Why the World needs India to Succeed?

These are revolutionary times, these are exciting times. As noted by numerous leaders and great thinkers across eras, it suits today’s times very aptly. A world plagued by issues ranging from Economic meltdown to radical change in the political landscape, the fall of capitalism and the rise of communist china; growing civil movements on issues such as corruption, greed, dictatorships(and that too as in case of Libya and Egypt which have had regimes running into 4 decades). There is little doubt that the world is going through so to say a mid life crisis. But in all this one idea rather a philosophy which has emerged as a real winner is well simply Democracy. Be it the Arab states, the US, our very own “Main Anna Hun” campaign, the emphatic undertone to each revolution or rather more aptly movement is the simple philosophy of For the people, By the people and of the People.
When discussing democracy, we need not go too far since we boast the rather ignominious and exceptionally difficult to handle title of being the largest democracy in the world, boasting of over 1.3 Billion people, practicing every religion and faith practised by humans all over the world, home to over 122 different dialects, a great many cultures. No other matches India in terms of diversity and the success of democracy is one of the greatest successes of the 20th century and it continues to flourish as we move forward. A case in point is China, a population of 1.4 billion, more or less a single dimensional cultural background(maybe the biggest and most debatable statement of this statement, but I would still stick with this and move ahead in making my point). Getting back to China, the most populous country in the world, the manufacturing goliath, the largest lender to the biggest economy in the world, the largest exporter in the world, the fastest growing economy of the world, the country with a whopping $ 5000 Bn forex reserves; there is no doubt that China is the poster boy for Big. Well, one thing that China is not is Democratic.
A communist single party nation state, China is a model for growth in economy coupled with ever depreciating human values and human rights. The income divide is growing, basic human rights (we refer them as fundamental rights; remember 8th class civics) are deteriorating, dissenters are not tolerated, a letter happy government, a crippled media all pointing towards a dysfunctional society. One the other hand is all the economic progress, the growth in all major Human Development indicators atleast income wise. All these point towards a flourishing society. An irony of sorts, China is scripting history, never before has a society achieved such levels of success on economic front with such social conditions, which raises the question that whether Chinese are happy and rather more importantly is China the right leader for the world?
This question assumes great importance in the post 2006 era, two major developments have undermined the US’s role in world stage; the first being the suicidal all out war against terror in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Economic Meltdown. One’s loss is another’s gain when China slowly but steadily has gained control of the entire world economy. The day is not far when China officially topples the US as the ‘Superpower’. In such times, the question of China’s leadership makes a lot of sense. I would leave you lingering with this recent news from China and would like you to make your own judgement on this. (well I do appreciate that one data point such as this should not be used to determine a judgement, but if the data point is so extreme in character and still represents to the best of our understanding a representative of the society it can be considered).

On Friday October 21 two-year-old Wang Yue, from China’s industrial heartland Guangdong, died. This in itself is hardly any news and in a country like China, as in India, where infant mortality is a daily reality, a fact we have to swallow. Now as more details are added about Wang Yue’s death, check where it touches a chord or if there is a lump in the throat — Wang Yue was run over by a van in a Foshan market on October 13; after the driver noticed that the front wheel had gone over her, he stopped, deliberated what to do next (in China compensation for death is limited while medical costs for the injured can be ongoing) and ran the rear types over her and sped away; 18 people (including women) passed by but avoided attending to her; in between another van ran over her. All this happened while the market was in full swing. If not for a 58-year-old street cleaner, Yueyue, as Wang Yue’s parents called her, would have been left unattended for who knows how long.

Now, lets focus a little on what is expected of India or rather the other developing world nations in the midst of all this change. India is a democracy, a functioning democracy with a history of 60 successful years marred only by a single emergency which has otherwise been civil and constitutional. We boast of a strong, honest and evolving Judicial System, a rather dysfunctional and corrupt crop of politicians, a lot of vote bank appeasements, a system marked with exceptional laws with incompetent and downright pathetic implementation of policies, an income divide which is the highest in the world, a sort of unity in diversity which is unique in its own way, a strong and functional media, an existent human rights regime and a respect to fundamental rights of the human being. All these in a wholesome represent what India stands for, a flawed but potentially great democracy, a leader which the world needs.
This raises the question that can we be more than a flawed democracy which holds a lot of promise for the world? India and its 1.1 billion strong populace could not bother themselves more with such absurd questions today, rising prices, slowing economy has taken a toll on the common man in the country. A sort of cleansing of the society is not the answer, its the cognizance of this increased responsibility on the average Indian that is the need of the hour. The world could use our brand of democracy and the ideas on which the nation was found; the guiding principles of the Mahatma. And we need to rise to this situation.
The challenges are a great many. We have economic and social issues which we would need to figure out even before we start considering our leadership potential to the world. But, its the attitude and the cognizance of the responsibility that’s upon us that is of utmost importance.
As once noted by the great revolutionary: When the time of an Idea has come no force on earth can stop it, and democracy is that idea and India is the vehicle of dissemination of that Idea, it’s upto us to determine whether we succeed or not.

Y is SRT(Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar) actually BRT(Bhagwaan Ramesh Tendulkar?)

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar - A name that has royal connotations,a name which is the most popular name in the country and every guy knws two names for sure _one sachins' and one his own. 17500 plus ODI runs,13000 test runs, highest score in ODI cricket. If there ever was a scottish whisky kinda player - gets better with time then it is Sachin Ramesh tendulkar.

Having started his career at the tender age of sixteen when we are all goin to school this guy was out there earning his own living and making serious bucks,serving his country and finishing off bowlers careers in dime a dozen style. If one has to look back at the great man's career and say one hting that has not changed a bit till now is the man's modesty. One of the most modest sportstars, the man has always steered clear of nay controversy, has attained dainty status in the country. Recently when sachin was up agianst shiv sena supremo( i dunno y is tht guy called a supremo),not a word was spoken by sachin but a parade of fans stood up for him led by the members of parliament.

He has the power to stop normal life in India,a sachin century has the ability to convert a 10 minute Indian railways schedule stop into a full hour at a station. His one good innnings both by quality and by the times he has played those knocks brings happiness to millions of indians ,indians who are divided by caste,creeed,religion,gender etc who come together nonetheless to cheer their truest son. A poor oriya farmer who tills his land day and night and barely has enough to make ends meet even on a daily basis may not believe in god, but a sachin century brings a smile on his face and makes him feel happy makes him want to throw that plough away and become a boy and play.
That is the greatness of the man they call Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. A man for whom any role u give him he is the ideal man for it, an epitome of all that is good in this world, a sea of patience and perseverance,a man who has been the lifeline of the country forover twenty years. I heard that there is god and he is good,he brings u happiness,he judges ur deeds and punishes and rewards you. I personally dont believe in a super power who just sits there and makes things happen. I believe god is within all of us but only some of us grow up to become a god who people can be inspired from,someone who has come from the same ranks as us and has outperformed to achive greatnes. And most of all he is someone who has never let fame get the better of him.I guess people like Mahatma Gandhi, I guess that sachin satisfies all these parameters and thus the conclusion that "Sachin is god!!"

And hence the name Bhagwaan Ramesh Tendulkar.

Placements - Noise or Signal??

Well the time arrives which everyone looks forward to but secretly is scared to death of..Plcaement season...a really dreaded time when all the classroom sessions go out of the window and all that remains is speculation,fear,happiness, greed,friendship,conspiracy theories ..basically the whole gamut of human emotions. The times are bad thy say this year..the papers tell me sth else...the prssure of the liabilities....the pressure of expectations...the lack of clarity..frenzied calls to seniors,friends,prior colleagues..basically taking an opinion from anyone who has one to offer...then run them through a very very flawed regresion model (what else) -our Brain...then take a decision many times a gut feel...apply....

Step 2: Shortlist: I am not in...dude what was the criteria...noooooo not grades please...no work ex m so screwed...i will never get shortlisted.....m done dude!! i will become an entrepreneur....
I am so finished and dead!! basically again the most weirdly ur mind can act it does....Ppl stop takin to ppl who are placed...tht placed syndrome....loss of confidence!!lack of trust!!...seems like the whole world is scheming against u...and most of all those placcom guys(poor them!!),still waiting for a job of their own and bearing the brunt of the whole batch!!!

So whats my view on all thiss...
Well basically..one thing ..u either have clarity or u dont have clarity!! Believe me its much better 2 be the latter. (U have a much larger pool of cos to aply to)
My view on the whole issue is a lil different!!

One its ur life.....its ur career......have confidence and clarity on what u want....and life will be fair on u!!!
Second i think u already have come out of one rat race ..to jump into another one...just think of the ppl u left behind in the previous IT rat race...equally competent(cz i believe ppl in this world atleast ur engineering frens and all are as good as u if nt better) and thus be happy wid wat u have...give it ur best shot.....and have confidence .....after at 22 ur life only starts and u have a long long way to go...
Realise ur dreams shudn be tough.....
U start big or not..what matters is the final destination and not the displacement to get there.......

Signing offf

What could happen if we didn have history as a Subject

History, a subject which scared most of us to death during exams.the fat books,the lengthy answers and most of all the boring stories about how the empires got built and deeestroyed.The sub starts in class 6 and then continues onto 10th trying to give u in a nutshell what has happened in the world till now( sometimes very region specific stuff).In many cases history shapes ur prejudices for the rest of ur lives. Say the britishers ruling over india for 4 centuries or the mughals conquering before that,the chengiz khans of the yesteryears or the roman and the greeks.

As a ardent student of finance one who believes in one thing very strongly.That life like markets moves in cycles,bears and bulls, plus the value of everything is in the future cashflows that the asset or in my example about the life of a human being, the weighted average of the happiness , the satisfaction and the pleasure he derives from his stay on the planet plus the knowledge, the love ,the societal contribution which he makes dat determines for me his value on a very micro sense.
in the macro sense that is captured in the discounting rate what is the proxy is the state of the society and the state he lives in factored in through social and demographic factors viz quality of education,level of cultural cohesion etc.
The point here i that how my lead my life is majorly determined by the factors quoted above.Now where does history figure in all this.History makes villains and heroes for u,mostly very region specific mirror image heroes and villains between conflicting states,it has had civilisations ruling over the World.We first had the egyptians,the greeks the romans,the Europeans,the golden empire and then ofcourse the US now maybe the tomorrow is with China or maybe one day India then Africa and so on.
I would like to closely examine how this history has affected day to day dynamics of a student of history in his years at school.

A few Examples
The Jews are always fed with the Nazi story, the Arab story ,and other innumerable such from time immemorial. The arabs are fed with stories of Jews Before and after Christ,in ancient,medieval and modern history. The Hindus are taught about pakistan and how it happened,about British empire ,the same wid the pakistanis.The Middle eastern countries taught dogmatic islamic scriptures about non sensible laws and practices on which the feared regime taliban was conceptualised on.The point here is simple we are brought up fed on prejudices al the while.And when does this happen ,well clearly during the formative years at school when our minds are like clay which can be moulded into whatever shape it encounters.And the worst part is that the shape is there is stay forever as if someone had just put it through a heat kiln.
Well there could be a counter to this sayin that it all depends on how the history text book is written but then history ust cannot be facts ,every book has built in biases to them and if they don the teacher makes sure they come across.Well as i believe it during school i never realised the imp of history,but then after that i came to believe maybe history is something u just cannot run away from,it will follow u everywhere.But then now again i realise if say u don follow history in ur formative years,compulsorily the prejudices are built in later when ur matured mind can take it atleast.That is when history catches up wid then u are at least wise enuf to base ur decisions on better logic and sense rather than a programmed mind.
Now picture this ,A Whole generation which is built on basic Human Principles,the minds look for order,love and happiness and the all the factors mentioned earlier. U look for micro factors like ur own happiness and satisfaction but u r also focused on macro and more social factors which bring happiness and peace to the overall race.That reduces the discounting rate,minimizing the denominator and driving the valuation, which is just an arithmetic proxy to Satisfaction.
That is what maximises value for u and ur valuations are the highest,as for the cyclical theory,everyone goes through bad times and depending upon the choices u make in life ,in such a place u determine ur future and not the society. A failed state whenever it happens makes us question our own assumptions about life and freedom.A la Afghanistan,Iraq,the Gaza strip,most of Africa are examples which force us to look at things from a lens very different from the one we use for normal life.A Young Indian helping a old pakistani blind man(who is publicly known to have terrorist connections in his younger times) to cross the road,a Jew lady making tasty and wholesome food for the gaza Strip refugees ,and the son of an taliban official leading a perfectly normal life ,living in america and helping the world out of an economic crisis,maybe one day these unimaginable things and much more like this could come true.
The question is
If we had not been taught History In school,could a whole generation have escaped Biases and based their life on more meaningful pursuits rather than fighting wars on land?

aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
4th march..the day will go down in history as the day on which indian cricket took its first graet step towards greatness..........India have beaten australia in australia for the first time in a tri series final and moreover india have clinched a major tournament after 23 years in australia...hjow is that for stats....now if that is not enough india have now been branded by our "great indian media" as the best team in the world.For me i would not let 2 games decide which team is better.......but surely indian cricket has come of age.now coming to the reason i wrote this blog-media both indian and australian.
to start with the australian media,harsha bhogle made a very apt comment during one of his commentary stints.it goes something like this:
"i read the australian and there is alwaz some nonsense about harbhajjan written there..u hardly can go through any australian paper without coming across a bhajji photo.but today it seems if australia loses.it would be the naked streaker who would find a more prominent place.that comment in itself summarises al i need to say about the australian media.

NOw coming to their indian counterparts-
we have a very peace loving and friendly kind which at times can be immmaturely foolish and entertaining,its true wen u are geetin bored by a dravid innings please watch wat india tv and star news have to say about it.they have a opinion about everything under the sky.and wat opinionists.

picture this india won the finals and where were india tv taking there opinions from ,bapi lahiri and asha bhonsle.and both talking to kirti azad,i cant understand how did this stupid guy end up in a world cup winning side.that encourages me to think that one day even the zimbaweans cud win the world cup.but als its not the immaturity that gets u cups.its geniuses swho get u cups.
and one such genius is sachin ramesh tendulkar.
the unsung hero of our finals.
i thought it was the most responsible and heroic innings u wil ever see from the master blaster.he knew his job like noone has ever had.just guess wen i am writi9n nopw..who is opinionating on india's victory-navjyot singh sidhu.the same guy who on a similar programme flagbested the indian team selectors on droppingdravid and ganguly......that is the sport and dat is teh game.....
but at the end of it all i sleep a satisfied and happy indian cricket fan........................
kudos men in blue............

well after a long time i have something substantial to write:
now let me enumerate wat has happened over the past 1 month after the last post:
- india won the perth test.(wow)
-india drew the adelaide test(sensational return to form of viru or is it?,sachin blasts the aussies,ricky,hayden,hussey stamp authority)
-dravid,sourav,laxman pack bags and head home after test series fail to find place in "dhoni's" odi squad.
-harbhajan singh cleared of all racial charges and test ban lifted and in place of that a 50% match fee fine for the 2nd test.(indians claims moral victory over aus,i cant see how??)
-first ever t20 btw india and aus on aus soil.
result-india loses.scores 2nd lowest score evr in t20(really a significant achievement for t20 world champs)
-vb series starts,weather plays spoilsport in the first two league games.
-india beat australia in their first non rain interuppted encounter.(ishant sharma bags mom)
-india beaten by sri lanka in rain educed match.
-india beats sri lanka and get beaten by aus.
-current standing:
aus 17
india 12
sri lanka 6
-now for the big news
IPL(indian premier league).now wat is ipl??

well ipl basically means
cricket+entertainment+bollywood+corporates+lots of cash+=ipl.

now even if u r not a cricket enthusiast this will be mouth watering for u .............

well wait for my next post form more dtails ....i will be back soon........

what's got into us??

The world witnessed what transpired on the eventful day of 6th jan 2007.A bright sunday morning,india after a decent showing in the last 4 days was surely heading towards a draw.Dravid and sourav,two of the stalwarts of the game were on the crease battling out on a 5th day sydney test.That is how the situation stood midway through the innings.India, set an improbable 333 to win in 73 overs was battling out for a draw.Then came the fiasco,dravid given out,sourav given out, and posibly if u take the very questionable sense of cricket that rajiv shukla has ,R.P.singh given out,all three decisions any fair umpire would never have given out.Add to that symonds,ponting's,hussey's and clarke's decisions and bhajji being charged on grounds of racism.............u have possibly the best piece of story that the media could gun for.here are some of the headlines that our tv channels displayed as breaking news.............."umpires cheat india","aussies cheat their way to victory",no one was ready to give credit to the aussies and alll had sympathy for india and then what was being said as an undertone became the motto with bhajji's ban,"call the team back".now what was the problem with all dat??..u may ask




well first of all we indians have always been subject to our emotions.never have we been able to control them.Over here too emotions started running high and what happened then was there for everyone to see. Conflicting opinions,politicians jumping into the fray by appealing indians to be called back,donkeys being named as the umpires,effigies being burnt..it was nothing short of mayhem.Pragmatism had taken a backseat,there was complete furore .Thousands of interviews were taken,innumerable conflicting breaking news headlines.Some went to the extent of saying that the tour was cancelled.What was the end result of all this shouting??

india continues with steve bucknor being removed even after the icc made it sure that it went against the laws.
Ten days later the news report would read like,bucknor hard done,sharad powar lets go easy,india humiliated etc.Then the media another scapegoat to keep this issue alive.

the big question dat comes to my mind now is, is the media really interested in indian cricket or all its trying for is a an issue to blow it out of proportion,same is for the molestation case,a commisioner's comment which was strongly misinterpreted,he was trying to defend his force,what the media did was to take up a personal agenda against him.


How many of u think bucknor a veteran of 120 tests was hardone by the icc??
definitely he was the scapegoat of all this, and the bcci's comment that it was a victory for them just goes to say that all that happened , cricket and we the fans were robbed in the aftermath of the sydney test.