Archive for the ‘General’ Category
$18.4 billion – That was the amount which made the uber-cool new U.S. President fuming.
Barack Obama wanted an introspection on whether Wall Street executives should have taken such massive ay-outs in 2008, a year which confirmed the start of what many call the worst recession in ‘living’ history.
Obama has a point. The much-hyped concept of investment banking was wiped off from glossy annals of history, larger-than-life banks collapsed without a trace, industrial growth plunged, and pink slips piled up across the globe.
So what where all these top honchos doing all the time. Weren’t they aware of the nature of crises which were to hit their inflated books and overrated performances?
True regulatory loopholes would have played a part. But that is no wanton excuse to take home the greenback in billions, after uttering the customary refrain of “hard times” to sack low and middle level employees, whom they hired without a alarming lack of vision, or without knowing what is in store in the days, months and year’s ahead.
The response as usual from some captains of free market was to ridicule intervention by state in matters of industry – like what happened in India when the man who ushered in reforms – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — himself spoke of executive pay.
So if intervention is bad why is everyone from clobbered banks to companies desperately in need of a lifeline seeking government bailouts.
That is the answer which the tax payers are seeking from the Wall Street honchos.
Vijeyender and Sushil with President Prathibha Patil
India’s highest civilian honours, doled out on Republic Day and many a time carrying the stamp of political patronage and petty considerations rather than an aura of excellence, has caught in its vortex a former beauty queen-turned-actress and two sportspersons. — the former for her inclusion and the latter for exclusion from a list figuring more than 90 Padma awardees.
The actress in question is married to a politically connected family in which only her husband has been left out in the civilian honour list,now that she has also made it. Her in-laws have already figured — Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri for her angry old former superstar father in law and Padma Shri for his better half.
If the actress in question is being elevated to the altar of highest civilian honours at this point of time, prima facie that could not be a case of merit.
If at all she were to be honoured, it should have been just after she won a world beauty contest. After that, it was her off-screen connections and cupid struck troubled co-stars who have propelled her to limelight, rather than her on screen exploits.
That she was in the jury of the world’s most prestigious film fete remains as much a mystery as her inclusion in this list of civilians who are being honoured by a government about to face the stiff acid test of general elections in three months time.
Perhaps the political clout that her in-laws wield in a dispensation propped up by party close to her meant
that only one of the family could be “conferred” the award. Otherwise, it seems, the lone exclusion from the first family of what is known as Bollywood – and an actors only one at that, would have also made it to the list.
So glamour, connections and cricket made it to the elite list of honour, but boxer Vijender Singh and wrestler Sushil Kumar, who did the nation proud by winning bronze medals in Beijing Olympics did not figure in the list.
What makes this omission a slight to Olympic athletes is that this is the first time an Indian contingent won three medals.
The country’s first individual gold medal winner, Abhinav Bindra, was awarded Padma Bhushan for his rifle shooting exploits, but that is no justification for the snub to the other medal winners. Vijeyender had bagged India’s first medal in boxing and Sushil’s is the second medal in that discipline.
Vijeyender and Sushil need not fret over the elusive civilian honour as they have stamped their class in the world’s biggest sporting event.
Of course cricket is one sport where we churn out world class performers, but if this is the treatment meted out to our olympic heroes, there is little scope for us to hope against hope that we might produce champions in other sports.
At hindsight, every revellery seems to trigger another bout of festivity. From the borderless landscape of the world wide web, to the lucid elevations only monks of yore connect to, there’s an option to wade back and forth. That’s the battle of the bottle and the mouse, powered by the lexicon of the geek.
Do it, but don’t say you did it. Instead the almighty E-word comes into play – U e-did it! e-shopping. Yeah e-drinking too.
Yup, kool dude so what? big deal? Eh?
Enter the green chillies, those umpteen tantalising time-tested/failed combos and weary glasses that have tinkered with delusions of grandeur and stood by despair’s melancholic nosedives.
Now pals come in from nowhere, thrust the good, bad and ugly smileys of all hues on to the window of connectivity.
brb
Mind you smileys do not always smile. They can frown, wink and be mighty naughty to beat the swathes of porn on which the bedrock of this era of faceless friends and busy buddies is laid.
U der ?.
Know what, travelled back in time through social networking marvels to fetch the address books long lost in the debris of your formative fixations and adolescent longings – the primary school, the college mag, cafe…
Its safe now, punched it on to notepad and posted it online for all and sundry fellow travelers, who might have already embarked on such time consuming, but priceless journeys.
They needn’t wait much, for the behemoth born in a garage is equipped for Herculean tasks. Might not be spot on, but somewhere in the folders of destiny, the long-lost link is definitely stored. Rest assured.
No need to ask ASL pls, for age and sex are known and location is a backyard trivia on your network neighbourhood.
Catch ya soon.
 No body complains about a fast buck. But when the bears spook the markets truckloads of tears flood the markets and media.
This is akin to the theory of exclusion which Bal Thackeray propounds by demanding 50 percent accommodation for Marathi speaking population in residential apartments coming up in Mumbai.
Thackeray’s call is to builders working on new residential projects. So what makes the Sena leader talk such nonsense.
He could have been overwhelmed by the occasion – his birthday.
But that does not grant any right to any one to proclaim such ‘fatwas’. Now try telling us that Fatwas are for Muslims alone and that all Muslims are blah blah BLASTTTTTTT Sheep in the secular wolves’ clothing.
Now, a volte-face scenario. Thackeray reigns over Marathis and lords over Mumbai. His diktat is the law.
That is the constitution of the sovereign republic of Marathi manoosh, written, enacted and watched solely by the Thackeray clan and their cohorts.
So where would the builders find enough buyers. In a residential complex which has 400 flats, 50%, or 200 flats, should be allotted to Marathis.
Now, return to the age of reason. Almost 60 percent of Mumbai’s population is non-Maharashtrian, some estimates say.
And only less than half of that would be the percentage of Maharashtrians in the basket of immigrants flocking to the city in search of a better livelihood.
That is every day. That is despite the city’s sinking stature.
So if you think that leaves the builder lobby at odds with the presiding deity of amchi Mumbai, you are dead wrong.
These are political noises emanating ahead of a poll. Last time Sena lost seven-odd seats than it had the previous time it lost, albeit in the whole of Maharashtra.
But that is only one part of diatribe.The untold story here is that Maharashtrians still make a major chunk of voters. And many migrants to the megapolis do not havetheir names on the voters list.
It is not about illegal migrants of the Bangladeshi kind alone. But affluent people who have most of the papers and still do not bother to get into the voters’ list.
When that happens, the Bal Thackerays , Ranes and Deshmukhs, of this crumbling city would adorn history books.
Or may be even chucked out of them.
premub@gmail.com
No one is waiting, but this is to inform the stray visitor, the faceless blogger or the unknown netizen that this space is to witness some activity in the days to come. Welcome to those who have nothing worthwhile to do, no horizons to conquer, no goals to work for and no energy worth boasting.