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A funny but rather true view of what ails Indian cricket today. Enjoy!
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Till last weekend, I have never seen any place in India with roads that are consistently good everywhere. At best, you will find a few highway stretches on the Golden Quadrilateral that are of international quality. [Great NYT article on the Golden Quadrilateral.]
Over a 3-day sojourn in Goa, I was amazed by the consistent quality of the road surface everywhere I went. There were small things that together made a big difference. A smooth and even pothole-free surface, clear white lines down the middle and on both sides, and lastly small but very clear and standardised signboards at every junction.
Such a simple formula seemed to transform narrow 2-lane roads into a driver’s paradise. Bangalore roads are a nightmare at best. Most roads, even though they are 4-lanes wide, have pockmarked surfaces and unnerving undulations. The lines drawn down the middle look like they were done by Pablo Picasso.
I gave up looking at Bangalore signboards after I saw one that had three arrows pointing to K R Circle, K H Circle, and K G Road. In addition to the information being useless, the signs at each junction are of different sizes, colours, and formats making the process of finding a road sign among the sea of billboards, ads, and shop signs impossible when you have 5 seconds remaining to catch the green signal.
This is all of course if the roads exist after being dug up by various telephone companies running fibre optic cables, works department building sewers, water authorities installing pipes, electric companies laying cables, and locals tapping new water connections. Normally all this activity happens after a new road has been laid.
I travelled around quite a bit and didn’t see a single instance of road damage anywhere in Goa.
The government always blames the poor condition of Kerala’s roads on the monsoon. The monsoon rains in Goa are of no less intensity but the roads look straight out of America. So much for excuses.
When will our other states learn from Goa?
Yesterday, the Indian stock exchanges lost Rs 2.25 lakh crore in value (Rs 2.25 trillion), the biggest drop in the 150-year history of the Indian stock exchanges. The country’s premier index, the Sensex, lost 826 points (6.7%) to close at 11,391. Nifty, the more broadbased index, also lost 6.7% to close at 3,388.
The markets have been driven up by FIIs (Foreign Institutional Investors) doubling the Sensex in the past 1 year from 6,438 to a high of 12,671 two weeks ago. FIIs have pumped in Rs 45,000 crore (Rs 450 billion) last year and about half of that in the first few months of this year.
The reasons being given for the crash are the sale of Rs 7,300 crore (Rs 73 billion) shares by FIIs in the past 1 week, an expected increase in interest rates by the US Feds, a crash in the international commodity prices, and the straw which broke its back seems to be a government circular which was interpreted that FIIs should be taxed. P Chidambaram, the country’s Finance Minister, issued an evening press release denying the latter.
A decade ago powerful individuals could sway the market and everyone would scream that small investors have lost their retirement savings but this time most investors have suffered only paper losses and are still in the black. The real big losers, paper losses again, are the business tycoons. Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani lost Rs 11,600 crores (Rs 116 billion) in personal wealth yesterday.
Notes
Sensex is the index of the BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange) analogous to to NYSE
Nifty is the index of the NSE (National Stock Exchange) analogous to NASDAQ
Dalal Street is where the BSE is located and is analogous to Wall Street
1 Lakh - 100,000
1 Crore = 100 lakhs (10 million)
US$ 1 = Indian Rs 45.50
Today marks the centennial of the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The 7.8 magnitude quake struck at 5:12 am along the San Andreas Fault and its tremors were felt as far away as Oregon and Nevada. The city of Santa Rosa was destroyed, the newly built campus of Stanford University was decimated, and San Francisco itself was damaged severely. Most people died in the fire that ravaged the city immediately afterwards than the actual quake. The fire was apparently started by an overturned stove inside a Chinese laundry. The firefighters couldn’t put it out because the underground water pipes had burst and there was no water coming out of the hydrants.
(Read more…)
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Now that is the best idea ever! How can you possibly go wrong with that? Convenient, inexpensive, and you can do it in four easy steps.
I am particularly fond of the IKEA-like illustrated instructions with the guy just zapping his eyeball with the laser.
In fact, I think this should be a new trend: Do-it-yourself brain surgeries, heart transplants, quadruple bypasses are just around the corner (or in your basement).
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A human side of Iraq from Baghdad at this blog. She reveals quite a sense of humor with her ‘Oscar Awards’ blog on March 6, 2006
It is chilling to read that the MoD is advising residents not to take orders from the army or police during nightly patrols.
For those of you not in the know, it is common among friends in India to split a cup of coffee. Where I come from, the concept is dubbed ‘by-two’. It is common among my friends to simply say “Let us grab a by-two” in the local language to mean “Let us share a cup of coffee”.
I wonder if Mr Eriksson had similar thoughts when driving his Ferrari over the weekend. Check out this story. Don’t miss the photo gallery on the right side of the story. If there ever was a worth while ’slow-down-and-rubber-neck’ for a car-crash this would be the one.
PS: I didn’t know how to categorize this story Disasters? Humor?
If you are a student of middle-east politics and if you have followed the ups downs and tragedies in the middle-east this one is for you. David Samuels has written a brilliant piece titled In a Ruined Country that is available for a limited time here
It is long and it is compelling. It was picked by David Brooks of the NY Times as the best essay of 2005. While I don’t agree with that charecterization, I do agree with Mr Brooks that it is an excellent piece.
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