The Govt. has a mint or what?The government is ready to make up for the fee shortfall caused by reservation. But schools say it may not be enough.
"Schools have no other source of income. So we will be forced to raise the fees by 40 per cent," said Sumer Singh, principal, Daley College.
The Congress party Elections Manifesto 2009, in writing, promises to increase the number of days for which work will be offered under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme as also the daily wage rate. As if this is not enough the party goes ahead to offer literally "free lunches" in community kitchens for a certain class of people. And it then promises to make available 25 kg of foodgrains at Rs 3 per kilogram!
Apart from being an inducement to influence the voters, this promise contains a threat to the foodgrains producers that their produce will be procured at artificially depressed prices. Artificially depressed prices over decades have resulted in mass suicides by farmers. This offer was repeated by no less a person than Ms Sonia Gandhi herself in an electoral speech in Karnataka.
In a meeting that he addressed in Wardha, in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, Rahul Gandhi maintained that his party was essentially for the poor and that as long as one poor man remains in the country, he himself, Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh would be there to address his concerns.
Indian politicians have no incentive to see the poor come out of poverty, no incentive, absolutely none!
There is an old adage that goes against giving alms to the beggars; "Give him rather the implements with which to work and earn his bread."
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme condemns millions of people to a life of manual labour, digging pits and filling them, rather than starting an enterprise. Such mindless labour can actually be poverty creating rather than poverty eradicating.
[Via]"One disgruntled former student, Boston money manager Harry Markopolos, appeared on 20/20 four years ago commenting on the simple investigation he had undertaken regarding master Madoff’s activities and the facts unequivocally indicated fraud: Madoff didn’t make buys or sells, he was making consistently above average returns for his clients, etc.. . He implied that the SEC should have caught those simple, basic aspects of trading in securities. He even had the audacity to suggest that they didn’t because either the SEC was an over-bloated, inefficient bureaucracy and/or so incompetent they couldn’t do the simplest things and therefore a waste of taxpayer’s money and/or – and this is just mean-spirited and obviously a product of Mr. Markopolos’ resentment – the SEC was bought off by a billionaire. Oh right. Please, like that can happen. What would Mr. Markopolos suggest? We get the SEC out of the securities markets so there’s no moral hazard and people will take responsibility for doing the necessary due diligence themselves before investing? Hah! Then what would the master’s like master Madoff do? Freak."Who will regulate the regulator? Sigh!
And of course earning a lot of money from all those parlors whose license is not revoked or will be reissued in the near future.Meanwhile, the Mumbai Municipal Corporation has already brought hookah parlours under the purview of the Cigarettes and Tobacco Act.
The corporation has been conducting raids at various hookah parlours in the city and revoking the licenses of parlours that do not have proper documentation.
"Repeatedly we are told that there is far too much at stake for too many people, for the IPL Board to even so much as contemplate the idea of such a postponement or a cancellation. But who are these stakeholders, and why should elected governments stretch their security apparatus dangerously thin in order to protect their interests?Well, honestly I am not sure voting makes any bit of difference in India. So, maybe, I would prefer watching a match instead of bothering to choose between the incompetent Gandhi family (where I base my judgement on their record to this day) and Shri. Advani.
The Lahore attack on the Sri Lankan players proved that cricket could indeed be a soft target for terrorists in this part of the world. While we may want to believe that India is a lot safer than Pakistan — and there is indeed some strong basis for this belief, 26/11 notwithstanding — this is not the time to traffic in illusions."
The Indian Premier League is about many things. It’s about money, money, money, money, money… and then, of course, about a bit of cricket, of the frenetic kind, too.It is about money, only because it is the kind of cricket people come to a stadium to watch. It may not be the purest form of cricket but is the only form one with a 9-6 job can go to a stadium to watch without having to take a day off. Nobody is forced to go to the stadium. People can choose not to go to the stadium.
Given that fact, this column has a suggestion to Mr. Lalit Modi, the IPL’s high-profile head honcho. He should request the Central Government of the world’s largest democracy to postpone the general elections scheduled for April-May. Well, actually he should go beyond that: he should demand it.
Those cheergirls are worth every penny paid to them: they not only get the fans into the stands well ahead of the contest but also help add colour and zest and life to our newspapers’ front and back pages _ and a few in between.Well, even the newspapers are behind big money!
There is a simple solution: postpone the polls, no matter what the Constitution says, no matter what the Election Commissioners may say. After all, can these blokes possibly bring in hundreds of millions to the kitty? Can they conceivably persuade Preity Zinta or Shilpa Shetty — draped in the finest their unabashedly expensive wardrobes can offer — to jive it live in front of TV cameras during the matches?Unabashedly expensive wardrobes? Are Zinta and Shetty to live like the poor of the world? Will that make their cause more just or the poor any richer? They earn the millions because of investments they make of their own money. In contrast, wonder what the Govt. does with our money? Not much seems to change election after election, not even the sloganeering. Oh!, the sanctity of the constitution is at stake.
In a rational world, it would have been an open-and-shut case, a non-issue. If the governments of the States where the IPL matches are scheduled believed they would not be able to provide adequate security to the players because of the election pressures, then the Central Government should simply tell the Board of Control for Cricket in India that it would do well to postpone, or even cancel, the event.In a rational world, the Govt. has absolute powers. Ya well!
Communications Workers of America authorizes strike of 20,000 AT&T workers, could happen soon: "I also am an emloyee and you CAN NOT cross the picket line, If and when there is a strike. You will not be able to keep your job if you do. You have to be a union member in good standing. I do believe that you need to educate yourself... You need to make sure that is really what you want to do if you have bills.. You need to support your union. And for all the people on here that are downing the union. I feel that we are deserving of what we are asking for. We work our butts off also. I for one have been in a wage freeze for some time. How fair is this? I think everyone should educate yourselves before you go off on the CWA. They are fighting for our rights as workers and I am backing them and I will be there picketing and doing whatever I need to do for US as workers."
Nine-Year-Old's Abortion Outrages Brazil's Catholic Church - TIME: "Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. 'God's laws,' said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church."
I am not too sure what is inappropriate about saying that one is happy not to have been shot at.When India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni was, fresh off the Indian team’s first win in New Zealand, he began by saying he was “shocked and sad” that sportspersons had been attacked. Pressed further about Pakistan he went on, his responses containing these phrases, “I am glad I am in New Zealand and I don't have to worry about these things… Sides like us are quite happy not to be there, in this kind of a situation…. I am happy we didn't tour Pakistan, and that the government didn't allow us to tour Pakistan. It may or may not have happened to us. But overall I am happy to be here.”
It was the last thing out of his mouth and the first thing that got snapped up. The news channels were happy to call this typical of Dhoni “speaking his mind,”. It was all true, it was gut-feel “honest”. It is probably what every Indian cricketer and every player in the world felt privately at the time. But it was not appropriate.
On a day when some of his peers could have been killed, when a match official was fighting for his life and when seven innocent human beings had lost their lives, the over-arching sentiment from the captain of India called for something other than a statement whose sub-text essentially read: “Ooo, lucky, lucky us”.He was happy not to be there as a result of decisions that were pretty much out of his control. How that translates to "Ooo, lucky, lucky us" is beyond me! Also, the Sri Lankan Board sending the cricket team despite warnings from security agencies is plain stupid.
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