The Indian Cricket Team Composition Indicator
Today, I am going to look at some kind of strange coincidence if one may call it thus. The idea striked me a few times, but more prominently when I was discussing something about recent election results in Delhi with a friend of mine.
As it turns out, if one watches the composition of Indian Cricket Team, one can deduce certain facts about attractive investment destinations or ‘happening places’ so to speak.
The Indian Cricket Team for the greater part of the history of the cricket in India was dominated by players in Mumbai, infact at one point of time there were as many as six or seven people from Mumbai representing India. This was the period when Mumbai achieved its status as financial capital of India and Mumbai and Maharashtra achieved the most developed state status.
Things started changing a bit by the turn of the century – Circa 2000. Indian Cricket team was dominated by players from Bangalore, almost 5-6 players in the team were from Bangalore alone. This dominance got faded away just as quickly as it was achieved. In the following five to six years, Bangalore ended up attracting the highest investment and became a ‘happening place’ just like Mumbai.
So where would you put your money if you look at the Cricket team composition of Today? Some themes emerge -
Delhi and Gujarat – There are about 4-5 players from Delhi and 3-4 players from Baroda (which is a place in Gujarat)
Chattisgarh – Our captain is from a little know place called Ranchi in Chattisgadh, Zharkhand. Though Ranchi per say may not be “the place” to invest, it certainly indicates most happening places in India or where the maximum investment is likely to happen are the so called ’second rung’ cities in India.
Anybody?
Ghajini Rewritten – An Open Letter to Aamir Khan
Dear Mr. Aamir Khan,
I am an admirer of your works and must admit was beyond impressed by Taare Zameen Par. However, your recent flick ‘Ghajini’ has left me completely disappointed. In what follows – I have attempted to rewrite the story so as to make it slightly better than a South Indian Masala movie – which unfortunately what Ghajini is. In the current form, it might still appeal to a large audience, but the movie is in my opinion truly truly below par. I agreree that – It is easier to critisize a work under the disguise of ‘review’, but not just as easy to actually come up with a suggestion as to how to go about doing it right. In what ensues – I have attempted to the best of my limited abilities the same about Ghajini using the same storyline but presenting it a bit differently, so as to make it somewhat better in my humble and honest opinion.
This is a first cut draft copy of “How I would go about writing Ghajini”. Having seen memento, it is but obvious that few ideas are based on that, some are blatantly stolen.
Basic theme around which I have written this is – I wanted to get rid of the extra non-sense that I have described here and make a movie around rougly the same plot. Some of the details of the plots are not covered here, especially the first part (Romance between Sanjay and Kalpana), which I believe does not need a lot of rework except deleting a few songs. The other main story is re-written. This is a draft version and there might be a few loose ends (just written in a couple of hours) – I’d try to address those subsequently.
Thanks.
Sincerely
-abhijit
Scene 1
Sanjay is sitting on a bed in hospital – With a polaroid photo of a man and a caption ‘I have killed him’ – perplexed,
doesn’t have a clue – what it is about (on the back of the photo, it is written, Ghajini is dead – Don’t show this to
anybody’. Unaware, Sanjay is staring at nowhere through the window of the hospital. A nurse enters the room ‘Good Morning Sir’ – He promptly hides the photo – She gives him medicine and goes away.
Scene 2
Sanjay is taken to the hospital – But not in the same condition as he’s found in the hospital in the previous scene. He’s treated in the hospital and returns home, to find out, he finds something odd with him.
Scene 3
He soon realizes that he suffers from a certain kind of disorder – Cannot exactly figure out what it is – His attendand nurse tells the doctor odd things she finds about him, a doctor realizes he’s suffering from Blah Blah amnesia. He’s effectively turned into a vegetable, doesn’t have a clue about what is happening, what is he about, he’s spending his days watching TV aimlesslely, changing channels. He doesn’t even have a clue what he’s watching on TV? As it happens one day the wall clock in his room runs out of battery, he’s been given a prescription to take medicines regularly he soon finds out that he’s not been given the medicine, calls for the nurse who’s off the duty asks someone to give him medicine. He’s infact taking it second time. Another 15-20 mins go away, again looks at the wall clock, finds out its morning gets angry, asks the same maid to give the medicine, she tells him ’she’s given him the medicine he shouts at her asks her to give the medicine.. He takes the medicine and subsequently realizes that its already 10am in the morning when his personal assistant calls on him as is the usual practise at 10am. The personal assistant finds him vomiting and Sanjay starts developing odd symptoms and soon falls unconcious. A doctor is called upon, he’s saved eventually. But he develops a fear that people around want to hurt him. He receives a phone call – “A man llegedly calling himself Cop is telling him, he wants to talk somethinb about the night of 10th july”. The assistant promptly takes the phonecall tells the guy, he cannot take the phone call now and cuts the phone. Sanjay is taken aback by this incidence and starts disbelieiving people around him. He thinks that – They want to kill him. He decides to run away – Open’s a Drawer, finds a note – Visit Mom’s house and there’s an address on that. Gathers his stuff and runs away to go to that address. Enters there to find out he’s no clue why he’s there? Starts taking things out of his bag one by one to find out he’s got a bundle wrapped up. Opens it to find that there’s a lot of cash in it. Eventually figures out that he’s got this problem of short term memory loss. (Remember he’s out of town to Nalasopara)
Scene 4
Suneeta – a final year medicinal student is studying the topic of – ‘Anterograde amnesia’ and finds out there indeed exists one patient in Mumbai who’s suffering from this disease and wants to figure out where he’s? Visits Sanjay’s house only to find out that she cannot meet him.
Scene 5
Sanjay develops a ’system’ to overcome his problem. First he starts with writing chits that help in do things. Second he takes to exercise very seriously for he believes somebody wants to hurt him may be even kill him and he’s got nobody to trust and gotta protect himself. He realizes, his system is ineffective still and needs to figure out a way to remember people and places. Finds out a tourist using a polaroid camera and decides to buy one and goes to a mall to buy a polaroid camera and starts with noting down places and people. Receives another phone call from a cop – Asking him about the details of the night. He feels the same man wants to find him and kill him. Destroys his phone and decides to end this all by killing the man who’s calling him. He only remembers Kalpana calling Ghajini and the guy saying about a night when Kalpana was killed. He writes down – Ghajini killed Kalpana. He wants to kill me. Find him Kill him. This basically transforms the man who’s fear ridden into someone with a Revenge on his mind and wants to find Ghajini who killed his Girl friend. This finally gives him a purpose to live for “Find Ghajini and Kill Him” (Whether this is a fabrication of his mind or actually the fact he doesn’t know nor does he care)
Scene 6
During his research to find ghajini, he makes one such visit to a city and its during this visit that Dr. Suneeta finds Sanjay walking by. She decides to follow him and follows him to Nalasopara and finds out where he’s living. She’s about to inform cops about his whereabouts but decides against it for she believes if Cops find him out he’d be taken away and she may not be able to find more about this guy. Sanjay actually realizes that he is being followed and manages to take a photograph of this girl and writes down – “Dangerous” on the photograph.
Scene 7
Hotel Scene where he finds out who Ghajini is and kills his assistant instead. Thats when Ghajini comes to know somebody is after him to kill him.
Scene 8
Decides to break into his house only to find out that the door is not locked at all, she searches around and finds all kind of weird stuff, photographs, his bag and diaries and the fact that he wants to kill Ghajini. Scared, she finds another book which she’s about to open when she listens to the door opening, tries to hide and run away. Manages to run away with two of his old diaries and a few photographs with him.
Scene 9
Sanjay decides not to stay at his place because its too dangerous he thinks, instead starts staying at a hotel closeby. Meanwhile Suneeta tells Ghajini, who is after his life with the photograph and a brief story about him. Ghajini thanks her and decides to outsmart Sanjay.
Scene 10
She returns home and starts reading about Sanjay. This is where the first half of the story begins. She figures out
about his life before this accident and searches more on the case of Murder of Kalpana, where she’s told that She was
killed by a thief who tried to rob her house and when she tried to stop him, she was killed. This is when Sanjay enters her house or hostel or whatever it is to kill her. With the photograph – “dangerous”. How he finds out her address? (she drops her wallet in his house when she had broken into, and in that address, there’s her ID card on which her Address is written) He’s eventually caught by police and kept by Cops for a span of few days.
Scene 11
Suneeta, in the meanwhile continues her search for the loose ends of the story and establishes that Sanjay was injured during the same robbery, though there is no evidence of his presence when Kalpana was killed (his company has managed to keep him out of this whole issue to save the company from any reasonable trouble). And finally finds out why Kalpana was actually killed and thats when she learns about Ghajini. But its already too late. When she visits his place at Nalasopara, she finds it completely destroyed into shambles and tatoos on his body wiped out. She’s devastated – Meanwhile she finds out his bag is intact and finds a gun in the bag. Written over it for your protection
- Use Sensibly. She calls the cops and informs one Mr. Sanjay is injured and destroys her phone.
Scene 12
Connects to Screen 1. When Suneeta Enters the room where Sanjay is – (Remember by now it is wiped out of his memory that she’s dangerous) She gives him his old diaries where after the last page, it is written. Ghajini is dead – I found him and killed him. He takes out the photograph and matches the handwriting. But doesn’t know who is Ghajini and why he’s killed.
Finally there is this slate on his wall with his and Kalpana’s footsteps. He looks at it and says to himself – Life is like this slate on the wall where my footsteps and those of my fellow travellers in this journey are engraved in our memory just like this slate. My slate gets cleaned every fifteen minutes, in half an hour from now I won’t even know why that slate is there, what I thought just now and I won’t even know why I exists, what is the purpose of my life. Is it just me or Everyone else too?
Remembering Memento – 9 reasons why Ghajini is Zilch.
A while back, while Ghajini was still ‘in the making’, I happened to come to know that Ghajini was inspired from Memento, a Chris Nolan film in 2000. Just curious about what it is like – I bit torrented that film and watched it. It was a class movie. It took me a while to watch that movie several times backwards and forwards to end up eventually not understanding it. This film lead me to become a Chris Nolan fan and subsequently I watched most of his movies – “The following”, “Insomnia” and “The Prestige”. Till date “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” remains to be seen. What I am going to write about is not about Chris Nolan and his movies but about the movie I recently saw – “Ghajini”.
Usually if there’s enough hype created about a movie, it ends out becoming a rather mediocre. Somehow I expected Ghajini to break this Jinx, afterall, it was beyond me – how a movie inspired by Memento and which Amir Khan was taking so seriously be thus? Ultimately, the jinx won. Ghajini came out just as expected – Pathetic, Medicore.
Now people will accuse me of comparing it with Memento – I am not doing it at all. I don’t expect this movie and for that matter any movie to come anywhere close to Memento. It is a leage of its own. But I had a notch too many expectations from Aamir Khan, probably after his previous masterpiece ‘ Taare Zameen Par’.
I would not get into details about the story and the plot , but here are the few points where I think Ghajini fails miserably -
1. First there are too many loose ends in a plot. A cop supposedly finding out a killer using a bus ticket fallen somewhere beneath a table is lame at best.
2. A movie of this kind does not need to have so many useless songs.
3. Background score of A R Rehman is below par
4. First time I have seen Aamir Khan not performing half as well as his calibre. Someone suffering from Anterograde Amnesia doesn’t have to scream, behave as if he’s some kind of a caged animal (This is one place, I cannot not compare Aamir with Guy pearce in “Memento”.)
5. There’s virtually no suspense in the movie – The viewer knows within 5 minutes from the beginning of movie who Ghajini is and he’s established well in advance as a Vile character. (As I will depict subsequently, the whole movie can be made without actually showing who Ghajini is?)
6. Ghajini fails to depict the utter helplessness of the lead character Sanjay who suffers from this disease. There are just passing references. ‘TZP’ did an excellent job of catching the psyche of ‘Ishan’ and his teacher. Ghajini scores zilch over here.
7. Finally there’s enough paraphernelia about photographs, maps, enough “Find Him / Kill Him” messages on the mirror and more than necessary “tatoos” on the body of Sanjay, almost to the extent of being obnoxious (and there’s a mysterious ‘Black Cat’ in the house, for a while, I was wondering whether it is an RGV film?), but not a single mention of how he got there? Or how he started in the first place about getting there.
8. Well a house in which someone was murdered, our hero is staying there again – A bit odd IMO. Police didn’t seal it?
9. The fight sequences are absolutely unnecessary.
As a followup to this post, I have written how a movie with roughly the same plot can be made much more effective and palpable. In short I’d soon post a – Rewritten Script of Ghajini.
Why don’t we outsource our security to United States?
Just a quick thought that came to my mind. Anyways, they are eager about policing the world, so why not happily oblige them. Of course, some patriot types will be aghast at the thought of US army stationed here. But, there’s a positive side to it. Japs did it , koreans did it and look where they are today.. Should be an option worth considering?
Some Questions about Mumbai Terror Attack
Random questions not necessarily in any order -
Why was there not a single eminent person present in Taj on Wednesday? No bollywood actor/ no politician?
Why does ATS chief has to encounter with terrorists himself?
Bravery apart, what is the credibility of ATS, after their persistant failures?
What lessons did Taj and Oberoy management learn after Islamabad attacks?
Is it really possible for ONE terrorist or whoever to actually hold a position for 60 hours?
What was Ramgopal Verma doing with Vilasrao Deshmukh?
Was there a screen test for DDLJ2 (बडें बडें देशों में छोटी छोटी बाते होती रहती हैं “bade bade deshon mein chhotee chhotee baate hotee rahatee hain), when our Home minister spoke those words?
Don’t people deserve the Government they get?
Why we deserve it?
Let me start with three seemingly uncorrelated facts and establish what I have to say
Recently, someone I know was issued a new cell phone connection on an address proof that does not establish the fact that he’s resident of that address. Remember this was done by an eminent world renouned telecom company. If a world renouned telecom company is so pathetic about establishing the fact that a person stays at a particular address, do you expect an ordinary man to make sure the house he’s renting out to someone, that he’d be able to do a thorough background check of the person? Sadly enough, NO!
Another incident – There have been atleast 5-6 occassions, where I have offered to show photo-identity to shop owners, whenever I used my Credit Card and asked them that you should “insist” on photo identity. To which I got a response “saab log chillate hain (people get angry if we ask this)”. Another fact.
Third, a leading actor in bollywood, who has been proven guilty for carrying an automatic rifle, runs free, shooting movies and reality television show and entire professional brethren joins hands to establish that “he is innocent”.
What do these facts say about us as a society? We deserve what we got in last four days? If we are so pathetic about our own security, if we are so eager to offer Telephone connections to anyone and everyone who asks for it. If we are desperate to give credit cards “without any documents” and if we spend our hard earned money on watching movies in which a “criminal” performs. We deserve to be attacked by the terrorists every now and then. We deserve it!!!
As a society we are not upto the level of evolution that can be expected . Come on are we not largely pathetic about hundreds of farmers who commit suicide? How many people remember the recent bomb blasts that killed 80 people in Assam? I know when something happens in Mumbai, its a big fuss ‘cos some bollywood biggie will come and perform in front of a television camera lamenting how sad this whole issue has been blah blah blah. It’s just true that, here we have an abundant supply of human lives and we can afford to loose a few. It has just become our mentality. So why we crib ? We deserve it!!!!
Now, I see around everyone blaming politicians and Government. Will people please tell me where did the politicians come from? Did they come from some foreign land? stomped into our parliament and Mantralay and started ruling us? These are the people amongst us whom we have “elected” as our leaders. So if we are so pathetic about choosing our leaders, why crib when they don’t act? We deserve it!!!
There are lessons for each one of us here to learn and improve -
1. Don’t feel embarrassed if someone asks to check u r baggage or check your ID card if you use a credit card.
2. Know your neighbours – Ask the society or apartment complex to establish stringent rules and background check before any flat is rented.
3. If you do vote, be judicious to select whom you are electing, because you are jeopardising yourself if you elect wrong people.
4. It’s easier to shout slogans we are proud of you brave soldiers, but it takes a little bit of effort, to live as a prudent citizen careful about his/her own security and its not so “cool”.
5. Do not spend your money in watching movies in which “criminals” star!!
6. Stay away from TV channels “who sell dispair”.
I hope “WE Deserve something Better!” in future.
PS: I am thoroughly disgusted by the manner in which the TV channels are showing the recent conditions of Taj and Oberoy. (However symbolic it may appear) I am sure through these ashes the phoenix will emerge!!!
PPS: Subsequently I am going to deal with – why “islamic fundamentalism” is not a real cause of terrorism. Infact, its not even a cause of terrorism.
Economics of Smoking
I have this rather odd habit of calculating costs of everything and some of such things that I have indulged in, include – cost per kilometer of running for my Nike shoe or cost per skip of the skipping rope that I bought for 140bucks and so on. This time around I am looking at one more such thing – The Cigaretter.
Government of India, recently imposed a ban on smoking in public places and it seems that their initial enthusiasm is commendable. Somehow, I guess I was early on this as well and I have stopped smoking (please note: I didnt use the word “quit” smoking) a week or so before that, thanks primarily due to a sore throat and continued this to get my health back on track.
However, I started thinking about another aspect of smoking that I have never read in popular literature. I have seen enough being written about smoking and its effects on health, it being a cause of cancer and heart diseases etc., while I do not have any particular agreement on this, I don’t have an agreement against it as well. But I’d keep this side aside for the time being. I am looking at the economic rather monitory aspects of it -
1. I have been smoking for almsot 10 years now, give and take a year. When I back calculated this, it means I have smoked close to 12000 cigarettes (assuming 300 smoking days in a year and an average of 5 cigarettes in a day and applying the final 20% hair cut to it.) So assuming there are a million smokers like me ( a very small number indeed), it means over this period all of us together have contributed to the topline of ITC by roughly 2500 Crs. (considering 2Rs is what ITC gets per cig. over these years). I think this alone is a startling number.. 2500Crs. (to give a perspective, Tata Nano investment in Singur was less than this number). 2500 Crs can create a 1000 MW power plant? In short, if one is considering to start smoking, first he/she should buy the shares of the company whose brands he/she intends to smoke, I guess the dividends earned will atleast partially cover the cost and in all fairness he/she deserves it.
2. Now let me come to personal side - Assuming the average cost of a cigarette over this period was 3Rs (for me) and usually each cigarette is associated with a chai (almost always) costing average of 2 Rs, the total cost per cigarette is 5Rs. which leads to an expense of 625 Rs. pm. (5Rs * 5 per day * 25 days) calculating the Time Value of Money for this annuity with an interest rate of 7% pa(roughly the average rate of inflation over these years), compounded monthly, the sum comes to 108178 Rs. In short this is a single largest expense I have incurred in my life. To give another perspective, I have a personal collection of about 100-200 books. The total cost of these books including the TVM is less than a third of this cost.
Please note that – I am not making a point that smoking is bad or something, (if great people like Mark Twain and Einstein used to smoke, it can’t be an incredibly dumb thing to smoke). So health aspects apart – one should consider this monetory side of smoking. This does not mean – I’d quit smoking or anything but this will play heavily on my mind if and when I light the next butt.
While, I have used this argument on smoking this argument applies to everything that does not provide a great health benefit or a lasting effect, but which we keep doing over and over again without thinking about the costs (eg. SMS spamming is one such thing).
Reliance MF: No redemptions
Three years back, I have invested some money in Reliance MF Tax saving scheme. To be precie on 17th August 2005. I might have been naive or plain stupid to trust my money with company run by Anil Ambani. However, having realized this mistake, I tried to rectify this mistake as early as possible.
Here are order details
I placed an order thrice to redempt my money from Reliance Tax Savings Scheme. All the three times, my Order was Rejected Saying that it is in lockin period. Following are the dates and ORder Details (slightly edited to avoid details)
| 22-09-2008 13:28:15 | 8016675 | R | RELIANCE MUTUAL FUND | RELIANCE TAX SAVER FUND – GROWTH PLAN$$ | NA | NA | N | Rejected | WEB | ||
| 22-09-2008 13:24:10 | 8016654 | R | RELIANCE MUTUAL FUND | RELIANCE TAX SAVER FUND – GROWTH PLAN$$ | NA | NA | N | Rejected | WEB | ||
| 02-09-2008 13:23:44 | 7852813 | R | RELIANCE MUTUAL FUND | RELIANCE TAX SAVER FUND – GROWTH PLAN$$ | NA | NA | N | Rejected | WEB |
Every time, my order was rejected, siting the reason as The fund is in lockin period.
REJECTION REASONS
Date Rejection reason
04/09/2008 Lock in period
REJECTION REASONS
Date Rejection reason
23/09/2008 Lock in period
I fail to understand how 4th September and 23rd September are respectively not more than three years after 17th August 2005.
I think one has to pay his price by trusting his money with Reliance.
I will never ever again put a single rupee with “R-World”, there are better ways of writing off your money.
I am sure there may be many others who’ve faced this issue.
An open (and somewhat humble) letter to Jihadis
Dear Jihadis (as you claim yourself to be),
I have been refraining myself from writing for quite a while about your misdemeanours. However, I think, the time has certainly come to write to you about what I generally think about your Jihad. Before I move any further let me accept, as far as purely religious thoughts go, I have one of the highest regards for the religion of Islam, so don’t be confused about that. Now let’s come to some questions I have about your Jihad and possible suggestions of how you should go about achieving (that may sound somewhat preposterous, still..)
First, let us all know what your agenda is – that is if you have any agenda. Lets for the arguments’ sake we assume that your agenda is to make the entire world follow the path to the Kingdom of Allah. Personally, I won’t have objections about this agenda and I don’t have. But I do have serious reservations about your way of trying to achieve it through the use “terror” as we’d shortly see, what you “consider” as terror is not beyond a noise. So having accepted this agenda, you should set your path to achieve that goal and allow yourselves some time to achieve it, it won’t happen overnight, which some of you might be tempted to believe. The times are not same as the times of prophet so assuming what worked in the times of prophet to work now is naive at best.
First about your purported acts of “terror”. Let’s look at recent bombings in Bangalore/Ahmedabad and Delhi. How many people were killed in to-to due to your acts of terror? say about 200. In these three cities the number of people killed in road accidents will not be substantially smaller than this or the number of “innocent” people killed because a rich druken brat runs over poor people sleeping on footpath (for lack of any reasonable house) will be somewhat same (in short your risk-reward is not favourable). He is set free, runs “television reality shows” and you poor people have to hide from the government, face the wrath of general public. I think at best you are doing injustice to yourself and your cause. This is further aggrevated by the fact that it doesn’t even create terror. People continue to do their jobs, life returns to normal in the “spirit of the city” and there is a general public apathy. Worse, still you and your keen become vulnerable to arrests and government attrocities. Is it helping at all? A substantial act of terror would be one where the number of deaths caused by acts of terror are higher than that of a serious natural calamity. You are simply no where near to that. Friends, you gotta think over it. What you did (assuming you really did it) on 9/11 was a reasonable act of terror. Even then what did it achieve anything? Nothing… Before, I go further, I might want to add something that I just recalled, the number of people killed due to your acts of terror, is not even a fifth of the number of suicides some farmers committed due largely to the apathy of the Government and the same Government is chasing you (or will atleast show it will chase you!)
Does this mean it is the end of the world for your cause? No, provided you are willing to consider some humble suggestions that I’d shortly offer
I agree that America is your #1 enemy (or atleast there is a popular belief about it being so.) However someone being a #1 enemy should not be disregarded for his qualities. Have you seen how americanized most of the world is – How did it achieve that through acts of terror? Well yes, but as a terror disguised behind a beautiful name of “democracy/freedom etcetra.” So there’s something you can learn from Uncle Sam, which I am afriad you are failing to learn time and again. No I am not saying open your version of McDonalds or Coke on every nook and corner of the world, there’s a substantial entry barrier for this, but there are other things that should be tried -
First you should have a marketing department akin to Hollywood, that’d showcase to the world how great your agenda is, How some american (or an infidel) can become a popular hero in your version of Hollywood and later goes on to become head of the State (I agree this might be against your conventional wisdom, but friends these are not the times to trust the conventional wisdom). You’ve to show the path to Kingdom of Allah is a dream path and generally create all the paraphernelia that should be associated with such marketing departmet like Gossip magzines etcetra. Remember for something to stick, it should be bombarded again and again in a manner people like it.
Second, embrace technology – Look at the Koreans – they are virtually sweeping the world with their cell phones (I bet some of the cell-phones that you might be using to “plan” your acts of “terror” will be Korean.) So while Samsung and LG continue to be desirable Brands, you continue to be social outcastes, hiding in caves in God forsaken (albeit beautiful) places. or even go east further, look at the Japs and how they took revenge for the Atom Bombs (but be careful don’t end up being Japs).
Third , identify your strengths and play to your strenghts – One observation that I have might help. Some of your people are gifted with art. Why’d you not consider playing this to your strength. Create your version of a Rock Culture (it does not have to emulate the present one or doesn’t even have to have a Woodstock festival) but it should have drug abuse (which might be against Islam, so we can spare that) and promiscuous sex (this is important!!!!). That’d get far many converts to your thinking and you can certainly leverage the following then.
Finally, I might offer, learn to be patient to achieve what you’ve to achieve, it takes time. I am re-iterating it becuase some early success might distort your vision and you’d end up being the victims of your own success (remember Japs?)
This is all I have to offer.
Is load shedding real?
While I type this post, my laptop and Internet connection are powered by an Inverter (which happens quite regularly, thanks to MSEB). I was wondering about possible real reasons of the load shedding (Well the well-known reason is Shortage of Power). Lets see
Some answers I am trying to figure out
1. What is the actual shortage of electricity in Maharashtra and what is the trend in last five years for Electricity Demand and that of Production? The reason I want to get into this is – I doubt whether we have a substantial increase in net demand that justifies almost a 6-7 times increase in load shedding (possibly more).
Looking at some information from MSEDCL website - Which conveniently speaks about Peak Demand
The Peak Demand in Maharashtra is about 13500 MW (This is a positive adjustment of 500 MWs to the highest reported demand.) where as the peak generation capacity is 9300MW which results in almost a 30% shortage of net power in Maharashtra. Without questioning the authenticity of these figures we’ve a roughly 4000MW of power shortage (at peak demand) no where steady state demand is mentioned. For the argument sake lets assume it is at about 80% of peak demand that is roughly 10800 MW.
Of course we might ask was the Government sleeping while the demand increased in last 4 years and doing nothing about additional power generation. But there are a considerably large number of problems with the Government so we’d spare them on this one for now!!
1. What is the percentage of loss of power that happens as a consequence of transmission and distribution losses? Where do we stand vis-a-vis rest of the world?
As per another statistics from the website of the company zone wise Distribution Loss is alarming the highest being as close to 47% and smallest being 12%. Incidently highest distribution loss comes from the zone which elects our Honourable Chief Minister (People deserve the Government they get) As per the website lets stick to average load shedding of 30%.
From another wikipedia article the TnD losses in US and UK were roughly 7.2% to 7.8% reported in 1995. (I must admit I didn’t dig deep enough to figure out latest figure, but lets assume they stand where they are.) Lets allow ourselves a “developing country premium” of twice those losses and say we can tolerate TnD losses upto 15%. Which means we are having a 15% little too much power wasted in TnD losses.
A quick summery we will be able to save almost 2000MW of peak load and 1500 MW of average load (ball park caluclations), if we bring down the losses to “reasonable levels”. That stands a net shortage that is half of the current shortage (inspite of claimed increase in demand)
Further from the same website of MSEDCL, the claim is that since the electricity cannot be stored, maximum load shedding has to occur during evening hours (ie. 6PM to 10PM). The pattern of current load shedding does not more than one and half hours of load shedding during those hours and a considerable percentage of load shedding occurs during day time.
All these facts lead to an obvious question – Is the power shortage real or orchestrated?
Let’s look at two other “seemingly uncorrelated facts” -
1. Is it a coincidence that the load sheding has become more prominent after the (failed) IPO of Reliance Power?
2. Is it a coincidence that load sheding has become more prominent after the nuclear deal became large enough an issue that could potentially have toppled the Government?
3. Is it a coincidence that the load shedding has become prominent after a surge in Crude prices world over and mounting losses of State Run companies in providing subsidized fuels and substantially high usage of diesel powered Generators by businesses?
3. Or is it because we are facing an election next year?
We’d soon find out what exactly is the reason – possible things that I can see coming are
1. MSEDCL buys power from Reliance Power at atrocious premium. (I don’t think I have to speak in details about this)
2. Load shedding suddenly vanishes in January/February. A little elaboration on this – First create a problem that is perceived as acute and then mysteriously solve that problem right at the time of election.
3. Prices of diesel used for “generators” are increased to match “unsubisidized levels” (This is one way dealing with the losses or there’s “someone else whose company’s name starts with R” who can provide this diesel at market price).
Ofcourse, inspite of these facts I am of a strong opinion that energy should be used judiciously by human beings (because that puts a considerable strain on finite resources to generate energy), but still these facts don’t quite explain why we’d have a 7 folds increase in load shedding (Which used to be for like 4 hours on Thursdays to suddenly average of 5-6 hours everyday on weekdays)?
Anybody?
