Identify the farmer quiz

Today let's celebrate 60 years of farmer suicides. Millions dead, an estimated 1,600 dead in the last 5 years in Vidarbha alone. The PM has most magnanimously announced a package (just like his predecessors have been announcing for the past 60 years). Meanwhile Shivam Vij of The Other Idiots has figured out the root cause. Did someone say moral hazard?

Anyway, let's get back to the quiz.


Question: Which image above is that of an Indian farmer?
(a) A
(b) B
(c) C
(d) All of the above
(e) None of the above



[Answer] The correct answer is (d) all of the above. The commenter who got it wrong, no OBC certificate for you. According to a report, Amitabh Bachchan claimed farmer status. Arjun Singh's official bio states his profession as Farmer/Agriculturist, whatever that means. Basically if your mother has a small patch of kitchen garden where she grows mint or coriander herbs, you may be able to claim farmer status. Farmer status comes with a whole bunch of goodies, wonder if the real farmers know.

This is the big problem in India. We have basically dumped pragmatism in the river Ganga. Ask this professor what two and two add up to. He will write some 100 posts on his blog and in the end accuse you of being biased.

The 100 Billion Mark Bill

100 Billion Mark, Nov. 3 1923 City of Freital

On November 1, 1923, 100 Billion Mark would buy 3 pounds of meat. Bread is 3 Billion Mark a loaf. On November 15, 100 Billion Mark would buy 2 glasses of beer. Bread is 80 Billion Mark a loaf.

Economics Quiz:

Which macro-economic phenomenon is on everyone's mind in India (perhaps elsewhere too) these days?

[Answer] The answer is of course inflation, as several readers pointed out. Once again, no prizes, get yourself an OBC certificate.

Inflation completely destroyed the common man in Germany in 1923. The very next year Hitler would write Mein Kampf. Well.

Now, here is a curious piece of document we would like readers to look at:

Railway Minister Lalu Prasad paid over Rs 10 lakh to Indian Tourism Development Corporation's (ITDC's) Ashoka Hotel for his daughter's wedding.

Receipts of the payment available with CNN-IBN show the payments were made in cash, on the same day and all this just to save income tax.

Tomatoes: Rs. 50 per kg.
Daal: Rs. 80 per kg.
Hapless incompetent ministers scrambling to do damage control: priceless.

If only we were allowed to make bets

Has anybody heard anything from Arjun Singh lately? Didn't think so. After the initial mass hysteria the quota stage was stormed by P. Chidambaram (*) and Dr. Ramadoss. Meira Kumar was not too far behind. After that - no more Arjun Singh. It was reminiscent of the who will be the PM musical chair competition after the last general elections.

Well, looks like the dogfight has intensified.

A tussle for credit on the quota issue has begun between HRD minister Arjun Singh and Social justice minister Meira Kumar. While on the face of it, Kumar's objection appears to be on a point of procedure, the riposte-in-making of the social justice ministry is seen as echoing the feelings of many in Congress, including those in top positions.

(*) Frankly, the likes of Dr. Ramadoss and Meira Kumar are totally expendable. They add no value to the economy while gobbling up profuse amounts of bureaucratic largesse. What alarmed us was that during the period of total turmoil in the financial markets and in this sensitive stage of the Indian economy, important ministers like PC were busy doing social justice.

What a shameless idiot

Dilip D'Souza has enabled moderation on his blog, in the fine tradition of communist censorship and Congress emergency.

Here is a shameless self-plug:

Dilip D'Souza said...

Shoummo, while you're right that there's probably not enough news about rural India in our papers, I'm not so sure it requires the papers to actually have "rural reporters" on their staff. That Cal daily you're talking about, last time I checked some years ago (I used to get it at home here in Bom) did make an attempt to have some serious news, often about rural India. (And I promise you -- saying so has nothing to do with the fact that I won one of those rural reporting award a few years ago).

25 January, 2006

[Edited to clean up a private personal reference. My policy is to keep it clean, I hope the Gandhians]

This guy says premier institutes must have representation from rural India. This guy is peddling his ideas of egalitarianism and blogging till kingdom come about how the privileged people do not want people from the villages to take away their seats. Yet when it comes to his own turf, he does not want any competition from rural reporters. This is insane! This is what goes for socialism in our country. Of course he will keep his empire safe from encroachment while asking you and me to give up our hard earned money, our hard earned seats.

The Other Idiots exposed

If reading the previous post gave you an uneasy feeling, you are not alone. Quite obviously there are big names involved here. We won't be surprised if there is a straight line connecting the guy who bankrolls The Other Idiots blog and the ruling party.

For instance, take this comment by Shivam Vij:

I don't think I am answerable to you, and neither are The Other India bloggers - ten of us by now. And I didn't get all of them together; Dilip invited me.

Now, let us take a close look at this interesting graphic (source register.com):


























Those commenters on the dcubed blog who are demanding the ouster of Shivam Vij from the Other Idiots site (see here, here and here) do not know what they are up against. Come on people, you are falling for it hook, line and sinker. The is no Other India! This is a very elaborate scam in preparation for a certain event in 2009.

Shivam's claim as to Dilip invited him to blog on The Other Idiots site is like Manmohan Singh saying, "I didn't want to be in the Congress, much less be the PM, Soniaji invited me", which is more credible by the way.

The ten bloggers at the Other India are just about down to four or five now. The rest scrammed as soon as they discovered the scam. Among the current members are some who wear the party- card like a badge. The rest are there for some form of freebies or prizes at essay competitions, government scholarships etc. As a matter of fact, the presence of one of them who is in the payroll of the Indian Government is highly questionable from an ethical standpoint, given the agenda of the site. But then again, upper class (*) people often tend to confuse between privilege earned versus privilege assumed.

Heck, what were they thinking, they will put up a website and suddenly the net savvy youth will go all mushy and stampede the poll booths to vote for a certain party? As far as I can see, it is not going very well.

[Update] Dilip D'Souza made a follow-up post, in response to the barrage of requests from his regular readers to take Shivam Vij out of The Other Idiots. The post is so mushy that we felt nauseated. In this post he also asks why so many of us do not use our real names. Well, Mr. D'Souza, blogging ain't our day job, that's why. So, we have no upside - no government scholarships, economic benefit, book contracts or jury-rigged blog mela awards waiting for us yet there is all the downside such as identity theft, spamming and for some even a possible loss of a lucrative job. By the way, he has also enabled comment moderation which is another way of saying, opposing views not welcome here.

(*) There will be a follow up post on the Mythical Indian Middle class.

"Secular" party's attempt to create Hindu-Sikh rift foiled

The blogosphere is slowly becoming a major leading indicator of the political environment. Take for instance The Other Idiots blog.

The blog started sometime during the last quarter of 2005. [Who owns the show is a mystery given that the writer of the very first post and the owner of the blog domain name claims Dilip invited him to the site.] Around the same time Arjun Singh et al started plotting the assault on middle India. Up to this point the owner of the blog was a campaigner for anti-ragging and a much hated personality at the St. Stephen's college, New Delhi. Come January, the blog started a steady stream of pro-reservation posts, many of them coinciding with political moves related to the reservation drama. Did someone say insider? We didn't hear it.

Take Dilip D'Souza's latest post. Please convince us that it fits into his recent chain of thoughts and posts. In this post Dilip claims that the late (i.e. someone who can not defend himself) Raja Ramanna had anti-Sikh feelings simultaneously with anti-Muslim beliefs! In the same post Dilip gingerly reveals that Raja Ramanna's brother had sheltered his Sikh neighbors from communal riots.

Quiz time again:

Which party caused, aided and abetted the 1984 riots between Sikhs and Hindus?
Answer below (*)

Now please take a look at this news item:

Under attack from pro-Congress Sikh religious leaders here for her comments on the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev, senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj said she stood by her remarks that a Hindu courtier had little role in the execution of the fifth Guru ordered by Emperor Jehangir.

See the cunning in Dilip's post. It was blood-thirsty Muslim Emperors who slaughtered the Guru. It was the Muslim Emperor who in the characteristic Islamic mould attempted to smother the great religion (along with other great religions) but it's all somehow the fault of Hindus! More surprising is the fact that Dilip and the Other Idiot bloggers seem to be amazingly prescient of every move by the ruling party.

Fortunately for Sushma Swaraj and more importantly the rest of India, Sikhs were quick to call the bluff. Among those who supported Swaraj were:

Noted Sikh scholars
Mohinder Singh (Director, Bhai Veer Singh Sahitya Sadan)
Mahip Singh (columnist)
Manjit Singh (Leader, Akali Dal Panthak)
Onkar Singh (General Secretary, The Shiromani Akali Dal)
In other words, who's who of Sikhism.

Who tried to fan the fire?

Harvinder Singh Sarna (Chief, Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee)
Dilip D'Souza
A certain political party (*)

Dilip's repeated attempts to create communal rifts makes us wonder if he is in the payroll of the ISI. Frankly, we wouldn't be surprised.

Science Quiz

An object placed in water displaces an amount of water whose weight equals that of the object.

Who said this?

(a) Archimedes
(b) Dilip D'Souza
(c) An Engineering graduate from BITS Pilani
(d) This is a trick question
(e) All of the above
(f) None of the above

[Answer] This is really a trick question. The above discovery was made by Dilip D'Souza when he took a dive into the Bombay rotary club swimming pool high on scotch whiskey. Dilip D'Souza is also an Engineering under-graduate from BITS Pilani and has a graduate degree in Computer Science from a US university. So the correct answer is (d). Of course there are no prizes, all we can give you is a link to some sites where they tell you how to get a fake OBC certificate.

Dilip D'Souza realized his mistake since then and corrected it. We were a little surprised, because as far as we knew, the displacement of water is the least important side effect of what is known as the Archimedes principle. The principle takeaway is the force of buoyancy, which, among other things makes interesting things like boats, ships, cruise liners etc possible.

Guess the OBC game

Question: Who is an OBC among the following:
(a) Arjun Singh
(b) Atal Bihari Bajpai
(c) Rajnath Singh (Janata Dal Prez)
(d) All of the above
(e) None of the above

[Scroll down for answer]

Meanwhile, take a look at the following screenshot (*) from the Other Idiots site:


















(*) The Other Idiots are notorious for randomly changing their URLs to mess up our posts. This is the reason our analysts almost gave up analyzing their posts. But we will be back. Many readers have complained about the dwindling number of analytical posts. We noticed that many bloggers have came back to the Other Idiots site, for instance Abi and Uma. Earlier we were requested not to analyze Uma's post as she was deemed non-partisan. Unfortunately based on some of her recent posts we can not guarantee her immunity from our analysts.

[Answer] Heck if we knew. All we know is that there is a mad scramble among politicians to get OBC certificates. Apparently it is good for the political Karma. Read this story for more.

Narayana Murthy flunks the Quota 101 Test

Is Narayana Murthy a genius? An above average person? Opinions seem to be divided on this. In any case, he has flunked the basic Quota 101 test for sure. More importantly, he has proven himself to be a total political greenhorn and a PR disaster.

"India must be the only country in the world, where people fight to be called backward"
- Narayan Murthy.

Excuse me Sir, but are you Clint Eastwood? You may have made billions, put India on the front burner of the globalized economy etc. etc. but how can you be so naive about the political environment under your very nose? That statement is gonna cost you.

A year after the social justice ministry gave a list of 100 SC/ST engineers from top institutes to industry chambers, Infosys has finally come up with a concrete plan to train them and "provide them with sufficient skills to enable them to compete on their own merit".

The software giant will call all 100 engineers to Bangalore for interviews on July 10. They will be given counselling before they face a written test. The selected candidates will be intimated about the training programme.

How many Employees does Infy have today?
About 50,000?

Please do some quick Math. How much is 22.5% of that?
11,250.
Correct!

How much is 27% of 50,000?
13,500.
Correct again!

You want to give away just 100 seats? What is this, some sort of charity? Don't you remember your ancestors robbed all these people for 3000 years? Now, don't you act coy or you are gonna get it real bad. How dare you talk about merit? What is merit anyway? You think you are a hotshot? It does not work that way in India.

Here is what else you have to do. Each time Infy wants to recruit, you will have to send a notice to the labor department. The labor department will check out the scenario. No funny stuff, Ok? Until you have rounded up 22.5 Dalits and 27 OBCs for every 100 positions, the new recruits will NOT start work. Is that clear? Good. Remember that Aunty Meira will be watching you, so will Dr. Ramadoss and PC.

Why are you whining? Azim Premji? Yeah, he also issued a bravura statement. So what? What is Mr. Premji's religion again? Yeah, you are slowly getting it. And, what is yours? Yep. Just what we thought. What is your caste again? You don't believe in caste? How does it matter whether you believe in caste or not, because we do. The constitution does too, don't you know?

The Quota and the Cup

People can't seem to get enough of Veerappa Moily, the enforcer of the new quota regime. See Abi drooling over Moily's management skills here.

Committee chairman M Veerappa Moily says, "The soccer World Cup selection goes to show that when weaker sections are given equal opportunity and access as other sections of the society, hidden talent emerges. It also broadens talent base and facilitates diversity."

In a note circulated during the committee's meetings, the implementation of the proposed quota system is compared to the zonal representation practised by soccer's governing body, FIFA.

Can't beat this. Goooooaaaaaaaaaal!

[Update] Since we posted this, Moily's comment was widely discussed in the blogosphere and the media.

Rashmi Bansal made a satire on her blog:

An expert committee has noted that in the last 76 years, India has not been represented in the finals of the FIFA World Cup. This is a gross injustice considering that we represent 16.66% of the world population.

From TOI (Oranges and Apples):

There are, indeed, a number of parallels. One could think of the way parties have made the caste issue a political football, the goalpost they're all aiming at being some fraction of the OBC vote.

Financial Express (Eh, Mr Moily? Don't twist opportunity into outcome):

In sum, the football World Cup is actually an advertisement for critics of caste quotas as used in India. Promoting equality of opportunity and abilities to compete is unexceptionable; decreeing particular outcomes quite another. For meaningful debate, distinguish the two.

Rama Doss AIIMS

We have been following the AIIMS drama with great interest, partly because it is slowly becoming a microcosm of the TN communal politics. What we have is a showdown between an MBBS Doctor (quota beneficiary) turned Minister (profiled here) and a widely respected visionary (profiled on the RealityCheck blog here).

Dr. Ramadoss is running amock through the AIIMS campuses like a pitbull in heat with his instrument in his hand, penetrating every soft spot he finds.

What does the Government have against centres of excellence in education? Going by the systematic campaign of vendetta and vilification unleashed against select centres of learning by powerful Ministers of the UPA Government, it would seem that the ruling alliance has decided to launch an Indian version of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. During that so-called Revolution, China's then supreme leader let loose thousands of illiterate lumpens masquerading as Red Guards on institutions of higher learning, humiliated scholars and men of culture, made bonfires of rare books and ancient manuscripts and directed university students to pack their bags and go to villages under the slogan "learn from the peasants".

Welcome to the 21st Century, India.

Funny Story 69 and the Google ticker

Funny Story Sixty-Nine is a Thai movie. A movie out of Thailand with 69 in the title is sure to make your imaginations run wild. This movie is pretty tame by the way. Nope, not even that, in case you are wondering.

So, how is this relevant? Glad you asked.

Remember the SC ruling that quotas shall not exceed 50% of total seats? Well, apparently Tamil Nadu has unilaterally decided that it does not need to pay heed to the SC directive. Backward classes have 69% of seats specially reserved for them. How does TN pull it off? Here is a blog that attempts to explain it. We could not really make any sense out of it except that TN has shown its middle finger to the SC through some complex legal maneuvering. Apparently this drama has been going on since 1994.



Remember the Google ticker? The one that you see when you log on to gmail?





Well, it looks like we could affix a ticker of the same kind on the walls of the offices of Hon'ble Minister for Social Justice Smt. Meira Kumar. After securing quotas for her half-dalit kids, she is now trying to increase the 15% quota for SCs to 16.23%.

In a move that may further fuel the quota controversy, the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry is 'favourably' considering raising reservations for Scheduled Castes from the existing 15 per cent to 16.23 per cent following the increase in their population.

This is alarming because if the population of certain segments increase at a very high rate, there is potentially no end to it. This happened in the past already.

A draft proposal for this points out that the quota, pegged at 12.5 per cent in 1953, was raised to 15 per cent in 1970 in light of the 1961 Census.

Funny thing is, now an entire religion will be officially considered scheduled caste, i.e. implicitly a part of the Hindu community. Guess which one?

Besides the increase in population, Kumar said as many as 68 more castes and one religion - Buddhism - have been included in the SC category, resulting in an increase in numbers.

I wonder how the Japanese will react to this!

The big bang

Folks in the blogosphere still continue to remain optimistic about the reservation issue.

The fate of the country was sealed the very day the parliament almost unanimously passed a law intended to enforce the OBC reservations in the central institutes.

It may be a matter of debate whether this was a well planned and coordinated step by the party in power to ensure a win in the next general elections or whether it was a case of one minister gone berserk and others having to gingerly play along. What is not open to debate or negotiations is the outcome.

Let us assert once again:

1. Quotas will be implemented as announced from the coming academic session
2. There will not be any creamy layer exclusion, not now, not ever
3. The quota will keep on increasing, just like entropy and the size of the universe
4. Reservations in private sector jobs is soon to follow, first for Dalits and then for OBCs
5. There isn't going to be a review, the public will never see the affidavit filed with the SC

As noted earlier, the overlook committee is making a great show of work being done.

While admitting that for maximum impact of 27% quota for OBCs the "ideal step would be to implement reservation in one big bang", he suggests that due to cost and efforts needed "staggering the implementation process could be considered".

Ideal for whom?

This is what the suggested staggered implementation will look like:

IITs/IIMs/AIIMS from academic year 2007-08
Central universities and institutes of Central government from 2008-09
Deemed universities and unaided private educational institutions from 2009-10

Clearly, not much of a stagger there. The prized seats are in IITs/IIMs/AIIMS. The reader may recall that the reservations in unaided private institutes were eliminated following the landmark judgement in the Inamdar case. Moily can speak about this so casually because several constitutional amendments are in the pipeline.

It is a very pertinent question whether it makes sense for the barbarians to continue blogging. Well, it does. First of all, the communists continue to provide solid entertainment. Secondly, we are sort of curious about where this is going. How far can it get? Any guesses?

Meanwhile several private efforts to collect statistics are going on. Blogger Vivek Kumar and a few volunteers are trying to digitize the original Mandal commission report. There is another effort led by blogger RealityCheck to collect reports of various commissions. Please help if you can.

Acting like an upper-caste

15-Year old Penny was just another black kid growing up in the inner-city. Her single mother worked two jobs to make ends meet. Penny buried herself in books. Soon she became an honor roll student.

One day, on her way back from the Church choir, Penny was surrounded by a dozen or so black teen males. They hurled abuses at her, accused her of "acting white". The next two hours were quite predictably very traumatic for Penny, the two hours she would try to shake off from her mind for as long as she lived....

You think something like that couldn't happen?

Smart black students being accused of "acting too white" is an issue Triangle educators are debating at a youth and race conference this week. "They can get high grades but they don't want to because they'll be considered as acting white, so they put white people down," Guzman said.

Are you saying it can happen only in America?

You think that standing on the other side of the reservation issue is going to get everybody in this society to see you as a Forward Caste and hence superior. Is that what you are trying to achieve??

OR you feel that since you have made it to IIT in the general category, reservation to OBC's is somehow going to dilute your degree in the future or is it *Follow the Junta* effect. I sense a big dissonance in you in terms of understanding who you really are.

The above was a comment on the popular YouthCurry blog. If you are tempted to dismiss it as noise, here is more stuff:

Some IITtians who have benefited from reservation have declared that they will not accept reservation for their kids. Through such private acts of self respect, despite their best intentions, they down grade themselves from the bearers of a right to lucky beneficiaries of a favour. They must reaslie the need to back up these acts with a public commitment to raise the self respect of their caste. In other words giving up one's right should not be a tactic to conceal the caste origin of one's kids!

The comment above, as quoted in the nanopolitan blog, was by none other than Professor. V. Sanil, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT-D. Apparently he emailed it to all his students. In the end he asks, how many SC/ST friends have you got? This is funny. So, if an SC/ST tries to work hard and secure a seat on his own, he is trying to kiss up to upper-castes. How in the world will an SC/ST ever want to make friends outside his caste circles if such attitudes begin to take root? Does your question make any sense, you moron?

Wait, there is more, not just another loony professor going off on a tangent.

Younger generation from backward classes have a misconception that they would become members of upper castes through their anti-stand towards backward communities. So they raise their voice against reservation in IIT and IIM, he said.

Above comment was by the former chairman of Permanent Commission for Backward Classes Prof Ravivarma kumar.

We can see clearly what is happening here. SC/ST or OBC students who make it on their own seriously dampen the credibility of the claim of need for reservations. Besides it is quite anti-climactic for the pro-quota guys when these students join the anti-quota protests. They are spoiling the free-luncheon parties of the freeloaders. Hence the vitriol.

Can it get any uglier than this?

North vs. South

Blogger RealityCheck believes that when the 27% quota floodgates open up for OBCs in premier institutes, it will be a clean sweep by Southern OBCs, especially the powerful OBC lobby of TN.

The OBCs from the south (esp TN) will cream the hapless OBCs from Bihar and render the whole system useless.

Do you really think a Kurmi from Bihar can compete with the Pillais and Mudaliars of Tamilnadu (who are into their 4th generation medical professions) ?

Well, we are not too sure of that. First of all, we are talking powerful OBCs like Yadavs here.

Yes, the Southern OBCs are probably a little more sophisticated as demonstrated by PC's gift of gab. But don't you ever underestimate the North, especially Bihar. Remember the ease with which Laloo swept the 800 crores loot from the fodder scam under the carpet?

If betting weren't illegal, we would be taking out bets on which OBC lobby, the powerful OBCs from the South or the powerful OBCs from Bihar ends up cornering the lions share of the loot.

I don't need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
Your power hungry sellin' soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain't that fresh
I don't need your civil war

The glass is half full

54% Hindu upper-caste folks believe reservations will lead to equal opportunities.

Ok, so what happened to the casteist ba****ds here? If the majortity of Hindu upper-caste members believe in reservations and strongly support it, doesn't the credibility of workplace discriminations go out the door?

Of course, the barbarians are a small minority group even within the minority (12%) upper-caste group who believe that all reservations should be done away with and Article 15 restored to version 1.0 (yeah, the 3 clause pre-first amendment version) .

Now, another interesting graphic:




32% OBCs do not believe that reservations create equal opportunity.

The percentage of OBCs is a max of 52%. Hence, the percentage of OBCs in the total population that may require reservations (of course, some of them will say they need it anyway, like Dr. Ramadoss), is about 35%. Recall that the estimated percentage of OBCs in premier educational institutes is about 23.5% (for IITs the figure is quoted between 8 and 20% depending on which side you are). Even without factoring out the Ramadoss types, we have a very minor shortfall in OBC representation. As opportunities increase and the economy expands (which is beginning to look less and less likely with all the communist speak), this shortfall will decrease and ultimately disappear.

Sadly, we will still continue to have reservations.

Iodine for all

Chillao, chillao! Tere ghar me maa behen nahin hain kya?

Dr. Anubumani Ramadoss, our Hon'ble Minister for Health and Family welfare could give Amrish Puri a run for his money.

Dr. Ramadoss hails from a family of doctors. He attended Madras Medical College. It is a mute point whether he used the OBC quota to secure his admission. His biodata lists his profession as Medical Practitioner. Contrast this with the official biodata of Sri Arjun Singh, who lists his profession as Agriculturist/Farmer. Incidentally Arjun Singh is also a B.A., LL.B. Educated at Allahabad University and Agra University.

Dr. Ramadoss has three daughters. As a progressive citizen and a national leader for Family Welfare, shouldn't he set an example in family planning and more importantly in rejecting preference for a male child? Well, we should not speculate on that one, after all accidents do happen.

In the recent times, Dr. Ramadoss has been providing a helping hand to his colleague, Hon'ble Minister for Social Justice Smt. Meira Kumar. Among other things, he vehemently opposes the creamy layer provision.

"There is no mention of creamy layer in the Constitution and we follow the law of the land," he told a private TV channel.

So, what makes him an expert on economic policies?

Attended the course on Introductory Macro Economics at the London School of Economics (L.S.E.) in 2003 (scroll down to the very bottom).

Among his stellar achievements is a push for increasing Iodine consumption in India.

ON June 15, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Anbumani Ramadoss declared the re-imposition of the ban on the sale of non-iodised salt meant for human consumption.

Well, Hon'ble minister, we will need lots of Iodine after your quota salvos albeit in a different form.

What! Me worry about market forces?

"If they leave everything to market forces, why do we have a Government? What is the responsibility of the Government and anyway, who are these market forces?" Communist Party of India leader D Raja said.

Exactly. Who are these market forces? Government should regulate everything, especially what the phat upper-caste girls eat. They eat too much and don't exercise enough! Why change? Why liberalize? Why reform? Everything has been going fine for us. We have been winning elections.

A rabid dog chasing its own tail

Former external affairs minister Natwar Singh has alleged that the UPA Government and some Congress leaders are trying to fix him and his son Jagat Singh in the Iraqi oil-for-food scam. Natwar made this allegation, which could greatly embarrass the UPA Government.

Under severe attack from various quarters, including the Congress party, the government said the new form introduced for filing Income Tax returns would be dropped from next year.

The Government today denied that it would reduce the revised fuel prices and began an exercise to "hardsell" the hike to protesting parties and states. But the option of a rollback remains open given pressure from the Left allies and even from within the Congress.

Sounds like a serious case of schizophrenia. There is no leadership, the facetime awarded to the PM and Cong leadership has been miniscule compared to what was awarded to virtual non-entities like Arjun Singh.

Meanwhile SENSEX appears to be all set for a bungee jump. Exchange rates are shooting through the roof. Hot money is disappearing. Who knows that the deficit is like? There is evidence of central bank interventions of the kind that collapsed Argentina recently.

Here, you wanna help dada tie a rope around this rock?
We'll tie it to her footsie then we'll roll her off the dock
Ready now, here we go, on the count of free..
One.. two.. free.. WHEEEEEE!

We learned from the best