Divide by Zero Exception

History as they say repeats itself. I guess the nastier parts of it repeat themselves twice as fast.

I've always hated history as a subject. In school, it was nothing but an extremely boring storytelling of the past, taught to us by another extremely boring person with exams mainly consisting to recalling dates and facts. I my opinion nobody learned anything! ANYTHING! Which is of course the main reason why history repeats itself. (And I always detested the fact that I was made to "learn" something that was repeating itself anyway). And before repeat gets too repetitive, I'll stop all the repetitive repetition.

Well despite the barrage of dates and sundry facts about events and people, I guess I did manage to learn a few things. Like divide and rule.

Raj Thackeray however either hasn't read it, or had a phenomenally boring history teacher and slept through the lesson.

What he's been trying to do over the past few days is a disgusting attempt at power, via divide and rule. And I keep reading with increasing disgust the Machiavellian politics going on.

Of course there is still a real problem in here. It is a real fact that there have been too many migrants to Mumbai not only from Bihar but from Bangladesh as well. When the number of migrants increases to beyond the point that the city can sustain, it weighs down the infrastructure. And then it's easy to blame all those migrants as the source of all inadequacies in Mumbai.Countries can try control migrants with visas. (of course when certain North American ones can't, they call it "illegal" immigration.... but that's another story). But Mumbai shouldn't and it can't. Thankfully.

The real source of the problem is that Bihar itself hasn't had the development it needs. If it had that, if it could sustain the population on itself, I'm sure no Bihari would relish the propect of leaving hometown. As long as there is a huge gap in that development, people will always migrate.

But it doesn't look like the development can happen anytime soon. So unfortunately for the Biharis they'll have to migrate somewhere, and unfortunately for Mumbai , Maharashtra and India, xenophobes like Raj Thackrey will thrive.

All that's gonna be left in the end is a broken country, with nothing left to govern (someone can call the Brits again then). And all Raj is gonna be left with to divide and rule is a big zero.

Some real news please!

Its been a while that I've been reading about how Ash and Abhishekh Bacchan have been dancing around the world, visiting temples, creating traffic jams in the process, going on karwa chauth vrats and what nots, visiting still more temples, creating still more traffic jams and so on ad nauseum.

Why is Ash going to the temple news? I mean WTF? I don't give a rat's ass whether she actually does go on a fast or hogs doughnuts. Plus aren't we trying to be a more equal society, trying to move away from being the patriarchical society which is currently is? And isn't the media being generally irreponsible (well come to think of it, THAT isn't news either. Sigh!) when they report this on the same page as the Chandrayaan report?

I'm pissed. Someone needs to act more responsibly. Please!

Goldman Sachs - BRICs

Although I'm sure most of you must have read about the BRICs phenomenon, I thought this presentation, made by Jim O'Neill at Goldman Sachs, the man who invented the concept of BRICs, was quite interesting.

Have a look at:
GS - BRICs

Mistakes of the Past

A few days back, I was reading a book which unraveled some startling facts about India.

• The income tax prevalent in India post Independence was as high as 97%! This was mainly during the Nehru - Indira Gandhi era.
• A one point of time in India, and honest businessman like J.R.D. Tata was being taxed greater than 100% of his income. He paid for them and his everyday expenses by selling off some part of his property every year.
• The Government of India had the sole right to decide what the quantity of goods that could be produced by a particular private sector company
• Not just that, the Government of India had the supreme authority in deciding what the produce would be, where it would be produced, and at what price it would be produced & sold.
• The Government Of India had the sole right to decide (on parameters which they were not liable to discuss with the public) to what extent a businessman could expand his business. This was widely incorporated under the MRTP (Monopoly Restricted Trade Practice).

Is this a joke or what? How incredulous could policy making get?

It all started with Jawaharlal Nehru's idealogy that India would be a socialist democracy. He believed in the Utopian idea that the industry existed only for the welfare of people. It existed only so that it could provide a means of employment. Nowhere in that idealogical process did he feel that industry also existed to make a profit. In fact, it has been on record, that Nehru was not eager to see the Indian industry make profit. He felt that profit making was akin to bilking the commoner.

I cannot understand this point at all. Let us for the moment assume that the whole point in industry is to generate employment. It is plain common sense, that in order to improve the employee's life, the industry would need to make money. In order to generate employment, the industry would need to grow. But how could that happen when the policies within the public service utilities (PSUs) were not designed to ensure effciency.In many PSUs, the policies were made by people who were in no way qualified to make decisions for that particular industry, but only did so because they belonged to the "experts committee" appointed by the Government. How could the private industry grow, when the government policies were tailored to stifle it? And then what quality of employment did one generate?

Today though, the picture is different. At least no one decides for you what, when, where and how much of material (or ideas) you should generate. And the results are there for everyone to see.

The irony of this whole thing is, the very government which freed us from this economic bondage, didn't get re-elected, while we still speak of Jawharlal Nehru, and his daughter with great pride.

Disclaimer: I'm a politically neutral (they're all thieves anyway attitude) person. The above references to Nehru and Indira Gandhi are not politically motivated. In fact I appreciated their very political party for having freed us of the economic gravedigging that was prevalent till then, and that stands evidence to my statement - this post has nothing to do with politics, rather with economics and economic policy making.