Category Archives: News and politics
Whats happened to Tamil Nadu??
The situation in Tamilnadu looks tense for the past 5 months ever since the Dharmapuri riots. Suddenly it looks like the entire state is divided on caste lines. The state which boasts the strides made in the social development suddenly falls back. Karunanidi & co which frequently speaks on ideals of Periyar becomes silent on the burning issues which clearly shows they are power hungry and no longer interested on their much talked ideals.
They said love marriages will eliminate the social evil called castes but now this happens to be rallying point for all caste based parties which till recently were just fringe players. They all unite under a forum and Mr.Ramadoss goes in air officially and says like Yadavs voting for Samajwadi, Vanniyars should vote for them alone. I have never seen such a power hungry person who will use the fault lines in the system for winning power at any cost.
Its a shame that TN government was like a sitting duck when PMK hoisted its flag on shore temple as if it was their citadel and government was taking action after everything instead of preventing such a heinous crime from happening. Let me come to my personal experience which i tasted first hand.
A guy repeatedly takes a ordinary raw mango without paying, when encountered on the third day, he threatens that he will wipe out entire caste as they are just four houses. The elders are sitting calm and watching the drama to unfold. when the shop keeper threatens to goto Police the elders intervene. (f**k these elders who have the responsibility to avoid this at first hand). I was travelling last week by taking risk, i see a van full of PMK people moving infront of the bus and i was guessing that some thing is going to unfold. As expected after few kilometers the bus comes under attack as stone bashing people throw stones at the bus taking the advantage of higher ground. PMK is known for chopping trees whenever there is a protest.
What happened? What should happen next in Srilanka for Tamils ?
Everyone in Tamilnadu has jumped into a chorus for taking action against Lanka for violating human rights during the final phases of civil war. It has become a habit to shout and forget later. No one really cared when the things were bad during the civil war with then CM Karunanidi threatening a fast until death. See the below image and you will understand the drama.
Comedy
It didn’t even last a day. Later when he was asked about this episode, he was good enough to dodge by informing that Centre and Rajapaksha cheated him. He didn’t have any guts to come out of UPA since he and his family was under spotlight for 2G spectrum case. Now for narrow political gains for upcoming 2014 general elections he and his son is playing a drama again.
With the death of Prabhakaran, one of my hero’s war came to an end with still some of my fellow srilankan tamils surviving. But now the focus should be on how to find solution and how the Tamils should be integrated with sinhalese. Its very foolish to still rely on the past and we should be careful enough so that we won’t forget the lessons learnt from the past.
Let’s come to the point on why LTTE assassinated Rajiv, our late PM sent IPKF and in the course of time our soldiers lost their morality by raping and doing all sorts of non sense. There was violence in LTTE but they didn’t behave like their African counterparts. Thats the reason they were able to sustain their fight for so long. Angry with the Indian soldiers LTTE assassinated Rajiv. They lost their support in India.
My support to LTTE is always limited because if I support them i don’t have any moral right for supporting India’s cause in Kashmir. I’m first an Indian and later a Tamilian. Support the cause of Tamils within the unified framework of Srilanka. A healthy neighbor is good for India. Gone are the days were a person can board Boatmail from Chennai to Rameshwaram and get a ferry to Mannar and catch a train to Colombo.
FDI in Indian retail – scope and out of scope – will Walmart sign SoW with India
So finally UPA government under Chidambaram found courage to open up retail sector especially in multi brand format for FDI. Now many people are up in arms against and in the same time there are lot of voices in favour of it. Is it going to really destroy kirana shops and no answer as experts are vary of it. We can hope that it will bring professionalism in that sector.
Currently in retail, many say farmers are in the receiving end as they are not able to get good value for their produce. People argue that farmers will get a raw deal as big retails build their logistics and procure directly from them. But even today farmers who are making use of their intelligence are earning a lot. Those who are averse to the current scenario’s sell them to middlemen often called in commission agents locally. So will they really lose their jobs, i say a big no as they can still act like farmers and can still continue to sell them to multinationals since most of farmers are unaware of this process. To make a change first in this highly globalized world education to the farmers on how this process works in a foremost thing.
Next i will come to kirana shops, they always carry a first mover advantage and a good retailer who is not greedy and reputation will still command a set of loyal customers even if walmart is in neighbourhood. Only thing he needs to do is reinvent himself in this changing times. All walmart stores in single brand retail in partnership with Bharti group are yet to turn black and keeps on accumulating losses. They need to pay a lot in getting a decent place in this high real estate prices.
Indians are big discount buyers and even if big brothers give huge discounts to get high footfalls, it will lose steam once discount is over. (In annual walmart discount sale in US, Indians are the one who stand in queue to enter like booking TATKAL tickets). So at the end they are not going to succeed.
Finally even FUTURE group under retail mogul Kishore Biyani is struggling to book profits and under heavy debts it sold pantaloon to Aditya Birla group. So odds are against them and no worry to Indian kirana stores and a happy ending for them.
How Indian federalism is threatened?
I was forced to write this article as i felt very disturbed with the latest round of geo political issues the country faces and it really threatens the existence of India as a whole.
The UPA government is grappling issues from across all sectors and i thought of highlighting them individually.
1.Indian Economy
With very high fiscal deficit, lack of political will for fiscal reforms, policy paralysis, crumbling GDP figures and IIP figures, etc,.. I don’t even see any place where there is sun shine. The scams from Coalgate to 2G spectrum is preventing the government from making any policy decisions.
2. Internal Security
Chidambaram who somewhat showed that he can make tough stance against terrorists by revamping the internal security mechanism failed to take state governments on board on NCTC as it somewhat appeared to be encroaching the authority of states. They must have better continued using POTA. Still Maoism and cross border terrorism is continuing unabated.
Coming to the recent ethnic clashes in Assam, BODO’s and illegal Muslim settlers from Bangladesh, the Government handled badly with local clashes spilling over and affecting the life of entire country. The Congress government is in dilemma to balance vote bank and national security.
We can’t feel pity on north eastern states for their plight, as it is self manufactured by them in late 80’s as they violently sent all the outsiders from their states and to stop the violence Indian air force bombarded its own cities. Since there was no free media those days we didn’t know. None ventured there to start any business and it soon became economically backward. The government should repel the acts such as only native state people can buy property in their states which is a handicap in Kashmir and the people can’t feel Indian if there is such acts. The oneness of India is absent in those places till that we will be split in various lines of ethnicity, caste, religion,etc,.
India Vs China : Reasons for the mismatch in Sports
We always lament our own Indians that they are not bringing enough medals from international tournaments, but we never realize that the root cause.
1.We Indians talk a lot but practically everyone sees it as a waste of time.
2.No one is encouraged for taking sports as a career option.
3. Chine is a big factory which produces products in a mass scale, similarly they train the machines (chinese athletes) with sole aim of winning medals.
eg: Their strategy in throwing games for easier fixtures in Q/F of london olympics
4. There is no factory in India like that. Even famed Kutraleshwaran who swam a lot disappeared from scene and he used sports quota just to get into Anna University.
5. Finally athletes have to overcome corruption, nepotism, scandals to come into limelight.
With many more ‘n’ number of reasons expectation is waste.
Data Pollution
We know different kinds of pollution but there is a new kind of pollution that doesn’t affect the environment but seriously hampers our ability to take decision. We can name it as data pollution. With cheap data storage devices we are lethargic in maintaining quality of data. Even though we strive to maintain quality of data in the warehouses through various control measures, still the volume of data is huge causing considerable amount of pollution.
Data pollution is caused by poorly formed data which is of less importance to humans. Recently we faced a similar problem where one user entered alias name for our currency as Indian rupee and another as Indian national rupee. The above mentioned is a perfect example of data pollution.
We BI people always take pride in fancy reports which we developed for people in the higher management. Suppose the same report displays the amount for a report based on the alias name of currency instead of currency codes definitely there will be amount mismatch which destroys the credibility of the entire report. The business impact varies based on the variation or difference in the amount values.
I think growth in volume of data is the only serious competitor to Moore’s law and reliability of data is very high these days and even the Indian government has to change its IIP (Index of Industrial Production) figures as there was data pollution causing huge embarrassment. So kindly takes steps to control pollution of data.
Kindly share your thoughts on how data pollution has corrupted your data.
Jayalalitha – The master
I see many people are critical about Jayalalitha but not with grand old Karuna which itself portrays the expectations of the people from her. I became a great admirer of her ever since the way she handled strike by Government employees when i was a teen. Time has kept rolling and she handles her adversaries in an iron hand manner. She can be called as a master strategist as every action of her creates more noise and atleast we can expect something in action instead of usual words. I accept the fact that Kudamkulam nuclear issue should have been handled with ease if she had taken firm steps at the initial stages. If i dig deep, its due to Paramakudi firing where she felt something is moving out of her hands. That fiasco made her to give in to the demands of anti nuclear protesters and they gained inital mileage.
But immediately after the Sankarankovil by election she took decision as expected and made Center to fall in line with the state demands which usually go unnoticed by the Centre in this federal system of ours. For me, its like everything getting into correct places and believe she will turnaround the state in remaining 4 years making the state power surplus and a budget without a deficit. She should bounce back like Modi again and provide a good governance with special emphasis on law and order, education and a outlook focusing long term benefits to the state.
The recent hikes in milk and bus fares should have been implemented in previous tenure of DMK and so people wouldn’t have felt the pinch in their pockets as there wouldn’t be any exponential increase. Lets see how the days are going to be in the coming days.
Impact of FDI in Retail in India
There is a lot hue and cry regarding the government’s policy decision to allow 100% FDI in single brand retail. But i guess there is an unwarranted buzz generated and government has to clear lot of misconceptions. To my opinion its good that they open up with clause stating that 30% has to be sourced from local people. Foreign investment in Retail may create a good supply chain relationship and network with the farmer able to directly engage with the retailer and may get a better price for his produce.
Currently the people in between, whom we call as brokers make a killing but systematic manipulation of prices and farmers never get a good price for their produce. But there should be checks to prevent a scenario where farmers are held in ransom by multinationals and threatening them by quoting low prices. We also face a situation where there is a possibility of market getting flooded with cheap chinese products and local producers will be left in lurch affecting the entire economy of our Country.
Competition makes the smaller traders to serve better with a smile to customers. Local Kirana stores will not lose out business as feared by people.
Dynastic Politics in India-The missing link
I was wondering why in India dynastic politics has become a routine affair. Right from national parties like Congress(known one) to regional parties like DMK, Rashtriya Lok Dal, NCP all have seen father/son or father/daughter kind of things. If the leader has an extended family then numerous power centers and each one of them competing to show who is great in controlling power. Lets come to the reason, India being a traditionally a Hindu country(other religions are converts from Hindus only) where you have numerous Gods and Goddess. I equate them to father figures but definitely they don’t have any qualities to be compared with Gods. Consider Lord Shiva and we worship her consort Parvathi and their children Karthikeyan and Vinayak. So we can see this as a first family of Siva and we the people or politicians have emulated this and say for example first family of DMK has Karuna holding the power and his extended clan from his sons like Stalin to grand nephews Marans hold numerous power centers.
Karuna's first family
First family of Lord Siva
Sudhans Thoughts and World 