Celebrating Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday Google Style

Netizens who visited Google today could see the new doodle celebrating Mahatma Gandhi's 140 birthday. The doodle has the Mahatma's bust intertwined into the word "Google".


Google also has other doodles that celebrate various birthdays, festivals and holidays. To get a glimpse search for Google Doodles, where else, but on Google.

Image obtained from Google website.

The Health-Care Debate

The topic for the last few week across the country has been whether we can get a significant health care reform bill passed. Since there are so many stakeholders involved including physician groups, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and medical device companies, patients, politicians and of course lobbyists, any significant reform which will address the needs of all these stakeholders will be a tall order.

Every stakeholder has an interest to protect, and nobody is willing to coincide, as coinciding would mean significant loss in revenues and profits for them. In addition health care reform has to address a whole host of issues including, providing some sort of coverage for the 47 million uninsured, improving efficiency of care and slowing the growth of health care costs. All of this without adding to the burgeoning federal deficit.

So will there be any significant reform this year, only time will tell. But in the meanwhile, these two websites provide a basic understanding of what is at stake.

The first website is the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center, and the second website is Health Beat a blog dedicated specifically to health care.

First the Oil Price Shock and Now Peanut Shock

It never seems to get easier for the airlines. First it was the oil price spike which forced almost all airlines to cuts costs. The easiest way to cut costs was to trim the food menu from flights. So that brought the era of the ubiquitous peanuts on almost all domestic flights in the continental United States. But some people are complaining about the peanuts too.

Reacting to the distribution of peanuts on Northwest Airlines some potential passengers voiced their opinion in a local newspaper.

"This is a very disappointing development. My wife's allergy is so severe that if someone is sitting next to her and eating peanuts, the odor is enough to trigger an allergic reaction."

"Northwest is really out of touch with its customers and the reality of allergies to peanuts. What's wrong with pretzels?"

With all due respect to people who have peanut allergies or any allergies for that matter, the airline is a free business and it can choose to serve whatever makes the most business sense. Just because a few people complain about peanuts, the airline is under no obligation to change what it offers.

With deference to all the people who are complaining about the peanut problem, they are as free as the airlines to choose what they eat or which airline to fly or not to fly at all. They are under no obligation to eat the products the airline have to offer and neither is the airline forcing any person to eat what it offers.

This is how businesses are supposed to operate: give choices to the market and let the market decide if it wants it or not. If the market wants it the business survives, if not the business goes under.

Why Smart People Make Such Dumb Decisions?

Satyam Computers until last week was one of the titans of the Indian IT and Outsourcing industry. Founded in 1987 by founder and CEO, Ramalinga Raju, Satyam rose to global prominence with the outsourcing boom, claiming 140 of the Fortune 500 companies as its clients and accounting for $1 billion in yearly revenue.

As it turns out, most of the $1 billion in revenue was non existent and Satyam was infact the biggest corporate fraud in Indian history. This begs the question, why some of the smartest people in the world, who have worked so hard their entire life to be at the top of their careers, just throw it all away in one false swoop? What is it that makes them play with the lives of several thousand employees, as well as billions of dollars of investors money? And Ramalinga Raju is a recent addition to the long list or people which includes Bernard Madoff, Jeffery Skilling, Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, Wall street, Investment banking and Mortgage company CEO's for their role in the sub prime mortgage crisis etc..

All of us would admit that these people were some of the smartest people in the room until things unraveled around them. So what is it that leads these smart people to make some of the dumbest decisions in hindsight which ultimately led to their downfall. Is it just plain old greed? Or is it the feeling that I am the smartest person in the room, having achieved so much, whatever decision I make will be the right one's. Or is it pressure from investors and shareholders demanding continued growth, higher value and greater returns.

The answers may not be one of the other, but a combination of all a number of factors. What do you think? Please chime in with your thoughts.

Citigroup Bailed Out by Taxpayers

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“Our job is to set a tone at the top to incent people to do the right thing and to set up safety nets to catch people who make mistakes or do the wrong thing and correct those as quickly as possible. And it is working. It is working.”
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These were the words of Chuck Prince in September 0f 2006 at the height of the real estate boom. If only he had followed up his words with actual actions Citigroup would not have been in the place that it finds itself: "Bailed out by the Taxpayers".

Read the complete NY Times article on how Citigroup followed the path to self destuction

As If Reservation in Educational Institutions was Not Enough

As if the reservations in educational institutions on the basis of caste was not enough, the Maharashtra government has issued a resolution asking industries to fill 80% of their vacancies with local people.

So where does the buck stop. Have your say on this.