Hello Again
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about something. Most of my bandwidth allocated to ‘compulsive urge to share something’ was hogged by Facebook. However, from being a ‘nice tool to stay in touch with people I know’, Facebook is becoming “I really don’t care if your dog is sneezing” kind of updates or something equally bizarre. I am amazed how annoyed my ‘Friends’ would be to read about every bizarre thought that comes to my mind, when they care little about those. I am sure many of them do.
So finally I have decided to enter Facebook in the read only mode and eventually say ‘thank you very much’. I am not so much concerned about ‘privacy’ and what all ‘information’ facebook may know about me’, but more about how not to spend time ‘commenting on’, ‘liking’ and ‘sharing’ etc. if someone’s dog sneezed.
Hopefully, I’d have something meaningful to share in the coming days (over here) and yes I am containing my compulsive urge to share this post by _NOT_ trying to share on FB. If this gets ‘somehow shared’, trust me, I din’t intend to.
Big Brother is Watching You….. :-)
Big Brother is Watching you!!
Originally from Mayur.
—–
Hope Fooly….
Nandan M Nilekani is appointed as head of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI),Nandan Nilekani can do it…..Fully integrated ID card system
Operator : “Thank you for calling Pizza Hut . May I have your…”
Customer: “Heloo, can I order..”
Operator : “Can I have your multi purpose ID card number first, Sir?”
Customer: “It’s eh…,
hold……….on……889861356102049998-45-54610″Operator : “OK… you’re… Mr Singh and you’re calling from 17 Jal Vayu.
Your home number is 22678893, your office 25076666 and your mobile is
09869798888. Which number are you calling from now Sir?”Customer: “Home! How did you get all my phone numbers?
Operator : “We are connected to the system Sir”
Customer: “May I order your Seafood Pizza…”
Operator : “That’s not a good idea Sir”
Customer: “How come?”
Operator : “According to your medical records, you have high blood pressure
and even higher cholesterol level Sir”Customer: “What?… What do you recommend then?”
Operator : “Try our Low Fat Pizza. You’ll like it”
Customer: “How do you know for sure?”
Operator : “You borrowed a book entitled “Popular Dishes” from the
National Library last week Sir”Customer: “OK I give up… Give me three family size ones then, how much
will that cost?”Operator : “That should be enough for your family of 05, Sir. The total
is Rs 500.00″Customer: “Can I pay by! credit card?”
Operator : “I’m afraid you have to pay us cash, Sir. Your credit card is
over the limit and you owe your bank Rs 23,000.75 since October last year.
That’s not including the late payment charges on your housing loan, Sir.”Customer: “I guess I have to run to the neighbourhood ATM and withdraw
some cash before your guy arrives”Operator : “You can’t Sir. Based on the records, you’ve reached your daily
limit on machine withdrawal today”Customer: “Never mind just send the pizzas, I’ll have the cash ready. How
long is it gonna take anyway?”Operator : “About 45 minutes Sir, but if you can’t wait you can always come
and collect it on your Nano Car…”Customer: ” What!”
Operator : “According to the details in system ,you own a Nano
car,…registration number GZ-05-AB-1107..”Customer: ” ????”
Operator : “Is there anything else Sir?”
Customer: “Nothing… by the way… aren’t you giving me that 3 free
bottles of cola as advertised?”Operator : “We normally would Sir, but based on your records you’re also
diabetic……. “Customer: #$$^%&$@$%
Operator : “Better watch your language Sir. Remember on 15th July 2010
you were convicted of using abusive language on a policeman…?”Customer: [Faints]
Regards
MAYUR
Interesting Conversation Again –
is because gavasakar, tendulkar, bahulkar,.. confused that is because
sitting in southern part of India they would ask the other person “are
you from Maharashtra or from south India..?” and genuinely wonder why the other person takes some time to answer the question. They like the
principles of pheejix and their favourite character in the alphabet is Zay
(god knows where that came from). Although soft, peace loving people but they elect the shivsena n MNS to rule them.
jai hind
jai maharashtra
They are lucky enough to get Chai sutta at 2 am in the morning and a place to sit and enjoy that (without being Sons and/or Daughters of a cop!). Also, they’ve cleverly adopted a script that lets them write ‘ऑक्टोबर’ and ‘उर्ध्र्वमूलम् अधःशाखम्’ without resorting to perverted localizations. and they say ‘t’ for a ‘t’ and not th’ for they’ve separate letters!! And they enjoy a temperate weather and adequate water supply for most part of the years that lets them enjoy the world in a much more meaningful ways, which I am afraid a lot of ‘South Indians’ are not lucky enough! And yes they don’t have to take pride in ‘knowing English’ as there are many other things that they can be proud of!!
Interesting……
A forward from a friend, Harish
“The triumph of human kind is a very recent development. Ten thousand years ago we were just another animal trying to make a go of it on planet earth. Humans – and all their livestock – were barely 1% of the vertebrate biomass on the planet. Now, they are 98% of it.” Hmmm…1 to 98. What a spectacular success story. A 5,000% increase. Hey wait a minute…that’s a bubble! Yes, dear reader, humans are a sell. How is that
Manase Letter and Reply.
After recent ruccous in Maharashtra Vidhansabha, I wrote to MNS on their website. What I was pleasantly surprised was by the fact that they actually replied to the post (implying having read what I posted). I certainly appreciate this fact. Below is my letter and reply from MNS.
नमस्कार,अभिजीत
संकेतस्थळाला भेट दिल्याबद्दल आणि संपर्काबद्दल / प्रतिक्रियेबद्दल धन्यवाद.काही तांत्रीक अडचणीमूळे उत्तर देण्यास उशीर होत आहे.त्याबद्दल क्षमस्व.
आपल्यासारख्या पाठिंबा देणा-या व्यक्तींमुळेच पक्षाची व महाराष्ट्राची ताकद वाढली आहे.
विधानसभा निवडणुकीत तुमच्यासारख्या पाठीराख्यांच्या बळावरच पक्षाला एवढ्या मोठ्या प्रमाणावर मते मिळाली.
वेळो-वेळी सहकार्य करावे ही विनंती..!
मा.राज ठाकरे पत्रकार परिषदेत म्हणाले होते की,माझे आमदार विधानसभा डोक्यावर घेतील आणि रस्त्यावर मी आहेच या ‘मी’मध्ये तुम्ही आहात याची नोंद घ्यावी.आपल्याला रस्त्यावर (विधानभवनाबाहेर)खूप काम करून पक्षाचा व महाराष्ट्राचा विकास साधायचा आहे.
धन्यवाद.
संकेतस्थळावरील इतर विभागांतील मजकूरही अवश्य वाचा.
जय महाराष्ट्र !
मनसे संकेतस्थळ प्रतिसाद कक्ष.
Quoting gabhijit@gmail.com:
Subject:Query to party
Information:महाराष्ट्राच्या
विधीमंडळातील कामकाज
मराठीतून होणे आवश्यक आहे.
परंतु त्यातील शपथ घेणे हा
विशेष महत्वाचा भाग नाही
(कारण शपथ कोणत्या भाषेतून
घेतली ह्यामुळे एक नागरीक
म्हणून माझ्या आयुश्यात
फारसा फरक पडत नाही.)
महत्वाची गोष्ट ही आहे कि,
मनसेकडे सर्व तरुण पिढी एक
चांगला पर्याय म्हणून बघत
असताना, अश्याप्रकारची
वर्तणुक ही पक्षास
फायदेकारक तर नक्कीच नाही.
विशेष म्हणजे त्यानंतर
झालेले सार्वजनिक
मालमत्तेचे नुकसान हे केवळ
निंदनीय नव्हे तर
लांछनास्पद आहे.
त्यामुळे केवेळ फुटकळ
विषयांवर वादंग
माजविण्यपेक्शा, एक जागरुक
विरोधी पक्ष म्हणून मला
असणाऱ्या अपेक्षा धुळीत
मिळाल्या तर माझ्याशिवाय
किती इतरांचा भ्रमनिरास
आपण केलात हे मोजणे अवघड
होईल.
——————————
Some questions unanswered a year after
1. Why were the three police officers not coming from the same department travelling together in the same van?
2. Is it a coincidence that ‘kasab’ who was so well ‘shot’ by the camera was the only terrorist arrested alive?
3. If a single terrorist holds a place for 50 odd hours, our commando squad probably needs some introspection (or may be they were not allowed to finish it off quickly?)
4. Ironically, the guy who was home minister of the state then and sacked is now again home minister of the state. Is this a cruel joke on the people?
5. Why is Mumbai such a soft target of Terror attacks, Is it because some bollywood idiots will come to the TV and speak about the ‘Spirit of Mumbai’, thus making the whole event ‘glamorous’?
6. Why the ‘spirit of mumbai’ is so overrated? I mean the people who flock the places with candles and placards, don’t even bother to vote…
Imbalances and how they manifest….
Jim Rogers is the biggest Agro commodities bull you’d find on the earth, for his logic is very simple – “I don’t see any supply coming in any of these commodities and the demand is ever increasing’. For instance, if there’s an increasing demand in crude, there’s more plantation of Corn and that crowds out Cotton, so the best way to play crude is play cotton or wheat. Of course, he’s taking the examples of US crops predominently.
Let’s look at this from the Indian Perspective. While all of us know that the official government inflation figures are completely meaningless and we’d not discuss them, let’s try to identify the root cause of this runaway inflation in food items (100, 200% YOY is runaway inflation in my opinion).
The root cause of this runaway inflation is the artificially maintained dollar-rupee exchange rate. Now people will find it hard to believe that this could actually lead to inflation in food prices. Let me explain this in a bit.
Assume that there’s a vast piece of land lets call it Indiland. In the Indiland, you can exchange Goods and Services for exchange of Blue Papers, which all the Indilanders do. So if anyone has to do any business with Indilander (s)he has to get these blue papers. You are the only one who are responsible for providing this blue papers to outsiders in exchange of their papers. Let’s say someone comes with a Green Paper and you decide that, in exchange for the Green Paper I am going to offer you 40 Blue Papers. This you arrive at mutual agreement, based upon what you think Green Paper is worth (though it is notional, its still okay). This is how Indilanders start trading with the outside world, whenever they get Green Paper from outside, they give it to me, I give them Blue Paper. (Let’s come back to what I do with the Green Paper Later, thats far more interesting). Now when I fixed that 1:40 Ration for Green to Blue, I had assumed that every year I’d have to issue say 40000 Blue papers for 1000 Green Papers. Move forward 10 years and the dynamics are changed completely, possibly thanks to the change in demographics and other things, consequently the supply of Green Paper now is 10000 Green Papers every year and I have still maintained that 40 Blue Papers to 1 Green Paper ratio. Let us see the consequences of this. Indilanders are still producing same amount of wheat, vadapaavs and motors, slightly more thanks to the improved efficiency (over the period through gained knowhow) but whatever being produced is being chased now by 400000 Blue Papers instead of 40000 as before. Some of the Indilanders are smart they say – this is excellent, why should I sell to Indilanders, I might sell what I produce to someone outside and get 40 Blue Papers instead. which is like adding Fuel to the fire. In short we are coming to a point where, there’s just too much of Blue Paper that is chasing limited resources. As a consequence, this leads to what we call ‘inflation’ – The inflation always manifests in one of the the following ways – 1. Asset price inflation (the rise in ‘value’ of Real Estate/Stocks’) which we all feel great about for it gives a notion of being wealthy. 2. Commodities inflation – The raw materials that we use for producing, steel/motors/cement or even finished food products. What we are witnessing currently is the massive Commodities inflation. Now a natural question one would ask, is Government so stupid that it cannot understand this simple phenomenon. Stupid not in the least in-fact quite the opposite, the Government perfectly understands the system and yet runs it ‘cos it does it for the vested interest of the important lobbying groups.
Now, for the benefit of a million people, we are sacrificing the rest of the billion people.
The imbalances thus created if left unchecked do lead to consequences that cannot be foreseen, the consequences could be as dire as ‘civil war’.
Now let us come back to the ‘Green Papers’ that I stored with me – The common terminology for that is – “Forex Reserves”, we feel very proud for XXX Billion dollars of forex reserves. Actually there’s nothing to be proud about, you are hoarding something thats loosing value every day, so eventually all the ‘forex reserves’ will be as useless as Tendulkar’s 175. There’s another twist to this, the guy who gave me the Green Papers initially (for he was ‘investing in indiland’) comes back to me and asks me ‘Hey I need someone to lend me Green Papers, for I am running on deficit and the only way I can finance running my business is through borrow it from someone. Why don’t you lend me the Green Papers that you are keeping with you, I will also pay you interest (in Green Papers). Of course he’s not as nice to say in these precise words.. or else you’d not lend him.. If I don’t appreciate the fact that the guy with the ‘Green Paper’ will eventually be going to go bankrupt, I am just waiting for the trouble to happen if I lend him and yes it certainly will.
The only right way for this system to work is – let there be a place where periodically (the periodicity can be as low as mlilliseconds) it is decided what one would exchange for one Green Paper, and there’s a true ‘price discovery’ of the Green Paper and Blue Paper happens. In the common terminology it is called making your ‘currency free float’. A very common argument for that is – but that’d lead to drastic consequences if people suddenly start withdrawing Green Papers from you. Possibly yes, in the short term, but in a steady state, it will lead to true price discovery, which is decided by the productivity of your land, demand for your products and services and your demand for outsider’s product and services. Well, some would agree, thats like ‘ideal world’. Let me remind them, this ideal world worked for good 2000 years, except last few decades, when the Governments across the world are running this Grand Ponzy scheme.
Now lets assume for the arguments sake that there’s indeed such a system, and thanks to market forces taking over, the recent agreement is 20 Blue Papers for 1 Green Paper, what it leads to is something very interesting, if I observe that its indeed cheaper to obtain wheat from the Green Paper guy, I might prefer to do that, instead of just relying on what wheat is produced by the farmers in my land. This does not in anyway mean that the ‘wheat will be cheap, what is guaranteed is there’s a true price discovery, and consequently proper allocation of resources for production’
Of course, will this system not have victims – Certainly there’d be victims – the victims would be the people whose business model relied on that artificially maintained rate of 40 Blue Papers to 1 Green Paper. If they didn’t adopt to this changing dynamics, they certainly deserves to be extinct, but not someone who for no fault of his has to face the consequences (‘cos the guys who are supposed to be running the show are running it for someone else.)
Now just replace Green Paper with US dollars and Blue Paper with INR, the picture would be self evident. This is not ‘technically perfect’ but gives an idea of the imbalances that are prevalent in the current system.
Eventually, the forces of nature do ‘take over’.
Analyzing the election results..
Mr. Market always gets it right – as one of my friends Harish would say it. If you’ve to follow the election results, they are always priced in by the market. The ‘charts’ were clearly showing a very favourable market result, the question was how much.. (note: This is not with the benefit of hindsight)
I had offered to my friends even before a single vote was cast that it’d most likely be going to be congress, with even a better mandate than last time, ofcourse however I kept asking myself where the numbers would come from? The reason I was thinking along these lines was fairly straightforward for me – Though there was a considerable negativity about the present government then, there was not a factor that could sweep against it, and people were generally Okay with MM Singh . The arrogance of the third and fourth front was clearly a precursor to what lied ahead for them (perhaps they were not confident enough or over confident that’d work against them.) Though I still expected BJP to do substantially better than what it did in the recent elections.What came as a surprise was the result in Maharashtra – for I was inclined towards a favourable outcome for BJP-SS vs. INC-NCP. The MNS factor was much larger than I had thought that made the results look much different than what they were.
I even told my friends the biggest suprise will come from UP and it’d either go in favour of Congress or BJP and whoever wins there is likely to make it to the poll position.
There was an easy parallel to draw between this election and the 2004 US presidents election, where everything that could conceivably go wrong against Bush was wrong and yet he managed to get elected with a record-breaking victory. The situation looked vastly similar over here for the Congress (that was one of my main thesis for predicting an easier congress win.)
My friend Harish offered me that left would be decimated in this election and he said I’d be surprised if they cross 20 in this election. Frankly, I had no idea about the politics in Kerala or WB, but he was certainly right about it.
Now lets look at the results more closely and see what ‘themes emerge’. First and the most important thing is – The national elections in India are largely Federal. Every state votes for a very localized issue and a sum total of all that happens eventually results into a national mandate. So the numbers do lie to some extent. I am not sure whether such a federal nature of election is the right choice that the voters make or if it is so, does it not make sense to look more closely at our democratic system more closely and move towards a much more Federal structure?
For the congress – First heartiest congratulations for showing the best ever performance since 1991. And most of that Credit goes to Rahul Gandhi he’s that nice-likable-can-do-nothing-wrong type of a guy and has delivered for its party and lets give the credit where it is due.Mr. MM Singh deserves his fair share of the credit for being a soft-spoken guy and bringing a credible image for the people to vote for (I’d not go ahead and call him performing in any ways.)
Lessons for BJP from this election – There’s a long list but I’d briefly go over a few very obvious. The single problem with BJP this time was – it miscalculated the elections as national elections and tried to keep projecting ‘Majboot Neta – Nirnayak Sarkar’. With the benefit of hindsight, I’d say this was a wrong strategy. Had there been a little localized efforts the results would have been notch better (though I still doubt to create any meaningful dent to congress.)
Second and it is the most important lesson – they’ve to ask themselves where’s their next level of Growth coming from? It seems like they cannot go beyond their presence in the few states.
Third – it’s much easier for a voter to shift towards Congress than other way round, that has been amply demonstrated in several elections across several states (when there’s no choice, Congress becomes a default choice) so it is of fundamental importance to make sure not to loose whatever you get. (Rajasthan and Delhi a few years ago case in point..)
Fourth – Evaluate the allies – if they are not working get rid of the baggage (and build from the ground up again and not look for different allies.) ‘cos it seems the allies that work for you eventually want to get rid of you (BJD and JDU case in point..) so you may have to evaluate the long term benefits of going alone vis-a-vis short term losses (which are not going to be big anyways)
For the regional parties – Have they lost relevance? Quite the contrary, the way they could play it is – taking a senior role in the local politics but offering a senior role to one of the national parties in national politics is important and staying away from opportunism is extremely important. You have to make a choice to go with either of the parties (or none at all) and stick to that stand forever, people don’t like jockying on different horses. They wait and wait patiently before they say enough is enough. (Ram Vilas Paswan case in point.) and the presence of regional parties in the other state is of even greater importance where one of the two national parties is clearly ahead because they keep the necessary checks.
For the next general elections though the task will be cut out for Congress, remember replicating an extraordinary performance is lot harder than doing somewhat better than last time and yet do good enough (that should be the only silver lining for the BJP.)
The task cut out for the next government is substantial (and I am of the opinion Governments can’t and generally don’t do anything useful, but they can cause harm. With the present government the later seems an unlikely scenario in the short term atleast.) and hope they live upto it atleast 50bips to the par.
To the voters at large – I am completely at a loss to comprehend the complete apathy of the voter for the elections. Perhaps to a large extent many of them believe that whom they vote for doesn’t make a difference with the government in center. To an extent they may be right, but I’d urge everyone to vote in your local elections – the corporations and the vidhansabha because, their outcomes directly affect our day to day life (Pune Corporation and the Debris problem a case in point here.)
Finally, I’d like to conclude with an interesting thought that came to my mind and an analogy if I could call it to draw – Congress is like Microsoft – they are everywhere, anywhere you go you’ve to fight them. BJP is more like Yahoo, has got an act of screwing up when the least needed. The natural Question is – Who is Google? BSP ( I know some of my friends would laugh at it) or they are still two guys in a garage?
and the credit goes to….
An interesting thought – Let’s for the arguments sake assume that BJP wins and comes to power and is able to bring in black money from Swiss Bank Accounts. Thirty years from now Congress will take credit for this, Saying “Just ‘cos our leaders had black money in swiss bank accounts, you could build the roads, generate electricity and educate Children”… Just as they are taking credit for nationalizing banks!!
