My take - America's superior in culture... coz although v speak of indian culture & stuff, it's not much existent in contemporary India... v hv got it all mixed up with the west... so, v haven't got much of an identity ourselves which v used to possess a century ago... whereas Americans hv it well-sorted out... That's what culture is all abt... it's the way of life & the thinking of the citizens of a nation...& regd lifestyle...both of the countries r @ the same level, but in very diff ways...most of us Indians stay with our family, v dont hv very strict rules & regulations around, & v r not much into recession...America scores on the per capita income level & self-service idea of life..But the way things r going with the Indians taking on all the bad stuff from their lifestyle like drinking, live-in relationships etc, I expect America to beat India @ this too, sooner or later...so on the whole, sadly, America tops...
America, or for that matter, Germany & Japan were destroyed completely after WW2...but they r still the world's most developed economies...coz finally, it boils down to the hard work of the citizens to raise their motherland.
I don't think India lost some of it's culture just coz v were in the British influence for 2 centuries...coz we r noticing an increase in the cultural & economic disparities in the last 15-20 years rather than immediate post-independence. In fact, Brits made things easier for us..they gave us postal system, railways, telephones etc while they were here. Otherwise India still would hv been counted in the underdeveloped countries even after having much more money with us which the British stole away...
Social well-being & economic development do not always complement each other... i'll give u an example...
China, which has the world's 3rd largest GDP, is the fastest developing economy in the world...the per capita income of an avg Chinese is much higher than that of an avg Indian...It is the backoffice & the factory of the entire world....But know what...no Chinese wants to be reborn as a Chinese... it's a strongly communist nation...the govt treats the people over der as machines, not humans...china is progressive, it's got tons of money, got gr8 infrastructure building underway, everything appears rosy....but at what cost?? human lives & humanity...der's no respect 4 an individual...it's abt the collective society.
...no personal choice or individual freedom...which r more imp than fast pacing collective development for some future gen to enjoy at the cost of oppresing the present one...
So, the point i'm tryin to make is that standard of living & quality of life do not always go hand in hand...
India might have produced many business tycoons stalwarts...but the life of an avg Indian is deteriorating day by day...The GDP growth might be very high, but the gap between the rich & poor is increasing too...if the no. of rich ppl is increasing, the no. of poor is also following suit...this is not the case in America or any other European nation. The disparity is not so vast. We speak of making Mumbai a Shanghai & hv built the Bandra-Worli sea-link as a starter...but look at Dharavi too, which is the world's largest slum, also in Mumbai...
What we have lost is our" cultural homogeneity"... We do many things which is Indian, but we also do many things which directly ape from the west....the way we dress up, the transition of the spoken language from Hindi to English, etc...
However, the west has hardly copied anything from us... Thus it has maintained its culture, while we r in a state of cultural instability...
As far as the lifestyle is concerned, tell me one thing...don't you believe, we, the youth, are living almost an American lifestyle...We subconsciously believe that their lifestyle is better than us, which is a fact...
My point is we have not retained our Indian culture...We have deviated towards the western culture...so, how can our culture be superior to theirs?
Same with the lifestyle...
India might be better than America in a few things like spiritual enlightenment, concept of joint family etc...but we need to conserve those aspects of Indian culture...
Most of the European nations, Australia & even America was under the British colonial rule...And what could be more worse than WW2???? in which the world's currently leading economies like USA, Germany & Japan were completely destroyed...They had to start from the scratch....What these nations r today, it's only after the end of WW2, which is very close to the time we got independence...So, India got the same time as them to develop, but look at the scenario now...
Who's superior in culture & Lifestyle? India or America?
Posted by self-aficionado at 2:59 PM
IITJEE - During & After
before I take you on the odyssey towards the JEE, take a glance at the predominantly 3 types of non-IITians:
WORSHIPPERS – Those under the misconception that "IIT is heaven & IITians are Gods". Nevertheless, their constant eulogizing can get on one's nerves sometimes.
PERSECUTORS – They are the "just missed IIT" types, in short, who will spend the rest of their academic life in vain, trying to reason out with themselves their failure& convince themselves how their college is better than IIT in some respects, as if they are thankful of not getting IIT.
ATHEISTS – Those who cant distinguish between IIT, IT, & ITI. A species to be as much ignored as their ignorance.
Now, the life of the pre-IITians. The grounding for IIT starts from the end of the mind-numbing 10th Boards. It mainly consists of countless hours of gruelling coaching, immersing yourself in corpulent books, cursing IIT every morning after seeing your figure getting podgier day by day due to lack of physical activity, keeping your attendance in colleges alarmingly low, inventing novel excuses for the same (also keeping track of the earlier ones lest you repeat them), preparing for weekly mock tests, & solving thousands of brain-racking problems in each of the hundreds of topics in each of the subjects(P, C & M). All these, 2 years long, (if you are lucky at the first attempt).
So, why does the number of these nerds who take the exam, after enduring 2 years of absolutely assiduous training, reach about lacs? Aren't these teenagers nuts to slaughter their so-called "precious college life"? These attain knowledge mostly in their physics, chemistry & math. They are very familiar with finding x, or tackling intricate electric circuits, or understanding reaction mechanisms of chains of hydrocarbons… but they scarcely are sapient with latest gizmos, automobiles, in-vogue clothes, or bikes, which a teenage boy be normally would.
The reality is these youngsters are, in fact, dudes, not duds, as they seem. They just want to grow from a dreamer to an achiever. A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline. A goal properly set is halfway reached. But again, a goal without a plan is just a wish. This does not mean one should cease to dream. The only way to make a dream come true is to wake up and live it. (Recapitulate the previous words slowly to grasp the idea)
These serious aspirants of the JEE have one thing in common, but its not the PCM syllabi of JEE, it's their zeal & zest, their vim & vigour, their endeavour in life to "MAKE IT BIG". You know, it seems like barmy when somebody studies day in & day out for 2 years in a row, but it actually isn't as difficult for him as is conspicuous to a layman's eye. This is because those types of
somebodies have a different perspective of life. They will do few things, but whatever they do, they want to make it big. And actually that is what the funda of life should be. "No matter what you do, but
make it big". Therein lies the real excitement, the real sense of success, the real passion that makes life worth living. Just visualize, wouldn't a brook lose its song if God removed all the
rocks? If you got this, you got it. Look at success in this way: It can be the ability to go from one
failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. It might be viewed as a paradox, but its true, that you will agree, & for success, the starting material is "SELF-CONFIDENCE".
Know what? People laugh at me because I'm different; & I laugh at them because they're all the same! This is self-confidence. You know, your self-confi becomes 2-fold after success, but then you even require some amount of self-confi in the course of your success. But the real test of
self-confi is actually failure. It should not decrease your self-confi, instead should also multiply it 2 times, simply because failure is a major symptom of success. And let me tell you, this
self-confidence can't be obtained overnight; it has to be cultivated & nurtured. In the path of arming yourself with self-confi, you may have to, in fact, you definitely will have to face internal hindrances such as inferiority complex, covetousness, seclusion… but just believe in yourself, believe in what you are doing & do everything within your scruples….things will definitely go right.
And then secondly, the material that you should make thick friends with & plead with it to accompany you in your journey towards your goal is "MOTIVATION". You know, even thinking of JEE without any kind of inspiration within you is incongruous. It's like driving a car without petrol.
Motivation is the driving force for any success. The motivation could be anything that can influence you, before which your mind stops functioning & your heart wins over. Just keep your focus on that
motivation. It will automatically lead you to your goal. Automatic, in the sense, that you won't refrain from working hard, & your pressure will be somewhat relieved just by recalling your motivation time & again.
Posted by self-aficionado at 4:01 PM
Sony vs Apple
Sony’s CEO, Howard Stringer, gets his hackles up each time he encounters the question: Why is Apple gradually overshadowing the Japanese electronics giant? The creator of the iPods, MacBooks, iPhones and their accessories consistently delivers trendy gizmos & doodads that are user-friendly, while Sony sells music players, TVs, cams, computers and game consoles, appraisals of which are not so unanimous. Also, it has often been a common complaint among Sony users that even some Sony complementary products are not compatible with each other.
Apple's iTunes store has long made loading iPods a walk in the park, but Sony's consumer electronics and PlayStations have only recently started to amalgamate their offerings with those of the company's movie studio and music label. That's one plausible reason why Sony's products earn relatively narrow profit margins compared with the huge margins that Apple's gadgets command.
So Stringer went straight to the root. Three years ago, he hired Tim Schaaff, a top understudy of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and made him the senior vice-president for software development in Sony. Although Schaaff's job description required him to spend most of his time in California, he's so integral to Stringer's plan to re-establish Sony that he has a direct reporting line to the CEO. Schaaff's responsibilities have outgrown his position, and today he also has a hand in product design, licensing, planning, and engineering. "When we brought Tim aboard, it was an acknowledgement that we needed someone whose experience crosses multiple borders," Stringer says.
Schaaff doesn't come across as an agent of change. The 48 something Dartmouth grad constantly avoids the press. When he speaks, he does it very cautiously as if he’s addressing a mass rally. But at Apple, Schaaff showed a knack for translating geeky ideas into killer products. The self-made software engineer supervises development of Apple's QuickTime video-streaming format, which serves as the foundation of iTunes, the iPod, and the iPhone.
Stringer is clearly hoping Schaaff can copy-paste Apple's Silicon Valley entrepreneurial culture into Sony. When the Welsh-born Stringer became Sony's first non-Japanese CEO in early 2005, he pledged to make the company "cool again." While Schaaff has made important strides toward that goal, Sony clearly needs to inject some zing into its products. After a four-year renovation, Sony is still careworn to get its market position back that Apple has snatched. And now, as consumers all over the world, especially Americans who were notorious for being spendthrifts, have transformed into tightfisted squirrels, they’re even less likely to buy the expensive gizmos Sony plans to unveil over the coming months. Schaaff’s integrated plan included selling Bravia televisions that connect to the net and download the latest Batman movie, Walkman phones that offer tunes from Sony artists such as Robbie Williams, and e-book devices that ask if you want to purchase that new John Grisham thriller. But looking at the global slump, one wouldn’t mind trying out the cheaper Chinese lookalikes of Sony. And for fun products, Apple’s the trademark. So, Sony has to think out of the box & make something that it can boast of being the only exclusive “Sony thing”. Just reminding us “It’s a Sony” worked earlier, but now the modern consumer has come out of being faithful to a particular brand lifelong & instead trying his hands at different brands that are cheaper and more cost-effective.
Buck up Sony & make yourself “It’s only Sony”!
Present Day Ostriches
A bunch of beauties comes to an ice-cream parlour in the university, buys cones, goes down the corridor of the market, giggling. They think nothing of their action of licking cones in public. They are unaware of the prying eyes of the public around them. They think, like the poor misguided ostrich, with its head in the sand, that they are invisible. There is yet another class. To this belong verbal vandals who, from the safety and coziness of their car, fling foul words on ladies and gentlemen of their parents age. Cars are an extension of their homes, their personal refuges where they feel protected and invisible. Home provides liberty, public places restrain. The mobile phone plays a similar role for these ostriches of modern society. They use it as their life-line linking them to their social and business support network. It is emotional, too. The boy who whispers in cell phone is using it as his heart-link. So is the girl! Both think like the ostrich. When boys and girls speak on mobile, they think they are talking only to the listener at the other end. They become so engrossed in their conversation that the presence of the person next to them matters not — even when he is sarcastically smiling! Why do we show this indifference to people around us? Is it because we think that others are non-people? The reason is related to the isolation and anonymity of the modern crowded urban life. The more the people, the less we know them! We deal with this by pretending that the crowd is not there. We mentally shut it out. Thus, cocooned in our mental space, we hold hands, hug, kiss in parks, lick cones, eat hot-dogs, drown drinks, insult elders and whisper intimacies in mobile phones while in full public glare.
We are becoming a world of headless ostriches!
Posted by self-aficionado at 12:40 PM
Eternal Love
Posted by self-aficionado at 12:32 PM
Experiments with Inflation
An article that I have written as a B3 guy...go through it...might help!...
When I was a kid, I used to go to the market with my mother. I remember watching her purchase a kilo of potatoes at Rs. 2.50 a kg. Sometimes, she would treat me to golguppe at the laneside hawker who would generously give 6 pieces for a mere Rs. 1.50. An auto rickshaw ride back to home after I got tired would cost us Rs. 2. Bombay was so much cheaper those days. The whole chore would be completed in Rs. 6. But now when she gives me the same errand (& I indulge myself to the golguppe from the same hawker), it takes me Rs. 30 to fulfill them! Rs. 12 for the same 1 kg of potatoes, Rs. 10 for the same auto ride, and Rs. 8 for the same serving of golguppe. Mumbai does differ from Bombay in a lot of ways other than their spellings!
This is the direct effect of inflation. When the purchasing power a rupee dwindles with time, the trend is called 'inflation'. This is manifested in a general rise in prices of goods and services. With most of India’s vast population living close to – or below – the poverty line, inflation acts as a ‘Poor Man’s Tax’ in our country.
India is facing the problem of inflationary pressure because Aggregate Demand (AD) is increasing while Aggregate Supply (AS) is more or less constant. Thus, to curb inflation, the gap between AD and AS needs to be minimized. Increasing AS with an immediate effect is next to impossible as all resources are fully employed and tapping the alternatives or building newer production plants would take quite some time which cannot commensurate with the pace at which Indian economy is developing.
The most direct way to reduce AD is to increase interest rates. This is a form of “artificial suppression” of inflation. This would reduce both consumption and investment. In the 70s, there was a minor debate whether to increase interest rates or reduce the money supply directly from the mint, but that debate died long ago once central bankers found out that in practice, tinkering with money supply led to far more uncertainty (about policy outcomes) than tinkering with interest rates.
Repo rate is the difference between the purchase price and reselling price of a security, expressed as a percentage. If commercial banks are short of money, they enter into an agreement with the RBI to sell their securities for a short term (overnight or fortnight) and then repurchase these securities at a slightly higher price. If the repo rate for commercial banks increases they will pass this onto their consumers. If the bank is paying a higher rate of interest to borrow money, we are the one who will bear the cost — we will have to shell out a higher rate of interest when we pay off the loan. Higher interest rates have the effect of reducing expenditures and investments of the populace. This will reduce inflationary strains in the economy.
Reverse Repo rate is the interest rate at which the RBI borrows money from banks. Banks are always happy to lend money to RBI since their money is in safe hands with a good interest. An increase in Reverse repo rate can cause the banks to transfer more funds to RBI due to the attractive interest rate that they earn later during reimbursement. Thus, it can cause the money to be drawn out of the banking system, & hence from the economy in the short run, curtailing liquidity temporarily.
Let’s understand all of the above by way of an illustration. Suppose you need money for some reason and you apply for a loan. The bank you approach may have already exhausted all its available money by:
1. Loaning to other borrowers
2. The mandatory cash reserve with RBI
3. Transfer of funds to the RBI by reverse repo.
This does not mean it will refuse your loan request. The bank will approach the RBI for money. The RBI lends this money to the bank at a fixed rate of interest (the repo rate fixed during the credit policy; the credit policy is announced every quarter.) Now, the RBI decides to pull up the repo rate in one of its credit policy. The bank will simply reflect this in the loans it offers to us by shooting up the interest rates proportionately. This will slow down the transaction activities of loans. Not many would come up for loans thus eliminating excess liquidity from the root. Inflation will tend to cease in the face of such a “credit crunch”.
In a nutshell,
Higher CRR, higher repo rate and higher reverse repo rate -> Bank’s ability of lending goes down -> Contraction of money supply into the economy -> Lesser liquidity -> Lesser money (cash) and hence lesser demand to buy goods and services -> Lower inflation.
According to the 2008 Economic Survey Report, India’s inflation rate was targeted by the RBI to be 4.1% with an upper limit of 5%, down from a rate of 5.77% in 2007. However, the beginning of 2008 has seen a dramatic rise in the prices of basic food stuffs, oil, gas and majority of the commodities leading to higher inflation. Indeed, by July 2008, the Wholesale Price Index (WPI), the key indicator of the rate of inflation in Indian economy, had risen touching 12%. In early August, the inflation rate was 12.63%, the highest in 13 years. It had jumped into double digits after a hike in retail fuel rates in June. This is more than 6% higher than a year earlier and three times the RBI’s target of 4.1%! (The WPI was more closely watched than the consumer price index (CPI) because it includes more products and is also published weekly. The CPI is released monthly).
Posted by self-aficionado at 2:05 PM
Wisdom from the moon
I sat by the lake
With melancholy as company,
The rippling water-canvas painted
With the sky lit up dimly.
The moon stared at me
Inspiring me no end,
Little secrets of success
To me, its rays seemed to lend.
From a cluster of white dots
Scattered above in space,
Like the moon stands out
Make felt, in a crowd, your presence.
The moon outlines with silver
The clouds dark and grey,
You too are unique
In your own special way.
Engulfed by black clouds
The moon least cares,
Striving to light up the earth
Every night it dares.
Revealing only the bright face
To the earth all time,
‘t says, “Cover your weaknesses
With strengths, like rime.”
Making hay in the day
Till the sun shines,
Throwing light at night
‘t teaches us lessons so fine.
Posted by self-aficionado at 1:58 PM
