Oh Darling, India!!!

While browsing over the internet yesterday, I happened to stumble upon an interesting article about how India can hasten its climb as a superpower and someone had posted that Slumdog Millionaire (2008 Oscar's best movie )shows the real India and as per him , there is no way India can achieve a Super power status in 25 years.

There are many people who have inhibitions about India being superpower in 25 years and almost all of them have one of their so called logical reasoning (mentioned below) behind it.

1. Total mess (Politically)
2. Corruption
3. Population
4. Being Lazy ( trust me , i have heard it )

Total Mess - "Super Power " may hold different meaning for different people but to me ,it means a country which is economically,socially,technologically and defensively ( please note that I have mentioned military as the last criteria) developed. I believe for any country to be a super power, it needs to be a developed one first. We have political instability , there is no "one" political party that gets absolute majority in the elections and because of which there are so many things which don't get done at all . In other words, onus doesn't lie on one political party to take blame for a mistake or to even take credit for a successful strategy. If India needs to be a super power, Indians need to make some major amendments to the constitution and the first one should be "Bi- Party System". Its about time that we get rid of multi-party system and let there be one and only one party in control of the government at any given time.

Corruption - That is a killer. There is no remedy to cure corruption except tough (and equal)laws and installing a sense of responsibility in every Indian. As English say "Spare the rod, spoil the child " . Let everyone who commits a felony shall pay the price of their misdeeds. I know, we still have a long way to go but I already see some changes ( look at how many famous people got charged,sentenced in last 5 years ). Some people may say that its not enough or its too slow but then Rome was never built in a day . Strict regulations,centralization of data and tougher punishments will keep a check on the corruption and perhaps may bring it down sooner than expected.

Population - I believe NGOs and government have spent considerable amount of time and money in recent years to send out a clear message that India cannot afford a huge population. Some people argue that we should have laws like China (one child ) ,however I don't buy that statement. People need to be educated about merits of small family and I should say that government, NGOs and media have done good job in spreading the word.

Lazy - Utterly stupid reason and does not deserve any clarificion.


Slums/Poverty/population are a reality and so is our zeal to reach the pinnacle. If we get bogged down by the petty things then we shall keep waiting for another 50 years. France, which is considered to be a developed country has lot of Algerian shantytowns and of course everyone knows about Brazilian slums. India is thousands of mile away from being a developed nation forget about being one of the biggest power but we are getting there pretty fast.

There is lot to accomplish and not much time to waste. But if we can land a probe on the moon, become 11th biggest economy in the world ( miles away from where I would like to see India, considering its huge population) ,develop a fully functional cryogenic engine on our own than yes we are on the right track . I think 25 years is sufficient enough time to cleanup the mess and become one of the leading nation in the world .


It all starts with a vision and ends with proper implementation.

Dear Investments

Investments: Should or Must not ???

Is there anyone who feels overwhelmed by so many investment options available in the market. 401K,IRA,Roth IRA,Stocks,Mutual Funds,CD,Foreign Exchange,Real estate ( one of the best options right now ,if someone can afford a 20% down payment ) and many more.

I started trading recently and somewhat face the same dilemma , should i buy only the finance stocks, as they are so down right now or should i diversify and buy energy,commodity,tech as well.As smart investors always say that secret is "Diversification of Portfolio" or in good old plain English phrase "Never put all your eggs in one basket" . I may not be the smartest investor on the block but what i feel is that diversification is good to minimize the losses but if you want a big,fat return .....its better to go full throttle without any diversification. I know it can be suicidal and we may end up loosing all our investment but what if it booms ? What if that one stock where you have put all your money doubles in lets say two years as compared to an average 10% return on your diversified portfolio ? ( provided one has done in depth research and has full confidence in the sucess of the company or the product)

Something to ponder:)

Stocks were down yet again

What a day,phew!!! . I was hoping that Monday will bring much needed boost and may be some goodluck to the stockmarket but nope , nothing of that sort happened today. I believe the only thing more disheartning than seeing your portfolios shrink is to see your company in jeopardy. Someone asked me today " Are you worried about your job ? " Hello.....aint we all are? Whats happening to US Economy and as a matter of fact to the world economy? All we hear about on tv is unemployment rate,housing crisis,banks collapsing and so on and on . Its sad to see that what started as greed and bad decision of some individuals could transform collectively into such a mammoth financial fiasco.

Its easy to blame big corporates like Freddie/Fannie/AIG for the current mess but as far as I am concerned the biggest culprit are those homeowners who knew all along that the mortgage was too big for them but yielded to the greed of making quick bucks on the equity of the house.


Sad to see that greed of some individuals have brought us to the brink of collapse of capitalism.

My take on Oscar's

So after watching marathon long Oscar's ceremony , i realized two things about myself . First of all how many good movies did i miss out in last year. I have always been a big sucker of good movies , however i havent seen so many recently . Secondly, i think i got the theme for my blog. Ever since i started jotting my thoughts over here I wasnt sure if i should write about politics or technology or anything else , but tonight i realised that there is only one thing about which i can talk at length and actually might have opinion of my own . So yes, from now on I would like to post my comments/oppinion about the movies that i have seen or will see in the future.

Coming back to Oscar's, Slumdog literally owned the show. I was little bit upset to see Mickey Rourke loosing but having said that I dont think it could have gone to a better guy . I have always admired Sean Penn and undoubtedly he puts his heart,mind and soul into any project that he takes. Also i liked his acceptance speech where he made an statement by talking about acceptance of Gays and Lesbians in our society. I am not gay but I do think that everyone on this earth should have the same rights . Being Gay or Lesbian is a personal choice and why should they (Gays/Lesbians)not have same previlages as so many others ( straight ) .

Oscar's night

Oscar's start in another 15 minutes and I am still not sure which movie should i be rooting for . My mind says that I should root for Slumdog Millionaire as it was shot in India, has a feel good theme and in general is a pretty nice movie. However my heart says that I should go with "The Wrestler". Its quite a movie and definitely deserves a recoginition. I think the best thing to happen would be , if Slumdog gets the best movie award and Mickey Rourkey gets an award for Best Actor. He has done a brilliant job and definitely deserves it.

Connundrum

Ok, So i am sitting here watching Seinfeld, talking to my friend over Yahoo and thinking how may I make my life more meaningful. I even hate the sound of it but it may be true that " I am a quitter" . Recently I enrolled in Spanish class but had to drop out coz i got bored after couple of classes, thought of developing applications for iPhone but could not finish off a single line of code.

Is there anyone out there who feels the same way ????


Is there a society for people like me ?