Crazy and Fabulous Times

Marine Drive is my favorite place in Mumbai. And that's my favourite view above. It inspires me a little. The little blue dot is my Bank's logo shining on top of its building. :) I also went for a drive down the much talked about Worli Bandra Sea Link today. I was expecting a smooth drive at least at 11.30 at night but no, there was crazy traffic. Probably it would ease out once toll is charged. But today it left me unimpressed. Moreover it wont really solve Mumbai's problem until it completes the construction of all its lanes. Until then there will be temporory dividers and people taking U turns and halting traffic etc. Here's one picture that I took of the engineering feat sealink (dont know why I did that! May be beacuse the side bars didnt shine enough for a brand new bridge and I got a feeling that the Rs.1600 crs were not completely used for the poor bridge and lot of it went into people's pockets!)

Congress is just too good at this. Can't solve the solution of providing quality education to everyone? Because that requires allowing private investment in education; that requires more institutes; more courses; more teachers; more infrastructure. So what is the solution? Let's just scrap the damn exam! That ought to reduce the stress!! What his foolish supporters do not understand is that it's not the exam that's causing the stress. It's the lack of opportunities available after the exam that's causing it. Seats in good colleges are only sufficient for the students with 95%+. It's a do or die situation. Anything less than 95% and u can say good bye to your dream colleges which in most likelihood would be handful of colleges across the country. I am not really opposing the grading system. But I just think there are bigger issues at hand that need immediate attention rather than this populist measure.

When I started to blog sometime last year, those were good days. We were riding the boom. Infact, that's how I named this blog. I thought it were the crazily fabulous times. The IPL had started and it was like the epitome of the great Indian growth story for me. I wanted to capture this mood in my blog. Then the Lehmen fell. Like a pack of cards, all major financial institutions US followed its suit. In less a year, this crisis has grown in such large proportions that a capitalist US has started using words like nationalization . That's drastic. India also got the hit; first by rampant inflation, and now in the aftermath of US crisis and world at large, we are faced with a steady and steep fall in consumption and jobs. Growth estimates are getting revised downwards almost every month. Not only that, terrorism has taken a life of its own. Whole year had an average of one attack every year with a grand finale in Mumbai. Outside home, there's constant violence in the Middle ...

After Cricket fixing, Azharuddin is back in media ; now about to join the next best career for him – Politics. Our politicians truly don't know their audience. In a cricket crazy country like ours, I think everyone hates Azharuddin. Why would they vote for him? Or may be they know their audience a little too well. How foolish we-the-people are!

I am sure everyone now knows about the Pink Chaddi Campaign . I can't be more excited about this. There is no more fitting reply to Muthalik than a flood of Pink Chaddis from all over the country. I have joined their facebook group . Although I couldn't send them the chaddi on time, I plan to participate in the Pub Bharo action. I believe this is the first of its kind of protest taking place in our country where we are not defending any of our actions and openly saying that as "pub-going, loose and forward women" we don't want anyone preaching us what is right or wrong. The word "loose" may be a problem for some but I think the message that we are sending out is that we don't care what you think about us… but you have no business of telling us what we should and shouldn't do. It delights me to see so many men come forward and support this cause. I hope to see this campaign reach far and wide and leave a lasting impact on our culture and outlook t...

This is the height of WTFness! Some BJP leader is talking about why girls should not be going to pubs - "After drinking, boys lose their controls and can be doing anything to girls". When people commit crimes, generally law punishes the criminal. Here somehow the victim is supposed to be under house arrest after 7pm so that the criminals can't commit crimes against them. Raghu does bring this in later in the debate, but this is a point which can't be over emphasized!! For a second if we forget that it is a very accepted norm in our culture to protect girls by restricting them at homes, you would realize how ridiculous this is. How can this old dude make this statement so openly? Oh, guys are guys, they will drink and lose their "controls" and if girls start going to pubs our culture will be compromised. If the guys are losing their "controls" then they should be banned from going to pubs; they should be arrested. That is the role of the law makers...

Obama is THE President. Obama is THE Hope. Obama is GOD!!! I don't understand this over enthusiasm over Obama, especially in India. News channels covered the sworn-in ceremony live. People are crazily cheering for Obama. I have had people clapping for Obama in my living room, while asking, "So do they have a Prime Minister too?" in the same breath! It was beyond any absurdity…

Lawyers are defending the right to represent terror suspects. For Kasab. First things first; Kasab is not a "suspect". He was caught red handed, for God's sake! But then they say that everyone has a right to self defense. Agreed; like the lawyer puts it, we can't possibly conduct a national sms poll to decide the fate of Kasab. He has to be tried. But what amuses me is what Kasab's defense lawyer is going to defend him on? "your honor, yeh ek garib aadmi hai. LeT ke behkawe mein aake 60 logon ko mar diya. He is not guilty your honor!" or if I apply my movie law education – "your honor, isne apna dimaagi santulan kho diya tha. VT station par inhone jo kuch kiya wo sab apne hosho awaaz mein nahi kiya. Your honor, mein appeal karta hoon ki inhe asylum mein treatment diya jaye. Your honor, he is not guilty, he is bimar". I don't have legal education. But I doubt if there's anything that the defense lawyer can do. And if he can, I am kinda ...

This year there have been many bomb blasts across the country. So many that we had lost our sensitivity for these blasts. Even the media lost its interest. People just took blasts as something which is part of their lives. Terrorists were not getting enough footage. So they have reinvented themselves. After more than 21 hours of terror, I can say this is something we have never seen before. Media have set up their second homes in all critical locations. Mumbai, the city which can never be stopped has indeed stopped. I just hope it does not stop at the media circus and we, as a country, don't get used to this kind of terrorism too. I hope it's a wake up call for the authorities to realize the state of our security system. Because this brazen open attack by terrorists out in the open is an evidence of their confidence to breach our country's security in any way they want as opposed to placing bombs and remotely detonating them.

I have a meeting at Belapur today. As I climb down the bridge to Matunga Central station, busy listening to my ipod, I couldn't help but notice the stark difference between western stations and central ones. The crowd is different. The occupations are different. Even the digital displays are older and about to fall off the roof, which itself has not been repaired in last 50 years. All in all it was a different world just a bridge away from the western line station. Anyone who has visited Mumbai once will know that the city is divided into haves and haves not by west and east along this long coastal cosmopolitan city. While I'm waiting for my train,I read my newspaper which tells me about the elitist problems in the finances of the richest street in the world. I just look up to see if the train is arriving and right in front of me beyond the railing I see this woman taking bath. Out of the nala water (open waste/sewage line) which was flowing beside the railway track!!! I don...

These days, newspapers are all about the US financial markets. Housing bubble just doesn't seem to bust completely. Last one year was marked by events which experts would term as the ultimate bust of the bubble. But the bubble just doesn't stop busting. It wiped out the whole investment banking in US and converted them into traditional banking business models. I like to believe that they are following Indian footprints. As I walk towards my office gate, I realize that tremor of this earthquake have reached all the way to Indian banks too. There's a strike in my bank and all nationalized banks. Ha.. got you.. if you thought we have some sophisticated complicated convoluted complex problem related to financial quants!! No sir, we Indians have more humane problems. Like the union issues!! Really sad.

I always refer to the rural development programmes as corruption programmes. Now have a look at this . It's about implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Main observations by Transparency International are that 61% of rural population were selected beneficiaries, 23% got job cards, 11% got paid and only 5% could demand unemployment allowance. And 1 out of 10 households had to pay bribes to get jobs, which amounts to Rs.7.15 cr paid by 9.65 lac rural households. I really believe that there are no free lunches and if there are, there's got to be something fishy there. What is required here is roll out of much needed agricultural reforms and create opportunities for these rural households rather than creating opportunities for the bureaucrats and politicians.

Indian politics is giving serious competition to bollywood masala flicks these days. I would really want to see this allegation by BJP to be investigated to the bottom. I personally feel there is equal probability for it to be true or be a complete hoax. But either way, it is serious bollywood masala stuff. And our news channels make it all so entertaining. NDTV played "Singh is King" for Manmohan Singh when he won!! Talk about dramatic! I love India. This is one of the crazy (not so fabulous!) times I am going to remember. On a serious note, I would want to see the nuclear deal through now and a dramatic topple of government once the bribery charges are proven. Ok… the second part was just to make it more dramatic. I too am an Indian afterall!

…. to the achievements of the UPA government. Came across this wonderful post , to which I cannot agree more. It so happened that I wrote my first post on the eve of this year's budget and it so happened (again!) that I mentioned that we are back to the times of rural _______ programmes (fill it up with anything you want; they all mean the same – corruption!). And it so happened (and again!)that right the next day the baap of all rural programmes was announced. The farm loan waiver. The scheme is flawed on so many levels I can't even begin to spell out. It's not just corruption this time. They are ruining the credit discipline of the entire agricultural sector. They are punishing the good borrowers. And they are not even covering the farmers who need it the most! We all agree agriculture is the priority sector for economy and yet such irrational and ruinous policy that backfires from all directions?!? I can't fathom how an economist prime minister could make any econom...