It's a quiet period for me... i don't know how long it will last!
ONLY TIME
Who can say where the road goes,
Where the day flows, only time?
And who can say if your love grows,
As your hearth chose, only time?
Who can say why your heart sights,
As your live flies, only time?
And who can say why your heart cries
when your love lies, only time?
Who can say when the roads meet,
That love might be ,in your heart?
and who can say when the day sleeps,
and the night keeps all your heart?
Night keeps all your heart.....
Who can say if your love groves,
As your heart chose, only time?
And who can say where the road goes
Where the day flows, only time?
Who knows? Only time
Who knows? Only time
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Money Only Matters: MP Babudom's 200% Pay Hike?
The other day the Cabinet approved for a 200% hike in our MPs salaries. While i agree that it's long overdue for our 'money only matters MPs, a 200% hike in my opinion sounds little undeserving considering the social economic landscape of this country. Never forget that the country's 40% or more of the population is under poverty line. Farmers who are the 'producers' are committing suicide unabated in this Rising Asian Giant. Even more the recent price inflation has aggravated the sufferings of the common man.
With this 200% hike, a conservative market value of an Indian MP's pay package comes to around 57 lakhs per annum. Now India's GDP per capita income is $3176 purchase power parity. So therefore the disparity between an average Indian income and an MP's income is over 100 times which fares much better than even some of the developed countries like Japan, Singapore, Italy etc. Not satisfied with this hike, one MP even growled that it's an insult to the parliament.
We would have really appreciated if the Cabinet had in mind the plight of the common Indian before its salary review. For instance, who knows if they had seen Peepli Live before its decision, it might be a different story. While David Cameron in the UK is advocating pay cuts for public sector 'fat cats' [read Babudom] to reduce the fiscal deficits, it's a shame on our MPs who are still not satisfied but complaining even after such an astronomical pay hike. In actual, they are the millionaires who are complaining. What can we expect as a common man from millionaires who are complaining about their salaries?
But Indians are not deaf, dumb and blind. They listen, they see and they will speak out soon. Let's wait for the next election.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
COMPROMISE?
Today i read something that grabbed my eyeballs. It was an eye opening for me in a long time. Compromise is the word. If I were asked to make one sentence using this word 'compromise', the first and foremost sentence that comes to my mind would be, 'I never compromise'. No surprise that it's coming from a headstrong person like me. Though i am a lot flexible in the way i relate to others. But the bottomline is we don't want to compromise in any way. In other words, we don't want to belittle ourselves before another human being because it's humiliating. Frankly speaking because of my 'uncompromising' stance in the past, i have had break-ups.
'Value compromise. But never compromise your values', was the heading that appeared on TOI. It was a soul searching and soul enriching experience. This is one great truth i wish i had known.
Take an example, even the mighty tree sways a bit, bends down and bows when a fierce and angry wind passes through as if to uproot all that it has, while standing firm. Compromise without compromising your values at core. A simple yet powerful truth.\
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Life is a mixed bag of flowers and fruits!
Forrest Gump has been one of my all time favs. I remember one quote from that movie: My mama always said, "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Chocolate. And you know it tastes bitter-sweet. Life's like that. In short, life's a mixed bag of both bitter and sweet. Sometimes it's like a beautiful rainbow that comes after the rain. At times, it's like eating [Manipuri] nongmangkha leaves.
We're all in the game of seesaw jumping up and down. Sometimes it's hard to comprehend why certain things happen contrary to what we thought. But whatever it is, the show must go on. As much as 'beautiful' is glorifying, the 'bitter/sour' should not prevent us from achieving what we set out to accomplish.
Life is beautiful but never forget, it's bitter too.
We're all in the game of seesaw jumping up and down. Sometimes it's hard to comprehend why certain things happen contrary to what we thought. But whatever it is, the show must go on. As much as 'beautiful' is glorifying, the 'bitter/sour' should not prevent us from achieving what we set out to accomplish.
Life is beautiful but never forget, it's bitter too.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
China Overtakes Japan as World's Second-Biggest Economy
It may come as a great shock to many Indians that China has overtaken the Japan's long held position of the World's second largest economy, only to be placed after the United States, the largest economy in the world. India Rising may have some merits but comparing India to China as equal giants, as many Indian writers ado, is a grossly assumed mistake. On many counts China supercedes the former. Below is the full report from Bloomberg News:
China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy last quarter, capping the nation’s three- decade rise from Communist isolation to emerging superpower.
Japan’s nominal gross domestic product for the second quarter totaled $1.288 trillion, less than China’s $1.337 trillion, the Japanese Cabinet Office said today. Japan remained bigger in the first half of 2010, the government agency said. Japan’s annual GDP is $5.07 trillion, while China’s is more than $4.9 trillion.
China led the world out of last year’s global recession with an economy that’s more than 90-times bigger than when leader Deng Xiaoping ditched hard-line Communist policies in favor of free-market reforms in 1978. The country of 1.3 billion people will overtake the U.S., where annual GDP is about $14 trillion, as the world’s largest economy by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist Jim O’Neill.
China’s surpassing of Japan “is a marker of its increasingly dominant role in the global economy,” said Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former head of the China division at the International Monetary Fund. “The resilience of China’s growth during the crisis enabled a number of other countries, particularly commodity-exporting economies, to ride on its coattails.”
The benchmark Shanghai stock index rose 2.1 percent at the 3 p.m. close today, climbing the most this month.
Tricky Comparison
China overtook the U.S. last year as the biggest automobile market and Germany as the largest exporter. The nation is the world’s No. 1 buyer of iron ore and copper and the second- biggest importer of crude oil, and has underpinned demand for exports by its Asian neighbors.
While China’s output was also larger in the fourth quarter of 2009, Japan’s GDP rebounded to exceed China’s in the first quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. According to IMF data using purchasing-power-parity calculations to adjust for exchange-rate differences, China overtook Japan in 2001.
Quarterly comparisons between China and Japan are “a little tricky because they do not take account of different seasonal patterns between the two countries,” said David Cohen, head of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore.
China’s economy is cooling as the government trims credit growth from last year’s record $1.4 trillion and discourages multiple-home purchases to cool surging property prices. July industrial output rose the least in 11 months, retail sales growth eased and new loans climbed less than estimated. China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. said last month that its crude-oil processing increased at a slower pace in the second quarter as fuel demand faltered.
Property Collapse
The country’s property market is beginning a “collapse” that will hit the nation’s banking system, Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor and former chief economist of the IMF, said July 6.
Still, China is on course to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy around 2020, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a January report.
With China’s growth surging 10.3 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier and Japan expanding 2 percent, the “gap is going to widen” in future, said Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. “It is not likely that Japan will retake the No. 2 spot given the likely growth rates.”
Four of the world’s top 10 companies by market capitalization are from China, including PetroChina Co., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Mobile Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.
Agricultural Bank
Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. boosted the size of its initial public offering to $22.1 billion this month after selling more stock in Shanghai, making it the world’s largest first-time share sale. The IPO made the nation home to four of the world’s 10 biggest banks by market value, half a decade after the country’s first major state-owned lender went public.
China may be the biggest IPO market in 2010 as companies are likely to raise 500 billion yuan ($74 billion) in Shanghai and Shenzhen, PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast last month.
Since introducing free-market policies, China has lifted 300 million citizens out of poverty, according to the United Nations. The country remains a developing nation, with its per capita gross national income ranked 127th in the world at $2,940 at the end of 2008, behind Angola and Azerbaijan, according to the World Bank.
Cultural Revolution
In the first three decades of Communist Party rule before Deng took power, China’s economy was hobbled by the chaos of the Great Leap Forward, a failed attempt to transform the agrarian nation into an industrial powerhouse, and the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political upheaval led by Mao Zedong’s Red Guards.
“China has a large population, a weak economic foundation, relatively few resources and a large poverty population, which remains our basic situation,” Ma Jiantang, head of China’s statistics bureau, said in January. “Therefore, while we take note of our expanding size of economy and enhancing economic strength, we should also have a sober understanding that China remains a developing nation.”
China’s future influence on the global economy will increase, said Shen at Mizuho. The country’s “double-digit” expansion will contribute a third of global growth this year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in March.
“Japan had a huge impact on the global commodities market and foreign direct investment flows in the 1980s” as China is doing now, Shen said. “The major difference is that China’s population is 10-times bigger than Japan’s, its economy is still growing at above 9 percent per year, and Chinese investors are just beginning to invest abroad. You can imagine that China’s impact will be so much bigger.”
China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy last quarter, capping the nation’s three- decade rise from Communist isolation to emerging superpower.
Japan’s nominal gross domestic product for the second quarter totaled $1.288 trillion, less than China’s $1.337 trillion, the Japanese Cabinet Office said today. Japan remained bigger in the first half of 2010, the government agency said. Japan’s annual GDP is $5.07 trillion, while China’s is more than $4.9 trillion.
China led the world out of last year’s global recession with an economy that’s more than 90-times bigger than when leader Deng Xiaoping ditched hard-line Communist policies in favor of free-market reforms in 1978. The country of 1.3 billion people will overtake the U.S., where annual GDP is about $14 trillion, as the world’s largest economy by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist Jim O’Neill.
China’s surpassing of Japan “is a marker of its increasingly dominant role in the global economy,” said Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former head of the China division at the International Monetary Fund. “The resilience of China’s growth during the crisis enabled a number of other countries, particularly commodity-exporting economies, to ride on its coattails.”
The benchmark Shanghai stock index rose 2.1 percent at the 3 p.m. close today, climbing the most this month.
Tricky Comparison
China overtook the U.S. last year as the biggest automobile market and Germany as the largest exporter. The nation is the world’s No. 1 buyer of iron ore and copper and the second- biggest importer of crude oil, and has underpinned demand for exports by its Asian neighbors.
While China’s output was also larger in the fourth quarter of 2009, Japan’s GDP rebounded to exceed China’s in the first quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. According to IMF data using purchasing-power-parity calculations to adjust for exchange-rate differences, China overtook Japan in 2001.
Quarterly comparisons between China and Japan are “a little tricky because they do not take account of different seasonal patterns between the two countries,” said David Cohen, head of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore.
China’s economy is cooling as the government trims credit growth from last year’s record $1.4 trillion and discourages multiple-home purchases to cool surging property prices. July industrial output rose the least in 11 months, retail sales growth eased and new loans climbed less than estimated. China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. said last month that its crude-oil processing increased at a slower pace in the second quarter as fuel demand faltered.
Property Collapse
The country’s property market is beginning a “collapse” that will hit the nation’s banking system, Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor and former chief economist of the IMF, said July 6.
Still, China is on course to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy around 2020, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a January report.
With China’s growth surging 10.3 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier and Japan expanding 2 percent, the “gap is going to widen” in future, said Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. “It is not likely that Japan will retake the No. 2 spot given the likely growth rates.”
Four of the world’s top 10 companies by market capitalization are from China, including PetroChina Co., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Mobile Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.
Agricultural Bank
Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. boosted the size of its initial public offering to $22.1 billion this month after selling more stock in Shanghai, making it the world’s largest first-time share sale. The IPO made the nation home to four of the world’s 10 biggest banks by market value, half a decade after the country’s first major state-owned lender went public.
China may be the biggest IPO market in 2010 as companies are likely to raise 500 billion yuan ($74 billion) in Shanghai and Shenzhen, PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast last month.
Since introducing free-market policies, China has lifted 300 million citizens out of poverty, according to the United Nations. The country remains a developing nation, with its per capita gross national income ranked 127th in the world at $2,940 at the end of 2008, behind Angola and Azerbaijan, according to the World Bank.
Cultural Revolution
In the first three decades of Communist Party rule before Deng took power, China’s economy was hobbled by the chaos of the Great Leap Forward, a failed attempt to transform the agrarian nation into an industrial powerhouse, and the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political upheaval led by Mao Zedong’s Red Guards.
“China has a large population, a weak economic foundation, relatively few resources and a large poverty population, which remains our basic situation,” Ma Jiantang, head of China’s statistics bureau, said in January. “Therefore, while we take note of our expanding size of economy and enhancing economic strength, we should also have a sober understanding that China remains a developing nation.”
China’s future influence on the global economy will increase, said Shen at Mizuho. The country’s “double-digit” expansion will contribute a third of global growth this year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in March.
“Japan had a huge impact on the global commodities market and foreign direct investment flows in the 1980s” as China is doing now, Shen said. “The major difference is that China’s population is 10-times bigger than Japan’s, its economy is still growing at above 9 percent per year, and Chinese investors are just beginning to invest abroad. You can imagine that China’s impact will be so much bigger.”
Saturday, August 14, 2010
When Love Dies....
The dark grey Mumbai sky hovers above. Seems like the blue has gone for a holiday. The usual vehicular movement and horn noise being heard around. People are busy walking on the road as if they are being chased from behind. Street hawkers too are busy selling so their families could be fed. Amidst these crowd, i am standing alone -- alone in the middle of the road. And i feel terribly alone in this world. Never I thought in my wildest possible dreams, love could take me to this place -- a place where love dies, heart burns and the whole being cries in tears.
Admittedly, love is a strange thing. When it dies, everything seems to die, even if every other thing in life is all right and intact. The power of love -- to break into pieces or to make into a wonderful, spectacular thing. Sadly, the latter never happened. Deep inside, I am not feeling all right. Something seems to simmer inside and eats up like a gangrene. Yes, I've had break-ups before in the past but this one is different. it's had almost killed me.
Admittedly, love is a strange thing. When it dies, everything seems to die, even if every other thing in life is all right and intact. The power of love -- to break into pieces or to make into a wonderful, spectacular thing. Sadly, the latter never happened. Deep inside, I am not feeling all right. Something seems to simmer inside and eats up like a gangrene. Yes, I've had break-ups before in the past but this one is different. it's had almost killed me.
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