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Showing posts from February, 2007

Let's Kill Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson,Tushar A Gandhi, has written & released a book called "Let's Kill Gandhi." In this book he has alleged that Brahmins were behind the death of Mahatma. According to him (in the book) Brahmins had tried to kill Mahatma on several occasions and finally one Brahmin (Nathuram Godse) succeeded in the attempt. This comment has, naturally, provoked a lot of heated discussions and now Tushar is trying to retract his comment. Clarifying his recent remarks on the issue, he said in a statement that he had not referred to the Brahmin community as a whole. "I am not in the habit of making generalised statement and branding an entire community for the sins of the few. An unnecessary controversy has been ignited due to misreporting of certain observations made by me," Gandhi said referring to remarks made at a function to release his book Let's kill Gandhi on Tuesday. "What I had said was that a group of Poona Brahmins were const...

India on the move

Stephen S Roach, Chief Economist at the US-based Morgan Stanley, returning from his fourth trip to India in three years, said the South Asian country has achieved breakthroughs in savings and foreign direct investments that would script one of the world’s most exceptional economic development stories over the next three-five years. “I am returning from India with great enthusiasm. India has made solid progress on two counts — savings and FDI — and infrastructure development seems set to follow. These are breakthroughs that can unshackle India’s greatest strengths — a high-quality stock of human capital and the magic of its entrepreneurial spirit. India’s national saving at 32.4 per cent in the 12 months ending March 2006 is up significantly from the 25 per cent average of the 1990 to 2004 period. At the same time, the aggregate investment ratio has moved up to 33.4 per cent as of March 2006, a major breakout from the 26 per cent average of the preceding 15 years. And foreign ...

India the Superpower? Think again

India should put aside pride about its growing economy and concentrate on improving the lives of average citizens, argues Fortune's Cait Murphy. Plug in the words "India" and "superpower" into an Internet search engine and it's happy to oblige - with 1.3 million hits. I confess that I did not check each one, but I suspect that almost all of these entries date from the last couple of years. This is understandable. For the first time ever, India has posted four straight years of 8 percent growth; since it cracked open its economy in 1991, it has averaged growth of 6 percent a year - not in the same league as China, but twice the derisory "Hindu rate of growth" that had marked the first 45 years of independence. India has gone nuclear, and even gotten the United States to accept that status. Its movies are crossing over to become international hits. The recent $11.3 billion takeover of Corus by Mumbai-based Tata Steel was the biggest acquisition ever ...

A Robot in Every Home?

If someone told us there would be PCs or TVs in every household in India, by the year 2007,we would have ridiculed the person. Now it is becoming a reality. Bill Gates (yes, the richest man on our Mother Earth and the .... oh,do you really need intro for this man?) has penned his thoughts in one of the recent articles appeared in Scientific American. Please find the gist of that given below: Scientific American, December 16, 2006 A Robot in Every Home by Bill Gates The leader of the PC revolution predicts that the next hot field will be robotics The emergence of the robotics industry is developing in much the same way that the computer business did 30 years ago. Think of the manufacturing robots currently used on automobile assembly lines as the equivalent of yesterday's mainframes. The industry's niche products include robotic arms that perform surgery, surveillance robots deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan that dispose of roadside bombs, and domestic robots that vacuum the...

Kamal Hassan & Controversies

Its no doubt Kamal Hassan is a multi-faceted film personality-excellent actor, script writer, fabulous dancer (or used to be one), soon to be an exemplary director-yet, why he is sometimes openly delaying his movies? Is the delay is due to controversies-like his all famous tussles with almost all his directors, naming of the movie (Mumbai Express, Sandiyar etc.) and sometime civil suites against(atleast most of his) movies. Another thing which is bogging him down is his reluctance to come out in the open & say that, "Ok,I am only person who can direct me." Or if he is comfortable with his directors, why there are so many news items about his tussle with almost all his directors? Is it a hype created by the media? Some of his detractors even say it is a way with Kamal to make people talk about his movies, so that the tempo is well maintained till the release of any movie. As a hardcore Kamal fan, right from my school days (am now in my early 40's), its hard for me to d...

Gandhi Giri

While Indian Youth have a re-awakening to Gandhiji's ideals and teachings, movies like Lage Raho Munnabhai are helping to go in to a positive trend, Indians living in US(well,atleast a few of them)have dared to ridicule the Father of our nation by posting this video on YouTube. One can say there is nothing wrong with the video and people should not bother too much about it. When this shown on CNN-IBN Channel, there was a big uproar,for few days and then we turned our attention to the crying of the voluptuous Shilpa Shetty (she has not completed her college, but can speak in ten languages, she is going to dine with the Royal Family in England and all that). See for yourself and judge. Honestly, in my opinion, the Indian, who has taken and posted it, could have chosen someone else (possibly a politician of today's India)and not the Mahatma.