Calendar for Life

If you are looking for a calendar for 2009 and beyond then you can find it at Free Calendar. All you have to do is change the year, year after year and you can use it up to the year 9999. If only I could live until the year 9999.....

Also get other cool Microsoft Excel tips at Pointy Haired Dilbert

Dr Doom Was Right!

A couple of months back, I had a post about Peter Schiff predicting that the United states was on the verge of a recession.

His reasoning:"What's going to happen is that the American consumer is basically going to stop consuming and start rebuilding his savings, especially when he sees his home equity evaporate," he said. "And when you have the economy 70 percent consumption, you can't address those imbalances without a recession." He also said and I quote, "You're going to start to see both the government and the lenders re-imposing lending standards and tightening up on credit — and these sky-high real estate prices are going to come crashing back down to earth."

When he made these comments, he was ridiculed and people called him Dr Doom. Well the supply side, naysayers like Arthur Laffer are nowhere to be seen.

Open Letter to the Prime Minister

An excellent article that aptly describes the state of internal security in India.
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So long as India’s response to terrorism will be characterised by a shameless appeal along religious lines with political parties trying to consolidate their vote-banks as opposed to coming together to fight the menace, we will continue to be viewed as a soft target by our adversaries and we will continue to fight terrorists in our streets. You will be ending your tenure in a few months from now but the damage that your government has done to the Indian internal security will remain with us forever. The fact that your predecessor’s record was equally pathetic is no excuse.One can only hope that the next government will learn right lessons from your failure. Otherwise, the very idea of India is in danger of becoming just a fond memory.
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Read the complete article Open Letter to the PM

What Should Pakistan's People Do?

In response to the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Tom Friedman, in his recent op-ed for the NY Timescalls on all of Pakistan's people to stand up and say enough is enough on terrorism.
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Sure, better intelligence is important. And, yes, better SWAT teams are critical to defeating the perpetrators quickly before they can do much damage. But at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn’t dare do or say. That is why the most powerful deterrent to their behavior is when the community as a whole says: “No more. What you have done in murdering defenseless men, women and children has brought shame on us and on you.”

Why should Pakistanis do that? Because you can’t have a healthy society that tolerates in any way its own sons going into a modern city, anywhere, and just murdering everyone in sight — including some 40 other Muslims — in a suicide-murder operation, without even bothering to leave a note. Because the act was their note, and destroying just to destroy was their goal. If you do that with enemies abroad, you will do that with enemies at home and destroy your own society in the process.
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Where are the Young Leaders in India

For a country which boasts of itself as a young democracy and where 95% of the population is below the age of 64 years and a median age of 25 years, it is surprising that there are not many young leaders who can inspire confidence or leadership abilities. Average age of a Member of Parliament is 53 years with only about 15% below the age of 65 years.

For a young country like India, the upcoming and existing leadership does not inspire much confidence. Take Rahul Gandhi for example. Though he is a member of parliament and is projected to be the future Prime Minister of India, his only claim to fame is he belongs to the erstwhile Nehru Gandhi family. Does anybody know his stand on issues urgently facing India including terrorism, economic reform, domestic and foregin policy? Forget Rahul Gandhi, most of the other young politicians who are Members of Parliment (MP's), be it Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Omar Abdullah or Akhilesh Yadav have been MP's because they were kins of established politicians. They did not rise from the grass root level to become MP's. But we cannot blame them can we.

For a country whose political parties have no democratic system of governance themselves, where nepotism rules roost , the current crop of young politicians is just reaping the benefits of the seeds that their father/grandfathers sowed. Unless this politics of sycophancy and nepotism changes, we cannot expect fresh leadership to blossom out of the grass roots.

Hold Our Leaders Accountable

Having witnessed the recent elections in the United States, both the presidential and congressional elections, one thing that I find very interesting and unique is how the elected officials are held accountable by the media and the voters even before they cast their votes. Take the examples of the presidential debates. The candidates are supposed to outline their plans on how they are going to fix the immediate and not so immediate problems facing the country. This gives a chance for the voters at large to know where the candidates stand on various issues.

Now try translating it into the context of Indian politics. India has a parliamentary election coming up in the next six months. Do we know where the potential Prime Ministerial candidates stand on the various issues that matter? Atleast I have not heard anything from LK Advani, or Manmohan Singh or even Mayawati about their stand on tackling terrorism, keeping the economy growing, providing helathcare to all of India, providing employment and jobs etc.

With the world economy in a tailspin and India begin attacked by terrorists, I think the upcoming election offers an unique opportunity for the Indian voters to start changing all of this. We as voters need to care about who we elect to represent us. We as voters have a responsibility to ask each of candidates tough questions on how they are going to deal with terrorism, how they are going to keep the economy growing and other relevant domestic issues be it access to health care, creation of jobs or fixing the educational system etc.

Now people may point out that majority of the Indian people live in rural areas and villages who are not educated enough to ask these kind of thoughtful questions. My response would be let the urban educated elite start working on this. Let the media bring the candidates together to debate some of the key issues. Let us not be satisfied with politicians addressing generic rallies or parties releasing election manifestos without any meaningful outcomes. Let us hold our elected officials accountable on every aspect of governance. Let them know that just promising "roti, kapada and makan" without any meaningful plan on providing it would not be acceptable.

Has Anybody Heard from Raj Thackeray?

Mumbai had one of its worst days in history. But still there is no news from one of its self proclaimed son of Maharashtra Raj Thackeray or his so called army of no gooders. Where is he when the city needs him the most. MNS workers would have earned some plaudits for doing some recovery work and helping people of Mumbai instead of trying to drive honest hardworking people out of Mumbai.

More Raj Thackeray 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,8, 9