Tuesday, April 28, 2009

BETTER TO BE A LION IN INDIA, THAN A MONKEY ELSEWHERE.


Got this interesting stuff in email. I have seen lot of people in US working in US below their capabilities just for sake of dollars... This just reminded me of people's love for nothing but "US dollars".

In a poor zoo of India , a lion was frustrated as he was offered not more than 1 kg of meat a day.
The lion thought its prayers were answered, when one day a Dubai Zoo Manager visited the zoo and requested the zoo management to shift the lion to Dubai Zoo.
The lion was so happy and started thinking of a central A/c environment, a goat or two every day.
On its first day after arrival, the lion was offered a big bag, sealed very nicely for breakfast. The lion opened it quickly but was shocked to see that it contained few bananas. The lion thought that may be they cared too much for him as they were worried about his stomach as he had recently shifted from India .
The next day the same thing happened. On the third day again the same food bag of bananas was delivered.
The lion was so furious; it stopped the delivery boy and blasted at him,' Don't you know I am the lion...king of the Jungle..., what's wrong with your management?, what nonsense is this?, why are you delivering bananasto me?'
The delivery boy politely said, 'Sir, I know you are the king of the jungle. .. but... you have been brought here on a monkey's visa !!! '
Moral of the Story....
BETTER TO BE A LION IN INDIA, THAN A MONKEY ELSEWHERE.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Is it true or just an email campaign from BJP office?

After fall of American Financial system, there has been growing debate on how to end existence of tax havens such as Caribbean Islands and Switzerland. US is negotiating hard to trace trail of American money in Swiss Accounts. At home, Main opposition party, BJP has been making black money as its one of main issues. I recently got below fwd email: Is it true or just an email campaign from BJP office?


IS INDIA A POOR COUNTRY? by M R Venkatesh
Revelation of Swiss bank accounts. This is so shocking.... ...If black money deposits were an Olympics event.... India would have won a gold medal hands down. The second best Russia has 4 times lesser deposit. U.S. is not even there in the counting in top five! India has more money in Swiss banks than all the other countries combined! Recently, due to international pressure, the Swiss government agreed to disclose the names of the account holders only if the respective governments formally asked for it... Indian government is not asking for the details..... ..No marks for guessing why? We need to start a movement to pressurize the government to do so! This is perhaps the only way, and a golden opportunity, to expose the high and mighty and weed out corruption! Please read on........and forward to all the honest Indians to.....like somebody is forwarding to you.......and build a ground-swell of support for action! Is India poor, who says? Ask the Swiss banks. With personal account deposit bank of $1,500 billion in foreign reserve which have been misappropriated, an amount 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt, one needs to rethink if India is a poor country? DISHONEST INDUSTRIALISTS, scandalous politicians and corrupt IAS, IRS, IPS officers have deposited in foreign banks in their illegal personal accounts a sum of about $1500 billion, which have been misappropriated by them. This amount is about 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt. With this amount 45 crore poor people can get Rs 1,00,000 each. This huge amount has been appropriated from the people of India by exploiting and betraying them. Once this huge amount of black money and property comes back to India , the entire foreign debt can be repaid in 24 hours. After paying the entire foreign debt, we will have surplus amount, almost 12 times larger than the foreign debt. If this surplus amount is invested in earning interest, the amount of interest will be more than the annual budget of the Central government. So even if all the taxes are abolished, then also the Central government will be able to maintain the country very comfortably. Some 80,000 people travel to Switzerland every year, of whom 25,000 travel very frequently.. 'Obviously, these people won't be tourists. They must be travelling there for some other reason,' believes an official involved in tracking illegal money. And, clearly, he isn't referring to the commerce ministry bureaucrats who've been flitting in and out of Geneva ever since the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations went into a tailspin! Just read the following details and note how these dishonest industrialists, scandalous politicians, corrupt officers, cricketers, film actors, illegal sex trade and protected wildlife operators, to name just a few, sucked this country's wealth and prosperity. This may be the picture of deposits in Swiss banks only. What about other international banks? Black money in Swiss banks -- Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 details bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland by nationals of following countries:
TOP FIVE
· INDIA : $1,456 BILLION
· RUSSIA : $470 BILLION
· U.K. : $390 BILLION
· UKRAINE : $100 BILLION
· CHINA : $96 BILLION
Now do the maths - India with $1,456 billion or $1.4 trillion has more money in Swiss banks than rest of the world combined. Public loot since 1947: Can we bring back our money? It is one of the biggest loots witnessed by mankind -- the loot of the Aam Aadmi (common man) since 1947, by his brethren occupying public office. It has been orchestrated by politicians, bureaucrats and some businessmen. The list is almost all-encompassing. No wonder, everyone in India loots with impunity and without any fear. What is even more depressing in that this ill-gotten wealth of ours has been stashed away abroad into secret bank accounts located in some of the world's best known tax havens. And to that extent the Indian economy has been stripped of its wealth. Ordinary Indians may not be exactly aware of how such secret accounts operate and what are the rules and regulations that go on to govern such tax havens.. However, one may well be aware of 'Swiss bank accounts,' the shorthand for murky dealings, secrecy and of course pilferage from developing countries into rich developed ones. In fact, some finance experts and economists believe tax havens to be a conspiracy of the western world against the poor countries. By allowing the proliferation of tax havens in the twentieth century, the western world explicitly encourages the movement of scarce capital from the developing countries to the rich. In March 2005, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published a research finding demonstrating that $11.5 trillion of personal wealth was held offshore by rich individuals across the globe. The findings estimated that a large proportion of this wealth was managed from some 70 tax havens. Further, augmenting these studies of TJN, Raymond Baker -- in his widely celebrated book titled 'Capitalism' s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market System' -- estimates that at least $5 trillion have been shifted out of poorer countries to the West since the mid-1970. It is further estimated by experts that one per cent of the world's population holds more than 57 per cent of total global wealth, routing it invariably through these tax havens.. How much of this is from India is anybody's guess. What is to be noted here is that most of the wealth of Indians parked in these tax havens is illegitimate money acquired through corrupt means. Naturally, the secrecy associated with the bank accounts in such places is central to the issue, not their low tax rates as the term 'tax havens' suggests. Remember Bofors and how India could not trace the ultimate beneficiary of those transactions because of the secrecy associated with these bank accounts?

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Is she Mandsaur's new future?



प्रिय मित्र ,इन्टरनेट आज के युग मैं संपर्क का आसान माध्यम है और इसलिए बदलते समय के साथ चलने वाली आज की पीढी से संवाद के लिए मैंने इस माध्यम को चुना है . मंदसौर नीमच जावरा संसदीय क्षेत्र से मैं लोक सभा चुनाव मे उम्मीदवार हूँ . मुझे आशा है की आप मंदसौर नीमच जवारा संसदीय क्षेत्र के विकास के मेरे और आपके सपने को पूरा करने के लिए मुझे पूरा समर्थन देंगे. यदि आपके मंदसौर नीमच जवारा संसदीय क्षेत्र के विकास हेतु कोई सुझाव है तो कृपया मुझे स्क्रैप करे.कृपया मेरे वेब पेज को देखें www.meenakshimandsaur.com सदैव आपके साथ ,मीनाक्षी नटराजन

This was the scrap that I got from Meenakshi Natarajan, Congress LokSabha candidate from Mandsaur Constituency. I was happily surprised with her use of orkut and internet to reach out to voters in a constituency which is agriculture driven, rural district. In spite of low internet penetration, she chose to reach out to prospective voters. Either she wants to not leave any stone unturned in her campaign or there is immense potential of internet marketing even in semi urban and rural India. It’s unique experiment as your candidates and representatives are getting closer to voters not just in cities such Delhi and Mumbai but also in low profile, grossly ignored areas of the country.
I visited the site to know more about her and her agenda. Here are some pros and cons of her candidature.
Pros
· She is just 36 years old. Her youth with be beneficial as she is contesting against BJP candidate Laxmi narayan pandey, who is septuagenarian (76 yrs old).
· Her offensive is based on poor performance of her opponent who has not done justice to his job in spite being in the office for 8 times.
· Excellent academic record.
· Excellent political career.
· She has consciously moved to Mandsaur while her opponent is on weak grounds as his permanent residence is still not in Mandsaur even after representing the area for 8 times.
· There is clear anger among urban voters over lackadaisical attitude of Mr. Pandey over negligence and non pragmatism. Issues of Railway connectivity, Roads, Water crisis, Electricity, Industrialization have been neglected by current MP that will sway voters in favor of Ms Natarajan.
Cons
· She hails from Ratlam, a neighboring district. Since her opponent is also an outsider, her outsider status is not of greater significance.
· She is new for Mandsaur and it would be extremely difficult to recall a new comer’s name at the time of voting. Her South Indian heritage might be a disadvantage as Malwis (people of the region) might not associate a “Natrajan” to be one among them.
· She is just riding on incumbency factor and has not come out with any concrete action plan for solving problems of water crisis and industrialization. Sadly this has been the case for all Indian politicians who never have any action plan to solve issues. They just have political promises.
Overall, I feel Congress has done a good job in fielding Ms Natarjan. Her youth, energy and qualification will prove advantageous in removing BJP bottleneck from progress of Mandsaur, Neemuch, and Jaora.
Pic Reference : http://www.dpcc.co.in/aiccimages/minakshi.gif





Friday, April 10, 2009

SCM

I found an easy explanation of SCM (Supply Chain Management ) concept. Here is the link
http://www.economist.com/business/management/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13432670&Fsrc=mgttkgnwl

Monday, April 06, 2009

Advani goes Obama way

Mr. Advani has adopted Mr. Obama's "Yes We can" in style. He is visible on social community sites such as Orkut and Facebook. His blog is getting popular day by day. BJP Ads on television are able to touch hearts of voters. His site http://lkadvani.in is creating fleet of volunteers.
But Is it worth investing so much money on Technology marketing in India where Internet and PC penetration is minuscule in comparison to the population of the country. How did BJP evaluated that IT is the way to go? Can this time's campaign go haywire as it had last time with India Shinning?
But whatever the answer is, It will surely have impact on urban voters in Tier 1 cities such as Delhi and Mumbai. It's welcome change to see leaders going tech savvy by writing blogs and creating forums to interact with people on facebook and orkut. The day of live Prime ministerial debates on lines of US's Presidential debates is not far. You can catch Mr. Advani's Blog @ http://blog.lkadvani.in/
It is heartening to know that BJP manifesto reserves one page for Information Technology.

Two promises are clearly in sync with what is needed urgently.

Launch a National Digital Highway Development Project to bring affordable broadband Internet connectivity to every village.

Mr Obama talked whole year while campaigning to increase penetration of High speed broadband connectivity which currently pales in front of South Korean achievement. Eric Schmidt, Google, CEO has been technology adviser of Mr Obama. Here's where we see the differences in Indian context, there is no open support and collaboration between Indian Tech leaders and aspiring political leaders. Why don't Indian Tech leaders come out in open and join political landscape by supporting , advising tech matters to these leaders on the similar lines as we have seen recently in US.

Every Indian citizen to have a bank account; welfare funds to be deposited directly into end beneficiary’s bank account to eliminate corruption.

This is good idea although remotely connected with Technology. Perhaps, BJP is linking direct deposits in Banks with information Technology. This act would create a direct channel between subsidy provider and consumer but How will we achieve this, given the fact that ECS(Electronic Clearing Service) is available in selected 50-60 odd cities in India and Cooperative banks and Regional rural banks have not invested much in technology. RBI and MOF(Ministry of Finance) would have to surely work hard to materialize this.

Leaving you with BJP's ads , Bhay Ho on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Nodf1aetA and Determined Leader, Decisive Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejuHr5FjtZg