Tamil Pride it should matter to every Indian ...

                     Legality is a matter of power, not justice this uncomfortable thought is gaining credence in the state of Tamil Nadu as each day is passing and this worries me, On the day when India was celebrating the Republic day Tamil Nadu was tense, because Tamil pride had been hurt and was left to lick its wounds with the kind of humiliation that it had only experienced at the hands of fascistic, religious and ethnic forces that did not share the Indian identity, this humiliation that was meted out to the Tamil pride was not by some fringe group but by the state itself which is what makes this incident a significant event in the history of Indian and Tamil Nadu politics. What happened during the last one week in the way of Lakhs of Tamils congregating at the historic Marina beach, before the dreadful violence that was unleashed by the police on the people protesting peacefully on 23rd was a celebration of the Tamil identity, an unanimous cry to the powers that be to do away with the malice's that very much stands in the way of the progress of our country as a whole, the protest wasn’t just about jallikattu it was also about much larger issues that we Indians have failed repeatedly to address with a firm stance, like doing away with corrupt political parties which have ceased to speak for the common man, that have ceased to represent the Tamil Pride, about the mindless exploitation of our environment by crony capitalists  for profit. “Tamil Pride”  do those words make you uncomfortable, I know it might make many who don’t speak the Tamil language, the problem lies in that uncomfortable feeling not in the people exhibiting their Tamil pride, Tamil pride is an aspect of the diverse India out of which arises our spirit to be united, and isn't that what which binds us all together as a nation and allows us to exude the exuberance of unity in diversity, in which we all take so much pride in ?, 

                   I have always wondered why people in Kashmir behave the way they do, why Kashmir is always on the boil?, I think as a person born and brought up here in Tamil Nadu, and having spoken the Tamil language all my life I understand their psyche now, because I have had a glimpse of what might be going through the minds of every kashmiri youth when Indian Policemen barge into their houses with guns in their hands and with a ferocious appetite to terrorize the living will out of their nimble and naive hearts. The Tamil Nadu police on 23rd went on a rampage and terrorized people who were seeking answers for questions which was in the interest of every Indian, those innocent harmless people did that as Tamil’s who take immense pride in the language they speak and the Tamil culture that they revere, the state has humiliated that feeling by employing a kind of unimaginable brutal force on those people calling them intolerant and anti-nationals, this unpardonable action by the state has left its mark on the pages of Indian political history. People who congregated at marina were being argumentative not intolerant, and we Indians have always celebrated that argumentative spirit that we all carry in us. This disrespect that has been meted out to the Tamil Pride has come as a shock not just to Tamilians living in the state of Tamil Nadu but to every Tamil speaking Indian living across the world.

                       A few in the media like to argue that anti-nationals had hijacked the protest conducted by students, well to me an anti national element is someone who doesn't care about the lives of people around him, someone who would cause harm to others knowingly, someone who would get into peoples houses to terrorize them by breaking things which forms the basis for their livelihood, someone who would set fire to public property, an auto a hut (You would know what i mean if you had seen those videos showing police men and women turning into arsonists ), to me an anti-national is not someone who raises slogans against Modi, Panee'selvam or Sasikala, or for that matter against Pepsi & coke, or peta.

                   Nothing can be as respectful an act towards democracy as showing ones dissent in the most peaceful way, if one argues that there were Anti-Modi slogans my question is SO WHAT ?, Modi is not INDIA, if one argues that there were Anti-India slogans then my response to that would have been to ask him or her whoever was raising such slogan's to do so in their homes, i wouldn't go around beating them nor should the police, all that the police should have done is to arrest such people and should have argued their case in the court, Why did the state employ such brutal force against honest harmless argumentative Indian's  who take immense pride in the language they speak and the culture they revere?.

                   Tamil Pride has been hurt, if the Government of India doesn't take steps to assuage the situation by taking strict action against those police men and others and whoever ordered those police men to behave the way they did on 23rd January 2017 things might become rather unruly for the state to handle and will give rise to the idea of democracy languishing at the feet of power, which is not what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would have wanted to happen after having given all his life to make an highly principled  Indian way of democracy a reality for every ordinary human being .....
                                                                                   

                                                       - An Argumentative Indian 

























Prasanna Kumar 

Stillness that alone count's

The sagaciousness in the sun shine
streaming through the waltzing willows
leaves the meandering percipience
dwell in the surreality of the cast shadows,

As the glistening leaves twirl and flit
painting the azure halcyon sky
with their gushing fluttery thrill's,
as one that is made of pellucid joy
and one that is all about
not being mellow and coy,
I walk in commune with the trunks
in silence
that's closer to the roots
that's closer to the soil,
I walk on the carpet of sward
in exalted awe
over the suffused glitz,
as presented by the play of
the swooning breeze ,
as presented by the play of
the swooning breeze,
the light's, the shadows and the leaves
which is of an unknown ease.

An ease that is even beyond the summons
of the tranquil will
favors only everything about the mind that is in raptures
like the wind playing with quill
caressing enduing and aligning it
with the far corner's that's moored
to the deep sweltering innate esurience
only to make them all pronounce
their vevre to flow as lucid
as the sounds in waffling rhythm
that make's a beautiful music,

lilting away the ignorance
of that not as yet knows to see the "monde"
as new as that it is,
in the stillness that's abound
and in the stillness that which alone counts.



-- 











Prasanna Kumar 
Cogito ergo sum ......

February 10th the day when good sense prevailed

A man who needs so many advertisements to be in the limelight is not a leader, he is just a commodity. 

 

and what a picture this is, an ultimate tribute to the "common man"

Prasanna Kumar

Unauthorized views - 100 Days of Chicanery ....

                    There is a Joke going around in the virtual social spaces that if it comes to allowing the PR machinery that catapulted Mr.Modi to be the 15th Prime Minister of this country it would have very much liked to ascribe the winning of the US open by a Japanese to the unambiguous effect of  Mr. Modi visiting that players island nation, though it seems like the Japanese weren't much impressed by our Prime Ministers effort to be a crowd pleaser which is very much underscored by the very little that Mr. Modi has been able to achieve through his recent visit to Japan and also by the very little that Japanese media had to say about Mr. Modis first ever visit to japan as Prime minister of the worlds largest democracy. But, the media over here wasted no time in placating an expansion in the industrial output in the month of June as the result of Mr. Modi becoming the prime minister giving way to a new economic theory called the "Modis effect" which defies all the logic behind the science that has formulated many postulations which remain till today as the guiding principles for all and any kind of transaction that involves the consumer, the seller and the market, and its quite interesting to note that the very same media just dint know how to react to a drop of 0.5% in the industrial output in the month after, even while the stock market's were reaching for the skies. While its no secret that it took nearly 4 months for the previous government to reign in the gold imports which was weighing heavily on its current account, one obviously would like to see people of some repute in the financial media industry to recognize this aspect of time that separates two nodes one being the policy implementation and the other being its outcome before providing their blunt views related to economic affairs.
                       In the years after 2010 that led to the showdown in which BJP emerged with a thumping majority it has to be noted that our country was running current account deficit month after month and year after year even while it sporadically managed to run balance of payment surpluses Clearly indicative of the fact that we were running capital account surplus during those periods. Recently Global financial integrity came out with a report stating that in the year 2011-12 alone around $ 85 billion of black money has moved out of the country, if one were to take this little piece of information and put it in the context of trying to understand our huge current account deficit in the same period one can safely attribute it for the most part to the over invoicing of the imports. The kind of policies that this government is spearheading is no different from the previous governments, and so will have no particular effect on the real economy so to say if substantial efforts are not made to create real jobs that are the results of capital expansion and capacity expansion leading to an increase in the over all median wages (not the average wages) across all sectors, Government has to take active interest in maintaining a balance between the farm subsidies and subsidies that are given to industries which provide the farm inputs in a way that it doesn't become detrimental to the profits that the farmers can make, Governments inability to address this issue which affects over 60 % of our population has been one of the main reasons why we have so much of farmers getting trapped themselves in debt. And one very important question that every citizen in this country needs to ask is why has this government not taken any steps to become the trustee of all the offshore Bank accounts held by Indian passport holders in the tax havens by nationalizing them, if Mr. Modi can do that he wont have to go around the world seeking economic corporation from other countries for the rest of his tenure. Government cannot keep depending on giving up its stake in public sector units to fund its deficits year after year, killing the public sector in its entirety would be detrimental to the free market economy itself which is a topic in itself to discuss about, and its a view that i have contrary to the present larger understanding which the neoliberal free market economists have been able to establish. The immediate responsibility of this government  has to be to check the rate at which the indian finacial sector has been adding bad loans to their balance sheets, and more importantly India cannot afford to be a pushover anymore, it has to protect its interest at all cost if it wants to become a vibrant manufacturing hub. 


















































Prasanna Kumar  

Mobster.. Fraudster... Bankster.

Would i hedge against

the towers that are crumbling

in which i dwelled for years,

which sort of destroyed

the old mighty Kremlin

along with its spires,

the towers that once stood

mighty and tall

on the street named wall ,

even while it

threatens to wipe the meek

earnings of the young joes and all,

 knowing well that, to do that

 would mean to be

 being meaner

 than to maul,

Oh ! why would i care,

was i not the one who led

this entire thing to be here,

Well, i care not to guess and

i am sure you know me

by now to the bare,

that i am just not your ordinary banker,

i am what they call

the wall street banker.

Profits is what I would die to make

even while things seem huge

that are at stake,

like the pensions that people hold dear,

i treat them like they are already mine dear

Pocketing them as my  huge bonuses

even while i keep inducing

my books

quarter after quarter, year after year,

only with losses,

since the great debacle of 2008

which sure did matter,

and that’s why i decided not to create assets

as it dint pay much than to sneak my hands

into the ordinary blokes pockets,

and that's how i still get to keep

the porches and my private jets,

and that’s why

I am not your ordinary banker

i am what they call

the wall street banker.

I securitize your mortgages,

calling them as debt obligations

knowing well that,

they would all end up as

collateral’s causing more damages,

and that's why i hedge against them

for well i know they would

end up as i expect them,

and that's how i wipe all the taint

off me,

by not wanting to be a saint

which is not for me,

and dying  to make profits for sure

which exactly is just me.

and that’s why

I am not your ordinary banker

i am what they call

the wall street banker.

while wells fargo is busy lending

sub-prime auto loans,

i am hoping to see it soon load and get blown

for i see there a chance for me to hedge,

the chance that i created for myself

by bringing it to that edge,

and that's why i am not your ordinary banker

i am what they call

the wall street banker.

I kick the LIBOR rates around,

even as Barclay's and banks of all the royals

in Scotland and England

would swear by on all accounts,

that this game is being played fair,

though they might give in a bit
when forced to confront the court's
and other such affairs,

that at times it involves

the twisting of the arms

of the meager players around,

and the bending of the rules

to wrestle everyone to the ground,

and yet they would maintain,

what's being played is nothing but a fair game

a stance that the likes of meagre joes cannot but only acclaim,

as the bail-outs have become cliched,

in comes the bail-ins in a sleigh

to hot things a bit in the game,

where no one gets to hide

under their own shade,

because this should be the game

where i always should be winning,

and the ordinary Joe, which is you,

should always be losing,

and that's the only reason
i ever chose to be a banker,

and to make the likes of you 
call me

The wall street banker...
































Prasanna Kumar

Seriously Speaking - It feels like a Deja vu

                  How would you describe a government which after having promised the moon crash lands the dreams of millions into the pit where it becomes even harder to get paid to own the basic needs leave alone owning the inflation?, Capricious, inept, deceptive, Incompetent, whatever be the word that one may choose to use it would be right in describing this new government which is on a spree to fix the fiscal fallacies at the expense of the gullible ordinary people of this country who are being made to believe that spending more would result in the betterment of the services provided by the government, while the fact remains that its just an effort on the part of the government to make the people acknowledge that the money that they have will buy less than what it used to yesterday. In a slew of measures adopted to make the balance sheet of The Indian Railways look good the newly elected government instead of showing proclivities towards choosing to do away with inefficiencies chose to raise the fares by 14 %, inefficiencies that have been plaguing for a long time at every level, starting with nonexistent efficient traffic flow analysis that could be translated into efficient resource management to not doing away with the outdated factious three tire structure on departmental lines which have been weighing heavily on the performance of the state owned enterprise, the government should have looked into the real issues to arrive at real solution's. But Nope, it had promised the moon so it had to come up with a brilliant idea to make people get used to the fares it will be charging while it really starts sending them to the moon. This 14 % hike in the fares might end up adding more or less 8,000 crore rupees to the state enterprises kitty which on the whole generates an annual revenue of 1,20,000 crore rupees, this meager addition to its kitty will have no impact on its entire outlook if it chooses to ignore the anomalies or inefficiencies and sticks to the established huge bureaucratic structure.                                            Governments across the world which have been elected democratically when forced to confront the realities of the after math of major financial crisis's, whether it be the 70's secondary banking crisis or the mid 90's Asian crisis or the recent sub prime crisis which resulted in the undoing of the hegemony of major financial institutions have all adopted a common stance of fiscal prudence initially only to indulge in fiscal profligacy during the latter part of their tenure's. And so now while this Newly elected government keeps itself busy by raising import duty on sugar, and prices of diesel, petrol, LPG cylinders and of various other essential commodities adding to the burden of all ready thinly stretched finances of ordinary house holds in this country, one wonders why this government has not been proactive in taking any kind of concrete measure to recover the illegal wrongful and irregular expenditure made by Reliance industries limited to the tune of 1.8 billion $ ( more or less 9,000 crore rupees ) when it went about drilling for gas in the KG basin. Further more Reliance industries limited has been very adamant in not furnishing the records for these expenditures to the Comptroller of Auditor General, in a country where an NGO could face cancellation of its FCRA registration and could have its bank accounts frozen for not furnishing records for a mere 2 lakh Rupees, this government seems to be dillydallying with a huge smile on its face about what it should be doing with a company that has openly flouted the Norms and the laws of the land, even while being aware that Reliance industries limited is sitting on a huge cash pile of 80,000 crore Rupees. How should one construe this?, Should this be construed as the rap on the head of that ordinary citizen who voted for this government in response to the democratic right he was called to exercise, and as a mean conviviality to oblige him in return with a government that has the kleptocratic and oligarchic signature all over it which sure seems like would only aim to legitimize the ill ways of crony capitalism.

                       Though the BSE index has been gaining new ground since April and has almost soared 14 % the Real inflation figures for the same period have been hovering dangerously at around 10 %, clearly indicative of the fact that cheap money is being herded into the speculative market's not based on the underlying strong economic developments but rather based on the need to boost the prices of certain assets as a way to hedge against the risky ones that firms and companies hold in their books, and that's quite the reason why Despite the euphoria in the financial markets there have been very little investments made to add new productive capacity, almost all the major firms are preferring to buy back their shares and are engaging in mergers and acquisitions and continue to increase their debt in spite of  the lackluster short term prospects. This and the recent fiscal deficit figure of 45.6 % of the budget only points in the direction where there is going to be no respite from the inflation anytime soon even though the government has been making it clear about the step's that are being taken to cull the spiraling inflation. A lower inflation figure would mean higher servicing cost of government debt, and the other privately held debt, which in other words mean that government might be proactive in trying to keep the prices of a basket of food items a few notches down but wouldn't be as proactive as it should be in curtailing the cost of commodities, industrial raw materials and farm inputs, which goes on to say that people will eventually realize who will be footing that bill ultimately and when they do they will curse their moon and stars. Dreams and promises can be sold like a product but once they have been bought they don't behave like one, for ideas and promises to become realities it would take more than the efforts put in by the multi crore propaganda machinery to broadcast those ideas and promises through every available medium, it would take more than the effort of using politics of resentment to further ones own political agenda, it would take more than a mere effort of carpet bombing marketing exercise of an unprecedented scale, it would take an enormous will to generate profits not at the cost of the gullible people but by being at the mercy of expanding economic activity, increased savings rate and median wage. 

Dance of Democracy - When good sense failed to Prevail.

                       16th May 2014 will go down in the history of Indian elections as the day when Propaganda won over good sense, 2014 Lok Sabha elections no doubt is India's first intensively televised election, which leaves many uneasy question's that needs to be answered by the media first and then the parties who have funded this entire grandiose exercise using questionable resources. All that one can expect now from the newly elected government is to see it exhibit right intentions and vigor in taking forward this nation of 1.25 billion into the future it has been promised.

Dance of Democracy - Seriously Speaking.

             The greatest trick  a proponent of kleptocracy can pull on anyone is to make him or her believe that he is the change, and the masses perennial clamoring for change at times give's Such venal vermin's the chance to cast their spell which appeals only to the naivety of the masses as it is oblivious to the facts that would accompany change, for change can happen only when there are reason’s and those reasons  can hardly be entertained to arise out of the masses understanding of the inconsistencies which they have been putting up with, as it should be the case, but that would become detrimental to the efforts made by the vested interests. So it is made to arise out of the masses naivety which is rooted in their gullible nature which seeks not the ability to inquire but an illusive perception which seeks to perceive the claims or promises that are being made about providing better infrastructure, better schools, better hospitals, price control of essential’s as good as of those promises that have been delivered upon, that’s the kind of effect a venal politician aims to inflict upon the masses when he chooses to position himself as the change with the help of the effort's put in by his entire propaganda machinery to win in an election. Does this seem like a familiar story ?, then it must mean that you don't belong to the pack.
                     Promises of Good roads, schools, hospitals, jobs, industries, farmer welfare schemes, electricity, piped water connection, affordable higher education, reservation for minorities, eradication of malnutrition and child labor, upliftment of the poor, empowering women, eradication of female infanticide are the promises that most political parties did make in the elections conducted way back in 1952, the funny and as well as the sad truth is those promises still remain as promises worth making to win votes even in 2014. Indian rupee has been steadily losing its value against dollar since the day our government decided to devalue it in 1966 owing to external pressures, in contrast the prices of the essential commodities have been steadily increasing leading to a ripple effect resulting in price escalation of every known useable item whether its perishables or durables, the life cycle of the perishables have been going up but still we have thousands of farmers who not being able to meet their debt obligations are committing suicide, on the other hand the life cycle of the durables have been steadily decreasing and yet it seems to have little or no effect over the profits determined by the consumption pattern whose function is predetermined by the need to economize. The fact of the matter is in 2014 there are 330 million people in this country who have no access to any kind of amenity which would make their life comfortable as it was promised to them by the politicians who fought way back in the 1952 elections, This raises many questions about the sensibility of the Indian voter leaving aside the conniving spirit of our political honchos which has always tried to capitalize on that sensibility, looks like the Indian voter is content with the promises that are being made to him every 5 years.
                               It is quite disturbing to see how naive most of the citizen's in this country are if one were to take the Exit poll's seriously, the poor beings that we already are don't even have the middlebrows capability to have a composite understanding of what it mean's when 30,000 crore rupees gets spent in the name of elections by those who are fighting the elections, we gullible beings expect all those people who have invested such huge money to do good to us just because we went to the polling booths in droves to cast our votes, if only we had the understanding of what and how a change would look and feel like we wouldn't have got swayed by the most elaborate marketing exercise in the recent times which through every instance aimed at positioning Mr. Modi as the change, If we really want to know how change would look like we have an example right next to us in the form of China, in china since the day Mr. Xi Jinping who is 60 years old now took over as its president 2 years ago has been going after corrupt low level government officials and top members of his Party's Central Politburo Standing Committee, in the last one year alone around 54 top Chinese government officials have committed suicide or drank themselves to death, the recent one being Zhou Yongkan one of the most powerful man in china he has gone missing, his illegal assets worth 15 Billion $ have been frozen by the Chinese government, and now here in this country people like you and me, people who are gullible and who have very little understanding of democracy have persisted long enough under the influence of multi crore " Modi Advertisements" with the notion that this nation's decisions be left in the hands of men like Mr. Modi who even before assuming power had asked corrupt venal vermin's like Mr. Yedurappa and SriRamalu who have looted this country's natural resources left right and center to help him win the elections in the state of Karnataka, is it any wonder, saddled as we are with our present parliamentary system, that we are unable to find any solution to our many difficulties? and we are still left with 330 million people who live in unimaginable conditions, Why, placing this tedious democratic exercise aside we may as well ask a committee of robbers, dacoits & murderers union to run the affairs in this country.

Dance of Democracy - What they wont tell you.

               Here is a man who has strived enough to get through school in order to make himself capable enough to get into IIT and then this man here takes up many high paying jobs which allows him to become somewhat settled in his life, at one point he takes a decision to change the affairs this country has been putting up with and starts to raise many questions in the name of ordinary citizens because he understands those problems better than your usual politician does. At first he is one among the many so they don't bother about his questions, then he becomes prominent and raises many more uneasy questions which they just ignore, but when those questions become so uncomfortable for some and realize that many have started to ask the same questions, they retort to those questions by talking about the person who has raised those questions, they say that you cannot ask those questions because you are not an ordinary citizen, you are an anarchist, you change your mind every now and then, you just drop things as they are and don't see it through to the end, you cannot speak for the people you say you are speaking for because you are not one of them as you are now staying in a 85,000 rupees rented apartment, they say you are a liar, you just accuse and don't prove anything. And meanwhile the gullible people that we are miss the whole idea and start to question the person instead of pondering and seeking answers to those questions which has been raised by that person.

                   The recent deluge of accusations that have been hurled against AAP and its leaders are attempt's to push the masses towards that direction, its an attempt to divert peoples attention from the real issues, its an attempt to make people concentrate on the messenger rather than on the message. Because they know that its easier to kill the message by killing the messenger than to kill the message itself. They wont 't tell you how Mr. Kejriwal can afford to pay 85,000 rupees as rent and why he cannot move out of the house right now in the midst of his busy election campaign schedule, They wont 't tell you why they called the toppling of a few metal detectors by the sudden surge in AAP supporters exiting a railway station as " vandalism " while they called the throwing of Chappal's, lattis and chairs against the police by hundreds of BJP workers in a rally as just " Commotion ", They will tell you that when a chief minister of a state indulges in a protest as a last resort in way of finding a solution to the reasons that drove him to protest is just not right and hence its Anarchy, but they wont tell you to look into that part of history where in a few take a controversial political stance knowingly and make a Rath yatra just for the sake of being in the headlines and in the process they create a huge communal divide in this country which would lead to a chain of dreadful events starting with a Mosques demolition, followed by several bomb blasts, and several terrorist attacks, and several communal clashes ending up in the deaths of children men and women in thousands, when one looks into such a history the question really arises in ones mind is protesting based on legitimate reasons to find solution's Anarchy or its creating a political climate which leads to killing of thousands of innocent men women and children. Everyone one who has ever been up against the might of the wrong have all had to face this kind of persecution, every leader who has ever had the chance to put himself or herself to test have all had to face such persecutions, Nelson Mandela did, Mohandas karamchand Gandhi did and so will Mr. Arvind Kejriwal.

Dance of Democracy - What should really matter.

              Its a shame that we the people of this country even after having the tendency to blame venal establishments, corrupt politicians, inefficient government machinery, unthoughtful government policies for all the ills this society puts up with day in and day out we have very little understanding of what we  actually are blaming about and what it takes to be successful in Indian politics, more so we have very little understanding of politics itself. Its an undeniable fact that Money is a huge enabler that allows one to gain traction in Indian politics, and where and how one gains that money determines ones " true political agenda ", if only the so called masses whose verdict is seen as a dictum of our collective democratic right arised out of the infallible thorough nature of our powers of observation as it would be in the case of an assumed ideal or hypothetical world, we wouldn't have had the misfortune of coming to terms with our own inabilty to make the right choice's which has allowed criminals, murderers, rapists, decoits, kidnappers fill up our parliament, a recent finding shows that one third of our parliament is filled with men who are of dubious nature with serious criminal charges against them.
               If only people had the brains to work out the cost behind vote seeking advertisements that the political parties have been bombarding the masses with through every medium thats available,  if only they had the brains to workout the cost of BJP or congresses 30 second advertisements during prime time television shows people will be dumbfounded and will be forced to ask themselves how on earth these political parties happen to have so much - So much of money at their disposal considering their 97 percent of cadres are people belonging to the lower social strata, and why on earth these political parties spend such HUGE MONEY in order to make their reach wider leave alone them spending money on Smearing campaigns which ridicule other political parties, People don't have the time or the will to find answer's to such important question's but these very frugal minded nitwits or dimwits or whatever, who after listening to relentless propaganda and lies about AAP being Anarchic, and the B- Team of so and so party have all the time in the world to worry about Mr. Kejriwals 5 Bed room flat, or of him having not vacated his government accommodation just after demiting office, or for that matter the assaults he has been through during his road shows, were they staged or not?, With such important question's occupying our small minds all the time we wonder why on earth we are not able to do something about the 30 crore people in this country who go to sleep empty stomach every night in the hope that they will wake up to a new beginning one day.
































Prasanna Kumar 

12 Years a Slave

I was totally speechless after watching this movie, 12 years a slave wrenches the sense of freedom out of you for you to recognize it all over again and makes you to see the sacrifices that have been made to make the words like dignity, equality, fairness and justice mean what they mean today, as someone who has always been in awe of the sliver light that streams above ones head to cast moving images on a silver screen in a scale that is breath taking as such, veiling the darkness that one doesn't have to endure in exchange for an experience as only celluloid could offer, i find it difficult to make a distinction as to what it is that makes this movie profound, is it the cast which pulls of an uphill task of putting themselves in the shoes of men and women who lived some 200 years ago or is it the depiction of the sheer brutality man is capable of showing to his own kind, i don't know. But all i know is i have watched an amazing movie about things that happened in no good way......

In this country everything happens in the name of the poor

          Lot has been undone during these decades of total disregard shown by many elected representatives to the edifice that stands as a symbol of our democracy, Parliament and state assemblies which were once revered as the sanctum sanctorum of the ideals that gave strength to our democracy is now being just seen as a place tainted by the vile spewed by the unworthy uncouth abominable's who lack sincerity and respect to the office they have been voted into by the people of this country. Often state assemblies have been turned into venues for Chappal throwing matches and shouting matches even while there are millions out there who go to sleep hungry everyday with the hope that someone in the government will change things for them tomorrow, and one got to see the very same scenes in the parliament today, how did it all come down to this ?, How ?, Sometime back I read an article about India having half of worlds modern slaves, 67 years !, even after 67 years. This is the most shameful thing that can ever happen to this country, it either means Indians don't have a clue as to what they need to do to make their lives as well as others around them better or its just that they are some grungy creatures capable of exuding only one human emotion which is that of "selfishness". Such a shame, every politician who is as old as someone like Lalu Prasad Yadav who when they started their political careers made certain promises to the people of this country to win their trust and these very people even after being in politics for more than 40 years are making the same promises even today to win votes, these are the venal vermin's this country has to do away with. 

                        Democracy would become meaningless when a mob is allowed to have its way whether its inside the parliament or outside it and one got to see pretty much the same happening today- democracy becoming meaningless, its a shame that we call ourselves a democracy, its a shame that this is the State in which our country is even after 67 years of independence, shame on all the political parties who keep aiding such unruly elements who hold democracy to ransom with impunity even inside the parliament, Shame on all the political parties who have ruled this country and have still left the conditions in this country to degrade according to the will of the people who are acting against the interest of this entire nation, this nasty habit of politicians to use region and religion to further their interests has been causing havoc in the lives of ordinary people, In the recent past there has been a huge exodus of people from North into other Indian states which the Indian government has failed to take notice of, its really sad that people have to leave their home state to be able to survive, this is not the kind of right to dignity our constitution promised to each and every citizen of this country. All is being done to create a new state in the name of the downtrodden, downtrodden ! one finds it illuding that in this country everything happens in the name of the poor but still its the poor who suffer the most, Its the poor who get recruited as terrorists and its the poor who get blown up by them, its the poor who are easy targets for marketers of religion and its the poor who die in any communal violence, its the poor who sweat it out in the watch towers in the border making sure that we all remain safe and its the poor who die in the open during heavy rains, during extreme winter, during extreme summer, its the poor children who get wooed to the schools by the promises made to them about a good meal and its the poor children who die in hoards once the election objectives have been achieved, everything in this country happens in the name of the poor, political parties win elections in the name of the poor, billions get siphoned in the name of poor and even after these many years if this is the condition this country is in one can only feel ashamed of the Apathy that brews all around.

                                So this system which penalizes people who are asking for a more honest deliverance of rights to which they are entitled to like better standard of living, better education, better hospitals, probity in the functioning of the government and provides incentive's to be corrupt has to go. This change will happen and no one can stop it from happening in a country whose median age is 27. If a few lakh ardent nationalists could make the British empire to squirm and make them leave India, its obvious what crores of young Minds who are constantly in touch with each other who don't want their politician to be some rabble rouser who knows only to throw chappal's in the assembly, or someone who only knows to swindle a 1000 crore every time he gets a chance. Politicians in India should realize that people in this country have recognized what they deserve, they know that they deserve much better than what they are being asked to subject themselves to. So Lalus and Rajas and Yadavs of this country pack your bags and be ready to face the wrath of this young nation which wont settle for anything less than what it deserves and it knows what it deserves and will get it no matter what. Its time for the common man to take up the mantle.

AAPanomics is it that contentious ?

                        Recently i have been getting to read too much of emphatic cavilings, remonstrates reeking with malice in lieu of  political thuggery over the recent Delhi governments decision to do away with FDI in retail, there are voices of descent from the industry says a prominent newspaper, there are apprehensions about this setting up a wrong precedent which will drive away foreign investments so says the party which was the reason behind such a situation to become a possibility. The foreign minister of this country who has always held a personal grudge against the year old party which is heading the Delhi government has spewed venom saying that its a party made up of third rate people who harbor Jurassic ideas, could it get anymore obvious than this, where were these opinionated people when 9 other states rejected this FDI proposal while it was presented to them by the government at the center. The real purpose behind the functioning of any democracy should be to throw up governments which would abide by our constitution which stands as the guiding principles for such governments to function in their full capacity in the interest of the people, corporate ideologies and their goals shouldn't take up the role of those guiding principles in establishing a form of governance which might in the long run end up being detrimental to the very foundations on which this country was built. Divers views and news's apart if one were to wield ones knowledge of economics into understanding the things as they have been presented it would become obvious that there seems to be a  wrong understanding in general about the relationship that exist between job creation and investment, & capital expenditure. Investments dont generate jobs as such, which is what an unassuming corporate psychoanalysts would want the general perception to be, but the fact remains that its not the people who invest create jobs but its the people who consume.              

  

                                       Addressing the concerns of the people who think that they have all the understanding of the free market economics just because they have read Adam smith and have become aware of his invisible hand theory is not the intention of this write up, nor its intentions are to make people realize how off the mark they go whenever they try to argue that there is a  direct relationship between investments and industrial progress which leads to job creation, which they always try to corroborate with  the workings of Capital expenditure which allows businesses to spend money either to buy fixed assets or to add value to the existing asset's which infuses usefulness in them extending beyond the taxable year to accrue future benefits by creating demand in future, adding to it their belief that an increase in the consumption can be created only through aggressive marketing. This write up is just an attempt to reach out to people who are wanting of a better understanding of what and how things should be after having realized how interconnected the businesses are in today's globalized world, how labor markets specific to a geographic location are free to serve the businesses located half the world across. So to start with capital expenditure the capital expended on creating more value over the existing assets doesn't happen unless and until there is a scope to enhance the output of product to out run the costs resulting in dividends after a period of time and that happens only to accommodate the consumption that is to happen in the future, though advertising plays a very important role in general which normally enhances the consumption it plays different roles in different economic setups at different levels, In a mature economy Advertising mostly plays the role of a whip which helps to drive down the competition as there is a limit to the amount of consumption that can happen in an economy or for that matter any economy so to speak, which is due to the constrains as set up by various other elements, if we were to discuss about those constraints this write up would take up more space than i would like it to. Its imperative to understand that our fiscal and monetary policies should be aimed at striking a balance which allows capital expenditure to increase vis-a-vis savings rate, that should be our real goal, that would take care of all the problems one would list out arising out of falling consumption owing to the fall in real wages, FDI in retail would drive down wages even further in the retail sector to keep up with the competition, no doubt consumers will get to gain but there are other ways to do that, its not necessary that we need FDI in retail to enhance the efficiency in the delivery system, such measures as such are only prosthetic in nature which in the long run would become detrimental to our economy .... 

















































Prasanna Kumar 

All Along

All along

one is oblivious to the time

one is oblivious to the changes

it brings,

in course with the maneuverings of unconcern

one would like to think,

but all of a sudden the tears that flow

in shock of being in presents proximity

doesn't do justice

to the real in its eternity,

people do leave behind their marks

people do leave behind their memories

people do leave behind what they have said

and people do say more when they are no more,

yes, people do say more even when they are no more

albeit through others,

they do say what that matters

albeit through others,

they do say things that are not theirs

albeit through others,

they do tell you life is just not redundant

just as they lie lifeless

albeit through others,

a thing of concern that pricks you

as it should

and makes you wish for it to stay

with you all along if it could.
































Prasanna Kumar 

US government shutsdown

I was just waiting to see if the United states of America would go the Keynes way AGAIN !, The country may be heading towards a situation where in the old-age dependency ratio will have to translate into growth in the Tax burdens in the near future owing to the rate at which its population is ageing coupled with falling fertility but that doesn't substantiate anything for us to be sure if the move by the republicans to curtail peoples right to have a better healthcare is the better way to make things better, but all those debt, someone has got to pay that debt someday and many from the rest of the world wouldn't want to be those people in the future who might have to lose their pensions to the false promises made by the US of paying them back handsomely, Chinese have been subsidizing the cost of living of millions of Americans for some time now, and most other Asian countries including India have been subsidizing their cost of living by consuming their produce at a higher cost and providing them services at the cheapest cost possible. As for this move to shutdown the functioning of the government I feel that it just shows some kind of prudence on their part for not placating themselves to be worthy enough to gobble up more debt Again, but this also raises many uneasy questions as well because this is happening just after the 2008 melt down and people are not sure if the world is out of it yet, and what would happen to those core industries which are drivers of the world economy which for sometime have been surviving on the improbable notion that growth will happen some how even if it means at the cost of cheap money.

                    The markets around the world have been under the impression that some kind of last minute deal would be struck between democrats and republicans which would stall things being pushed to the extreme, most of the markets dint have enough time to factor in this new development, Shanghai's composite index, Japan's nikkie , hong kongs Hang seng closed now and dint have enough time to react, things would be grim tomorrow as these markets open, once this new development has been factored in by the Asian markets the movement of the indices upwards would definitely mean that dollar might weaken even more against the Asian currencies including rupee. As of now its imperative to note that an economy which always has its eyes on prudence will take sufficient measures to avoid such an inconvenient situation not the other way around like getting itself into such a situation and trying to peddle through it, With all due respect to some analysts who seem to be suggesting that this is some kind of daily occurrence which doesn't require our scrutiny, I have this to say it is this attitude that gave too much power to credit default swaps to wreck the entire US housing market which led to the subprime crisis and to all the subsequent events that followed the Lehman brothers collapse, placing ones trust on the ability of the US economy to adapt is one thing but that shouldn't be too blind enough to discount the conditions which has prompted such an event to occur, US economy is reeling under a huge pressure which is prompting it to enforce such measure's, if this debate between the republicans and democrats continue leave alone they deciding to raise the debt ceiling it will lead to huge uncertainties because raising the debt ceiling doesn't mean it gives enough room for the government to borrow more money to spend on things to keep the economy going but it only allows the US government to payback the money it has already borrowed, the markets know this and they will react accordingly.

Disconnect

                       I think this movie has come so close to defining the time we all live in, I may be wrong the movie might have done much more than getting closer to defining the time we all live in, it might have done just that - defining the time we live in. The movie explores our inabilities to be relevant to our times in the way we understand it or the way we try to understand it and scares even the little bit naiveté out of our already cynical individual selves. It starts with not so much of a comment but with glimpse's into one of the stark realities that has come to be associated with the word "Staying connected", a reality which is a world unto itself existing in response to the world that has changed the way it communicates with itself and the world that doesn't mind shedding its inhibitions in front of a 10 inch screen which implodes into a domicile of a different kind that's built up of bits and not pieces but gigabytes where nothing is spurned in answer to a 16 digit number on a plastic card. 

                      A teen can exist in that world wanting to be rewarded for playing along satiating with carnality the eyes staring at the 10 inch screen from the other side desire's, a teen who finds it impossible to give expression to his thoughts in the way expected of him in the world he exists finds it easier to show how vulnerable he is in front of that 10 inch screen, an unassuming women leading an insular existence along with her reclusive war veteran husband finds an outlet to her grief through that 10 inch screen only to confront a much starker reality of the other world, its the world that allows people now to use the words " I am online" in a context that defines everything around us even the medium that has dominated our living rooms for over 8 decades- television, what is television today if not redundant in a world that stay's connected constantly. The movie disparages what television has turned out to be through a character, a woman TV reporter, who sets out to expose one of the dark realities of the online world but gets caught up in her own guilt after coming face to face with the reality of her own existence besmirched by the vile as inveigled by the screen on which she loves to see her face projected every day for millions to see.

                      Through these characters the movie raises many pertinent question's as to how the things that makes us human our ability to trust, our inabilities which allows us to be vulnerable, our innocence that has very little use in the real world will be shaped into in the future to which we all are chained to through the links of time, The movie is a stunning depiction of the insecurities and confusions one has to confront in the time we all live in, which makes us more gullible than we ever were, more in need of rectitude than we ever needed, desperate to be close to each other than we ever wanted to be. I don't know if I should call this movie a great one but it surely is one of the best movie's of our time and definitely deserves a watch.

And the Rupee touches a new low - Again !

   As the rupee hit 66.06 the Sensex plunged 600 points to end at 590 by the end of the day, this my dear fellow countrymen is called carnage, this is total carnage, every other day whatever small gains the Sensex makes is swallowed by the huge plunges it takes, whatever the government and RBI together have been doing for the past two months or so to instill a certain sense into everything that affects the macroeconomic conditions has had no effect at all, why?, because this government is hell bent on pushing things to the extreme just to carve out a minute chance to secure a third term at a huge cost. What was the need to introduce Food security bill at this point of time when there is too much of negative sentiment and little faith in the fundamentals of our economy, and even after being aware that this is going to add an additional pressure of 40,000 crores on our already stretched up finance's the government chose to pin its hopes on its gut feeling rather than on reams of economic and statistical data which are crying out loud for prudent economic measures, it is this very exact fiscal imprudence resulting out of political compulsions free markets hate to entertain, the rupee has lost around 20 % of its value since the beginning of this year, the last time the rupee saw such a plunge in its value in a year was in 1991 and 1998 during the Asian economic crisis.

                               Its good to take risks to create wealth, to create assets but not to spend that's exactly this government has done, it has pinned it's hopes on generating more revenue in the future by parting with the stakes it has in the PSU's, but for that to happen the market condition's have to be favorable for the valuations of these PSU's to be inviting enough so as to be able to broker equity purchases of these PSU's in the primary and secondary markets, and that can happen only when India clocks the exact GDP figure the government has projected for this fiscal year and other indictor's of economic health are in green. The government has pinned its hopes on the future revenue it should be able to generate to be able to spend now if this is not fiscal imprudence nothing is, and adding to that the price of the crude oil the single commodity which has been pushing our CAD figures to dismal is lurking at risky levels in terms of the effect it could have on our already spiraling import bills, The Brent crude oil price is hovering at around 110 $ and with the political conditions in Syria getting worse and the US wanting to put its foot forward to instill some or more (in)sanity into that region things are heading towards worse, I just hope that in months from now I don't end up being that person who get's to say "see dint I say this was coming !"