SINGH & CO GETS LISTED, FINALLY

THE “availability of talent” and “other considerations” were the key reasons why it took Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Congress leadership to finalise the council of ministers. In the end, Mr Singh described his 78-member council, as a “mixture of experience and energy”. Referring to the delay of nearly a week, Mr Singh said there was a need to be thorough. “Picking a Cabinet is a thorough exercise,” he said.

Elucidating, Mr Singh said there were several considerations while making the choice, which included the “availability of talent”. Discussing the reasons why there was no representation from Uttar Pradesh in his 38-member Cabinet, Mr Singh referred to “availability of talent” and “other considerations”. Several members of the previous Cabinet have been dropped. Sidestepping queries about the exclusion of senior members like HR Bhardwaj and Arjun Singh, the prime minister said: “There were other avenues of public service.” Indicating that the efforts would be made to accommodate senior party leaders who had been left out in his council of ministers.

Meanwhile, Congress president Sonia Gandhi reiterated the prime minister’s stress on performance. Virtually putting the newly-inducted party ministers on notice, she suggested that they either perform or perish. “Some of those who are inside can make way for others,” Ms Gandhi said. At the meeting of the Congress parliamentary party, Mr Singh had told Congress MPs that people expected a more efficient government and that “business as usual” will not do.

The following is the complete list of the Union Council of Ministers and their portfolios: MANMOHAN SINGH: Prime Minister,general administration, personnel, atomic energy CABINET MINISTERS Pranab Mukherjee: Finance AK Antony: Defence P Chidambaram: Home SM Krishna: External affairs Kapil Sibal: HRD Anand Sharma: Commerce & industry Mamata Banerjee: Railways Kamal Nath: Roads GK Vasan: Shipping Sushilkumar Shinde: Power Murli Deora: Petroleum A Raja: Telecom, IT Vilasrao Deskmukh: Heavy industries, PE Virbhadra Singh:Steel Dayanadhi Maran: Textiles M Veerappa Moily: Law Ambika Soni: I&B Sharad Pawar: Agriculture, consumer affairs, food & PDS Kumari Selja: Tourism, housing Pawan Kumar Bansal:Parliamentary affairs Ghulam Nabi Azad: Health S Jaipal Reddy: Urban development Vayalar Ravi: NRI affairs Meira Kumar: Water resources BK Handique: Mines, northeast development CP Joshi:Rural development, panchayati raj Farooq Abdullah: New/renewable energy Mallikarjun Kharge: Labour MS Gill: Sports, Youth affairs Subodh Kant Sahay: Food processing industries Mukul Wasnik:Social justice Kantilal Bhuria: Tribal affairs MK Azhagiri: Chemicals & fertilisers MINISTERS OF STATE WITH INDEPENDENT CHARGE Praful Patel: Civil aviation Prithviraj Chavan: S&T & also MoS in PMO, parliamentary affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal: Coal, statistics and programme implementation Salman Khurshid: Corporate affairs, minority affairs Dinsha Patel: Micro, small & medium enterprises Krishna Tirath: Women and child development Jairam Ramesh: Environment and forests MINISTERS OF STATE Shashi Tharoor: External affairs Preneet Kaur: External affairs Ajay Maken: Home Mullappally Ramachandran: Home NN Meena: Finance SS Palanimanickam: Finance MM Pallam Raju:Defence Jyotiraditya Scindia: Commerce & industry Gurudas Kamath: Telecom, IT Sachin Pilot: Telecom, IT E Ahmed: Railways K H Muniyappa: Railways Jitin Prasada: Petroleum D Puran Deswari: HRD Srikanth Jena: Chemicals & fertilisers Saugata Ray: Urban development V Narayanasamy: Planning, parliamentary affairs Panabaka Lakshmi: Textiles A Sai Prathap: Steel Harish Rawat: Labour KV Thomas: Agriculture, PDS Bharatsinh Solanki: Power Mahadev Khandela: Roads RPN Singh: Roads Dinesh Trivedi: Health S Gandhiselvan: Health Sisir Adhikari: Rural development Pradeep Jain: Rural development Agatha Sangma: Rural development Sultan Ahmed: Tourism Mohan Jatua: I&B Dr S Jagathrakshakan: I&B Mukul Roy: Shipping D Napoleon:Social justice Tusharbhai Chaudhary: Tribal affairs Arun Yadav: Sports, youth affairs Prateek Patil: Heavy industry & PE Vincent Pala: Water resources

wordle

Previous week while surfing I came across a wonderfull word jumbling website- wordle.net and thought of sharing it.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

A voter in search of a candidate

Past few weeks we can see election fever everywhere, candidates busy in campaigning and the party members busy arranging rallies here and there and everywhere in the country. This is toughest time for the ministers and candidates as they have to wander in this hot summer in rural areas to vow the public, making baseless promises to people to get vote.

This time the elections were not the same as earlier, as many NGO and student community comin forward and aspiring people to vote; more focused towards the younger generation. We can see many campaign and cartels made to promote people to vote for elections like vote for India.

One of the funniest thing in the election season is that we can see the amazing creativity of the cartoonists with there state of art sculptures in the newspapers and magazines depicting some of the ministers and candidates, have I mentioned the blaming game where the members of the either party blame each other for the any damn mis-happenings, rising prices, terrorists attack, bla bla bla…. (Lot more). The opposition need just a small reason where by something goes wrong to pull the leg of the ruling party and to highlight the issue as the main election agenda. Also the candidates make some funny comments on each other.

Recently a new trend has emerged after the shoe attack on George bush, that is shoe hitting. The trend is so popular that it has been tried on some of the renowned ministers in India like Manmohan singh, L K Advani, P Chidambaram. The ministers have got shoe-phobia these days and while giving speech in public gathering they are more focused and cautious on the shoe thing rather than the speech.

Today the campaign are emphasizing people to vote; despite of all campaigns and the awakening messages, there were less than 50% of voter casting vote in Mumbai itself. There is a reason behind this- Are there right candidate worth to vote for? Most of the politicians are having criminal cases on them, the rest are corrupt, other are so old busy to get treatment for themselves rather than treating the illness of the country, one candidate only wants to hang Afzal Guru, another is bothered about India's unused uranium deposits, someone else is worried about security, the other about defence deals and yet another about corruption or rather, corrupt people in politics and yet other want to bring back the Indian money from the swiss account. For some, it's not clear what exactly they represent. Some of these issues are important and others do not really fall under the umbrella of influence which an ordinary MP has.

Do we have candidates who truly represent us, no matter how diverse, different, intelligent, silly, emotional, irrational, scientific, religious, greedy, rich or poor we are? Yes, there are times when we vote for or against this or that party because some party appeals to us and some parties fill us with loathing.

The people have lost their faith on the Indian politics system. It's become a bit of a downer as a voter. You can't, it seems, really go by the candidate. And, as it happens according to surveys, 60 per cent of the electorate knows that -- it votes by party. There is a tendency of the people to vote for the particular party, without knowing the candidate. They should know the candidate and vote for the right candidate rather than voting for the party.

Under these circumstances, the search for the good candidate has left me flummoxed. There is a need of overhauling in the current political system in India and more and more young generations to take participate in the political system and contribute towards the country. As together we will and we can lead to a prosperous country and developed nation.

S.Africa set to earn a billion rand

The Indian Premier League (IPL)cricket tournament will bring an expected investment of about 1 billion rand (100 million U.S dollars) to South Africa, as said by the South African President Kgalema Motlanthe at the tournament’s opening ceremony in Cape Town. IPL is providing 10 million rand (1 million U.S. dollars) in scholarship funds for 300 students and 32 schools.
“Together, we formed the greatest partnership so that India, Brazil and South Africa could stand together and navigate a path through the unpredictable waters of globalization.”Motlanthe said choosing South Africa to host the tournament was a “tremendous vote of confidence”, but also inspired serious reflection.Nevertheless, he said choosing SA as a host showed confidence in its ability to host the IPL, the Confederations Cup and the 2010 FIFA World Cup.“It is a vote of confidence in our facilities, our telecommunications capability and our cricket-loving fans who have already snapped up all the tickets for the IPL matches.
Motlanthe said the unique aspect of the IPL tournament was that it meant some opponents now became teammates and vice versa.“In entertaining us, the IPL teaches us this important lesson in life: no task is too big, no problem is insurmountable, no disagreement or rivalry is permanent, and every challenge is an opportunity to demonstrate our character and resilience,he added.

The present financial crisis explained in simple terms.............................

One-eyed-Gordon is the proprietor of a bar in London. In order to increase sales, he decides to allow his loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later.

He keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood into One-eyed-Gordon's bar. Taking advantage of his customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, One-eyed-Gordon increases his prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. His sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases One-eyed-Gordon's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for undue concern since he has the debts of the alcoholics as collateral. At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager (subsequently of course fired due his negativity) at the bank decides that the time has come to demand payment of the debts incurred by the drinkers at One-eyed-Gordon's bar. However they cannot pay back the debts. One-eyed-Gordon cannot fulfill his loan obligations and claims bankruptcy. DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by 80 %.

The suppliers of One-eyed-Gordon's bar, having granted his generous payment due dates and having invested in the securities, are faced with a new situation. His wine supplier claims bankruptcy and his beer supplier is taken over by a competitor. The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties. The funds required for this purpose are obtained by a tax levied on the non-drinkers.

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An entry after so long……. (Not so long actually) these days I was a bit busy ( donno for wat but stil) freakin out here n there wid some friens, shiftin from places to places findin a nest for myself….

life sometime become so exuberant that we don wanna lose a single moment of lyf and zzzzzzuupp yet another moment suddenly things come to be so ho hum n lyf become slow and tedious that one goes away from it in the state of self realization. Mind rotates like a pendulum of the clock over very petty issues.

Don’t we think that the recession and the global depression has a reversal effect on over lives, people are losing jobs many people are unemployed. People in USA are attempting to suicide due to job loss or unemployment. New graduates are not getting jobs. People who are employed are having fear of cost cut and severe pressure.

Every now n then we read the articles in the news paper based on the recession, slowdown, depression, job cuts... n in the business or economy section. And not to mention the economic times the paper is full of such articles (people suffering from high blood pressure be cautious reading such news paper….. lolz) as daily or alternate days we can find the big blue chip companies announcing the job cuts, declining growth rate, etc. so here life goes on oscillating between slowdown and recession.

Cheers people the story is not so sad at all at this time the banks are decreasing the bank rates, plr to infuse more money into the system and to increase the purchasing power of the common people. RBI has continuously decreased the crr, slr, reporate during the last 6 months and the government is trying its best to cope up with such situation. Also the oil prices are decreasing after decades, which are having cascading effect on some economies. The inflation rate is about zero; soon our country will see deflation after so long when last it was there in 1975.

On the other side the companies are goin through a stage of consolidation whereby the fittest would survive the top management is busy plannin some good strategies and revive the plans for the companies. In this race the competitive people will survive and the nonperformers would be left besides. The good news is that the companies are becoming more though to be prepared for any such drive henceforth.

The show has not ended, still the worst part is yet to come so be prepared, experts say the slowdown will have its impact uptill end of 2009 and may be extending to 2010.

Slumdogs Are No Underdogs

The laurels that A. R. Rehman, Gulzar & Resul Pookutty brought to India at the centrestage of the Academy Awards function have enthralled every conscious Indian. We may have had loads of criticism against the portrayal of India's poverty and wretched condition of life of its slum-dwellers in this movie, but we cannot detach ourselves from dousing in the celebration for the victors who are very much Indian.

This is not the end of the story; India have once again proven her worth in another field - banking. Our very own State Bank of India (fondly known as SBI) have superseded Citigroup's market capitalisation to be among the largest banks in the world. The market capitalisation of SBI on Friday closed at Rs. 66,285 crore. This is around 25% more than the closing market capitalisation of Citigroup on the NYSE on Friday. The market capitalisation of Citigroup was Rs. 52,931 crore.

Though Citigroup's revenue in the last four quarters is almost eleven times more than the revenue earned by SBI, its profits are nowhere near the figures earned by SBI. While Citigroup has suffered losses of Rs. 83,474 crore in the last four quarters, SBI has booked profits of Rs. 8,262 crore. Martin Hutchinson, an economic commentator, recently put out a list on the status of the 12 largest banks in the US. He categorised Citi as a zombie bank. “Citi has been a serial flirter with bankruptcy over the past 30 years and remains a basket case,” he wrote.