Scraps Stuffs - Random musings from apun ka desh

The recent diplomatic fracas over the denial of a diplomatic visa to Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, to visit the USA has raised interesting questions and thoughts.

Modi has not been indicted by any court in India as yet. NHRC's findings/report aren't the end of the story and India's biased anti-BJP media has made things murkier by their biased and selective reporting of facts.

Although the US is well within its rights to deny a visa to anyone, the fact that a diplomatic visa was denied to a constitutionally elected Indian, means that they are trying to fish in the troubled waters of Indian politics. Since the US styles itself as a globocop, it needs to poke its fingers in all the pies of the world. They constantly keep looking for various pressure points in all countries, pressure points that they can use whenever needed to get their way on things. The other thing is that the US has granted visas to many thugs, dictators and despots when it suited its purpose. Denying a visa to Modi makes me feel that it may be a tactic to curry favour with Indian muslims and try and get their support for their misadventures in Iraq.

Condolezza Rice is the head honcho at State and the final decision would have been hers. She was making nice when she was in India and the moment she stepped out of here, the whole thing erupts. The sooner people in India realize that the US will be all sweetness and light when it suits them and nasty when it doesn't, the better for us. The US looks after its own interests first and always. Sundry bastard Indian lefties, weeping heart pseudo secular liberals and assorted loonies like Dilip D'Souza and Praful Bidwai look after others interest before their own country's. Shame on those chootias.

The reaction of the Tabloid of India and the Uneconomic Times was patently cowardly. Rather than standing up against interference in India's internal affairs, those bastards justified US actions! Hello, why don't you migrate to "the land of the free" instead of staying in India? Although from the same stables, I didn't expect the Uneconomic Times to take a line justifying US actions. This line can be expected from the Times of Islamabad but I thought that "cold-blooded capitalists" would know better!

By presenting a half-hearted united front slamming US actions, the Congress and the leftists (now thats a motley crew if there ever was one :-)) somewhat mitigated the lack of unity on issues of national importance. But India's image of a soft state was reinforced by the fact that even a request for a review by no less a figure than the PM failed to reverse the decision. Manmohan Singh cut a very sorry figure and no amount of spin can cover up this fact.

Finally after much complaining and multiple phone calls to BSNL, their DataOne broadband through ADSL is now operational at home. Yipee!!!

It seems to be stable so far and speeds are decent although I still need to check up the exact download bandwidth. BSNL has this stupid policy of bandwidth limits although this is waived until June of this year. You can't call a service broadband and impose a download limit at the same time! First of all the minimum speed should have been 512 Kbps and not 256 Kbps. The bandwidth limit should have been atleast 10 GB per month and not the pathetic 1 GB that they have in place. One can easily consume about 30 MB in an hours worth of surfing which means that in a little over 30 hours of surfing one would have exhausted an entire month's quota!

Still, this is better than dial-up. We have been racking up bills over four grand a month on dial up and this should bring down the bill substantially, although the second PC is still dial up. Need to find out a way to make both the PCs share the same ADSL service if this is possible.

I would never have thought that broadband was possible away from the main telephone exchanges in Bangalore (we are located in a small exchange outside Bangalore city limits) and this is truly amazing since we live with low levels of expectation from BSNL.

The article - Mumbai's makeover gamble - by Ramnathan Swaminathan makes one correct point. When the rural poor see no reason to migrate to cities, slums will stop expanding. Problem is that politicians only pay lip service to "garbi hatao" and instead swindle all the money and line their pockets. The Indian National Congress party is the prime example of this - for decades they did nothing to decrease rural poverty. Nothing except mouth inane slogans. Will the current central government be any different. Will they be able to implement their grandiose Common Minimum Program?

My bet is that they will not be able to.

Because they are not sincere.
Because they are corrupt as hell.
Because they are incompetent.

Thanks to two days sick leave on account of fatigue and the weekend after that I managed to finish reading English August by Upamanyu Chatterjee. I had wanted to read this book for a long time and finally bought it from Strand (with a 20% discount). Enjoyed it throughly. It tells the tale of a westernized Indian who spends a year in the Indian mofussil (hinterland) as a IAS trainee. Its very irreverant and tongue-in-cheek and paints a very realistic picture of the life of an IAS officer-in-training. I also enjoyed watching the movie based on this novel starring Rahul Bose. My former Bihari roomie found the movie vulgar!

Planning to buy the DVD/VCD when I can find one. I'm also planning to get the sequel "Mammaries of a Welfare State".

English August is highly recommended and I plan to re-read the book after some time.

The worst thing about Chidambaram's budget proposals is the tax on cash withdrawals over Rs. 10000. Chootia even has the gall to say that its not a revenue raising measure but a scheme to track tax evasion. The things wrong with this proposal are:

1. Its effectively double taxation. Its my income on which I have already paid tax. So why pay even a single naiya paisa more tax on it?

2. Chidambaram cannot guarantee that everyone will except cheques/credit cards with no exceptions. In an emergency can he guarantee that all hospitals will accept cheques. Credit cards is not the answer because everyone may not have one.

3. It's not very effective as a means of tracing black money, because most black money would not be in banks in the first place. It would be in gold/jewellery or benami real estate or even the proverbial stacks of currency under the mattress.

Chidambaram needs to be a man and say it for what it is - an ill thought out measure which is ill suited to what its supposed to do. Or if he really intended it to be a revenue raising measure, he needs to say so

I received this hillariously sarcastic list of tips through email. Its amazingly appropriate for my boss

1. Never give me work in the morning. Always wait until 5:00 and then bring it to me. The challenge of a deadline is refreshing.

2. If it's really a "rush job," run in and interrupt me every 10 minutes to inquire how it's going. That helps.

3. Always leave without telling anyone where you're going. It gives me a chance to be creative when someone asks where you are.

4. If my arms are full of papers, boxes, books or supplies, don't open the door for me. I need to learn how to perform miracles routinely and opening doors with my teeth is excellent training.

5. If you give me more than one job to do, don't tell me which is the priority. Let me guess.

6. Do your best to keep me late. I like the office and really have nowhere to go or anything to do.

7. If a job I do pleases you, keep it a secret. Leaks like that could cost me a promotion.

8. If you don't like my work, tell everyone. I like my name to be popular in conversation.

9. If you have special instructions for a job, don't write them down. If fact, save them until the job is almost done.

10. Never introduce me to the people you're with. When you refer to them later, my shrewd deductions will identify them.

11. Be nice to me only when the job I'm doing for you could really change your life.

12. Tell me all your little problems. No one else has any and it's nice to know someone is less fortunate.