Wake up Mr. Shiv Raj Patil, Greatest Theat To India are not naxals, its your politics of region & religion

The evidence of how out of sync with reality Mr. Shivraj Patil, the home minister of India is that he thinks the greatest threat to the integrity of India are naxlalites.

Maybe this is ignorance or just the fact that naxalites are against the bad governance and not common people.

I am not a genius, but its easy to understand the greatest threat to the integrity of a country does not come from a few people unhappy with the government but it comes from the fact that masses are divided among themselves.

We all are unhappy with the government at some level, the difference between naxalites and a common man is that a naxalite take up arms and fight these politicians and police while we don't. I guess its easy to understand why.

The greatest threat to the integrity of India comes from the politics of division, of religion and region. I realise the two biggest parties themselves are fighting over religion.

But to start with i hope the two biggest parties of this country come together and kill regional politics sooner than later because if this is not done, there will be no nation, we will just have unUnited states of India.

We need a 180 degree shift in politics.

Another example of how regional politicians are of the lowest grade is when the congress was on the verge of extinction, people like Sharad Pawar and Sagma ran to Sonia gandhi to save it, when she saved it, they wanted to be the PM, when they couldnt be the PM, they just left the party.

Thats how small these regional politicians are. They have no ethics, no principle. Yet they are the richest politicians. Wake up Indians, you have been fooled long enough.

Sardar patel, i hope you were still alive.

Arvind Adiga Wins Bookers Prize

Arvind Adiga, a writer and resident of Mumbai, India has just won a bookers prize for his book The White Tiger: A Novel

Arvind is a graduate of oxford university and a former Time megazine reporter. He is also the second youngest winner of bookers prize at the age of 33 after Ben Okri who won at the age of 32.

Michael Portillo, a former cabinet minister and the chairman of this year’s panel of judges, praised Mr. Adiga’s novel, saying that the short list had contained a series of “extraordinarily readable page-turners.” However, Mr. Adiga’s book had prevailed, he said, “because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure.”

Mr. Adiga said his book was an “attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India — the voice of the colossal underclass.”

The other authors that were shortlisted were Irish writer Sebastian Barry, 53, whose book “The Secret Scripture” is the story of an Irish patient in a mental hospital sharing her shocking family history with her psychiatrist, “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh, “The Clothes on Their Backs” by Linda Grant, “The Northern Clemency” by Philip Hensher and “A Fraction of the Whole” by Steve Toltz.


According a kerry walterz a reviewer of Adiga's book on amazon.com, 


The plot centers around Balram Halwai, a laborer born and raised in a small village utterly controlled by crooked and feudally powerful landlords. The village is located in 'the Darkness,' a particularly backward region of India. Balram is eventually taken to Delhi as a driver for one of the landlord's westernized sons, Ashok. It's in Delhi that Balram comes to the realization that there's a new caste system at work in both India and the world, and it has only two groups: those who are eaten, and those who eat, prey and predators. Balram decides he wants to be an eater, someone with a big belly, and the novel tracks the way in which this ambition plays out.


You can find more information about The White Tiger and buy it on Amazon.com

Congratulations Arvind!

Recession Comes Home To India: Let The Layoffs Begin

Jet Airways a leading airlines company has recently laid off 850 staffers and will layoff another 1100 soon. Air India has offered its employees a unpaid leave for 5 years, whatever that means.

Pepsico. has laid off 3300 employees.

Satyam laid off 400 workers and have given notice to another 4500.


Stock Markets are under 11k down from 21k in January. Beat that.


Most companies have stopped hiring, more layoffs expected. RBI has taken some serious  preemptive action.

ICICI is closing down branches. HDFC and other institutions are seeing a decline in demand.

Malls are less crowded, airports are emptying. But the ones with jobs are still ok. There will be no 50% offs in most shops this festive season. And its money saving time anyways.

But the worst affected will be the new graduates of this year and the next when they come out with no jobs in sight.

Tough times ahead. Didn't someone say Indian economy is decoupled from US economy? 

Updated News: Jet Airways takes back its fired employees. According to the chairman of the company Naresh Goyal, he has listened to his conscience, while the avitiation minister jumped into to take credit by saying he asked Goyal to take back sacked back employees.

It seems the truth is political pressure arising from the coverage of the sacking and the effect it will have on the salaried class and the upcomign elections.

Orkut On IPhone, A "Time Waster's" Dream Come True

Vellas, by the way are people who have too much time and not enough stuff to do. And like the word "guru" this should be included in the english language because there are so many of them.

Unlike most people who cannot seem to find enough time to do things that are really important to them, like read a book, meet an old friend, spend time with family, these people always have excess time. Lucky them.


Orkut.com recently wrote a blog post about this new feature where you can access your orkut.com service from IPhone and they called it "Orkut on IPhone: A Socialites dream come true". Sometime, or most times, i wonder how do people make time to scrap each other the whole day.

I have also seen people scraping each other when they could easily IM(both being online), or email, or call.

Sometimes i feel people use messaging  on social networks in cases when they "sorta want to be in touch" but not "too much".


I mean hey i messaged you, once, on orkut, i like to stay in touch you know. Its like an excuse, a formality.

People who really care would much rather have a meeting, a call, an IM or email. And in that order.


This is one reason why marketeers do not want to reach masses on social networks, they don't want to reach out to this segment of consumers, they sorta, don't wanna be in touch with you much you know, but hey maybe they will scrap you. Just maybe.

The Power of Motivation

In school, we were never taught how to deal with motivations. We were taught what motivation is but still we never took time out to understand it in its entirity, no one ever taught us what it is, where it comes from and what it can do for us. Or maybe they didn't know.


But than you grow up and see one motivation makes a terrorist out of a regular man, and another makes a Gandhi. There are countless other examples where individual motivations led ordinary people to become extraoridianry. Some extraordinary in a good way, others in not so good way.

Some became billionaire philanthropists who gave away their wealth to end world hunger, others blew up bombs under the pretext of saving their religion. One motivation led a women to leave her country and serve the poorest of the poor in a foreign land another led a man to invade a foreign land.

One motivation led the man to space, other led him to a plane that would crash and kill hundreds.

Yet we never worried about understanding motivation, for its just a word, for what happens is not because of motivations, its because of luck.

Our obsession with randomness has never let us really understand this amazing word motivation.


But its time, we rid our selves from the mistakes of our teachers. Spend some time understanding motivation, not just our own but everyone else around us and the guys in guantanamo bay and the missionaries and the mercinaries.

Try to understand your motivations today, while you are at this, try understanding how motivation is different from inspiration, aspiration and instigation, if it is.


Watch your motivation, because my friends, it can take you places. Literally.