What are Participatory Notes?

There has been talk about 'banning' Participatory Notes after the unexplicable rise in the Indian stock markets in the last few days. What exactly are 'Participatory Notes' or PNs?

The article below in The Hindu Business Line attempts to throw some light on PNs

What are ‘Participatory notes’? D. Sampathkumar Mumbai, Oct. 17

‘Participatory notes’ are instruments that derive their value from an underlying financial instrument such as an equity share and, hence, the word, ‘derivative instruments’.

When the Indian capital market regulator permitted, back in 1992, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) to register and trade in Indian securities, every one assumed that they would make proprietary investments out of their own capital.3rd-party investments. There was no question of their trading on anyone else’s behalf. But as it turned out, FIIs were merely acting as a conduit for third-party investments.

But some of these third-party investors had their own preferences in the matter of what Indian stocks that they would like to own with its own risk and reward characteristics. In order to ring fence, each such pool of investments they created accounts or ‘sub-accounts’ in FII parlance.Sub-account holders. But even sub-account holders, it turned out, were not investing their own money but were in fact raising money from a multitude of high net worth individuals.

They were issued pieces of paper that derived its value from underlying equity instruments of Indian corporates. The participatory notes were now well truly launched. International investments got a little more complicated with sub-account investment institutions raising loan funds as securitised paper, with a pool of underlying equity shares of Indian companies.

All this leveraged money got further leveraged with the investments going into not just equity shares but derivative instruments (futures and options) of shares of Indian corporates.

Thus one could have a sub account holder of a registered FII investing a combination of subscriptions by a group of investors topped up with funds borrowed by floating yet another piece of tradable instrument using a pool of participatory notes as collateral.

But the tale of leveraged investments became a little more complex with a $100 of such funds getting invested, for example, not in Reliance shares but into futures contract on Reliance shares.

Futures contract

Now, in a futures contract, one did not have to invest the full value of the contract. It is enough if put up a small margin and topped it up each depending on how the share price moved.
The potential of $100 got further magnified.

It is easy to see the super structure of heavily leveraged investments flowing into the Indian stock market. That is without even thinking of whatever private financial arrangements that each one of investors in the original pool of investments that gave rise to the participatory notes.Global liquidity.

All of this became possible when there was a global liquidity thanks to the economic policies of the West and more particularly the US. A financial distress for one lender who participated in leveraged transaction of investments of a sub-account holder of an FII who had invested in the Indian stock market can cause him to call back his loan.

This could lead to the sub-account holder closing out his futures position in the underlying share which caused the latter’s future price to fall.

Share prices

Since future prices are in turn linked to the spot prices of the same share, there is a price correction in the spot price as well. The fall in share price erodes not just the overseas investor’s wealth but that of domestic investors as well.

The depreciation of the rupee’s value against other currencies or wiping out huge chunk of the RBI’s currency reserves when the liquidated investments goes out of the country, are the other unintended consequences of the FII play on the Indian stock market.

The Threesome - A love story frozen in time.....

A photo Taken by the legendary Henri Cartier Bresson, this photograph of Mountbatten, Nehru and Edwina - a personal favourite - has been all over of late.

It has been pulled out to accompany reports on Pamela Mountbatten's (Mountbattens' daughter) book published recently `India Remembered: A Personal Account of the Mountbattens During The Transfer of Power.'

Who cares whether Nehru and Edwina's love was platonic or otherwise. How does it really matter to anyone beyond these three people frozen in time. What matters is when you see a man wear just the expression Nehru's wearing - the jester, desperate to catch the woman's eye, trying to impress her, waiting for validation - you will know a man loves a woman.





It was even being said that the knowledge of the more-than-close relationship between Lady Mountbatten and Nehru was in the public domain even in those days and is well documented. It was obvious that Lord Mountbatten was in a position to influence Nehru through his wife. Lady Pamela’s disclosure, therefore, only confirms what many believe. Sardar Patel tried his best to stop Nehru from referring the Kashmir issue to the U.N. but could not do so.


dont forget to read more on the topic published in the frontline.

Unity in Diversity

Cool Road-sign !!! Thatz India for u !!! Got thro mail...

After the Bang

This is the tale of the events that followed the formation of matter, gravity, space and time. Again, this is a very simplified version, as I am a very simple person. Randomness (Or, I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.)

There were fluctuations in the chaos of our infant universe. In any liquid or gas, Brownian Motion occurs; this is why milk will eventually disperse through your tea even if you don't stir your cuppa. This motion causes random fluctuations, and without these events the galaxy would never have formed, as matter would have been even distributed throughout the universe. All the ionised matter cooled, the protons, electron and neutrons started to form atoms. Nearly one hundred per cent of these atoms were hydrogen and helium, and none of the heavier elements, like oxygen, iron & carbon, were formed. This is not a universe where 'complex' molecules exist; there is no water, no salts, and no metals. Of course, there could be no life as we know it.

Gravity Works! (The Universe learns about the lightness of being.)

So, we have ended up with 'clumps' of matter, mainly hydrogen and helium, swirling and twisting in space. Gravity acts on these individual clumps, causing them to condense. As the matter condenses, it begins to pivot around its centre. Have you ever watched how an ice-skater achieves a fast spin? As they rotate, they draw their limbs in close and conservation of energy mean the kinetic energy has to go somewhere. The same thing happens to the condensing matter…it begins to pick up speed, and rotation increases. Spheres and discs are the natural products of the conglomerating, spinning matter.

When enough matter collects in one place, heat and pressure ignites it. And new suns light our infant universe…wouldn't that have been a sight to see, the brightness of the first sunrise.

Heavy Metal (Or, the Universe learns how to Rock!)

The first suns were the furnaces that baked heavy elements out of hydrogen and helium. Only the tiniest proportion of the matter was converted, in the intense heat and pressure of these solar ovens, but enough converted to make the some of the suns' unstable.

Even now, we know about suns going nova. Most of the matter in these solar explosions is flung off into space, leaving behind little cinders - usually neutron stars. This cycle of matter condensing and exploding has been repeated at least twice in the history of our Universe.

Even if only one percent of one percent of all the original matter were converted into new elements, enough rock and other stuff would exist to create the planets and asteroids. Today, the majority of matter in our own solar system is still contained within our sun; the mass of all the planets added to the sun wouldn't make much of a difference.

So, every atom and molecule in your body once existed within a sun; it had to, or you wouldn't be able to exist. You know, you hear about people that spontaneously combust…maybe the atoms remember their previous incarnation, and up they go! (Just my little joke.) Our Earth and everything on it are part of a third generation cycle, with each cycle increasing the complexity of elements. One can't help but wonder what the next generation will be like.

Big Bang - Fi and Fact

you're into sci fi?? But what about sci fact????

Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction... Let us see some fact related to the famous Big Bang Theory ( of course is believed to be the fact) as understood by a person with no mathematical ability, so this is a very simplified description.....

The Big Bang

The Big Bang is just a theory, but as a working model to describe our universe, it's a very good theory. As it also involves the Theory of Relativity and the curvature of the Space/Time continuum, it isn't a walk in the park to understand…even if it does have a really cute and easy title.

The Bang

Before the Big Bang, all that existed was a singularity. This means that everything that now exists in our universe was compressed to a point that only has reality in a mathematical sense. When the Big Bang occurred, it wasn't an explosion in the sense that everything 'blew' from that single point. The explosion occurred all over the area that is now occupied by our universe - which is thought to be a 'closed' system. This is a wriggler of a concept; as everyone knows the universe is expanding, so it must be expanding from the source of the explosion…right? In reality, the universe is expanding all over, not from a central point. A popular metaphor to explain this phenomenon is blowing up a balloon; all the points on a balloon are travelling away from each other as the same rate as the balloon expands…and our universe is expanding in a similar manner.

The Next Few Seconds

There was an interval at the very start of time when matter, space, time and energy were interchangeable, and when gravity didn't exist. The four forces of physics; strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic and gravity were combined as a single "super force". This time period is referred to as Planck Time, when the Laws of Physics were yet to form. It is theorised that these conditions occurred in the first 10-43 seconds of time (that's 10 to the minus 43 zeros). After this point, in the next fifteen seconds, things were still chaotic but space and time became distinct from matter and energy, and the first elementary particles started to form. Gravity asserted itself. And the colossal expansion of the universe was well and truly commenced.

Anti-matter

Now, in the formation of the particles, both matter and anti-matter were formed, and then annihilated as the particles cancelled each other out again. (The term anti-matter is being used here for convenience…there are no terms to really describe what was occurring.) Radiation is so dense; no light is visible…so this is all happening in the dark. Within the ionised plasma of our infant universe, our matter has a slight bias. For every billion pairs of particles created and destroyed, one pair might survive, thanks to the slight fluctuations occurring throughout the plasma. Anti-matter decays rapidly. The expanding universe is cooling rapidly, allowing the formation of neutron, protons and electrons of matter to exist. Only the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, can exist in the inferno of creation. It's only three minutes after the Big Bang.

The Edge in Space

So, if the Universe is expanding, it must be expanding into something…right? So, where's the edge? Our universe is a 'closed' system; it has no edge. Theoretically, it you could live forever and travel faster than the speed of light, you could set off in one direction and eventually you would return to your starting position; Space and Time are curved. (Don't ask me the mathematics behind this…go look it up yourself.) The universe isn't sitting in nothing, like some great crystal ornament hanging in a vacuum, it's just there - or here - whatever.
Other Oddities

The background radiation of the universe is an artefact of the Big Bang. This is one the facts that supports the theory behind the Big Bang.

There is a sudden interest that 'cosmic strings' may have formed as the universe cooled down, the same way that ice crystallises out of water. These strings are thought to (may) have formed when the universe went through the phrase transition from 'no time and space' to 'curved time and space'. If these strings would be proven to exist, or to have existed, there would be more evidence to support the Big Bang theory.

There is speculation about a 'fifth' physical force in the universe, as to create a symmetry with gravity. After all, all the other physical forces have a positive and a negative to balance each other…only gravity remains as the sole 'positive' with no real negative. This is pure

visit voyageronline for more details.......

An article on Vivekananda & Vedanta Philosophy

A good resource with lot of articles and links of various persons.

http://www.wisdomportal.com/ Edited by Peter Y. Chou

Article on vekananda

Voyager - Living to its name....

Science celebrates 30 years of the Voyager space probes whose discoveries opened up new frontiers in the study of space.

Voyager 2 used the gravity of the planets it visited to slingshot it towards the outer planets.

IN an auditorium at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in California occupying pride of place is a full-size replica of the two Voyager spacecraft, launched 30 years ago. Why, after all this time, are the Voyager probes still remembered so fondly? Quite simply, they opened up whole new vistas of the solar system, made many new discoveries that have influenced every space mission since and, despite being the most distant human-built objects ever, are still conducting valuable science.

Sent on two different trajectories, Voyager 1 completed its primary mission in 1981 after it encountered Saturn, while Voyager 2 continued onwards to visit Uranus and Neptune. Both are still going strong, voyaging outwards from the sun into realms unknown and unexplored on the edge of the solar system and beyond. To celebrate the anniversary of these remarkable emissaries from earth, let us take a look at their goal and objectives already achieved.

Read the lines below Quoted from the article written by AMALENDU BANDYOPADHYAY. Where he gives a wonderful explanation between Science and Technology.

"Sending spacecraft to another world is very expensive, and it may seem pointless when that world seems totally hostile to human life. What practical value is there in sending a space probe to Jupiter or Saturn? To resolve that question we need to consider the distinction between science, technology and engineering.

Science is nothing more than the logical study of nature and the goal of science is a better understanding of how nature works. Technology, in contrast, is the practical application of scientific knowledge to solve a specific problem. Engineering is the most practical form of technology. An engineer is likely to use well-understood technology to find a practical solution to a problem.

We might describe science that has no known practical value as basic science or basic research. Our exploration of worlds such as Jupiter or Saturn would be called basic science and it is easy to argue that basic science is not worth the effort and expense because it has no known practical use.

Of course, we have no way of knowing what knowledge will be of use until we acquire that knowledge. In the middle of the 19th century, Queen Victoria is supposed to have asked physicist Michael Faraday what good his experiments with electricity and magnetism were. He answered, “Madam, what good is a baby?” Of course, Faraday’s experiments were the beginning of the electronic age. "

An excellent article on Frontline (Into the unknown). Read the full article here.

Frontline can be downloaded in Pdf format for free here.

Mahatma Gandhi, the Missing Laureate

Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) has become the strongest symbol of non-violence in the 20th century. It is widely held – in retrospect – that the Indian national leader should have been the very man to be selected for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was nominated several times, but was never awarded the prize. Why?

These questions have been asked frequently: Was the horizon of the Norwegian Nobel Committee too narrow? Were the committee members unable to appreciate the struggle for freedom among non-European peoples?" Or were the Norwegian committee members perhaps afraid to make a prize award which might be detrimental to the relationship between their own country and Great Britain?

When still alive, Mohandas Gandhi had many admirers, both in India and abroad. But his martyrdom in 1948 made him an even greater symbol of peace. Twenty-one years later, he was commemorated on this double-sized United Kingdom postage stamp.Photo: Copyright © Scanpix

Gandhi was nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948. The omission has been publicly regretted by later members of the Nobel Committee; when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Peace Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was "in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi". However, the committee has never commented on the speculations as to why Gandhi was not awarded the prize, and until recently the sources which might shed some light on the matter were unavailable. Below is an abstract of that article in http://nobelprize.org/

Why Was Gandhi Never Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Up to 1960, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans. In retrospect, the horizon of the Norwegian Nobel Committee may seem too narrow. Gandhi was very different from earlier Laureates. He was no real politician or proponent of international law, not primarily a humanitarian relief worker and not an organiser of international peace congresses. He would have belonged to a new breed of Laureates.

There is no hint in the archives that the Norwegian Nobel Committee ever took into consideration the possibility of an adverse British reaction to an award to Gandhi. Thus it seems that the hypothesis that the Committee's omission of Gandhi was due to its members' not wanting to provoke British authorities, may be rejected.

In 1947 the conflict between India and Pakistan and Gandhi's prayer-meeting statement, which made people wonder whether he was about to abandon his consistent pacifism, seem to have been the primary reasons why he was not selected by the committee's majority. Unlike the situation today, there was no tradition for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to try to use the Peace Prize as a stimulus for peaceful settlement of regional conflicts.

During the last months of his life, Gandhi worked hard to end the violence between Hindus and Muslims which followed the partition of India. We know little about the Norwegian Nobel Committee's discussions on Gandhi's candidature in 1948 – other than the above quoted entry of November 18 in Gunnar Jahn's diary – but it seems clear that they seriously considered a posthumous award. When the committee, for formal reasons, ended up not making such an award, they decided to reserve the prize, and then, one year later, not to spend the prize money for 1948 at all. What many thought should have been Mahatma Gandhi's place on the list of Laureates was silently but respectfully left open.

Read the Full article here http://nobelprize.org/peace/articles/gandhi/index.html

Tryst with Destiny !!!!!

Its the first time after so many years, i read the Tryst with Destiny speech by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964): Speech On the Granting of Indian Independence, August 14, 1947

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long supressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of Inida and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.

II

The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom

that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good [or] ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.

And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

JAI HIND.

I didn't kill Gandhi

Who killed the Mahatma? History tells us that three bullets from a Beretta M1934 semi-automatic pistol silenced Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Nathuram Vinayak Godse had pulled the trigger and killed the person. But the thought, principles, ideas have all passed away – peacefully and unnoticed. In private conversations Gandhi bashing is a favourite pastime, in public functions Gandhi provides the preferred quotable quote. In the institutions founded or inspired by him, he exists - in the hanging portraits on the wall and the statues amidst the grass.

The ideological death was not caused by hot lead or senile decay - it was apathy. A well-maintained Rajghat and a national holiday on every October 2 - our duty is done. 56 years later Jhanu Barua's Prof. Uttam Chaudhary pleads "Maine Gandhi ko nahin mara (I didn't kill Gandhi)." Nor did I? How could I? Gandhi to me (and so many others) was only a synonym of two words - truth and non-violence. I didn't kill any word. Words whose meanings I cannot comprehend. Words that exist in the dictionary, but not in a vocabulary. Did Gandhi imply anything else? I as a schoolboy never knew, until Richard Attenborough told me. But that was Ben Kinsley not Gandhi. I didn't kill Ben Kinsley. Nobody took me along to meet the real Father of the Nation. I never knew he existed somewhere beyond the inscriptions of Hey Ram, images on currency notes and photos on the wall in courtroom dramas. How could I kill someone about whose being I was unsure of?

I stand acquitted of any conspiracy to kill Gandhi. Everything about him was long dead long before I was even born. Gandhi died on January 30, 1948. So did his legacy. Long live the Mahatma.

On a personal note, the minute Gandhi was Mahatma-ed, he died. The point is, we fail to realise/appreciate that he was a man who rose to that level. We gave him Godly status, and at that precise moment, we thought, "Ok, he was not just human... something more" and there we distanced ourselves from him and his ideology. And, along with that, we killed all chances of resurrecting him.

Listen to the Mahatma: Click here to download this audio clip [WAV 961KB]

Gandhi N Me :)

When I was first told about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, it was with the emphasis that he never told a lie. My little mind wondered that, he was a prominent freedom fighter and the British could have easily got all the confidential information about the clandestine activities of the revolutionaries just by asking him. My idea of a freedom fighter was someone who fought with guns and bombs. Ahimsa was only about Gautam Buddha. Then in primary class I first read about him in a chapter where he couldn't spell the word 'kettle.' It felt good; the Father of the Nation was also orthographically challenged like me.

Not everyone agreed with his 'offering the other cheek' proposal - the school bullies were more hard-hearted than Lucky Singh (played to the hilt by Boman Irani) in Lage Raho Munna Bhai (LRMB). Now that I have mentioned the film, I would like to mention the one thing that I liked the best about the movie. It attempted to dispel a few superstitions, which deserves applause in the stone obsessed, star possessed and name processed desi film industry.

For me it is difficult to idolise someone. Not everything about them appeals to me. My father, a proponent of good handwriting, compared my handwriting to the Father of the Nation. Not a complimentary comparison, but that was similarity number two, though there is a considerable difference in style. That's where the similarities end. Any way I never did sit down with a weighing scale to compare myself with others. You should never undertake such an exercise.

Today is October 2 (an old post long kept in draft)- a national holiday (and a 'dry day' as Circuit in LRMB puts it) - and also Bijoya Dashami or Vijaya Dashami (depending on the tongue you speak in). A day symbolic of the victory of good over evil. Ravana with his ten heads or Mahisasura masquerading as a buffalo went down on this day ages ago. Today is different, even different from first half of the 1900s in which the Sabarmati ke Sant lived in. History books tell us Hitler was evil (attempt to glorify/defend him at your own peril), so was Mussolini and to some extent Stalin. For Indians the Union Jack didn't exactly symbolise the good. Who is the evil today, Osama with his kamikaze squad or the oil-thirsty occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or the war mongering general in the nearby country who now preaches peace as innocent Indian citizens continue to get blown to pieces? The evil also resides within us. In this world of grey, there are no blacks and whites. Even Ravana wasn't all back or Lord Rama detergent ad white.

Gandhi is long gone. The practicability of his ideas and practice in todays world is merely in the realm of academic discussion. Movies don't impress us much. Decades of senseless cinema has made us numb. All we seek is paisa wasool experience. The coincidence of sharing his surname is still reaped and also venerated. In this currency-less world even his face is fast vanishing. Credit cards have our own photographs instead. He's there today in the newspapers. A few ads in the newspapers show reverence to him on his 137th birth anniversary (Rajiv Gandhi occupies more column-centimetres on his birth and death anniversaries).

For me Gandhi resides on my T-shirt, which is neither black nor white but olive green - the colour of the military uniform.

Extensive archival material (including different renditions of his favourite prayer songs Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram and Vaishnav Jan to Tene Kahiye) is available here.

Believe me - I'll not let u fall - have a little faith in me

When the road gets dark
And you can no longer see
Just let my love throw a spark
And have a little faith in me

And when the tears you cry
Are all you can believe
Just give these loving arms a try
And have a little faith in me

When your secret heart
Cannot speak so easily
Come here, whisper a start
And have a little faith in me

And when your back’s against the wall
Just turn around and you will see
I will catch, I will catch your fall baby
Just have a little faith in me

Dare to say what u feel... :-)

Electric Microbes

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's all about power; power generation, power transmission, power storage and power consumption. The most useful form of power in our modern electronic world is electricity, it can drive technologies that move us, assist us, inform us and ultimately protect us. With such a bright future for electricity shouldn't we be laser focused on finding better ways to generate it.

A couple of years ago I read an article about a naturally occurring bacteria that produced electricity by eating pollution. Given the modern energy and pollution situation, it seemed like a potentially important new avenue for energy research. Since that initial article I have seen a few follow-up articles, like this R&D one on bacteria based fuel cells, but nothing about the commercialization of the science. Even if they haven't been productized yet, the approach probably will eventually get to the commercial markets (kidding aside, products like mud batteries could give another revenue stream to chicken and pig farmers as they sell power to the grid while detoxifying all that waste).

Of further interest is the recent discovery of other bacteria, at Yellowstone National Park, that convert light to electricity. Using photosynthesis to create electricity, these bacteria are sure to become an important research and discovery tool.

For the future, all of these bacterial generators could become important for energy independence, not just national independence, but personal independence as well. With the prospect of inexpensive alternative energy generation from sunlight, waste disposal and other readily available sources, along with intelligent power storage systems, shouldn't we expect to someday generate enough energy for our own individual needs? If not completely then what about partially?

With so much attention dedicated to research on batteries, power management and alternate power sources shouldn't there be some system thinking going on that would bring it all together? How about self-contained on-site power systems for our homes? If Apple produced one it could be called iPower and it would be launched with a very hip and expensive ad campaign. As for me, I’ll be waiting in line on launch day.

DeMockerAcy

Democracy ???

Democracy is widely established as the optimal governance mechanism. This is mainly due to the distribution of power among various institutions (rather than individuals) and the checks and balances against abuse of this power.

But the way the system has managed to beat itself in this game amazes me. If there's anything I've learnt in my diploma institute, its that a system can be adjudged to be a good one only if it does so when all players act in a self-interested ( a sophisticated way of saying 'selfish') manner. Hence I refuse to lay blame on the politicians' door for being selfish. When they find no incentive to lead their respective constituency on the path of development, why would they? When there is an easier and surer way to cling to power than carry out developmental work, why would they care to develop their people?

The least one should expect in a good system of governance is for performance to be linked to rewards/punishment. Instead, there is significant proof that one's misdeeds does not necessarily mean defeat in the next election. Well, we have a live example where a person needs less than 1500 days to make a trillion dollar deficit from a surplus state, gets the energy corporations to decide energy policy and of course, run a war to settle scores with the guy who tried to kill his father, and then win an extra four years to continue his service to his nation. A little before Lok Sabha elections in India this year, India Today reported a survey in which people displayed a remarkably high negative correlation between their preferred candidate choice and his performance.

Political parties seem to consciously avoid issues of importance and would rather debate non-issues. If, in India, it is Mandir / Mandal / Foreign origin etc, in US it is abortion, gay rights, Vietnam War and of course the War on Terror. Whatever happened to good ol' poverty, increasing divide between the wealthy and poor, poor infrastructure etc?!

Even if at a later date, a political party does decide to take up issues of development, by then the public is fixated over the non-issues to the extent that any vote for this new political party will probably be based on its perceived stand on the non-issues.

In other words, the current set of political parties benefit by changing the rules of the game so that the ideal winner is destined to lose.

So what is the way out of this mess? My answer is rather simple - I have no clue whatsoever. I just hope there exists some person who can creatively and intelligently play the game of electoral politics to break this impasse.

Well, the only reason I can think of for democracy to be considered a good system is that every other conceivable system is worse.

In any case, I just hope that out of all this churning will emerge a better system of governance. Hope is good - Andy in Shawshank. Indeed it is.

The Great Indian Dream By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BANGALORE, India

Nine years ago, as Japan was beating America's brains out in the auto industry, I wrote a column about playing a computer geography game with my daughter, then 9 years old. I was trying to help her with a clue that clearly pointed to Detroit, so I asked her, "Where are cars made?" And she answered, "Japan." Ouch.

Well, I was reminded of that story while visiting an Indian software design firm in Bangalore, Global Edge. The company's marketing manager, Rajesh Rao, told me he had just made a cold call to the vice president for engineering of a U.S. company, trying to drum up business. As soon as Mr. Rao introduced himself as calling from an Indian software firm, the U.S. executive said to him, "Namaste" — a common Hindi greeting. Said Mr. Rao: "A few years ago nobody in America wanted to talk to us. Now they are eager." And a few even know how to say hi in proper Hindu fashion. So now I wonder: if I have a granddaughter one day, and I tell her I'm going to India, will she say, "Grandpa, is that where software comes from?"

Driving around Bangalore you might think so. The Pizza Hut billboard shows a steaming pizza under the headline "Gigabites of Taste!" Some traffic signs are sponsored by Texas Instruments. And when you tee off on the first hole at Bangalore's KGA golf course, your playing partner points at two new glass-and-steel buildings in the distance and says: "Aim at either Microsoft or I.B.M."

How did India, in 15 years, go from being a synonym for massive poverty to the brainy country that is going to take all our best jobs? Answer: good timing, hard work, talent and luck.

The good timing starts with India's decision in 1991 to shuck off decades of socialism and move toward a free-market economy with a focus on foreign trade. This made it possible for Indians who wanted to succeed at innovation to stay at home, not go to the West. This, in turn, enabled India to harvest a lot of its natural assets for the age of globalization.

One such asset was Indian culture's strong emphasis on education and the widely held belief here that the greatest thing any son or daughter could do was to become a doctor or an engineer, which created a huge pool of potential software technicians. Second, by accident of history and the British occupation of India, most of those engineers were educated in English and could easily communicate with Silicon Valley. India was also neatly on the other side of the world from America, so U.S. designers could work during the day and e-mail their output to their Indian subcontractors in the evening. The Indians would then work on it for all of their day and e-mail it back. Presto: the 24-hour workday.

Also, this was the age of globalization, and the countries that succeed best at globalization are those that are best at "glocalization" — taking the best global innovations, styles and practices and melding them with their own culture, so they don't feel overwhelmed. India has been naturally glocalizing for thousands of years.

Then add some luck. The dot-com bubble led to a huge overinvestment in undersea fiber-optic cables, which made it dirt-cheap to transfer data, projects or phone calls to far-flung places like India, where Indian techies could work on them for much lower wages than U.S. workers. Finally, there was Y2K. So many companies feared that their computers would melt down because of the Year 2000 glitch they needed software programmers to go through and recode them. Who had large numbers of programmers to do that cheaply? India. That was how a lot of Indian software firms got their first outsourced jobs.

So if you are worried about outsourcing, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that a unique techno-cultural-economic perfect storm came together in the early 1990's to make India a formidable competitor and partner for certain U.S. jobs — and there are not a lot of other Indias out there. The bad news, from a competition point of view, is that there are 555 million Indians under the age of 25, and a lot of them want a piece of "The Great Indian Dream," which is a lot like the American version.

As one Indian exec put it to me: The Americans' self-image that this tech thing was their private preserve is over. This is a wake-up call for U.S. workers to redouble their efforts at education and research. If they do that, he said, it will spur "a whole new cycle of innovation, and we'll both win. If we each pull down our shutters, we will both lose."

Pulavar - Tamil Kavidai - Anonymous

Enough !!!!

I am sitting in a little cubicle at work, ( such a joke that, work) and for some reason, I decided what had been bothering me ever since I stopped to consider how I was doing, three minutes ago.

Enough, really, my life has deteriorated into some nothingness, mostly conflicted decisions and loss of sleep and major unproductivity.

It pains me.

No really, damn it, I think I have over the course of the last tow years asked more people for help, advice, support and chocolate than I had in the previous happy existence. I definitely have whined more more more than I thought was possible, perhaps as an experiment in pushing the limit.

Also profund inabilities to write in paragraphs less than three sentences baffle me.

I know, I know, I've reached similar conclusions about state of afairs before, but none of them have been very helpful.

Shall therefore vow to:

1) be an arrogant snob
1) not whine that much
1) do more more with life
1) not hate myself in anyway
2) read more ( and stop trying to finish the bloody wheel of time series - it is painful.)
2) be happy
2) go on vacation - must.
2) get_____
2) not guilt trip oneself. no. not your fault, not yours not yours (raguvaran style)

and lastly, and yell at me if i dont stick to this, but not to make this a personal diary space - uh huh - well atleast not too overtly.

yes. there. new me.

new me is proud to report fresh explorations in the fields of music, ledzepplin come to lifelike. If you live close by, come n have a look :) .

Quote of the day

Each Step ...“Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect.

There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions.

So what. Get started now.With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”

- Mark Victor Hansen

A Poem Agains War - by Leslye Layne Russell

Iraq

dark

dark eyes

dark eyes of the children

say no

say no don't

say no don't do it

again

say no don't do it

say no don't

say no

dark eyes of the children

dark eyes

dark

© January 2003 Leslye Layne RussellThis poem was published in Black Spring Online in 2003 andin Black Spring (print) Winter 2004. It was also published in poets against war in 2003 and was included in the collectiongiven to the White House by Sam Hammill.