اخبار 1

Many men of this blogger's vintage are seriously challenged when it comes to matters of fashion. This blogger is a card carrying member of the tribe who behaves like this when it comes to clothes  - A few shirts and a few trousers, all looking very similar, hang in the closet  - A shirt is plucked from the leftmost corner,  the trouser is picked from the rightmost corner and worn  - As they are laundered , they join the back of the queue in the hanging sequence; thereby ensuring an automatic first in first out principle !  - When a hole appears in any of the garments, it is thrown away  - When there comes a day when not enough shirts or trousers are hanging in the closet, a shopping expedition ensues and half a dozen items are bought and the cycle repeats all over again !! The last of the above happened recently to yours truly and off I trooped off to the mall to replenish supplies. By way of background, you must know that this is the way men's clothes are sold in India  - An a...

There are various ways to vent out road rage.  I am trying a novel experiment here to douse the fire that is consuming me. By attempting to write a law !! Read on and see if you agree. Office of the Frustrated Motorists of Bangalore Middle of Nagwara Junction Bangalore - 560045 25th April 2018 Do No 435/16/346A/FMB/2018-16 Dear Sirs The Motorists Community of Bangalore is considering an amendment to the Motor Vehicles Act to provide guidance for vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road. It is recognised that in Bangalore the number of vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road have exceeded the number of vehicles driving on the right side of the road. It is therefore in the public interest that clear rules are formulated in this regard. The draft rules titled "The Bangalore Motor Vehicles (Wrong Side ) Rules 2018 " are hereby being released for public comment & consultation. We are seeking your opinion on these draft rules so that they may be...

I received an email from a classmate of mine, who is now the CFO of a large Indian company. It was such a lovely story that I asked for his permission to publish it in my blog. It is contextually, very Indian and the specifics may be unfamiliar to an overseas reader, but the overall story can easily be appreciated. Here is the message from my classmate. (On the left is Mr Konnappa, the MLA who is the subject of this post) PART 1 The person with me is Konnappa, MLA (equivalent to a Congressman in a state in the US) from the north west part of Telangana adjoining Maharashtra.  I happened to meet him while pursuing some factory location. He was originally elected on a BSP ticket - only one of two MLAs of BSP (Mayawati). But then seeing his good work, the Chief Minister asked him not to waste his time, join the ruling party and continue his work. So they merged. His constituency is in the vicinity of Ramagondam, Sirpur, and Singareni coal mines. Recently the area has seen some factories s...

It's very simple really to most people and that's why its such a complex problem. The problem of executive pay (lets just take CEO pay as a proxy to make it easier to analyse). For the left, CEOs are greedy bastards who make too much money, when lower level staff in the company can barely make ends meet. Income equality is one the biggest issues facing society. Therefore the answer has to be to curb CEO pay.  Preferably by law. Where is the problem ? For the right, who is anybody to say what somebody else earns. It's a free market and CEOs perform one of the most difficult jobs of all. When a CEO can increase shareholder value by $10 bn, why should he not get $10 m. Where is the problem ? In the US, this issue has got into prominence because companies are now required to report how much their Chief Executives make in comparison to the median paid worker. This was opposed tooth and nail by industry, but now the law has come into effect. And the first reports are starting to ...

In democracies, the will of the people is supposed to be supreme. The forum for expression of the will of the people is the parliament. All laws and policies are enacted by the parliament and you need a majority of the elected representatives to pass any bill. Issues are debated and a majority vote determines the outcome. So goes the theory. Ha Ha . India's parliament has become a joke. It has descended into a complete farce, where regular business is impossible to conduct because every party disrupts roceedings by protesting and shouting. Witness the current session of the Lok Sabha. The TDP is protesting against non grant of special status for their state. The AIADMK is protesting against the non formation of the Cauvery Board. The Congress, Trinamool, et al are protesting against the PNB scam. The Shiv Sena , which is actually a part of the government is agitating for, of all things,  inclusion of Marathi as a "classical language" . Each one has disrupted the Lok Sabha...

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong should go on TV and broadcast to his countrymen that Singapore has "arrived". The mighty US is scared of little Singapore. Perhaps a national holiday in Singapore will be declared to mark the event ! I am referring to the US government blocking the bid by Broadcom for the takeover of Qualcomm, on the grounds of national security. Broadcom is a Singaporean company (never mind that Broadcom had offered to move its headquarters to San Jose if the deal went through). Qualcomm is an American company. So Singapore is a threat to the national security of the US. Great ! The US government is giving a specious argument to justify national security. According to the government, Broadcom would cut R&D spending after it took Qualcomm over.  This would affect the development of 5G technology. Instead Huawei would become the leader in 5G. Huawei is a Chinese company. Therefore the US would be dependent on China for its mobile networks. That is the threat ...

This blogger knows a thing or two about procuring visas , having had to endure this torture hundreds of times for nearly 30 years now. Indians, as is generally well known, are not welcome anywhere. The visa regimes of every country is designed to make it as difficult as possible for an Indian to visit. Note - the word is "visit" and not "stay". You sign all sorts of declarations and produce all sorts of proofs before you will even be considered for a visa. You have to produce a ton of documents (my favourite is the Australian visa for which I once had to produce 723 pages). You have to make all sorts of declarations (my favourite is a US declaration that says you have not kidnapped somebody below 18 years of age - there is no requirement to declare that you have not kidnapped somebody above 18 years of age). You solemnly swear to everything under the sun in the fine print.  My favourite is the UK requirement in the past (thankfully no longer there)  that if you are ...