Value of life

What is the most important loss of the current Mumbai Bomb blast?Is it the death of 200 people, the modus of operandi or the loss of 500 billion? To me, it is the loss of 200 people. Any tragedy which Causes loss of more people will be bigger tragedy than this.

But I seem to be in minority. Stampedes at temple kill almost 100s Of people and media and others forget about it in 2-3 days. Recent Bihar flood killed 1000s of people and more than 20 million people are affected. Odisha flood have similar devastation effect. More farmers suicide in Andhrapradesh/Maharastra because they are unable to repay the loan. There are more deaths in tribal areas in Odisha because of Malaria. Do we care about the same?

As I am from Odisha, let me put some facts from Odisha. 2008 flood was of greater magnitude than pat couple of years and took more than 1000s lives. 20 Million People were affected by the flood. Though not In this magnitude, flood is a regular phenomenon in Odisha. I have not heard any year when there were no death because of flood. And no government tried to eradicate the same. Let us discuss the action taken by the state and central government. State government is busy in blaming central government. It is unable to distribute the little help it gets from others. There are tones of food grains and other relief material laying down in national highways of Odisha. What is the central government doing? Being opposite party to the ruling state government, it ensures that people of Odisha does not get the basic amenities, which will cause anti incumbency and hence more vote for the party. Honourable prime minister declared a help of Rs 200 crores but send only 5 crores. Honourable ex-home minister said there is no such provision like declaring it as a national calamity, thus stopped international aid, where as the same government has declared Bihar flood a national calamity. There are millions of people who don’t have food and shelter.

Now let us look at the number of deaths in malaria in Odisha. It is unaccounted, as media/Government does not bother much about it. The tribal areas don’t get the basic education or medical help from state. It is either Ekal Vidyalaya from Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram
or some missionary provide medical help to the tribals. State hospitals does not reach all the people, and in the hospital, the doctor is not equipped with medicines. And one can not guarantee
that the medicine present is not duplicate or expired. So the locals live at the mercy of expire/duplicate medicine and may be god.

So there are higher number of deaths of common people and common people lack basic amenities. Why are the media/Governemnt not speaking about the common people? Is the life of a villager who stays in a tribal village of Odisha less than a millionare who has visited Taj Mumbai? I think life is life, irrespective of who the person is. But our government and media think otherwise. Life of a Mumbaikar is higher than a farmer or tribal.

Old wine in new bottle

Recent Mumbai attack has shaken the Indian political leadership. It has forced the
ruling party to change the home minister both at the centre and Maharastra. What
will happen next? Will the there be a paradigm shift towards terrorism? Is
government of India serious towards fighting terrorism? My answer is a skeptical NO.


The current hue and cry is something similar to what happened after every terror
attack. And will die a natural death after 2 to 3 months. Prime minister has not called
a special session of the parliament. He is not interested in setting up central federal
agency, though congress spoke about it, and BJP said it will support it. Probable it
will become a poll issue and Congress will ask vote for Central federal agency.

Police modernization is a long pending issue. Police is ill equipped and can only
harass common people. How do we expect ATS with a service revolver and bullet-
proof jacket which is not bullet proof to fight terrorism? There is no difference among
political parties regarding police modernization, still it is taking long time to implement.



Mumbai blast is not the first terrorist attack. If we look at the previous terror attacks,
India has not got any substantial evidence in any terrorists attack other than last
Gujurat attack. Either intelligence does not gather information or the authority does
Not act based on the intelligence reports. We need better coordination between police
and intelligence agency.


Probable government has done its best by sacking the home minister. Now media
is speaking more about home minister and possible changes in Maharastra
government. What government needs to do have taken a back seat. After a couple of
week, Bombey terror attack will be history and media will speak about election
results and new plethora of permissions and combinations of coalition along
with election analysis.

There will be a new parliament and may be a new government. But a little
action taken. It will be the old wine in the new bottle.

Why Balbir Punj is MP from Orissa?

Balbir Punj is the official BJP Candidate for Rajya Sabha from Orissa.Looking at the numbers he will be elected to the Rajya Sabha. SurelyBJP will get its own man nominated. But what will Orissa get out of it?Will Mr Punj spend the his MP-lad money for the development of Orissa?What is his plan for the money? He does not know anything about Orissaand more interested about his state Punjab. So MP-lad goes to Punjab. Orissa is neglected by Central government starting from planningfrom an IISc to Railway budget. Punj will be at an influential positionif NDA will be on power, Will he influence some of the decisions toOrissa's favor? Looking at the history, it does not look so. S. R Bomaia former Karnataka CM was a Rajya Sabha MP from Orissa. When he gotcabinet minister, he did not do anything for Orissa. Why will Mr Punj be loyal to Orissa? Neither the People of Orissanor the leaders of Orissa selected him. Rather his loyalty to theleaders like Advani fetched his the Rajya sabha seat. So he will beloyal to high command than to Orissa. Mr Punj's selection is an indication that Orissa does not have any ableleaders from BJP, thus BJP selected Punj ahead of other Odiyas. So Orissa lost out the MP-lad fund. And there will be 30 people inParliament who will represent Orissa in stead of 31. And it will weakenBJP at the state level.

Why should I pay tax?

You may complain government is not doing enough to solve our problem.Traffic is a problem. IT professionals are getting harassed byeverybody starting from vegetable vendors to auto-walahs. But not payingtax is not the solution. A mistake does not solve another mistake.

Is the tax so high? I don't think so. In India we don't pay tax till1,50,000.Some part of HRA is exempted from tax. Savings till 1,00,000 is exemptedfrom tax.Tax is lower at lower income group and increases after a certain income.So somebody whoearns around 6,00,000 pays an tax of 1,00,000, which is around 16%? Thisis much bellow than thatof USA. So the employees don't pay much tax.

Who is getting benifited from the tax? Lot of us studied in subsidizedschool/college or private school or college which is build on subsidized land.Government has paid for us, and it should be our duty to return back.

Today lots of IT professionals own their own car. It increases thetraffic problem.Thus government needs to build fly-over. Spend to manage the trafficproblem. So government does spend because of us.

Why should I pay tax?

A working professional pays income tax before he gets her salary. And probable one of the honest community which pays proper amount of tax on time. Many of my friends complain about undue tax rate and how we as working professional pay more tax and get nothing from the government. Come to any office in Jan/Feb, you will hear about tax talk. How much is to be taxed, what is the legal/illegal way of reducing the tax.

Many people complain about paying tax, but mostly what they complain is not to pay any tax at all, but to pay reasonable tax and get return of it. Are they over taxed? Are they not getting the return of the tax? What is the government doing with th tax?

Intelligence failure and Maoist attack

Maoist attck is both intellegence failure, and incapability of police.

Intelligence Failure:
1) A local newspaper reported about possibile attack 2 days ago and police ignored the report.
2)Dasapalla inspector send a message to the SP about some suspect people moving towards nayagarh. SP send some constable to check the fact, but unable to identify.
3) Maoist killed the shopkeeper who owns the tire shop as he opposed maoists taking tires forcefully. Police was not alerted from the incident
4) Maoist ate at Trinath hotel and have not paid the bill and asked the hotel to shut down in the evening.
5) Maoists did not pay after fueling petrol.

Police did not take any action to organize against Maoist. It is common failure of Maoist.

Incapability of Police:
1) Police was asking about the bullets and don't know how to fire
2) Trained police with proper weapon could have caused more casuality among Maoists if police was strategically positioned. But police was living in fear and casuality of Maoists is not being reported.
3) Maoists knew aboit weapons worth crores coming to Police training school where as whole department was unaware about this.
4) Most of the student in police training student were deputed to Bhuaneswar on the same day.

Microsoft refuses to boost its Yahoo bid

When Yahoo did not agree on the bid from Microsoft, MSFT has options
1) sweeten the bid
2) Go hostile to buy it from the share holder
3) Spend money to change the board of director
4) Forget about the take over now

Microsoft denied to go in the 1st way to increase the bid. I believe, 4th option is out of choice and Microsooft won't go back from here. So it will either do a hostile take over or try to change the board of director. 3rd choice seems more appropriate for Microsft, and expecting Google to move ahead further than both YAHOO and MSFT when they are concentrating on take-over or no take-over.