Well it’s no big news that oil prices are on the rise. I guess it might even reach $200 per barrel soon if the price band suggestion is not implemented. This all is the technical gibberish which holds importance for us but is just not what we care about.
To tell the truth what I care about is how much I have to pay for any kind of public transport which includes buses, taxis and autorickshaws(according to Indian context). Main problem anyone would face would be with autorickshaws in India. Take my case for example, I used to pay around Rs. 30 to go to the Bus Depot(CMBT) from my house in an auto. That was about a month or so ago. Suddenly some days ago when I wanted to go there, I was being charged Rs. 50. I actually thought it was just this one guy trying to get more money but I realised that every single auto driver was charging the same price. The truth is that, the place is barely 3-4 kms from my house and I really don’t think 1 litre of petrol would be wasted for 3-4 kms even if its an auto. This shows how these people are having fun with the increase in petrol price.
When you talk about fuel prices you really can’t miss the rising inflation in India. Its like the latest hot topic. Wherever I turn to people are talking about how that inflation in India might actually cross 20% if the fuel prices don’t go down. Many things that are not related to fuel directly or even indirectly are increasing price giving a boost to the inflation. So my fellow Indians be ready to pay through your nose for anything and everything.
Photo of a autorickshaw
I am not going to go much into the detail how TATA motors bought Jaguar and Land Rover. I actually don’t care much about it. But the point I wanted to make was how cool the deal was. I mean look at it an Indian company owning two most recognized automobile brand. This is definitely more amazing than someone wasting as much money as India’s GDP to get some cars running. More on that topic later.
The deal was of around $ 2.3 billion which comes to around Rs. 9,300 crore. That is a huge amount considering that the company who bought these was a Indian company. They own all the intellectual property rights and factories which come under Jaguar and Land Rover. It seems they went with some agreement with the Ford Motor Corporation over this. That means they get the 3 factories owned by Jaguar and also 1500 workers with it. The Deal would officially be completed by the start of the next quarter.
Exciting thing here is that TATA, has now shown the world that India’s automotive companies’ capabilities are much higher and better than what the other countries expect. From what I see TATA may continue the manufacture of Jaguar and Land Rover in their respective factories and use the design ideas to build India specific cars. Importing the cars to India would be a costly affair which may be done for the rich and elite class in India.
I am a very lazy guy and once I am on PC I don’t like getting up and searching through newspapers to find something that I remembered. We get "The New Indian Express"(it’s the Indian Express for South Region) here at home, though it’s not very good it’s bearable.
So back to the topic, since I hate getting up I wanted to see if they have a online record for their papers and to my surprise they have a very good online e-paper which works quite well. You can visit it by going here. It seems to have most of the news from the newspaper. I thought this was useful to people like me so posted it.
I would start getting "The Times of India" once they start publishing their Chennai Edition. I hope they are better than the rest.
Published on February 14, 2008
in India and Misc.
I have been reading and watching a lot about the statement made by Raj Thackrey on this topic that Mumbai is only for Marathis and everyone else should just pack their bags and leave. I understand that he has said this just so that, he can create rift among the people and get more votebanks, but the worst part of it was the violence which has followed this. It reminds me of the Gujarat incident where all the events that took place where mostly because of the various parties that wanted to create a divide among the people to gain vote from people of specific religion.
Mumbai is like India’s New York(not visually), where there are people of varied ethnicities living together. The divide that these people create just ends up making people feel, that they are right and everyone else is wrong. Such feeling creates problems such as, these violent acts that have taken place in Mumbai in the last week. Claiming Mumbai to belong to a certain group of people is not correct. Though it may not hurt the Marathis living in Mumbai but the Marathis who live in North India and other places in India will be discriminated against just because, someone thought it would be fun to stir up the people. I have had many Marathi friends over the years and they have been very nice to me. I don’t think they would be the people, who would like to fight others just because they live in their city. I personally feel the statement by Raj Thackrey was wrong at many levels.
The problem does not lie with the people but the infrastructure of the city. Even a small city can accommodate many people, if the infrastructure of that city is good. If Raj Thackrey had genuinely wanted good for the city, he should have brought all the problems faced by a common man in the city to light. I don’t understand what happened to the country, where everyone was proud to be an Indian and believed that all Indians are their brothers and sisters. I believe that even though schools make children recite the pledge everyday, they don’t exactly explain it’s meaning in the school. It shows how our education system lacks many fundamental things. If a person who studies in school that, all Indians should be proud of the fact that they are Indian and should never forget that, he or she would never be part of such regional fight. But I guess even schools have played a big part in creating this regional divide. Children are not taught to be patriotic. I have come across many students who have a strong hatred towards the country, which in turn comes out in such forms. Even though people say our country is progressing, such events remind us of the bitter truth that Indians still haven’t exactly developed in terms of their mind set.
I saw on some news channel someone had said that anyone can live in Mumbai without knowing Marathi but no one can live in Chennai without knowing Tamil. I found this to be totally nonsense since when I came to Chennai I didn’t even know one word in Tamil but since my mother tongue(Malayalam) is similar to Tamil I was able manage. Here the thing to be noted is that, since Marathi is similar to Hindi anyone knowing Hindi can get his work done in Mumbai. But what about the person who doesn’t know Hindi and Marathi, he might never be able to communicate with anyone ever. Same way if a person doesn’t know Malayalam and Tamil or any other South Indian language for that matter; is it so that the guy won’t be able to live in Chennai. But to tell that truth nowadays even in Chennai you can get things if you know English or Hindi. There is a really large population of North Indian people in Chennai which makes it easy for an outsider to interact with people since you can ask every second person to translate something for you or help you. Even though Tamilians here have problems with people of other states, they are less vocal about it since the major businesses here have a huge contribution of these people .
I truly believe that all this is just total gutter politics. Anyone who divides the people of any place on basis of their religion, region, skin colour or anything else is just trying to make people fight among each other and get his work done.I hope politicians of my generation would actually bother about the country rather than their own personal agendas.
God save the country.
I have been in college for more than 4 months now and like many other college going students in India have been instructed not to carry a mobile phone with a camera into the college by our college authorities. I am one of those people who don’t care if we have a camera in our mobile but do need a good enough GPRS facility, nice resolution, JPG image support, mp3 ringtones and Java facility. So if you want all this you just can’t take a mobile to college because any mobile with these facility ends up having a camera, at the least a VGA camera. Since I am a internet freak I had one of these kinds of phones and I ended up loosing it to the college authorities(even though we are allowed to bring cameras into college). I really have no problem with that fact that they took my mobile phone and neither do I want to write blaming them because that will be too stupid. But I wanted to point out some details for people who might find this interesting.
Nowadays mobile phones as cheap as of Rs. 2500 and above have camera. But many high end mobiles don’t have them(not that we can buy them). 
Camera with a mobile phone is not a luxury now but actually a necessity according to many people. People demand it since many people use mobile phones as their primary camera. The way mobile has been developing I am sure the day is not far when mobiles phone will not be made without camera. All mobiles will have camera. I guess this would happen in nearly 5-7 years in India. I guess at that time they will just simply ban mobile phones in colleges.
Published on December 14, 2007
in India.
It seems Sania just can’t stay without being in trouble. It seems that she was recently again in trouble when she shot for an Advertisement inside Mecca Mosque in Hyderabad without permission. It seems she shot the Ad wearing jeans and T-shirt hurting the Muslim sentiments. 
This is not the first time that she has come under scanner by the Muslim Community. A fatwa had been issued earlier against her for wearing improper clothes. But it was proven to be wrong since that was the dress code of the game she plays. Well, it seems she can be in trouble for doing absolutely anything. Though trespassing is not being considered as a big deal but I must say it is a big issue. Police are saying its a petty case but I feel they are not looking at it as a whole. I mean how can anyone just barge into a religious place and do whatever they want. Though she has apologised to everyone regarding this, I would still say the case should be continued if not against her at least the Advertising firm since trespassing should be taken seriously. This was the statement issued by her:
‘‘It is with a deep sense of remorse that I would like to apologise to all my brothers, sisters and respected elders, who have been anguished by my entering a portion of the land belonging to the Mecca Masjid, while filming the Charminar with the intention of promoting the heritage monument. While I am fully aware that a woman must not enter the sanctity of the mosque, I was unaware that even entering the outside gates was seriously objectionable, specially without permission, which I was assured by the agency they possessed.”
This should be seen as a serious offence so that in future no other organisations go inside any religious places(Temples, mosques,churches and etc included) without proper permission of the authorities.
