اخبار 1

My good friend who goes by the moniker of Vaingluory, at least on my travel blog, messaged me drawing attention to this story .  The opinion piece from a headhunter is titled 'Expect 100,000 to 200,000 Jobs to be Lost Every Year For The Next Three Years' . There is a lot of hyperbole in this - I don't think India is going to lose jobs at that rate. Certainly not from the IT industry . But there is an undercurrent of truth , and there is a chill wind coming. In the last 10-15 years, India, especially in the IT and BPO sectors has seen a pace of job creation that has been unmatched in its history. The impact this has had on people's lives is very visible in India's cities. In any other country, these job numbers would have been a spectacular miracle that would have transformed the country. India has a huge population and hence this is only a small wave in the ocean. The young have come to believe that this scorching pace is the natural order of things and that anybod...

So says the Finance Minister of Nigeria. Beggars will have to pay taxes. Apparently some beggars are earning millions in Nigeria. Perhaps its fair enough that Mrs Adeosun , the Finance Minster said “proceeds from begging are taxable. You are supposed to pay taxes even if your means of income is begging”. Nigeria is a notoriously corrupt country and tax evasion is blatant and has been elevated to a fine art.  Hence the startling "fact" that beggars are earning millions. Nigeria should, by all rights, should be a very prosperous country. It has oil wealth and is a net oil exporter. It has a  young , bright and growing population.  It has a decent education system and some of the ablest people in the African continent. It is a large economy - second largest after South Africa.  And yet, it is a huge underperformer economically.  Periodically the Nigerian government tries to tackle corruption and the also shore up the country's finances. Bolstering tax revenue by cracking dow...

The extreme left , as this blogger is wont to repeat ad nauseam, is as bad as the extreme right. The champions of the hard left - Bernie Sanders in the US and  Jeremy Corbyn in the UK have one policy in common that is a good example of this. Free college for everybody.  They also have another thing in common which is often the case with the left's policies. Right problem. Wrong solution. First the right problem. Its a complete disgrace that in a developed country, a young person starts working life under a mountain of debt.  Outstanding student debt is now £100bn  in the UK,  and a ridiculous $1.3 trillion in the US. And just to give you a perspective on the latter statistic, its $ 600 m higher than the total credit card debt in the US. You start life with a mountain of debt, and not a ready prospect of a good job. Great. If I was to be born again and had a choice of where to be born, I wouldn't choose either the US or the UK on that statistic alone. The left deserves great cre...

Regular readers of this blog know that this blogger rather likes railing against Ramamritham. Ever so often, there has to be a post yelling at this cursed individual. This time it is on the Department of telecom (DoT) which is a pesky nuisance that purports to regulate every aspect of  our phones and how we talk to others. Along with the child it spawned TRAI - The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, they have been busy over the last decade framing rules and procedures for everything on earth. Did you know that every phone company has to publish its prices and tariffs in a prescribed format  ? If you have seen that format, you'll know that you need a PhD in mathematics to understand it. One result is that you have to go armed with lots of paper and proof for something as simple as getting a SIM Card. In control obsessed China, I just went to a corner shop and bought a SIM. It took me 2 minutes to do so. In India, you submit an ID proof and an address proof (of course Raramritham...

Humans love eating meat. Vegetarians and vegans (this blogger is a vegetarian) don't stand a chance. In quite a few countries in the world, you simply have to starve if you are a vegetarian.  In many others, your only ordering choice in a restaurant is likely to be an apology of a salad, that could more appropriately be fed to a cow ! Any chance that you can turn the human race into vegetarians ? Well, at least one company thinks so. The aptly named Impossible Foods based in California (where else)  would like to try. An interesting Q&A with the founder that I read in the Guardian, prompted this post. The logic for turning the human race vegan is impeccable. The largest environmental impact that humans have created is from rearing animals for food - cows being the primary culprit. The resources utilised - water, land, etc - per pound of meat is also the largest. The absolutely atrocious conditions in which we rear and kill farm animals has to be a permanent blot on the human ...