July 11, 2006
Mumbai Blasts, All major cities on high alert
Today has been one of the most tragic days as Mumbai was rocked by a series of seven blasts which happened on the Western Railway section all the way from Churchgate to northern suburbs of Mumbai. As many as 163 people have died and more than 450 injured. This is one of the worst attacks after the 1993 Mumbai blasts which left 257 dead. No group has yet claimed any responsiblity but these seem to be well-coordinated terror attacks.
Srinagar as well was attacked with five separate grenade attacks leaving as many as 8 people dead.
Ultrabrown has been covering the blasts with regular updates. Desipundit has some important information such as phone numbers in case of emergency.
A very sad day indeed. India has always been a soft target especially Mumbai where it is very easy to find a large crowd of people. The entire World has condemned the attack. All the major cities have been put on high alert. Even NYC transit system has been put on high alert. The pattern is very similar to the Madrid and London bombings.
Posted by Anuj at 05:20 PM | Comments (1)
February 28, 2006
GDP growth up for India, Bush visit
The Indian budget for financial year 2006-07 was released by the Finance Minister Mr. P. Chidambaram today in the Parliament. It looks like the economic growth is up 7.5 % and the GDP is likely to grow by 8.1% in the next year. Also there hasn't been any change to the Income Tax rates or slabs etc. Finally the middle gets some relief in this regard. But some consumer goods like AC's will cost more. All in all I guess it has been a good budget. But in my opinion it is a lot of factors which go into it. I mean the economy is already doing well and we had the sensex markets breaking records recently, so the budget really cannot promise more changes than what is necessary to keep the momentum going. But I guess there is always a class of people who are unhappy after every budget.
President Bush is also on his visit to India. He would also be visiting Hyderabad. I guess the situation in Hyd is chaotic. There is already a lot of construction going on. I guess all this would have to be somehow patched before he reaches there. He is also scheduled to visit the Indian School of Business (ISB). Everyone is viewing this visit with great enthusiasm. For me this visit is very political and also personal. India is now a key ally in this geo-political game. And since India is getting stronger economically by the day, I guess the need of the hour is to befriend this country than alienate it. Lets see what the outcomes are from this visit.
Posted by Anuj at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2006
Hearing India, Tasting India, Smelling India--India at WEF
"India Everywhere" was the focal point of this year's World Economic Forum held at Davos from Jan 25-29, 2006. India this time sent a delegation of 300 people with some of the top business and political leaders. In fact the agenda was to woo other countries to invest more into the fastest growing economy on the World.
This is a really good move. I guess we are slowly begining to come out of the shell and looking outside. As long as we keep our head and concentrate on the issues at hand, I am sure we should do well. A lot of this is because of the new breed of young politicians who don't mind taking risks. In fact we are known not to take risks. And also I remember one instance where a major leader pointed out that one problem that we have,is not taking criticism constructively. Rather we take it as an insult. In fact all of us are like that and we need to change that attitude. I guess this is slowly changing. I just hope that we continue to have this agenda and bring in more FDI.
Read a nice article on this issue in Knowledge@Wharton
Posted by Anuj at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2005
India Accelerating
A series of four very good articles on the modernization of India and the problems it faces in the coming decade have been highlighted in the "India Accelerating" series in The New York Times. Amy Waldman does a great job of moving around India for a month on the newly built Golden Quadilateral Superhighway, much like the Interstates here in America and visiting small towns and villages to really understand the essence of the culture and how the urbanization is affecting the common folk. It was interesting to note thata lot of westernization is taking place at the village level and this is because of more and more migration of workers to the urban cities. This is quite contrary to what people outside India think i.e. India is still a poor state with most of the people just uneducated and backward. But the article clearly brings out the fact that India is really accelerating from the grassroot level.
Some experts may argue that this is not really a good thing as we might be losing our culture in the growing western influence. I think otherwise because I know that our roots and ideals are pretty strong. But nevertheless we should only try to emulate the good things that another world offers to us, but still remain Indian in every way.
Here is the link to the four articles:
NY Times - India Accelerating, Amy Waldman
Don't forget to look at the interactive feature also. It gives you some good images of India.
Posted by Anuj at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2005
Indian Air Force-A Force to Reckon
This was taken from the Rediff.com article on the joint air-exercise between the Indian Air Force Pilots and the U.S. Air Force. Well the Sukhoi-30's were flown against the F-16's and apparently they did pretty well. Good job guys! Make us proud.....
--Vice Commander of the Pacific Fleet Lieutenant General DA Deptula said, "IAF pilots performed exceedingly well during the exercises which for the first time were being held in an AWACS environment." His top F-16's commander Captain Eathen White was more forthcoming saying, "IAF pilots were outstanding. We watched them very closely and have learnt a lot from them".-- From Rediff.com
See the images here : Rediff
Posted by Anuj at 06:09 PM | Comments (1)
April 10, 2005
Dr. Manmohan Singh-Time's 100 Most Influential People
Dr.Manmohan Singh is one among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. I think that's a great achievement. Read Dr.Amartya Sen's comments on the Indian Prime Minister here.....
Posted by Anuj at 05:10 PM | Comments (1)
February 26, 2005
What the HELL is going on here?
Well for starters, this entire thing about Saurabh Singh, the 15 year old from UP who "apparently" topped some International Scientist Discovery exam, which is "supposedly" conducted by NASA but has been denied by them, is all going haywire. The news said that that he has joined the illustrious list of "great" people like President Kalam and NASA astronaut Kalpana Chawla. But the President's office denies the President taking such an exam anytime. Now there have been reports that Saurabh did go to London at Oxford to write the exam, escorted by some Mr.Bansal of Bansal classes in Kota, Rajasthan, but then says that he has no proof of foreign travel. He was also told by "somebody" that President Kalam and Kalpana Chawla has taken the exam and stood seventh and twenty third respectively.
Now there have been a bunch of reports where the UP govt says that his certificate is fake, Saurabh saying that he took an Oxford University exam, his family saying that he did take the exam based on his foreign travel(which is ridiculous, for all anybody knows he could have gone abroad to do anything, and nobody clearly mentions if he DID go to write the NASA exam) etc. etc. etc.
Well one thing is for sure that Saurabh did take some exam but neither he nor his family had any knowledge of NASA NOT conducting such exams. I think he was fooled into thinking by the classes at Kota that he was writing some NASA exam. Kota is known to produce the maximum number of students who get into the IIT's. And it is I think for this reason that Saurabh was out there. But I think what might have happened is that a huge sum of money was taken from him and was promised that he would get into the IIT's. Most of these Institutes claim that. I know coz I have been through all this. But then I even read somewhere that people at the very institute claimed that he was NOT such a bright student. Well I guess that they thought that this publicity would get him a seat into MIT or something. Or I am probably suffering from paranoia and can't actually figure out what the hell's going on?????
Posted by Anuj at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2005
Ash and Oscars
Ash is all set to take over the world! She has been invited to present the Oscar. Read all about it here.
Posted by Anuj at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2005
Carly Fiorina gets $21million as compensation
HP's ex-CEO and Corporate America's top ranking woman Carly Fiorina was sacked from her job on February 9th for having "failed to live upto expectations". She was also paid $21 million as a compensation package and out of that $14.5 million is in cash. That's a huge sum of money, something difficult to even imagine. To read all about the story check out the following links:
BusinessWeek
Knowledge@Wharton
Fortune
Also the next in-line for the top post is an Indian born American Vyomesh Joshi aka VJ who has been instrumental in shaping the imaging and printing division of HP, which is three quarters of HP's revenues.
Posted by Anuj at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2005
Action Plan for Employment Generation
President APJ Abdul Kalam's speech on the eve of the 56th Republic Day of India. The title summarizes the points listed out in the speech, which calls for unified effort to reduce unemployment of youth in India. It also lists out schemes which could offer employment oppurtunities and also wealth generation and help India progress into a developing nation.
A must read !
Posted by Anuj at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)