اخبار 1

Kentucky Fried Chicken is owned, by a company with a distinctively “uncorporate” name – Yum! Brands, complete with the exclamation mark.   This blogger is a vegetarian and therefore has not really sampled its wares. But I am reliably told that its fried chicken, is fairly delicious.   But these days, alas, KFC is not sounding very yummy. The problem is in China. KFC is everywhere in China. I mean everywhere. Sometimes I wonder if the icon of Americanism in China is not McDonald’s or Coca Cola, but KFC. Every street corner seems to have one.   The Chinese were happily munching or chewing or licking, or whatever you do with fried chicken. All that changed in December of last year. CCTV, that great bastion of broadcasting   and China’s answer to Doordarshan,   aired a program that claimed that local suppliers to KFC had given its chicken excessive amounts of antibiotics.   CCTV is more renowned for informing the world that Xi Jinping had a good night’s sleep rather than do investigative...

Joseph Ratzinger has resigned. Joseph who ? you may ask. And what's in a resignation - after all somebody is resigning from something all the time.  Ah well; its not just anybody. It's Pope Benedict who resigned about a week ago. Popes rarely resign - its one of the few "jobs" for life. The last Pope to resign was Pope Gregory in 1415 to end the Western Schism - a complete mess when there were two competing claimants as Pope.   Pope Benedict stated that he was getting on in years (he is 85 after all) and that the leader of a billion catholics around the world needed "strength of body and mind".  While he cited the lack of strength of his body, I dare say his real reason was the strength of the mind.   It has been a period of great tumult for the Catholic Church. It was during his papacy that the child molestation scandals in Europe and America burst into the open. Leaked papers from the Pope's butler showed the Vatican in very poor light - messy politic...

I am in trouble because my KRA with CDSL consequent to having submitted some change of KYC, is apparently pending, which I have no recollection of. Therefore I am stuck with my DP who is quoting arcane SEBI rules to make my life miserable.   If you don't understand one word of all this, welcome to the club. I don't understand it either ! And I am supposed to know something of finance !!   This perfectly sums up the status of how consumer unfriendly the financial sector in India has become. Try doing anything - opening a bank account, or buying a mutual fund  or even changing your address. You will tear your hair in frustration. Such is the state of affairs.   This is all because Ramamritham and his political masters have , over the last five years, exclusively been framing rules for catching Kasab.  The starting assumption is that everybody is a Kasab unless they prove otherwise. Rules and procedures have become so complex that an honest simple  man has no chance of understandi...

There is something about the world of business that dehumanises relationships. The other is seen usually as a competitor to be trampled, or a boss to be hated, or a subordinate to be kicked or a peer to be beaten. We often gripe at everybody and anybody around the water cooler/coffee machine/whatever. Office parties are largely gossip sessions where everybody trashes everybody.   I met her not so very long ago. She is a confident, consummate professional, very competent in her job. She is poised, articulate, easy to work with and with a ready smile. So it was easy to picture the typical upwardly mobile, confident business executive and deal with her exactly in that manner.   Quite by accident, I came to know of the tragedies she had been, and is, going  through.  Tragedies you would not wish on your worst enemy. But you could never ever guess from any of the professional interactions. She is, as I said, poised, articulate, easy to work with. But now that I know, I can relate to the sma...