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Showing posts from December, 2009

IT IS SO UNFORTUNATE THAT WE HAVE CONVERTED THE WORLD’S FOOD BOWL INTO A BEGGING BOWL!

While the government would make us believe that all is well with the economy, and that the Indian economy is resilient enough to withstand the shocks of global recession, one visit to any vegetable market in Delhi or for that matter anywhere in the country actually gives a very different kind of a picture. Food prices, in the last one year or so, have skyrocketed to such an extent that many items have become beyond the reach of the common man. For the common man in India, the staple diet consists of things as basic as potato, pulses and rice. But given the way the prices have increased in the recent past, today they can no more be called the ingredients of the common man’s diet. The price of pulses is almost touching Rs 100 per kg, while that of potato is hovering around Rs 40 per kg. Even a year back, pulses were available in the market for less than half the price and almost a fifth in the case of potatoes. So does it mean that all of a sudden the farmers of the country have decided

It is a dangerous precedence to create more states based just on mere political ambitions!

The untimely demise of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy could not have happened at a worse time. The sequence of events that happened post his death proved the same. If initially it was a major political crisis that erupted with respect to the nomination of a candidate as the next chief minister of the state, later on, it was the demand of K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) for a separate state of Telangana that turned one of the most prosperous and properly administered states into a virtual battleground. The state, which for a very long period has been in the news for its strides in Information Technology and the successful battle against Maoists, is now in the news for all the wrong reasons. True to its style, the government at the Centre easily gave in to the demands of K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who was quick to realise the political vacuum that was created by the death of YSR and found the revival of Telangana movement for a separate state an ideal platform to re-launch his political career graph. But wh

THE UN COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES LIKE INDIA AND CHINA TO SET THEIR OWN STANDARDS

AND WORK TOWARDS THE CREATION OF A BETTER AND CLEANER WORLD! An interesting piece of news had come out a few days back, where it was stated that the government is planning to replace polluting ‘chullahs’ in rural households with green stoves (stoves fuelled by biomass). As stated there, this flagship program would cover around 140 million households. In other words, it would cover over 560 million people. This, in itself, is a wonderful initiative and would go a long way in not just saving the precious forests of India but would also arrest many ailments which emanate from the poisonous smoke of chullahs. Another interesting news that has come up in the recent past is that India’s forest cover has grown by 728 square kilometers during 2005-07 and thus now stands at 21%. Similarly, one has also witnessed that there has been a sincere effort on the part of the government and also the judicial system to crack down on illegal mines in forest areas and force the fuel guzzling and polluting

THE WORLD NEEDS DUBAI!

Dubai sent shockwaves across the world when the news broke out that Dubai World, Dubai’s chief investment vehicle, wanted to defer its repayments on all or part of its $59 billion in debt. Dubai World alone is responsible for almost 75 percent of the entire debt of Dubai, which stands at $80 billion. Although post 25/11, when the news broke out for the first time, the ruler of Dubai did release an official statement comforting global investors (specifically on December 1, 2009 – the global financial markets stabilized a bit after that statement), but the world is still keenly looking forward to December 14, 2009, as that is the day when bonds worth $3.5 billion for Nakheel – the real estate arm under Dubai World and the company behind the prestigious palm shaped manmade islands – become due. A great deal of Dubai’s future and global investors’ fate would be determined on how the company deals with the bonds issue! In fact, for getting the right perspective of what is happening to Dubai