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The stock market crash is like rains. There is no respite no matter who you are, and irrespective of your wealth and social status.
The similarity though ends here. The impact of loss – notional or real – is different for different people.
So while the Ambani brothers can face some trillion rupees loss with no more than just a shrug, for millions of others even a lakh rupees loss can be immeasurable.
Howsoever I may wish that the tide will turn soon there is no relief in view. The torrent of bad news continues to come abated to which the latest addition is the possibility of a general election taking place by year-end.
In times such as these a resilient economy comes to rescue. But that too seems doubtful especially, as experts say, because of high international crude price and the rate of inflation arising thereof.
The picture is however not that gloomy for all. In fact for some people the last several years of spectacular economic performance has been a great boon. There has been a spurt in the number of high net worth individuals or the HNIs.
Sometime back a co-passenger in the Metro coming from Hyderabad was narrating his surprise when he found there were no 3-wheeler autos at the filling stations. [Picture courtesy, TT]
His surprise was justified because after all many city roads are clogged with them, which meant that there must be many thousands that plied on the road every day.
I told him the reason, and he nodded saying that he soon discovered that the autos fill their tanks from clandestine roadside shops. Sooner thereafter he also found out that the fuel the autos used was an admixture of petrol and some other fuel.
It takes no special brain to conclude that the typical admixture is not a lab tested product. This likely means that when the fuel burns during combustion when the autos run, it leaves behind ‘residues’ that are highly toxic and detrimental to health.
Today’s TT reports that the green bench of the Calcutta High Court has agreed to hear on July 18 the subject of auto pollution as a separate case. This is in response to a plea by Subhas Dutta, the noted environment activist.
The TT news informs that Calcutta’s annual average RPM (respirable particulate matter) count is about 105 micrograms per cubic metre, 45 micrograms above the permissible limit of 60 micrograms. Even the state government has admitted that air pollution kills at least 10,000 people in Calcutta every year.
According to activist Dutta, as per report of the Central Pollution Control Board, 50 to 70 per cent pollution in any of the metros across the country arises from auto emission. In Calcutta, the pollution caused by autos is the worst in the world.
If these are true, you may think, then how the hell do autos still run the way they do every single day. By creating air pollution, are they not causing slow death to millions of people?
I’d say you’re too naïve to think so, because in many aspects Kolkata bears similarity with the despotic ways some African countries are ruled where what matter are just the wills of ruling warlords.
To support my argument let me quote from the article ‘Autos you ride fill CITU kitty’ in June 8 issue of the Hindustan Times’ Kolkata Live.
An auto-rickshaw driver on the Ruby-Hiland Park route along EM Bypass said: “It doesn’t matter which political party you support. If you want to ply on this route, you will have to pay the unions a certain amount of money everyday. Otherwise, you will not be allowed to operate on the route. The unions demand a hefty amount when you enter the route. The union members will also take your vehicle when there is a political meeting to transport their cadres or anytime when they need it. But, you will not get any money for that.”
Let me sum up. Though the rights and safekeeping of life and property of the people of the country are guarded by the Constitution, they are effortlessly flouted by a section of people who care for nothing else but their own selfish unlawful ends.
These people have taken law into their hands even as the law keepers look elsewhere.
For the government the picture is bleak on all fronts – the relentless northward march of the inflation, the ugly stand-off with the left on the nuclear deal, and the inability to plunge for elections because of heavy odds stacked against it [Image above from TT].
The inflation is high for many reasons. Experts say one of the main causes is high economic growth because of which a section of populace is flush with money to spend on whatever they wish to.
This has resulted into strong demand for items like steel and cement and has gradually spread into similar demands for other commodities.
Economists opine that inflationary pressure is a pain that is inevitable at early stages of economic growth. This time the skyrocketing international crude price has added fuel to the price-rise fire.
As if these are not enough, the Indian rupee is also sliding against US dollar, and in fact the RBI reported a whopping dip in FE reserves by $4.96 billion in the week ended June 13 presumably because RBI wanted the rupee not to breach the 43-mark against the dollar (ref: ET, June 21).
Turning to nuclear deal, the scene is getting murkier by the day. The equations among political parties at the center are rapidly changing even as the 2 principal opponents, the Congress and the Left, are circling around the final push whatever that is.
Mirroring the all-round negatives, the stock market too has plunged so deep that all the money one made till December last by holding stocks has evaporated into thin air.
Given these conditions, what are the likely future courses? Let us look at certain important issues.
For one what is notable is that even though the prices of many items have indeed increased those of food items more or less remained stable. This is a good sign because people can curtail other spending but not food.
Second, the rains are good so far and expected to be so. If that happens, chances are the inflation monster can be controlled by the time the festivities start in October.
Third, in sharp contrast to India Shining campaign by the previous regime, the government this time is actually trying to improve the conditions of the rural poor like the 100-day employment scheme. It remains to be seen though as to how the Congress party can translate these pro-poor actions into votes.
Fourth, whatever the Left and the principal opposition party say, the nuclear deal is supposed to be good for the country if only because it has gone through so much close debates that it will be suicidal for the government to pass it through if it has serious lacuna as the BJP says.
Besides, countries like Russia have openly said the deal is good for India. Experts say that similar pact between US and China doesn’t have many leeways that US has agreed for India.
If the nuclear deal succeeds, it has the probability of attracting huge investments in the infrastructure sectors that can catapult India’s economy by leaps and bounds.
True, many of these investments will be by US behemoths, which is perhaps why the Left parties are so much against the deal. Maybe they feel that too much US presence may wither away whatever influence they have in certain pockets in the country.
Summing up, elections look imminent toward the end of the year. The government will not announce elections unless the spell of good monsoon – should that occur – is over and the inflation is somewhat under control.
If an announcement is made in September, count 45 days from then. And we’ll see the electoral slugfest for ruling the country once again, about the same time the US elects either John McCain or the talented young Democrat, Barack Obama as its next president.
The monsoon just arrived but already it wreaked havoc. The rains took a heavy toll last week as it lashed with tremendous ferocity across the state, and battered the normalcy of life out of shape.
Unsuspecting people who thought the deluge was temporary and would soon stop paid price loosing their dear belongings, and even lives in some cases.
Stats say that in the past 2-3 days many places received rainfall that they normally get in the whole of a monsoon month. Rivers have swollen inundating large parts in South Bengal, and later in the north of the state as well.
The rail link between Kharagpur and Bhadrak has suffered extensive damages, because of which all train services including those going to Chennai, Secunderabad, and Bangalore have been suspended.
Rarely has a year passed since last several decades that Bengal hasn’t suffered the flood fury. Yet surprisingly the steps for improving the canals, dams in the villages, and drainage systems in towns have been awfully inadequate.
In Kolkata, areas like Behala and Bangur are notorious in turning out as the catchments of filth and stagnated water of surrounding places. It remains that way for the entire duration of monsoon.
It’s not that money doesn’t pour in for doing things that can change life for better. For example, a central government funding under the JNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission) scheme is providing money for improving the drainage system throughout the city.
But will that really give succor to the sufferings of the people? This as ever remains the million-dollar question.
Meanwhile in the countryside the fury of flood has already begun to heap untold misery on the people. The danger to life and property is too real for them to even think of other losses like missed opportunities, lost business, and suchlike.
One hopes normalcy returns soon, and people can resume their daily activities.
According to beliefs Bengal has the singular distinction of ’33 crore’ gods and goddesses that are worshipped. Okay it’s only a metaphor to describe just how many heavenly superpowers rule the minds of the people here.
Which is one reason why there is no dearth of religious celebrations that take place all through the year. The terms ‘utsav’ and ‘mahotsav’ aptly apply to them according to their importance (utsav means festival, and mahotsav means even bigger festival).
There are quite a few non-religious festivals too, like blood-donation utsav, frequently occurring fairs of different hues, and so on. To that I’ll add ‘the admission utsav’.
I happened to be going around various city colleges seeking admission for my son. And I was surprised to see sort of carnival-like atmosphere in the famed ones, such as Presidency College and Asutosh College, and to a lesser extent Jadavpur University, where present students poured out in large numbers to assist in form submission.
Many colleges made it really simple to apply for the honors courses – rightly so in this age of computers and broadband.
Among them ranked Xaviers, Scottish Church, and the real surprise, Heramba Chandra College (or South City). For these 3, one only needed to submit form online and pay the fee in designated banks….no other hassle.
Presidency College was halfway like the 3 above. The difference was that the fee had to be paid in the college itself, and that meant quite a journey for many staying far off.
I did that and noticed students from rival unions camping there and doing mundane things like guiding the people and selling earlier years’ question papers.
However it was pretty fast at Presidency, but the situation at Asutosh College was decidedly cumbersome and grueling to say the least.
The process there commenced with buying bank pay orders for application fees from only a few designated banks (wonder why..!). This took me one and a half hour.
I then stood in a frighteningly long queue spending over 3 hours on June 9 in the afternoon to submit applications.
Meanwhile, as people like me proceeded ant-like in the queue, the students in their zeal to assist form submitters, blocked off the pavement in front of the college. Maybe the idea was to ensure that the queuing people faced no problem.
In effect though, the whole thing resulted into huge melee that was made worse by students. They stood on benches yelling out instructions. I could see their labor helped little but perhaps added more to chaos. All in all, a picture of perfect mismanagement.
Jadavpur University fared better, and so did the RKM colleges in Belur and Narendrapur.
As such the number of colleges offering UG courses is less than what is required to cater to all qualifying students. That being so the colleges can at least ensure that the form submission process is made simple and fast.
The trauma of trying out at different colleges is too real to ignore. It’s time that colleges wake up to this reality.
Khushwant Singh is an opinion maker par excellence. You may disagree, decry or even reject outright what he says, but you cannot take away the charm and lucidity of his writings.
It often wonders me that Khushwant Singh at 93 still has his mental faculties intact, and perfectly capable of sound reasoning. In that capacity he of course has the august company of luminaries like Jyoti Basu and Russi Mody.
It seems to me that The Telegraph has a pact with the nonagenarian sardarji according to which he will write weekly columns for the paper unto death. If so, it gives the readers a rare glimpse into what and how a person thinks as he marches toward the century mark.
I like reading mostly all that he writes, but sometimes a piece or two look extraordinary to me by their sheer strength of clarity.
Here is one that deals on the perennial debate of vegetarianism versus the opposite. Khushwant speaks his mind that incidentally is ‘my mind’ as well. I excerpt the full article from The Telegraph.
Eat Flesh And Be Merry
The practice of killing an animal or a bird just because its flesh tastes better than vegetables is morally inexcusable. You have to see goats being slaughtered in Calcutta’s Kali temple or the throat of birds being slit at Kamakhya temple in Guwahati and your stomach will churn in disgust.
You will swear never to eat meat again. Whether it is halal or jhatka: taking life is butchery, not sacrifice. Nevertheless, the vast majority of peoples round the globe are meat-eaters. Vegetarians and vegans (those who refuse to consume animal products like egg, milk, butter, cream and honey) are eloquent about the harmful effects of having a non-vegetarian diet. But they have to face a few awkward facts.
Let me spell them out.
Vegetarianism is not in the order of nature. Apart from ruminants like cattle, sheep, goats, deer, horses or donkeys, which eat grass and elephants, which eat leaves, all other species of animals, whether they be canines (of the dog family, such as wolves, foxes, jackals and the like) or felines, (like cats, tigers, lions or leopards) live by eating ruminants.
Every other creature in the food chain, such as birds, reptiles, insects and fish, lives off eating each other. This is the ‘tooth and claw’ pattern of survival ordained by nature. It is nature’s way of controlling over-breeding among animals.
About 90 per cent of the human population are flesh-eaters. There are regions where no vegetables can be grown and people live entirely on meat or fish.
Humankind eats a baffling variety of life: cattle, birds, pigs, deer, rats, dogs, monkeys, snakes, fish, frogs and insects. Some religious communities are selective non-vegetarians. For instance, Muslims would not eat pig flesh, Hindus and Sikhs do not eat beef.
It is often maintained by vegetarians that their diet is healthier than the non-vegetarians’. The argument is not sustainable. Meat and fish are easier to digest than many vegetables.
The ideal balanced diet is a mixture of meat and fish, with vegetables like beans, tomatoes, peas or potatoes.
Meat-eaters are sturdier than vegetarians. They manage to live longer. Vegetarians often say that the strongest creature in the animal kingdom is not the lion, the designated king of beasts, and a notorious non-vegetarian, but the elephant, which lives on foliage.
Perhaps a fitting answer to this asinine argument would be that even the mighty pachyderm is tamed to obey a mahout, who sits on its head and prods it with a stick to make it kneel, stand up or raise its trunk.
But no man has yet sat on a lion and ordered it to do his bidding. If he tried, he would soon find himself in the lion’s belly.
Yesterday, as the ruling party cadres enforced bandh on the street, I stayed put at home, destined to watch occasional passers-by hurrying along, braving the heavy downpour.
Later in the day when the rains stopped for a while, a small cacophony coming from outside caught my ears. I came to my 3rd floor balcony and located the source of noise when I found a group of girls playing ‘chu kit kit’ in a small dry path adjacent to our flat.
Chu kit kit is a game where when the turn comes, a girl holds her breathe and jumps single legged across large adjacent squares which they draw on the ground with pieces of charcoal or some such markers. If the girl misses her breathe or missteps on the squares, she is ‘out’ and will have to wait for her turn after the others have had theirs.
As it usually happens, quarrels ensue pretty often as to whether one is really ‘out’. This time a girl was loudly protesting her dismissal, “I told you before….told you before.” Apparently, the girl had said she was to take a break standing on one leg which others denied.
Strangely, I find the girl’s childlike protest echoing in the voice of CPM state secretary in today’s TT (June 6, 2008). It’s okay for the small girl; she is a child after all. But can one expect a childish sameness from the state secretary of CPM?
He is quoted as saying:
I am requesting Mamata Banerjee to call off her bandh. We would have supported her if she had called a bandh before we did.
He also says considerately:
We waited for 40 minutes after the oil price hike was announced for other parties to declare their protest moves.
So kind of him, but one can’t help laughing at his statements. It indicates the mindset of a senior politician who takes pride in being double quick in calling the bandh he did before the opposition parties could.
To him it perhaps means very little to have inconvenienced millions of people with his clarion call yesterday.
Mamata Banerjee of course cannot digest the slight of failing to make it first. So she calls ‘her bandh’, so termed by Biman Bose, today. This is what she said:
If the CPM calls a bandh despite being in the government, should we, the Opposition, suck on lozenges (labenchus chusbo in Bengali)?”
No prize guessing right why Bengal lags behind many states in nearly all spheres of development.
Some diehard XP lovers, Rob informs, loathe seeing Vista taking over the mantle. A ‘Save Windows XP’ campaign has so far seen 206,016 users (as of this writing) urging Microsoft to offer XP indefinitely. If you want to join the campaign, do so before June 30.
It’s obvious that many people really get the benefits they desire from using XP. I do too, yet I do not harbor any special love for the Windows operating systems, except for the fact that I cannot do without it since most software I have run on it.
Here is the dilemma for many computer users like me.
On one hand you are told, and maybe rightly so, that the Mac experience has no parallels. On the other, you have practically very few options to wriggle out of Windows’ control any time soon.
True, you can possibly run Windows in Mac environment, and yes for many routine office works you have splendid Mac choices, but do those solve all the problems? My answer is ‘not really’.
I’m not alone in thinking so. I recall a video (below) 2 months back in which Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome explained why he wants to switch back to XP from Mac OS X. Guess there are many like him.
If Chennai and Bangalore – sorry, Bengaluru – have the privilege of central government’s participation for the construction of Metro links, why should Kolkata be deprived of that? So inquired Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, the I&B minister at the center, in today’s Cabinet meeting in Delhi.
The Cabinet approved the East-West Metro project by permitting formation of SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) for it but not before some stiff opposition from Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson, could be overcome.
The East-West Metro will be the first in the country that will run under a river, River Hooghly. In fact the existing Metro from Dum Dum to Tollygunge – now being extended to Garia at the southern end, and being planned for extension to Dakhshineswar at the northern end – has been the first ever in India.
Mr. Dasmunsi ears many hats. He is the Congress Party chief in Bengal, and also the chief of AIFF (All India Football Federation), the controlling body of football in the country.
There are doubts as to how he can do all the works with equal aplomb, but in India examples are many of political persons occupying several posts of great importance, in the process failing to do justice to any of them.
On this count at least, that is the approval of E-W Metro, Mr. Dasmunsi can be thanked for lending his arguments in favor of the project, and seeing its ultimate approval.
As if the fuel price hike is not enough, there are other blows to counter with as the day grew old in the afternoon. I happened to be at Presidency College around 3-30 to submit my son’s application for admission but I was late by minutes.
I was told there would be no application submission for 2 days because of 2 successive bandhs. There was subtle excitement in the air as I looked around, people milling around here and there. But the reason was not on account of bandhs per se.
Bandhs have since long ceased to create stir among the public. Bandhs are now as much parts of life in Bengal as any other normal activity. As I sought to dig a little, it soon transpired that the quantum of petro price hike was a bit unexpected.
A smart debate in the public bus on my way back showed that people were aware that the international crude price has been scaling hitherto unthinkable highs for quite sometime. And that price hike for our consumption was just a matter of time before it happened.
So it has, today. Bandhs are a dampener, but it will be forgotten soon. The hit to purse will be felt for fairly long time, especially if the petro prices stoke the fire under the belly of inflation.
Conversely, if rains are good, the inflation monster can be contained to some extent. This is too far off, one may argue. For, what else can explain the unprecedented slide in share prices after today’s trade..?
This is yet another blow for those who deal in stocks. The signs, according to some experts, look ominous. The Nifty and Sensex breached the crucial levels of 4600 and 15550 on their way down.
Several analysts see 14000 levels for Sensex in not so distant future. Should that happen, many investors will stand to loose substantially.
And after that it may be a long, long journey for the Sensex to scale the top it reached only about 6 months back.
Last evening rain was lashing from the north as I wrote this post. It was past 8 in the evening, and despite the troubles that water from the sky always poses for the city, one was reasonably sure that people were heaving a collective sigh of relief from several days of grueling heat.
For me there was double relief. Yesterday was the first day after a month-long spell of T-20 hullabaloo that nearly stole all the other ‘sporting’ senses that one possessed.
I’ve hardly watched the shortened version of the cricket – some of which, I gather from newspapers, were cliffhangers – sweetened with bollywood masala and some real fleshy stuff, not because I was terribly occupied otherwise which I was not, but because of my firm belief that any game that has 3 time-determined formats just to popularize it is not worth spending precious time for.
But I am perhaps in a minority. The papers say T-20 has been so roaringly successful that kids and oldies are suffering from withdrawal syndromes now that the games are over. It is also widely reported that malls and plexes suffered remarkably reduced footfalls while the show was on.
The IPL success doesn’t mean that we the Indians are really a sports-loving bunch. I happen to come across IPL-bitten people in the last 2 days who barely know that the same day when IPL final was taking place, a lesser-known Jamaican, Usain Bolt (see the video below), put the stadium on fire making new world record (9.72 seconds) for men’s 100 meters dash.
Many are also not aware that this weekend a bigger sporting spectacle, Euro Cup 2008, is to start, the more than 1 million tickets of which are already sold out.
But then the Indians are never sports crazy. If however IPL brings in some sort of craziness in other games, like the 1.2 lakh turnout at Mohun Bagan versus Bayern Munich match with another 20K waiting outside failing to get in, I’m game for it.
