"I've resigned because it's the right thing to do. Aur main Rae Bareli se election zaroor, zaroor ladoongi." No one has made as much a mockery of the Indian political system as Sonia Gandhi. Sonia has demonstrated to one and all how powerless and utterly ridiculous the Indian Democratic System can be made, provided you punch the right buttons. I salute the lady for her achievement ! While leftists and rightists both tried their best to argue to the public about the lacunae in the political system, Sonia has demonstrated the same by example; also in turn demonstrating the impotency of facts and arguments ( tark-aur-vimarsh ) in the current set up. The current case is ridiculous in more than one way. Sonia Gandhi had held many offices of profit even before she became an MP, primarily due to the distinction of being the Desh ki Bahuraani . Obviously so, otherwise how could the widow of an ex-PM survive while affording the pomp of the Gandhi family. But anyway, I digress....

"Refusing to hobnob with the bands of merrymakers, we lock ourselves at home, catch up on the latest blockbuster on the DVD and hope to goodness we are not disturbed. " - BRIEF CASE: Holi Nostalgia (TOI 16-03-2006) Well! That's what I too did on this Holi - finally found courage to sneak out of home in the evening to watch Taxi No 9211. Nice movie; a fresh theme and noticeable performances. I finally confess that I had misjudged John Abraham - he's not just-another-model-trying-to-become-a-hero; he's pretty good at acting too ........ Change of thought ...... Two movies back to back - Bluffmaster and Taxi No 9 2 11 have showcased Mumbai City. In fact the titles at the end of Taxi No 9211 start with the proclaimation - 'Shot Entirely In the City of Mumbai' . To that effect Indiafm's review about Taxi No 9211 was exact - and for those who do not know, the bulk of the movie is actually shot in the suburban belt of the city (to be exact its the Powai-A...

Countries like India, which were not prosperous enough for development to be funded in each corner of the country, felt the pinch of the neo-capitalist economy. In prosperous nations, in spite of centralization, economic prosperity was widespread. But here, lack of resources coupled with corruption, slowed down the developmental rush of the early independence years by 1970s; the 1980s was marked by confusion in economic policies. Come the 1990s; with communism fallen, decentralization and liberalization on, a new wave of enthusiasm crept in the economy. But this all is probably happening too little and too late. The argument in favour of high-taxation for the rich is that this money would be utilized for the uplift of the poor. What has been observed on the ground however, is that it is the middle class (and not the rich) which feels the pinch of taxation, while the poor do not seem to be benefited at all. The reasons behind this phenomenon would be the topic for another write-up and I...

1NDIA , One Nation, One Billion People, One Dream, One Voice One India The OneIndia (by Reliance and now BSNL, MTNL ... and ... Airtel) campaign is another step towards equalizing (or rationalizing) the mobile tariff schemes. Another step in the direction of universalizing telecom availability! Are these simply marketing promotions or indicators towards the new ways of economic thinking that are entering our policy making corridors? By the early 1900s, the theory of free markets had firmly established itself. The rise of the United States, as a formidable economic power, ahead of Great Britain was a proof to its success. However, towards the end of the economic crisis, in the early 1920s when industrialization was in full swing in Europe and in its infancy in countries like India, communism also rose with its own philosophy of state controlled ‘factors of production’. Meanwhile the economic crisis of 1929 loomed large over the capitalist world; as a result even capitalist governments s...

You can take me out of NITIE. But you can never take NITIE out of me. - Shubham Choudhury* I could not help but (re)post this comment made by Shubham on my previous post. By the way, Junta! I am going to go be in a nomadic life for the next 15 days, so might not be able to post :( References * Choudhury, Shubham; URL: http://my-mind-space.blogspot.com Born July 19, 1980; NITIE, PGDIM-X, Class of 2005 Co-Creator: Arbit Choudhury - World's First B-school comic character

Another Saturday that was; hectic yet fun. Started the day by rushing my bike to the service station in Mulund - rushed ahead to KPMG Office in Lower Parel to attend a training. While the training entered its last leg, I ran away back to Mulund to collect my bike and then braving through the traffic jam, reached home - exhausted! Had a late dinner @ 10:50 PM and then decided to go for a short stroll. So me and Somnath set out on foot to stroll in Hiranandani . It was looking very beautiful - empty but lighted streets with the marvelous structures. Both of us simultaneously had thoughts of taking snaps and incidentally Somnath's camera had just a few strips remaining. So we went back, grabbed the camera and set out roaming on the bike at 1:30 AM to take snaps. We took snaps in Galleria, Olympia, and old-Hiranandani areas; but with a few shots still left, we were both overcome by a wish to visit NITIE and take a few snaps there. So here we were, two souls in Shorts and T-shirts, ente...

This old post by Shubham (and the comment made by Sabya on it) made me realize how much has changed between my entering NITIE and today - within me as well as without. Shubham himself echoed the same thoughts in his mail of which I am posting an excerpt: "This post refers to a lot of things we discussed during our days in NITIE (gee ... doesn't that make u feel it has been ages since we left NITIE). Some of the thoughts expressed there have become even more relevant now, now that we have been earning for some time. When I read some of my primordial posts, I almost feel that they were written by a different person. And that I do not identity with what I wrote there any more .... have u ever felt similar too??" Just the other day me and Somnath (aka Tiger) went to Pizza Hut because ghar par khaana acchha nahi bana tha. When the waiters there recognized us instantly, I was trying to figure out how many times I had visited this place and I couldn't count. Pizza hut is n...

Have you ever imagined if you were merely a witness to this world, rather than being a participant - how would it feel? Would our daily lives - chores, events, celebrations, troubles, tribulations make really interesting events to watch? One would argue, Yes! After all, the movies are made up not completely fictional stuff - they are all inspired from our real lives. But then, why do movies interest us? Because they relate to us, they represent our dreams, our life, our land, our world. I repeat, if we were all mere spectators, non-participating - then would all this make any sense to us. It is unlikely that a Taxi driver would enjoy Wallstreet . Similarly, for ... say ... galactic observer from another galaxy - will the earth not be some chaotic nonsensical place where people are running for goals which do not matter or make sense? We are a miniscule disturbance on the galactic scale - whether in terms of space or time - in all 4 dimensions. Nothing would ever change in the universe i...

Check out the public notice of the trust on Gaurav's blog http://gauravsabnis.blogspot.com/2006/02/manjunath-shanmugam-trust.html Check out the trust's own website: www.manjunathshanmugamtrust.org and http://syg.com/web/manjunath/

Gaurav Sabnis makes a very valid point in this post that - "...it is not necessary to hate* Gandhiji to admire Bhagat Singh ... to hate Gandhiji is not the same as disagreeing with some or most of his ideals". I have reverberated such thoughts in past on this blog . Whether one agrees with Gandhiji's views on Ahinsa or not; we should credit Gandhiji with the discovery of the individual's power. As Louis Fischer put it - 'The individual was Gandhiji's major concern and it is this concern which makes him so intimately relevant to the present day India. Most of Gandhiji's ideas can be ascribed to some inner quality of his mental eyesight that kept him from seeing people as a mass. He never saw or judged Indians or Frenchmen or Christians or Muslims in millions. He considered each human being too holy, too important to be the mere instrument of a remote impersonal terrestrial power called state." Freedom for Gandhiji was not mere political - it was ...