my uncle's house at Beasant Nagar.

The travel was horrendous with my share auto severing along the breadth of road which had sank under water without a trace. The journey from Velacherry to Thiruvanmayur under normal circumstances takes about 20 minutes, but it was not a normal day. When we had finished three quarters of the distance, the auto came to a virtual stand still just before the Taramani junction. I waited for about 10 minutes inside the auto and thought trotting on the foot was a better alternative to reach quickly. As I came to the T junction of Velachery road and Perungidi link road there was a deadlock which any Operating system teacher would have pretty much liked to use as an example. A section of traffic was trying to take a right towards SRP tools, whereas the traffic from SRP had blocked the entire road. Worse still there was another set of vehicles trying to take a right towards the Perungudi road.

And all the vehicle drives were not just hoping but working hard to clear the traffic with persistent honking of their horns which amused me a lot. Though vice (we will discuss later what is the vice) has spread across the length and breadth of our country there are many persons who have not been still attacked by the same, maybe our population is too huge even for a vice or disease to spread. 3 persons unaffected by these vices were trying to do something for the traffic, buoyed by their spirit I also jumped in to lend my effort as far as possible. And after a struggle for about 15 minutes we were able to regulate it a bit. The worst part was we had to persuade, plead, shout at people to ease the traffice,  everybody sounded that it is urgent for them to reach home and to them it didn't matter what happened to others. 

In other words everybody was trying to follow Adam Smith's philosophy of "In a group best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself". Little did they realize that what John Nash had corrected it as "In a group best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself and the group". (Courtesy: A beautiful mind).

After half an hour of effort, I realized it is time to leave or else it will be too late to reach my uncle's house. As I walked my way to the next bus stop more than a kilometre away I was thinking about the vices which has engulfed our society. The first and foremost one is materialism, which has spread its tentacles across the length and the breadth of our society. Everybody wants to become rich, build homes, buy ornaments, cars, etc. There is nothing wrong in being materialistic but the way in which we attain materialistic is extremely vital in determining the health of a nation. I think our understanding of God is also one of the reasons why we are like this blaming everything on God and asking him for a solution instead of trying to find out one.

Call it fate or irony the fact is, the land in which Gandhi was born, people no longer have regard for the philosophy of means and ends which he adhered till his death.  If we had indeed followed that principle of Gandhi, this country would have been a better place to live. Still it is not late, we could see a turn around in the lives of each and everyone of us, but it will take some time to see the effect. Alas, the present day Indian lives in an era of instant coffee and soap operas where he has become devoid of something called patience. 

I believe the second most important thing which is proving to be a nemesis is patience. We are not even patient enough to wait for a traffic jam to clear, instead we just jump over the yellow line and take the wrong side of the road to reach our destination  which ultimately will create a deadlock or an accident and in fact worsens the problem for everyone of us. It is not just traffic, we do it everywhere in every phase of our life from paying our bills in a shop counter to taking coffee in our offices, wherever it is possible. 

The third reason is lack of social responsibility. The definition of Social responsibility has got narrowed down, by corporate India, to the helping of orphans, old age homes and destitute children. There is also another definition of Social Responsibility used by our media, it is about people coming out to help during natural catastrophes, terrorism etc. Do these things alone constitute Social Responsibility?  I believe the above said acts are due to empathy and constitute only a part of Social Responsibility. 

During the past two days I noticed lot of people blaming the Government for its inability to tackle terror, inadequacy to tackle floods. The only question I would like to ask each one of them is, "Who is the government?". If you are blaming the government it means you are blaming yourself not someone else. 

The problems faced by our country is not due to the politicians or the administration, it due to each and everyone of us. We cannot become a developed country unless each one of us change, unless each one of us bring in control the demons in us. 

I have come across many people who talk about the problems in our system and are ready to work for the change, but they want to see the change immediately. Change in a country with such a big population will not come quickly, it might take years, even centuries. For that to occur we must start now, lets strive our best to leave this world a better place for the generations to come.

For that the Change must come from within.................

Is bailout really neccessary, no I don't think so.

Few days back, I wrote a post stressing the need for bailout. I came across an article which which pointed out that how the bail out is going to make life worse for the common man me explain how it is going to be worse.

Say Mr.X has taken a loan of $200,000 from a mortgage firm for buying a house. The mortgage company in order securitize the loan, converts the it a bond and sells the bond in the open market. The bond is bought by an investment bank or a mutual fund or a pension fund since it offers good returns. In order to securitize their investment, the entity which bought the bond insures it with an Insurer. when Mr.X defaults, then it sets off a chain reaction which affects all those involved in the chain of events, i.e. the mortgage company, investment bank & insurance company.

The guys with with fat pay checks in Wall street never cared about the fact that this vicious chain may crash. All that mattered to them were profits, never the means to achieve it. Wall street being the brainchild of capitalism came up with a master plan to save their skin from this economic breakdown. The US government $700 billion bailout save only the financial companies from bankruptcy and leaves Mr.X in total disarray.

The bailout has put a double burden on the common man, first $700 billion has been made raised from the tax payers money which includes Mr.X's contribution also. We need to remember Mr.X has been shown door from his house has he has defaulted his payments. His house would be auctioned off now and say it is sold for $50,000. Mr.X still has a liability of $150,000 to his mortgage company. In other words he needs to pay for the house he doesn't have and also he has to pay for preventing the financial institutions from crashing, the very same institutions which has left him in lurch. These guys do have a lot of brains.

Had this bailout not happened the entire world economy would have collapsed and a new world system might have been formed. Of course we would have faced many problems, but I sincerely believe it might have cut off the wings of Capitalistic Imperialism. The bankers have made sure that this didn't happen and Capitalism continues to thrive so that they can reap it's benefits.

Friedman points to Gandhian ways for recovery

Today in New York Times, Friedman has written a nice article, Why How Matters, in which he points out that it is not the goal alone which matters, but also how we achieve the it.

Gandhi had always argued same, it is called the Means and the Ends concept. i.e. it is not enough that we must have a very high goal, but the means we employ to achieve the goal is equally important. Though I am not a great fan of Gandhi, I greatly admire him for this particular trait. I believe at this hour when one of the biggest ever economy crisis of post World war II era is slowly catapulting, this concept of integrity is very important to improve not just the economy but the living standard of the entire world.

Bailout is neccessary

I came upon this article by Scott A.Kjar . Though his argument theoretically seem correct, I believe the bail out is necessary without which lot of banks would collapse and the one to be most affected would be the common man. The bailout might be helping the banks whose policies were managed by the greedy and dumb guys, who failed to foresee the catastrophe, but I don't find this reason to be strong enough for people who had invested in these institutions also to suffer.

The increasing liberation policies and complex instruments make the functioning of banks and economics incomprehensible to an ordinary man and is really tough to expect him to analyze this situations beforehand, when seasoned economists themselves have been left confused. The bailout in turn must be followed by stricter regulations of the market and trail of those responsible.

Be a bit slow, Mr. Chidambaram

Prakash Karat has lambasted P.C for his aggressive stance to deregulate India's financial market.,d despite the fact that the entire world economy is plunging into crisis. At a time when economists all over the world agree that there must be a rethink on the current strategies, worldover it is really worrying to see some of the bills that are being discussed in Indian parliament. The most sensitive one is the Pension Regulatory Development Authority (PRDA) bill which seeks to allow the pension funds in capital markets. With the entire financial world running on speculation, I think it is not a good idea to allow pension funds to invest in financial markets, especially derivatives, futures and stocks.

I believe a detailed discussion must take place before any action is taken, let's hope Chidambaram doesn't act in haste. One thing which worries me a lot is the fact that BJP are also neo-liberal and this could prove a boon for P.C. It is upto each and everyone of us (Indians) to make sure that we follow the progress of Pension Regulatory Development Authority Bill, Banking Regulation Amendment Bill and the Insurance Amendment Bill.