[ Sajith M ]

If you thought caste based reservations were a bit too much, now sample this: Tamil Nadu government has announced exclusive reservations for Christians and Muslims in government services and educational institutions. (Link)

As is we have had enough of this dammed reservation happening in all walks of life. Till now we had reservation based on the caste, and now based on religion. Why the hell can’t people compete on merit instead of asking for the crutches of reservation. And why are these politicians hell bent on dividing the country on the basis of caste and religion?

Posted under: Thoughts/Reservation
Tagged with: caste, religion, Reservation

The subject was to be introduced to create AIDS awareness, but school-going children are too young to contract the disease. It will unnecessarily affect their tender minds.

This is what the Karnataka Minister for primary and secondary education Basavaraj Horatti had to say about the decision not to introduce sex education. Now, I am left wondering if the minister needs some education (read the emphasized part of the quote) before he opens his mouth in public again.

Posted under: Thoughts/Sex And Sexuality
Tagged with: AIDS, Karnataka, sex education

Hi,

Okay, so there are no demonstrations, no call for a strike, no threats of self-immolation, nothing, nothing at all… This is disappointing. Guess, I am to be blamed for this sad situation. I should have done better to publicize this event. Looks like despite my best attempts at spreading this news, not everyone has come to know about it. Well, better late than never, so here is this (spam) post to tell you that today is/was my last working day at Stylus.

1336 days back, I joined Stylus as a PHP developer (yes, you heard it right - PHP and not .NET). For the last (almost) four year, I was multi-tasking to my best abilities (phew, its tiring). I could be chatting with someone while being on the phone and checking those really funny forwarded emails or all the blogs that I am subscribed to. If this is not multi-tasking, wonder what will be… And oh, I forgot to mention - work.

No, am not saying that I will work while chatting, being on the phone, or reading those emails. Hey, am not that irresponsible to mix them up, so I would not work while I was busy with anything else (which was 80% of the time). Btw, 20% of my time at office was reserved for lunch and tea breaks.
The remaining time, I would be busy with work and only work. No wonder then that when I told Ranjit that I am supposed to be working for him, he immediately went looking for a dictionary and was for some strange reason looking very closely at the meaning of the word work. Guess he wanted to find a superlative for work, so that he could use that to describe me.

Moving away from Stylus was a tough decision. Life will be boring for some time. I will not be able to glance at the latest cricket score while walking around (specifically, I will miss all you guys who keep crickinfo always open). Will not be able to get the daily dose of latest movies and songs provided by Suthin. Will not have Anish to provide the latest updates on Chennai. Will not have Vinod to provide marital advice. Will not have Rama’s jukebox playing music. Amongst all this gloom, the only silver line I see is that I will not be around creating trouble for you guys ;-)

On a serious note though, it has been a great 4 years (well almost) that I spent at Stylus and its been fun. I will miss you guys, you guys rock!

–
Sajith M <+91-9980590846>
http://blog.sajithm.com/

Posted under: Thoughts

So finally some sense has prevailed and the Supreme Court has stayed the central law providing for 27 percent reservation for Other Backward Classes.

Its a good judgement, and hopefully will go a long way in making sure that merit and not caste is the deciding factor for admission in institutions of higher education.

Link

Posted under: Thoughts/Reservation
Tagged with: caste, merit, Reservation

Air Deccan is a great airline. After reading my previous posts (Air Deccan - Simpli cheat and Air Deccan - Simpli unsafe), you might be thinking that I am kidding, but no I am serious. Air Deccan is a great airline. This airline does so many things for its passengers - cheating, bending of safety norms, crazy rescheduling and other such nice things. This airline can do it all, except perhaps for flying you to your destination.

Wow, don’t think there is much left that they can do to screw up the passengers. And what surprises me is that despite all this (and thousands complaining/ranting about it), this airline continues to operate…

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Air Deccan, cheating, rescheduling, safety

Air Deccan - the Simpli Fly Unsafe company seems to be in trouble, with another CNN IBN report indicating that they are bending the safety norms.

Links:
Air Deccan is bending safety norms

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Air Deccan, Unsafe

Air Deccan - the Simpli Fly Cheat company seems to be in trouble, with the CNN IBN report indicating pretty well that they are not just simply flying, but also simply cheating some hapless passengers.

What remains to be seen is will the Civil Aviation ministry or the concerned departments take any action against the airline for cheating passengers.

Links:
Air Deccan ’simplicheats!’
Air Deccan taking people for ride

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Air Deccan, cheating

The pursuit of order is making a mess on Newsweek reports:

It may seem counterintuitive, but the human mind—and a lot of other things, as it turns out—often work better not when they’re neat and highly ordered, but rather when they operate in a messier fashion. That principle may apply not only to how we live and work, but also to how people around the world deal with regional instability, terrorism and natural disasters.

1. I realized that trying to get things organized is just a waste of time and energy (you can’t beat entropy) that can be put to better use by doing something else. So I am giving up all my attempts to be even reasonably organized.
2. Is the genius of the Indian mind what it is because of the mess, dirt, filth and squalor we grow up and seemingly revel in? (Via churumuri)

Posted under: Thoughts

There are 28 states and 7 union territories in India. How many of them can you name in 10 minutes? Write them down in notepad or Excel and see how many can you get right. Once you done compare with the Wikipedia entry on States and territories of India. No cheating :-)

I was able to get 25 states and all 6 union territories (Missed Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Tripura and Lakshadweep). How about you?

Posted under: Thoughts

10 years back, a guy named Palaniappan Chidambaram rose to present a budget. People hailed it as a Dream Budget. Now the same guy presented another budget. Forget dreams, this is a budget that is disappointing, unimaginative and a seriously sad budget. Everything was in place for the Finance Minister to present another dream, this time though he chose to presnt a nightmare for you. So lets take a look at what makes the nightmare budget (Budget 2007) so nightmarish.

Being an election year, the finance mister chose to provide sops. Dispensing swiftly with the usual figures, the minister dwelt at length on two social sectors that have high priority in the Congress’ promise of good governance – education and agriculture. Of course, the finance minister did not forget to bring more services under service tax, bring IT companies under MAT, and of course increase the cess.

• A booming economy and resultant buoyancy in tax revenues helped our minister meet the targets. Instead of trying to help the aam aadmi by reducing the taxes, the minister chose to increase the government expenses (mostly unproductive) by Rs 100,000 crore.
• Education came first with a whopping 34.5 per cent enhancement. Now that sure is a welcome step, if you decide to overlook the fact that most of this will go into providing the reservations and very little will actually help the education of the general quota (or the normal people)
• Next came the farm sector. A proposal for Rs 2,25,000 crore for farm credit and a target to bring 5 million more farmers under farm credit. Also a promise of 100 per cent subsidy to small farmers and 50 per cent subsidy to other farmers. Dear minister, when will you realize the fact that you are putting all that money into a black hole. Agriculture in India, in its present form is unviable. Farming on tiny individual plots is never a good idea (much less an efficient way of agriculture). The minister ought to have encouraged farm consolidation, but nothing of the sort happened.
• Rural India dominated with hiked outlays under the Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Mission, the Bharat Nirmal Housing Programme, the National Rural Health Mission. Now our dear minister seems to have forgotten that people live in urban areas too. While the cost of health services in the urban areas has been rising, our minister chose to ignore the fact. With the infrastructure crumling in our urban areas (take Bangalore for example), attention to urban infrastructure would not have hurt. While its good that our minister has tried to help the rural area, the complete lack of focus on urban areas is disappointing and unfortunate.
• The budget proposes to include any specified security or sweat equity shares allotted by a company to its existing or former employees within the ambit of fringe benefits for the purposes of tax. So with the ESOP now under FBT, employees stand to lose.
• India’s export-oriented enterprises such as in the thriving software outsourcing industry were brought back under the tax net. Now they have to pay 11.33 percent of the adjusted book profits as minimum alternative tax (MAT).

Dear Mr. Chidambaram. Some questions that came to my mind while listening to the boring and unimaginative budget of yours (the one that you say will help the aam aadmi, but I disagree)

• Was this not a good opportunity to bring down the excise, custom, income and all other taxes? The why did they not happen?
• What the hell is this FBT thing? Yeah, I know it was introduced in last budget becasuse someone went brain dead but continued writing the budget. Don’t you think this thing should have been scrapped?
• And hey, all this cess and surcharge needs to be done away with as well. You collect taxes for doing things that the government is supposed to do - things like building roads, providing basic education etc. Why the hell do you have a road cess (on petrol) and an education cess (on all taxes)
• While I appreciate the focus on rural development, the fact is that people live in urban areas too, and they too need infrastructure. Btw, do you think the urban middle class is just about a hundred people or so (the complete disregard in your budget makes me think that someone told you that)
• While IT too should be taxed like any other industry, don’t you think its too early? Also did you know that 11.33% might make a difference of just about 1.5% to Infosys’ profitability but can push a lot of small companies (already with razor thin margins) into loss making units?
• You talked about the aam aadmi, how does increasing the service tax net (to include new services) help the aam aadmi? As far as I can see this is going to only pust up the costs and that (IMO) does not help the common man

Maybe it was the expectation of another dream from the man who presented a dream budget once, or maybe it was the expectation that the finance minister will help the aam aadmi to grow at the rate of GDP, or maybe it was a combination. At the end of the day, the minister has presented another dull, boring budget that does not help the common man, and pushes his rate of development further into the negative. Has the dream merchant has stopped daring to dream?

Posted under: Thoughts
Tagged with: Budget, Chidambaram