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So not only is Laloonomics of khullar fame, bad economics and not liked by the potters, it is also environmentaly unsound and bad for marginal agricultural farmers.

Mig-21 beats F-15C which is considered best in its class.
It seems that American top gun schools will have to reinvent new training methods, because Indians using one of their lowest tech planes,i.e. modified Mig-21s beat F-15C. Similar thing happened when Indian Su-30ks were used. The best planes that India has Su-30mki, i.e. Indian modified sukhois were not even used in the exercise. See this item's bolded text for details on how well the avionics on Su-30mki have been modified.

Update: Another story See this link.

It seems that Shekhar Kapur's prediction has come true about 20 years before he said it would.
Spiderman in Dhoti





Indian entertainment industry is growing at rates of 30-40%, and Bollywood, the Indian film industry produces 1000 movies a year and outstrips hollywood by almost 3:1. Also, theaters worldwide sold some 3.6 billion tickets to Bollywood films last year, compared with Hollywood's 2.6 billion. Although, total revenues of Bollywood are still far behind Hollywood, with the current growth rates, Shekhar Kapur predicted that it is only a matter of time (a couple of decades??) before Indian entertainment industry overtakes Hollywood in revenue terms also.
Added
A link at GothamComics web site with more pictures and details

I met Dr. Ashok JhunJhunwala yesterday, as he had come to give a talk on his work. I must say that he is doing some excellent work back in India, and is really an inspiration. I and I believe everybody else attending the talk were really impressed by his work, his energy and sheer nationalism for India. He seems to have incubated about 10-12 companies from IIT chennai making some excellent products. I wanted to have a personal meeting with him today, but unfortunately my work kept me away. Hopefully, tomorrow I will get a chance to do so. Who knows something interesting may come out of it. Watch out for an update...

One of the interesting things that he talked about was how telecom market is exploding in India, with the mobile connections in India expected to be around 500 million,and broadband internet connections 100 million by 2010. Anticipating this Indian govt. is pushing for development of 4G technology in India to make India a leader in wireless technologies. Needless to say that Dr. Jhunjhunwala is involved in this.

If you notice the talk of reservations has died down in the newspapers. Nobody including politicians seem to be talking about it.

Also, as posted in one of the previous news items, a committee has been formed to look into it. A committee in govt. parlance means nothing will happen for at least next 2-3 years, if it happens at all.
My belief is that either nothing will happen, or an extremely harmless watered down act will be introduced, or a compromise will be made and social programs for improving the lot of backward castes will be started.

The reason for this is very simple ---The govt. has realized that the day it declares this policy, the very next day the stock market will tank, exchange reserves will go down by a $100 billion or more in a few days, foreign companies will threaten to pull out their investments or freeze them or delay them. Also, people like Bajaj, Ambani etc. have told the govt. in no uncertain terms that they would shift a large part of their new investment to China and other countries if that happens, and also possibly cut down the existing investments. Also, as BPO jobs and IT jobs will be cut, the golden era where each college graduate can get a job in the bigger cities will abruptly end, which implies a mandal multiplied by 10. No govt. can afford this mayhem, when anybody can easily see that when VP singh did something similar with govt. jobs, he did not gain anything in terms of number of votes.

By the way this will happen if it is done now, but because it seems like they will wait 2-3 years in the committee(if the govt. lasts that long), at that time it will be totally impossible to introduce such a law, because the Indian economy will be even further integrated into the global economy. So, if they even give a whiff of doing something like this 2-3 years from now, expect the above stated disaster multiplied by 5.

Added Later
Also, increasing influence of big business can be seen on the govt.. Ambanis, Malyas etc. all seem to be joining Rajya Sabha. India is getting into an era, where we will get the best govt. decisions that the money can buy. So, no need to worry about reservations.

P.S. These are my feelings on the issue, and only time will show what really happens. Ofcourse we will have to wait 2-3 years at the current pace for the committee to come back with a decision. :sleepy

So, GurcharanDas goes to present India to the billionarires club, and what happens? Do you agree with this?

Some interesting quotes from Sri Sri RaviSankar's article about Krishna.

Krishna also says in Gita that the religion/religious books only exist to spur you to start looking for the truth, and once you start on the search, the books become useless and should be thrown away.


For those who don't know Krishna was a philosopher king who gave hindus their formost religious book Bhagavad gita. He is also considered an incarnation of Vishnu the preserver of the universe

Another Good one by Talveen Singh
Previous one

Why Vajpayee deserves our respect

All right!! even I hadn't thought of this when I posted the Laloonomics Part I


Potters turn down daily order for 10,000 khulhads

You have got to read this article by Talveen singh. It is really really good.

I found out an interesting new term today. It is called Pigouvian tax The idea is to tax things such as pollution etc. to get the companies to take into account the cost of externalities that are not being paid for. The externalities may or may not be harmful to the society, but it has to be proven that they impose a cost on society that has not been accounted for. In our example the companies can internalize the external cost of pollution , and then the market forces should take care of reducing pollution. I think this is somewhat similar to the Kyoto idea, but need to verify that.

I found this term while browsing kuro5shin where I saw a new story at kuro5hin which talks about how advertising imposes such an unaccounted cost on the society.

You learn something new everyday...

Try this out --
a) go to http://google.com
b) type "Dishrag of India"
c) click on "I am feeling lucky"

watch the fun

Dean, to the physics department. "Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper."


Two strangers, a man and a woman, meet in a cafe. The man asks,
"My Dear, would you go to bed with me for a million dollars?"
"Well, yes, I guess I would."
"How about $100?"
"What kind of person do you think I am?"
"My Dear, we have already established that.
We are merely haggling over the price!"

Try arguing with this guy
A funny phone call

Also, see this

Warning: Audio link -- with lot of bad language in punjabi. But absolutly hillarious.... will have you in splits...
Only listen in Office if you have headphones. Only audio at the link. It has no video
Extremely funny.
By the way all punjabis sound like this when they are pissed off, so be careful and try to remain in their good books
As an Indian Punjabi I should know.
This summarizes it--
"Connection to hazaro hai Moblink jesa kohi nahi
Galiya to hazaro hai magar Zahid jesi kohi nahi."
You will know what it means after you hear the phone call

I always knew it, and now I have incontrovertible proof that Italians are Punjabis
As a Punjabi, I should know
< shameless-self-promotion >
P.S. Also visit my blog and comment -- Kautilya's blog
</shameless-self-promotion >

Why you should never put your picture on the Internet .. Very funny

Added later:
The abobve link has stopped working, so use this --
Click me

As you might already know, we have a new extra-constitutional authority in India. Yes, I am talking about Sonia. She is the actual PM and Manmohan Singh is just a puppet in her hands.

This has already been talked about in lot of places like --- Sonia's remote control and here Tips from Tiger on remote control

But, what I want to talk about is why this is really bad for the country. Ofcourse the problem would never have happened but for the sychophantic attitude of congressmen, who will not consider MMS as the PM, and everyhting will be done according to "madam-ji's wishes".

Sonia is the power center in congress, but let us say she choses to remain out of limelight. So, what would happen if MMS govt. gets to be successful? Suddenly MMS will be in the limelight, and she will be out of it. Given her insecurities, she will do something stupid, or wierd. She has done this before to Delhi govt. when shiela got too strong. Result, the only way things can work is if MMS govt. fails or is mediocre
The other possibility is that she remains in the limelight and everybody knows that she is the real PM, which is what is happening now. What then? My guess is people will soon be pissed off at her being the remote control and see through her drama of renunciation. She will probably not want that either, because she wants the image to be clean to save the "gaddi" or the chair for her son. So, she has an unsolvable dillema.
In any case we will have a govt. without accountability which will most probably be unable to perform well.
Also, In either case, unless MMS acts extremely strong or extremely weak, the govt. will probably not be able to function properly.

Let us watch the drama as it unfolds in the next few months. The honeymoon period of about three months that all govt.s get will be over soon, and then the fun should start.

For those who eat meat... funny...
Meatrix

So it seems Laloo is doing this now


here is what I think about this--
These "pro-poor" decisions can have the reverse effect that is sometimes not easily seen. For e.g. using home-spun linen, is good for the people who make it, but bad for the people who make non-home-spun-linen. So, what have you essentially done? you have done the following --
you have replaced the jobs of the machine operator by handloom guys. let us say you have replaced 1 job by 10. sounds good right? wrong...
This implies that the cost of home-spun linen will be much more then the factory made one. So, the railway will pay more for the linen. The only way this can be done is by --
a) taking money away from the expansion of the railways
b) increasing the ticket price
c) increasing the railway budget deficit.

So, which do you think is more likely in laloo raj? You are right it is c)
Is that pro-poor? well you are basically taking the money out of the hands of the public and spending it somewhere else. The only thing that has happened is transfer of money from the efficient hands of public to the rotting and inefficient beauracracy, and then to the handloom weavers.

You might argue, that you have created new jobs, so all that is ok. But, that is a fallacy, and overlooks the jobs lost due to --
a) less machine weaved clothes being produced
b) If the ticket prices are increased, then jobs are lost because whoever travels on trains will have that much less money to spend in the market. for e.g. multiply Rs 1 ticket price increase by 100 million passengers. Calculate how many jobs have been lost. you get the idea.
c) If the money is taken from budget for expansion, and expansion of railway is not done or is reduced, then the jobs are lost due to non-expansion. Even more due to slowdown in buildup of infrastructure. This will have a multiplier effect.
c) If deficit is increased, then common man has less money to spend, as govt. snatches away that money(taxes, inflation etc. etc.), and jobs are lost again. It does not matter which class of the society money is snatched from, rich or poor, jobs will be lost due to less spending. Also, the cost of industries to get money from the market increases, as the govt. will crowd them out due to deficit sepending(borrowing). And, jobs are lost once again.
d) High taxes and deficit will ofcourse increase inefficiency in the economy, which means lots of potential jobs lost.

So, yes visible jobs are created for handloom weavers, but many times more of the invisible jobs are lost due to increased inefficiency. When will these idiots like Laloo and environmentalists learn that jobs cannot be created by transfer of money, but only by increasing efficiency and productivity in the economy. But, then that requires an IQ level in at least double digits, and is too much to expect from these morons.
P.S. I also posted a slightly abridged version of this on India forum

Why am I suddenly calling for nationalism? Do I see any problems? Let me talk about this theory that I have.
A culture can absorb other culture's influences in one of three ways --
a) look down upon the other culture as something inferior, exotic to be tasted, learnt, de-linked and absorbed to remove all traces of origin in order to maintain the belief of superiority. OR to be totally ignored.
b) look up to the other culture as something superior. This results in absorption as supplicant, and thus in blind aping. This is what I see a lot of Asian countries doing, and have done especially the Asian tigers in blindly aping the west.
c) look right into the eye as an equal. This results in absorbing what you find good and absorb-able, without de-linking and removing the traces of origin.

Now, digressing a little bit India and China until about 1700-1750 AD controlled 70% of world's wealth which was far in excess to the proportion of their world population share . For comparison all of America's+Europe combined controlled about 18% -- slightly more then their world population share of 16%. Also, it seems before Mughal invasions of 1400s the riches proportion of India was even greater. So, what happened? Simple answer stasis.

The day we came up with the concept of "mlecha" was our doom. For those who don't know this implied thinking of foreigners and their culture as barbaric and backward. In other words we looked down upon other cultures and refused to learn from them. Today, after a long period of stasis, when we are emerging again I see signs of b), i.e. looking up and absorbing. This is still not as bad as some Asian tigers, but I think we have to absorbers as an equal.
That is why the call for nationalism...
More some other time...

This is the email I sent to Arun Shourie and Arun Jaitley. Hope they listen, and some of this is useful. Well, at least I tried

Dear Sir,
We the well wishers of BJP have been doing a lot of dicussion about BJP and its
comeback. And, since you are one of the dynamic leaders of the party, we thought
you might want to hear our thoughts. We humbly hope that we can provide a
unique perspective, and some of these ideas may be useful to you. If not, in
any case please accept our best wishes for the BJP comback. Below I have
included some links about the analysis etc. that we did, and proposals.

Regards and best wishes,


Links:

From Arindam Banerji:
http://www.vigilonline.com/reference/columns/vicharamala_view.asp?col_id=88
http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/may/27ariban.htm
http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/may/28ariban.htm
Our discussions and some other links --
http://www.india-forum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=371
http://www.india-forum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=321&st=210

I am very disappointed with the the current government formation in India. I mean look at the kind of ministers they have. For e.g. Laloo -- the less said the better, and Tamaludin is actually a murderer and kidnapper. And best of all CPI(m). I mean look at the bunch. The most fun part is that most of the parties supporting INC are the ones that fought the party tooth and nail in the elections.

Of-course another bogey that they have thrown out is the new call for reservations in private sector. If they manage to implement that, I think we are definitely screwed. How can India be made a meritocracy rather then a casto-cracy?

And, what is this with congress and dynasty? If they are in a democracy, why is it their own party is not democratic? All their decisions are always "unanimous" lol. And, what is this extra-constitutional authority Sonia? I mean who is the real PM? when foreign ministers totally ignore MMS and talk directly to Sonia?

What we in India need is meritocracy and democracy. And what do we have? The current bunch of politicians are trying to give us is casto-cracy, dynasty-rule, criminals as cabinet ministers and a puppet government. As a friend of mine put it, "Whenever I see MMS on TV, I almost want to move my hands above his head to see if there are any strings attached. :lol"

So, anti-outsourcing is pro-outsourcing? What is the world coming to?
Anti-BPO drive gives Indian firms $89 mn publicity

A report under preparation by New York-based market research firm Evalueserve, BPO to KPO —Business Process Outsourcing to Knowledge Process Outsourcing, has estimated that the Indian BPO companies have received free advertising worth about $89 million because of the anti-outsourcing campaign. The report is likely to be released in July.

Confirming the trend, more than one BPO company told Business Standard that there is a longer queue of American companies in front of their offices than ever before wanting to outsource work to India.

This is what I posted at the india-forum:
Part I
Some more thoughts on potential NDA strategy. This is more of a collection/summary of various things read on india-forum, new articles, and some ideas I proposed/am proposing. For the sake of brevity I am not going to acknowledge sources, but thanks to all whose ideas these were.

First thing to remember is that no single product can be marketed for all segments. What this means is that you have to have a different product for each segment, or at least the product has to be presented in a different manner to each segment. Look at companies like hindustan lever, they make soap using the same basic process, and either add a little bit of moisturizer or better packaging, different color etc. and successfully cater to very varied segments of the society.

The above is usable by a political party with caveats. A political party cannot be everything to everybody. If it tries to then it will loose product differentiation. This is so because a party is a single product company, only thing is that it markets differently to each segments. Another caveat is that the segments chosen should be related, so as they are easy to cater to without seeming like a party with no product differentiation. And, finally the total set of segments should be large enough to capture more then majority share of the market(vote). It should also be kept in mind that no issue should be such that it pisses off any one of the segments completely. Or if such an issue has to be chosen it has to be kept out of mainstream media, and only used in grassroot advertising.

The next step in the plan should be to identify what market segments you are going to concentrate on. Keeping it in mind the above two caveats, the following is my proposal--
a) strong nationalists
b) youth
c) middle class
d) other backward castes
e) significant part of sc/st/dalits
f) a significant segment of "intelligentsia"

It should be remembered that most of these segments can be further subdivided into i) hardcore supporters ii) fence sitters iii) hardcore non-supporters
The segments have been chosen with the criteria that i) and ii) should combined be the majority of the chunk, or have a potential to get there. So, for example sc/st and intelligencia have lot of potential if marketed to correctly, and nationalists are already big supporters. In the rest of the analysis, I will assume that our goal is to get hardcore bjp supporters and fence sitters for each segment(a to f) completely on BJP's side, and break away a significant chunk of non-supporters either to BJPs side or divide it up hopelessly, so that no other party gains.


Part II
Does this constitute enough of a market to get BJP to majority? I think it does.
What should me the main product?
I will come back to what I proposed before, i.e. bhartiyata, or nationalism with free market economy. But, after thinking about it a party is a multi-issue single product company, so we need more issues besides bhartiyta, and as long as they are related we will have product differentiation. what are those things? I propose the following --
a) Bhartiyata or nationalism
b) Dreams of a great future in a high tech Bharat.
c) Party of good governance
d) Party which is inclusive of all castes
e) Different from kangress, and has none of hollowness of kangress's structure --undemocratic, dynasty based, non-progressive, divisive etc. etc--

All of the above of-course require a very savvy media management


How will it work in different segments, or what will be the marketing strategy? Let us look at each segment...
a) hardcore nationalists -- bhartiyata will easily work as it directly caters to them
b) youth -- market it with a high profile campaign with dreams of hightech future
c) middle class -- Party of good governance
d) other backward castes -- inclusive part ... with great future
e) significant part of sc/st/dalits .. inclusive party + grass-root work/charity
f) a significant segment of "intelligentsia" ... hollowness of congress's sychophancy and dynatic rule

Different and innovative media should be used for marketing. Like TV/newspaper for youth/intelligencia/middle class., grass-root work for others etc.


The last part of the strategy should be about the market segments we did not cater to, i.e. muslims, hardcore dalits etc. These markets cannot be captured easily and trying to capture that will mean letting go of some of the core segments that BJP wants to cater to. So, if they vote due to some low level campaign like "universal civil code marketed to muslim women" etc. great, but never have any high profile mainstream media campaign for them.
So, the main strategy should be divide the votes for the non-bjp supporting segments across parties, and confuse them hopelessly about which party to vote for. In any case try to make sure that it is not kangress.

As a followup to my previous post Spirituality and Atheism, this is what I posted at blog:AnarCapLib in the discussion about spirituality

All the misconceptions in educated Indian's minds seem to come from assuming something about religion. The words "religion" and "God" are Abrahmic concepts and have really no direct meaning/translation in Indian philosophy.
Let me put it this way --
there are two forms of knowledge -- a) experiential and b) underlying reality.
That the sun rises from east is experiential knowledge, and does not change with the knowledge of underlying reality of earth going around the sun. When you find out the underlying reality of sun's motion, it simply changes the way you look at the world, and interpretation of the experience, not the stimulus of the experience.

Goal of Indian philosophy is similar. The goal is to show you the underlying reality and change the interpretation of the experience. Now, let us map this to Indian philosophy.

That mind is a huge associative machine and is always thinking/working, never being still, is an experiential knowledge which you can easily observe. Let us think of it as an ocean of thoughts with a lot of waves at the same time, where the conscious thought is the most dominant one. But the end result is that just like a noisy room, you are unable to see/hear beyond the most dominant thought(s).

Now, the Indian way is simply trying to answer and show you the underlying reality below the waves. The method is very obvious and simply wants you calm the biggest wave/noise source first, then the next biggest and so on until only the underlying reality remains. Only a will to experiment with your own inner mind is required. This will change the way you interpret the stimulus from the world around you, not the world.
P.S.
As a side effect it will also give you control of what you think, when you think it, resulting in more freedom. Would you want a TV without remote which shows you random channels? Well that is what your mind is -- it does what it feels like. Do this and you will get the remote.

This is my entry in wikipedia for God

God in exclusivistic religions
In exclusivistic religions like Christianity, and Islam, it is believed that the God has revealed a version of his message which is final and the only true message through a prophet or messenger. Most followers of exclusivistic religions also believe that their path is the only path to salvation ordained by God.

God in inclusivistic religions
In inclusivistic religions like Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism, it is believed that the followers of religion do not have an exclusive path to God. Followers of inclusivistic faiths believe that followers of other religions are equally correct and are just on a different path to the same destination.

This is my entry in wikipedia at the page for Religious conversions

Conversion in indic origin religions

Indic origin faiths like Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism do not believe in conversion as a form of religious expansion, even though they welcome anybody to join their faiths. The reason for this is the strongly held belief in these religions that "all religions are true and are only different paths to the same truth". The followers also believe that the religion you follow is to be chosen based on an individual's temperament, birth etc. Also, what would be very strange and foreign to non-indic origin faiths is that people can claim to be follower of multiple religions. For example in Japan which is influence by indic faith Buddhism, it is easy to find people who follow both Buddhism and Shintoism. It is also common to find people in India claiming to be both Hindu and Buddhists or Hindu and Sikhs etc. This inclusivism is in direct contrast to the belief that the ordained path in the book (Bible, Quran etc.)is the only true paths in exclusivistic faiths like Christianity and Islam. This inclusivism also makes any conversion unnecessary, and in fact some followers of Indic faiths consider conversion by allurement, money etc. that evangelists sometime use, as a form of violence and attack on personal religious freedom.

Want to Prosper? Then Be Tolerant

One of the rare articles in foreign mags praising India -- very interesting.
India is another example. It is the nature of the Hindu religion to be tolerant and, in its own curious way, permissive. Under the socialist regime of Jawaharlal Nehru and his family successors the state was intolerant, restrictive and grotesquely bureaucratic. That has largely changed (though much bureaucracy remains), and the natural tolerance of the Hindu mind-set has replaced quasi-Marxist rigidity.

In the last fiscal year India's GDP grew an estimated 8%, and in the third quarter, 10%. India's economy for the first time is expanding faster than China's. For years India was the tortoise, China the hare. The race is on, and my money's on India, because freedom--of movement, speech, the media--is always an economic asset.

There is and interesting discussion going on at a blog:AnarCapLib about atheism and spirituality. The way I see it spirituality has nothing to do with being theist or aetheist. Here is what I posted there:

Atheism is a great way to start on the path to truth. As long as your quest is for truth it does not matter where you start. The only condition is to have an open mind and search for the truth. In fact atheists are more rational and inquisitive and better suited. On the other hand, if atheism is just an excuse to not look for real knowledge, and just induldge in hedonism, then it is a completely different issue.

Now, I assume as an aetheist you are a scientific and rational person who believes in experimentation. Now, here is an experiment you can perform. Just sit down silently and try to focus your attention on your breath. You will find it nearly impossible to do it, because you mind will throw in a monkey wrench and you will suddenly start thinking about your work, itch on you leg etc.

You see our mind is always jumping from one thing to another, and never sits idle. It is a huge associative machine that never rests. So, would you like to discover what happens when you are able to calm down this jumping monkey, control it, and see what is it you experience? If you are of scientific bent, and always looking to experiment, question and experience, then try this experiment out. That is all that is needed to search for the ultimate truth. The goal is simply to see what is in our mind beneath the jumping monkey, everything else about meditative techniques is just detail.

Now where is any kind of belief involved here? Willingness to experiment, yes, but belief no way.