On Oily Surface

The astronomical increase in prices of petroleum products esp. petrol is looming large since last week. The Congress led UPA government at the centre has been in a quandary over the timing of the price increase. It didn't dare to do so till Karnataka elections were over, and now it doesn't have any other option but to go ahead and review the petro prices as the losses of oil companies mount. The funny thing is that the congress has already lost Karnataka, and it's highly prone to face the voters' wrath in the coming general elections.

We must anticipate the fact that the international crude oil prices have crossed $132 per barrel and might well touch $150 a barrel in the coming months, the most intriguing thing is the politicisation of the issue. The oil companies have suffered almost 200000 crore loss (There were quite a few raised eyebrows when the loan taken by Maharashtra Govt crossed Rs. 100000 crore last year) only because the govt's insistence on keeping the petroleum prices under control.

The government should get rid of most part of subsidies in a phased manner. It could always start with petrol, which hardly affects inflation as most of the transport vehicles are run on diesel. It could easily fix the petrol prices as 'Mark to Market'.
Instead the govt. uses other easier options like issuing oil bonds. It's very unfair on part of govt. to pass the burden on future governments.

The other thing that I fail to understand is the heavy advertising by the public sector oil companies. These companies spend crores of rupees daily just to sell their branded products like extra premiums and speed and turbojet diesel. The companies often tie up with banks and credit card companies to push their sell. The need of the hour is certainly not to encourage the sale of petroleum products.
There is hardly any significant competition to these public sector companies. So instead of wasting the money on advertising, they could use it to subsidize the products in rural areas.

It's time for the govt. take bold decisions and phase out all the subsidies on petroleum products including cooking gas and kerosene irrespective of the political compulsions.

माझा व्हिडियो

तीन वर्षांपूर्वी शूट केलेला व्हिडियो आता यूट्यूब बरोबरच माझ्या ब्लॉगवर देखील उपलब्ध.



प्रतिक्रीयांचे स्वागत.

But the ACs are on, sir!

I'm really fed up with the cliché mentioned in the title.

After hearing these words for years together, I've come to the conclusion that we, as a society, lack AC sense.

Whenever I raise this issue, people often try to tone me down by asking me whether I use AC at home too. But unfortunately for them, I’m a proud owner of an AC that I won in a TV contest some five years ago, which I’d otherwise not have bought. (These kinds of weird arguments continue to go on in our society. E.g. If you want to insist on speaking, say, Marathi instead of English, you are praised by everyone but only if you know English in the first place; otherwise you will be ridiculed)

So wouldn’t I have any right to protest against bad air conditioning if I don’t have an AC at home?

You’ll find ample of poor air-conditioning examples at almost all the places you visit viz. Hotels, Restaurants, Discos, Offices, Cinema halls, Trains and so on. The first reply to your complaint or protest is nothing but the same “The ACs are on sir.”

In most of the offices, the centralized ACs function badly. It might be chilling in one corner while sweating in the other corner, and people are least bothered about it. Often in meeting rooms you will find people crying to have the ACs switched off. The result is ten people suffocate in a closed meeting room, meant for five, thanks to the switched off ACs.

The most important thing people don’t understand is that the issue is more of air circulation than the “cooling” caused by ACs. I won’t mind if you keep all the windows open and just put fans in the office. AC is not at all required for good circulation of air, except for a couple of really hot months in the summer.

If you agree with me then include “+1” in your reply otherwise “-1”

Check your typing speed here

60+ words

Speedtest

TRAI'n reforms

Telecom Regulator TRAI has taken a good step announcing to impose heavy penalties on telecom operators for unsolicited calls.
The DoT has also suggested a Do Call Registry (DCR) instead of the present Do not Call Registry (DNC) which, if implemented well, could benefit millions of telecom subscribers.

While the service providers are the mains culprits, the banks are no lesser evils either. Whenever we register for mobile banking or just give our mobile number to the bank as a contact detail, it then immediately gets circulated among the telemarketers who work for all the major banks. No sooner did I register for Citibank last year than a telemarketer offered me a personal loan from Deutsche Bank.

The same is the case with credit cards. Whenever you apply for a credit card of one bank, all the banks (through telemarketers) will line up to you to offer their credit cards; golds, platinums and so on.

There are few mobile applications that could be used to buy movie tickets, train tickets etc. The first thing they ask is your mobile number; and once we fall into their traps, we are bombarded with ads that are rarely relevant, or our numbers are shared with (or sold to) the telemarketing agencies.

TRAI should consider making it mandatory for all the companies, which distribute these kinds of application, and banks not to share the mobile numbers of customers to any other company, and this should be strictly monitored by the telecom watchdogs.

So in addition to the telecom operators, TRAI should also penalize Banks, Telemarketers, and all those who share or sell our mobile numbers to other agencies.

Managing Corruption

Transparency International has just released its latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and has placed India on the 72nd position among 180 nations.

Insider news: India was actually placed well below 20 but our great politicians "managed" the CPI to move India down the ladders at 72nd place.

Cheers!

My Take on Jodhaa-Akbar

I was quite pleased to watch Jodhaa-Akbar on the very first day of its release. I really liked the sets, while the picturization was quite outstanding. The war scenes, especially those involving cannon balls, were really mind blowing. Though I'd certainly not call the movie in the same breath of Lagaan or Swades, still I must say that Ashutosh Gowariker has done a great job.

It's very hard for anyone to believe that there was any kind of love between Jodhaa and Akbar as theirs was just a political union. But Ashutosh has successfully implanted some "love" components and that too quite seamlessly in the story, which show his class. Some examples include showing Akbar's respect towards Jodhaa's feelings and faith, and Jodhaa's boldness and beauty true to the character of a Rajput Pricess. Both Hrithik and Aishwarya have been excellent in their respective roles.

Ashutosh Gowariker's brilliance is seen in the melodious song "Khwaja Khwaja" where he has shown that Akbar is so overwhelmed by the praise of Khwaja Moinuddin and the beats of the song that he forces himself to dance with the other performers.

The picturization of another song "Azeem-o-shan.." is truly superb. The performance of the artists is very organized and well directed.

So far so good but there are few points I'd like to raise which seem hard to digest.

1. It's been shown that Akbar's sister was not pleased with the concept of the "muslim" Akbar marrying the "hindu" Jodhaa. We all know that the Mughals invaded India with their huge armies, and they had no business bringing women with them all the way from Persia, Afghanistan etc. So in most of the cases the only option, which they enjoyed a lot, was to marry hindu girls (I strongly believe that this was precisely the reason why people used to marry off their daughters at the age of as low as 10-11). So the concern expressed by Akbar's sister in the movie, and in general, doesn't make sense.

2. By no stretch of imagination one could think that the prayers sung by Jodhaa in the janaankhana were louder enough to be heard in the durbar of Akbar.

3. Akbar's dialogue "Hum Hindustan ko galat hathon me nahi jaane dengey", just before a war, seems devoid of logic. Just the fact that Akbar was born in a Rajput Fortress doesn't make him a Hindustani, as we all know that the Mughals were invaders.

Overall this movie is certainly worth watching. I've always been an admirer of Ashutosh Gowariker. I consider his "Swades" above anything else produced during the last decade.

I'd love to see a grand movie on Chhatrapati Shivaji from the same director.

CEO Compensation

Read this very good article written by Sucheta Dalal.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=165369

I agree most of her views, esp about the family-run businesses. Feel free to post your views.

Also click below if you want to free up your mobile bill
http://www.mginger.com/index.jsp?inviteId=248877

Cheque with a cap?

Ever felt the need to have your cheque with a certain limit?

Suppose you pay around Rs. 1000 every month to your biller Mr. A. The amount is not fixed, but you know that it’ll be around Rs. 1000, or Rs. 1100 at the max.
You can’t frequently meet Mr. A to handover the cheques, and obviously you can’t issue signed blank cheques to him.

In this scenario, wouldn’t it be helpful to you, should you be able to issue post dated blank cheques to Mr. A, the only difference being that all the cheques will be “capped” to Rs. 1100? It means even if you issue signed blank cheques to somebody, he/she won’t be able to write any higher amount than your specified “cap”.

Incidentally, when I discussed this issue with my dad, he recalled some instances where a line e.g. “Under Rs. 51000” used to be printed vertically in red in some government issued cheques, which meant the max amount promised under that cheque was Rs. 51000.

I often felt the need of such kind of cheques while paying my mess bills, providing my brother with his pocket money etc.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences.

Child Tax?

"You know in Philippines, there are only girls and girls everywhere" - a Philippines returned friend was telling me the other day.

He was clearly exaggerating, but ever wondered why does India have a sex-ratio well above 1.0 (sex-ratio = no. of males/no. of females)? Most of the countries other than the developing countries similar to India are 'rich' in terms of proportionate female population. The major contributor to this disparity is the so called 'khaandan ka chirag'/'वंशाचा दिवा’ mentality among us. Just look around and you’ll find couples willing to do ‘anything’ just to have baby boy and not a girl. It’s no wonder the freak astrologers, the babas etc. flourish.

In a more global scenario, facing a stiff shortage of skilled manpower, the whole developed world is looking at India’s huge pool of talent. In fact it’s time to forget the family planning, even though we are heading toward becoming the country with the highest population in the world. We just can’t afford to force limit our young talent. Look at Japan and China. Both have a large population density; still they are starving for more and more children. China has abolished the 1-child norm way back, as they have understood the importance of the new generations coming in.

Though we have been fairing pretty well on the population front, are we producing a ‘quality’ population? We often see that the well educated and financially sound people tend to have less children than those who are much poorer. The growing population of the economically backward class or of the BPL (below poverty line) is the big problem ahead of us rather than the overall population.

The nation cannot bear the burden of incompetent population. Every child coming into being should have some solvency. One shouldn’t produce just any number of children as he/she wishes and put extra burden on the nation. After all, the taxpayers’ money is used to feed the ‘insolvent’ population.

The need of the hour is to introduce kind of Child Tax. The parent’s must deposit, which could be refunded after the child turns 18 –say- Rs. 10k per each baby boy (girls can be spared till the sex ratio gets even) . This could well solve the above mentioned issues. First, as there’s no tax on baby girls, the sex ration will be in check. Secondly, only those children who could be well fed, well brought up will come into existing and help India prosper.

Look what just the two Ambanis are doing. Wouldn’t have –say- 5 of them been more helpful to the Nation?


-- Comments and suggestions welcome.