Monday, April 30, 2007

http://www.chakree.in/home.htm


Does anyone remember the musician for the music at this site. Its a very distinctive rock/pop hit song from college days (Wham ?) but I'm not getting it at all.
The website itself is kinda... interesting huh.

Saturday, April 28, 2007



The H-Dog is back at the Onion and all true connoisseurs are rejoicing.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Mani Shankar Aiyer -- renaissance man ?



I was forwarded this (IMO) truly remarkable speech by Minister for Panchayati Raj, Mani Shankar Aiyer. I found it 1.) intelligent and perceptive 2.) sensitive 3.) insanely honest and courageous. The speech is rambling, the historical and ideological analysis contestible and some of the things he talks about are fairly common left wing 'party line'. Nevertheless.


{{Okay -- let the flame wars begin. Arvind, no doubt you will accept the privilege of the first salvo}}

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'I was always Leftist. Economic reforms made me completely Marxist'
Mani Shankar Aiyar



In a speech at a CII meet, Mani Shankar Aiyar argued that policy is hijacked by a small elite. That the cabinet he belongs to is quite comfortable with this hijacking. That India's system of governance is such that Rs 650 crore for village development is considered wasteful but Rs 7,000 crore for the Commonwealth Games is considered vital. The classes rule all the time, Aiyar says, the masses get a look-in every five years. A few weeks ago the newspapers reported that the number of Indian billionaires had exceeded the number of billionaires in Japan, and
there was a considerable amount of self-congratulation on this. I understand from P. Sainath that we rank eighth in the world in the number of our millionaires. And we stand 126th on the Human Development Index. I am glad to report that last year we were 127th. At this very fast rate of growth that we are now showing, we moved
up from 127th to 126th position. This is the paradigm of our development process. In a democracy, every five years the masses determine who will rule this country. And they showed dramatically in the last elections that they knew how to keep their counsel and show who they wanted. We, my party and I, were the beneficiaries and we
formed the government. Every five years, it is the masses who determine who will form the government. And in between those five years the classes determine what that government will do.
In determining what that government will do, the CII has played an extremely important role. I am not surprised, as that is its job. It represents industry, and therefore it argues for the interests of the industry. Industry has been enormously benefited by the processes of economic reform that we have seen in this country over the last 15 years or so. But the benefits of these reforms have gone so disproportionately to those who are the most passionate advocates of reforms that every five years we are given a slap in the face for having done what the CII regards as self-evidently the right thing for this country.
It is a sustainable economic proposition, because our numbers are so vast, that there are perhaps 10 million Indians who are just as rich as the richest equivalent segment anywhere in the world or in any group of countries. There are about fifty million Indians who really are extraordinarily well off. That's the population of the UK.
But if you look at the 700 million Indians who are either not in the market or barely in the market, then the impact of the economic reforms process, which is so lauded by the CII, makes virtually no difference to their lives. That is why there is a complete disjunct between what the democratic processes are trying for in the short run and what those who have made an enormous success of our achievements
in the last fifteen years deem to be, at least in the short run, their own requirements.
So when you talk of a nine point two per cent growth rate, it becomes a statistical abstraction: 0.2 per cent of our people are growing at 9.92 per cent per annum. But there is a very large number, I don't know how many, whose growth rate is perhaps down to 0.2 per cent. But certainly, the number of those who are at the lower end of
the growth sector is very much larger than those who are at the higher end.
Yet what happens when you have the budget? As an absolute ritual every finance minister (my colleague Chidambaram is no exception) will devote the first four or five pages of his budget speech to the bulk of India and there will then be several pages, including whole of part B, which deals perhaps with one or two per cent of our population.
Almost the entire discussion that takes place at CII or CII-like forums, will be about Part B rather than Part A. There are comfort levels that you get from statistics — for instance, suddenly Arun Shourie, announcing in the NDA government that our poverty rates have fallen from 35 per cent to 22 per cent. He did it by changing the basis on which you estimate poverty. You cannot compare apples and oranges. The next national sample survey has shown that our poverty levels have actually increased. Are we going to be mesmerised by these statistics or understand that 700 million of our people are poor? So we have an Indira Awaas Yojana which will ensure that there will be a 'jhuggi' for every Indian round about the year 2200. We have the PM Gram Sadak Yojana which was supposed to complete all the gram sadak in seven years — we are in the eighth year. And where we are told that the education of 1000 may be covered, who knows only the education of 500 will be covered. And if you happen to be a tribal in Arunachal, you are told that because of your social custom you are to live in one hut atop a hill, we can't provide you a road.
I was always something of a leftist. But I became a complete Marxist only after the economic reforms. Because I see the extent to which the most important conception of Marx — that the relationship of any given class with the means of production determines the superstructure —holds.This ugly choice is placed before the government. An unequal choice, because you have organised yourself to say what you want to say but the others are only able to organise themselves and that too without
speaking to each other in the fifth year when the elections take place. That is why this expression anti-incumbency, although the Oxford Dictionary says that it is a word belonging to the English language, is a peculiarly Indian phenomenon. Because everything that goes in the name of good governance like the economic reforms either
does not touch the life of people or affect them at all. We have seen what happened at Nandigram, we have seen what was happening at Singur and we have these propositions that say that SEZs are going to come and lakhs of hectares are going to be utilised for the good of the country. For what's the syndrome in all this, it's
still 'do bigha zameen'. The chap says that I want my one bigha of zameen to be reinstated, but you offer double the compensation and "baad mein dekha jayega". You go to Hirakud, which is where Jawaharlal Nehru actually used the expression modern temples of India, and you ask what happened to the tribals who were driven out of there. Absolutely nobody knows. Coming to the cabinet, you see what happens. The minute suggestions are made as to what would perhaps benefit the people and what would benefit the classes, the tendency is to say that our great achievement
is 9.2 per cent growth. Our great achievement is that Indian industrialists are buying Arcelor and Corus. That Time magazine thinks we are a great power. In these circumstances, when a proposal came before the government to spend Rs 648 crore on the Gram Nyaya department, we were solemnly informed by one of the most influential ministers in the government to remember that we are a poor country. I was delighted when the next day he was with me in a group of ministers and I reminded him of his
remark and said in that case can we stop spending the Rs 7000 crore on the Commonwealth Games and he said, "No, no, that is an international commitment and a matter of national pride." This national pride will of course blow up if you spend Rs 7000 crore on the Commonwealth Games. We will be on the cover of Time and Newsweek.
I have always wondered why this rate of growth and economic reforms process is dated to Manmohan Singh. Because actually it should be dated to L.K. Jha's book Economic Strategy for the 80s. It is the decade in which we quickly recovered from agricultural depression and registered a double digit growth. At the beginning of the decade our biggest import was crude oil and after that it was edible oil. By the
end of the decade we were exporters of several kinds of edible oil. Why is it that Nehru became successful with his Hindu rate of growth? The reason is that the Hindu rate of growth was five times what our pre-Hindu rate of growth was. From 1914 to 1947, the figures of which are available, the rate of growth of the Indian economy was 0.72 per cent. And we got the Hindu rate of growth which was five times that and it made a difference to the people. The minute you had solid land reforms, the people had their 'zameen'. That is what Mother India was all about. People felt that they were involved in the process. All the political talk was: gareeb ke liye ham kya kar sakte hain. Indira Gandhi matched it beautifully when the entire political
spectrum joined hands against her by saying, "Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, hum kehte hain Garibi hatao."
There is nobody so marginal in a government as the minister of Panchayati Raj. I count for nothing. Nothing! When I was the minister of petroleum, I used to walk surrounded by this media. I kept on telling them that petrol prices can do only three things — go up, go down or remain where they are. And it was all over the place. But try and get them to write two words about the 700 million Indians —
absolutely impossible. And now with terrestrial television it is even worse. You have to be quarreling with your mother-in-law or hitting your daughter-in-law to be able to hit the headlines. It is impossible to get particularly the pink papers to focus on issues that affect the bulk of the people. And it is so easy to get them to focus on issues that are of high relevance to only one or two per cent of the people.
I believe the CII, if it is serious about the issue, should not be restricting itself to 25 minutes discussion before lunch but hold discussions for ten days and maybe something will come out of it.

Edited extracts from a speech at the CII Northern Region annual
meeting 2006-07, New Delhi, April 4

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Newspaper watch - Turkey

The Hindu on Turkish politics: "<<..>> However the decision is unlikely to resolve the chronic tension between Islamists, internationalists, and reformers on one side and nationalists, secularists and conservatives on the other"

Say what ??

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There's also a article on Francois Bayrou who came third in the French elections. He seems quite a smart chap and perhaps the messiah France has been waiting for. His critique of Segolene Royale and Nicolas Sarkozy:

" By his close links to the business world and media powers, his taste for intimidation and threat, Nicolas Sarkozy wll concentrate powers as they have never been. By his character and the themes he has chosen, risks worsening the social rift through a policy that benefits the richest.

Segolene Royale appears to have better intentions in terms of democracy. She seems more attentive to the fabric of our society. But her programme is full of state intervention, perpetuating the illusion that is it up to the state to do everything, that it can do everything. This programme goes exactly against the steps needed to give our country back its creativity and balance."


Sunday, April 15, 2007

Firefox



Firefox (the browser) has this absolutely amazing ability. Firstly it has tabbed browsing so you can have all you browser sessions up within the same window. Then if the browser crashes for some reason, and you bring it back up again, it will ask you if you want to restore the sessions. If you say "Yes" it will actually manage to restore the sessions perfectly including logging back to your email like Yahoo Mail or GMail. There are few things that have amazed me recently as much as the sight of a Firefox browser that just came up and is busy recreating like 12 different sessions that I had up previously. In fact, why do this only on a crash ? If I could bring up and log into the 4 or 5 different sites that I frequently visit when I go online without the headache of doing it for each one, it would be a big happiness gain for me.

Go Firefox.

Friday, April 13, 2007



For those who care ..

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Did I post this already ?

The beauty of Indian telecommunications.

From a billboard ad for Kingfisher Airlines:

Call 1800 2333 131 / 020 2729 3030 / 080 4197 9797 / 022 6649 9393 /0124 2844 700 or 1800 1800 101 / Contact Your Travel Agent

And this might be of interest to some

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Globalization, meet localization





Making pizza at home was never something that I seriously considered (or knew anyone who seriously considered) while in the US. However we're (well Priya's) now making pizza at home. I think the process can be traced as follows:
-- pizza comes to India
-- kids like
-- moms don't like the cost, but have cooking smarts and (relatively) more time
-- someone figures out there's a market in home-made pizza

Now its relatively easy to find pizza base and sauce and cheese at supermarkets here.


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Curious personal development website:
http://www.centerpointe.com/