I am proud to be a Hindu. Hindus do not convert and have never fought any war of crusade or jihad. However we are constantly being abused by the pseudo secular Congress and its freeloading press dogs just to get votes of non hindus. Yesterday I went to Haridwar, a most important pilgrimage for us Hindus. The river Ganga flows through this city and it is said that Lord Vishnu took three dips in the river at Hari Ki Paidi which is where most pilgrims take their dips. Ganga is the only holy river in the world and its water stays fresh even after being left for over two years in a bottle. The road to Haridwar was is narrow, congested and full of potholes. Once we reached the car park we were hit by a stench of human excreta. At least fifty buses full of villagers were parked there and the villagers were cooking. washing and defaecating at the same place. The whole area was disgustingly filthy. There is no shade so when it started to rain we got soaked and the car park was ankle deep in mud. Hindu temples are some of the richest in the world yet no attempt is ever made to clean and beautify the sites. There is no accounting of the billions of rupees collected in offerings so all of it is probably being stolen. Haridwar is in the new state of Uttarakhand which has a BJP government which talks Hindutva but does nothing. Contrast this with the state of the art Haj terminal at Delhi Airport.

When Dhirubhai Ambani died he left behind a vast industrial empire without a clear will about how it will be divided. His elder son Mukesh wanted it all and this was resisited by his younger brother Anil. Eventually a compromise was worked out by their mother and the various assets were divided between the brothers. Mukesh inherited RIL which produces and refines oil whereas Anil got RNRL, a power company. It appears that RIL had a contract to supply gas to RNRL from its offshore fields in Andhra at $ 2.34 per unit which is the same rate it had quoted to the government controlled power company, NTPC. Now, however, RIL wants
$ 4.20 per unit because its capital expenditure was some Rs. 300 billion more than earlier projections. This was disputed by RNRL in the High Court in Mumbai which found in its favour. RIL has appealed to the Supreme Court where the matter rests at present. Curiously the Oil Ministry supports RIL's increased demand whereas the Power Minister wants NTPC to pay the original agreed price. No doubt the Supreme Court will decide in one brother's favour in due course but it is impossible to understand why Mr. Mukesh, being the elder brother, will do anything to harm his younger sibling. Mr. Mukesh is said to be building a 24 storey house for his wife for some Rs. 80 billion and is content to spend hundreds of millions in lawyers' fees just to hurt is own brother. In the land of Rama that is really disgusting.

Michael Jackson's death seems to be getting weirder by the minute. Turns out that his doctor had given him injections of midazolam and lorazepam which are used for minor procedures in hospitals. When these did not work the singer was desperate to get sleep so he was given propofol, an intravenous anaesthetic agent. After this the doctor went to the toilet for a couple of minutes if you believe the doctor or he was on the phone for a couple of hours leaving the singer unattended as per the police version. All this apparently happened before noon. Whichever version turns out to be the truth it shows a shocking lack of basic medical standards. 1. Why was Jackson so desperate to sleep at such an odd hour? 2. Why were injected benzodiazepines completely unsuccessful? It shows that he had been given these drugs regularly and had developed tolerance. 3. Who gives intravenous anaesthetic agents for insomnia? You need to be prepared with endotracheal tube, oxygen and ambu bag and be skilled in inserting an endotracheal tube if necessary which is a difficult skill to master. If anyone has reached a stage where he is unable to sleep without opiates or anaesthetic drugs then he needs to be in hospital under psychiatric and neurologist care. To casually inject a powerful anaesthetic and then walk of to the loo is completely irresponsible. At the very least the doctor should be struck off the register. Is this the kind of health care the Republicans want to protect. They do not have to wait. The ' death panels ' are already here.

The Democrats are a bunch of pussies. Their party controls both the House and the Senate and yet theyare still cowed by rabid right wing Republicans. The Republicans left behind two unsolved wars and the mother of all recessions but are still able to dictate the debate on the Healthcare bill with lies and scaremongering. They have accused the Democrats of being socialist because the government wants to bring medical care to around 47 million americans who have no insurance at present. By their arguments Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, two of the richest men in the world, are also socialist because they are using their wealth to finance treatment of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in the poorer countries of the world through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. If rich americans can finance medical care in the third world then why is it wrong for their own government to try and bring medical care to their own citizens? Microsoft has been fined in several countries for its retrictive trade practices, ruthlessly cutting competitors out of the market so Mr. Gates is clearly no socialist. The Democrats should have met Republican aggression head on but they are seen to be in the wrong because they are cowards. Already commentators are suggesting that they will lose seats in 2010 and they deserve to. It would be bad for the Americans but good for us Indians to get rid of the Paki loving Democrats.

The Law Commission has framed a new set of draconian legislation which will put every motorist at the mercy of the corrupt police. It proposes that rash and negligent driving is to be made a non bailable offence and be punished by 10 years in prison. This stupidity will apparently reduce the number of accident deaths on Indian roads. Accidents on Indian roads are because roads are inadequate for the number of motor vehicles, they are full of pot holes, any sarkari idiot such as from the telephone or water departments can dig up a road at whim and leave a broken surface behind and because the aam aadmi is given the right to use roads as public toilets for children or to sell vegetables. Two wheeler drivers are never caught for driving on the wrong side, driving without lights or for zigzagging through traffic and 90% of accidents are the fault of the two wheeler drivers. Yet if there is an accident the motorist is immediately blamed becuse the idiot on the two wheeler is badly hurt or even killed. The response by the police is to arrest the motorist, impound the car and make another speed breaker at the site thus increasing driving hazards. Criminal politicians and kleptocrats want to use any excuse to reduce individual freedoms and keep tax payers in a permanent state of terror. We need to change the Constitution so as to make it an absolute right for all Indians to have the best roads, the best utilities, the best education facilities and the best medical care in the world at the lowest taxes and without being terrorised by our own government.

Yesterday the convicted mass murderer William Calley expressed regret about his role in the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam where at least 500 people died. Then a lieutenant in the US army he was court martialled and sentenced to life in prison only to be pardoned after three years by Richard 'I am not a crook' Nixon. Compare that to the treatment meted out to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay where prisoners, some as young as 16 years, are being routinely tortured. These were people picked up in Afghanistan, their offence being trying to kill American troops. The problem is that Afghans have every moral, legal and God given right to try to kill Americans who are the invaders raping their motherland. Every invader has labelled freedom fighters as terrorists so as to be able to torture and slaughter them. The British did it in India, the Russians did it in Afghanistan and the Americans have been doing it in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. This tactic has failed repeatedly and will fail again unless the Americans adopt the methods used by the Chinese in Tibet. Occupy the land by force, ban foreign reporters, reduce the locals to minority by transferring millions of Han chinese and kill any Tibetan who dares to raise is eyes let alone his voice. Trouble is Americans are prone to lecture others about human rights and do not have millions of Chinese cockroaches to occupy Afghanistan. This could turn out to be Obama's Vietnam.

The Libyans will gradually realise how badly they have been shafted by the Scottish government. The case against Al Megrahi was built on lies and evidence hidden from the defence counsel. His co defendant was released on appeal but Megrahi was kept in prison by Scottish judges on orders of the US ( see the case of the Chagos islanders ). Megrahi had launched a second appeal and this time the lies may have unravelled so he was given this deal. Drop the appeal and you will be released on humanitarian grounds. A man with terminal prostate cancer his desire to be with his family must have weakened his resolve to clear his name and he succumbed. The Libyans played into British hands by greeting him as a hero. Now his conviction remains proven on paper and the British and the US are acting as injured parties. By this one act the British prevented their slave judicial system from being exposed. They have saved enormous amounts of money which would have been required to treat the cancer and they are calling him a mass murderer. Some two decades ago Al Haig, then Secreatary of State, called the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington a
' duplicitous bastard '. Clearly there are many more such bastards in Britain even today.

With death defying courage Afghans have gone out to vote inspite of Taliban mad dogs threatening to cut of fingers marked with indelible ink. Such courage is heroic as well as touching in its naivety. They are voting for Hamed Karzai who has been a resounding failure as president. He has formed alliances with warlords sharing power with the very people who have killed thousands during the civil war. Corruption is uncontrolled and rampant. Most of the aid money is probably usurped by the powerful leaving the poor to scratch the dirt for a living. The Afghan security forces have improved very little and are still useless as a defence shield. The Taliban have made a comeback. Opium cultivation is the highest ever recorded and providing the Taliban with money to buy arms. Ordinary people continue to die and lose limbs in a wretched cycle of violence. Once the hoopla is over and Obama and Clinton have pontificated over the 'historic significance' of the election the Afghans will go back to their wretched lives. Democracy has come to mean a mark on a paper every few years to legitimise the continuing exploitation of the people by scoundrels and narcissistic megalomaniacs. As an Indian I can sympathise.

On tuesday students near Patna in Bihar tried to forcibly occupy seats reserved in advance by passengers in airconditioned compartments of the Delhi-Patna Shramjeevi Express and were prevented from doing so by security personnel. Enraged by this they burnt airconditioned compartments of the train causing millions of rupees worth of damage and enormous invenience for legitimate passengers. Biharis seem to be brought up with the belief that they can loot from others whatever they fancy and if thwarted are prepared to kill. All trains from Kolkata, except those going east, have to pass through Bihar and passengers are regularly forced to give up their seats to thugs who refuse to pay the fare. Loots and rapes are common and if anyone resists he or she is thrown out of the moving train and mostly killed. Thus there is enormous anger against Biharis in all parts of India. Biharis also continue to produce the largest numbers of children and migrate to every part of the country in search of jobs often outnumbering locals. Thus people like Raj Thackeray and ULFA are easily able to tap into a preexisting resentment very easily. The freeloading press heaps abuse on these people instead of discussing the root causes. Thus the problems continue to fester.

Allegedly a British citizen called Gary McKinnon hacked into NASA and US military computers causing
$ 700000 worth of damage. The Americans have asked for Mr. McKinnon to be extradited to the US to stand trial and the British Home Secretary has agreed. Mr. McKinnon suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism but his many appeals the British courts have been turned down. This is not an isolated incident. We regularly hear of Britain throwing its citizens into US jaws but the opposite does not apply. Americans do not have to answer any charges to the British justice system. Also Britain regularly hands over all the intelligence it gathers to the US but the Americans give only selected bits in return. Seems that Britian has handed over its sovereignty to the US and is merely a slave nation. If that is the case the British government owes it to its citizens to be open about it so they can avoid falling foul of US laws. It is also of vital interest to the rest of the world because Britain continues to occupy, quite unjustly, a veto wielding membership of the UN Security Council. It means in effect that the US actually has two votes and can always find support for whatever it does. This needs to be taken up at the UN General Assembly and then nations should collectively ask Britain to resign its seat. It will be ugly but the world should stand united for justice. Chavez and Ahmadinejad, are you listening?

Wash your hands, avoid crowds, stay indoors if you have a cold, bla bla bla. Such are the pious recommendations of the Indian government probably having seen how other countries have handled the swine flu outbreak. Unfortunately as usual they have missed the most important and potentially the most deadly source of spread - the food industry. Ganesh chaturthi, Dussehra, Diwali, the festival season is upon us. At this time tons of sweets and dry fruits such as cashew, almonds and walnut are distributed as gift. Unlike fruits and vegitables they will not be washed or cooked therefore any organism on these food items will survive. All sweets and dry fruits are packed by hand. A visit to any shop will show young fellows taking out laddoos and burfis by hand and packing them into boxes following which they wipe their hands on a cloth black with dirt. They scratch, wipe their sweat and noses and then use the same hands for serving customers. In north India people are so barbaric that they may even be serving with their left hands. The government should have used this opportunity to pass a law compelling all shopkeepers to use spoons, ladles or gloves. However laws are formulated by criminal politicians and chamcha kleptocrats and not designed for the common weal. If fortune is against us we could see the mother of all pandemics come october.

A fifty something plus American male called John Yettaw (real name?) swims across a lake in the dead of night, enters the most heavily guarded house in Burma, that of Aung Sang Suu Kyi completely undetected and then refuses to leave. The fellow is detected after two days following which Suu Kyi is sentenced to hard labour reduced to 18 months house arrest in a magnanimous gesture by the slugs who rule Burma. An unknown US senator Jim Webb turns up in Burma and Yettaw is promptly released. Life is not a chocolate commercial that you just swim to the most heavily guarded political prisoner in a foreign country. Clearly the Burmese slugs are ecstatic because Suu Kyi is now barred from standing in next year's fraudulent elections. How did they get an American to play the part? Advertise in a newspaper? ' Wanted stupid looking man to swim to Suu Kyi, ah so ' will certainly not work. So who organised this farce? Do the Americans want something so badly from Burma that they organised this comedy? Or is the foul hand of the murderous Chinese helping their equally murderous brothers to secure rights to Burmese gas? I just hope that our politicians are not so preoccupied with Pakistan that they neglect our malignant eastern neighbour.

Five SC/ST students were expelled from IIT Delhi for not getting required pass grades. They moved the Supreme Court which has asked IIT Delhi to reconsider its decision to expel them because they are from so called backward classes and, therefore, deserved to be helped. These students entered IIT in the quota reserved for backward classes and were clearly not good enough but the Court suggested that the professors at IIT, who are poorly paid, should give them extra tuition to bring them upto standard. No one wants to do extra work without reward. At the same time the professors will not dare to fail any substandard SC/ST students for fear of stirring up a political storm. Most likely they will take the path of least resistance and pass them. Armed with coveted IIT and SC/ST certificates they will then be eligible for high government posts. Imagine these people in charge of building bridges or building the defence systems of this country. It is shocking how the standards of education in India are being systematically dismantled. How long before foreign universities begin to derecognise the IIT brand? The meek may eventually inherit the earth but the bleak have already inherited India.

The Libyan, Al Megrahi convicted of the Lockerbie bombing of a PanAm airliner may be released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Home Secretary because he is suffering from terminal cancer of the prostate. Some American relatives of victims killed in the attack have expressed outrage at this news. No one seems to remember the Iranian passenger airliner shot down over the gulf by an American warship patrolling the area. Surely the radar signature of a passenger airliner slowly gaining altitude after takeoff and a military jet flying at twice the speed of sound would be entirely different. Also most crew of any passenger liner would speak english and therefore could have been verified before being shot down. There is no doubt that it was a deliberate murder of hundreds of civilians. It may have been revenge for alleged Iranian involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. The Americans apparently offered the Iranians a derisory amount as compensation thus insulting and humiliating them. The captain of the ship is still free and no doubt enjoys telling stories of how he personally killed hundreds of Iranians. Is it any wonder that Iranians see the US as the Great Satan and will do anything to manufacture a nuclear weapon. No matter what the propaganda channels like BBC and CNN keep telling us the US better watch out once the Iranians are successful.

The Honb'le Finance Minister has set a target of Rs 4 trillion for direct tax collections this financial year as opposed to Rs. 3.7 trillion last year. ' I know what I am asking is an extremely challenging target given the current economic situation. But it is equally true that if such a target has to be achieved, it can only be done by direct tax,' said Mr. Mukherjee. The surprising thing is that I seem to be the only person in the country who thinks that it is strange for an elected representative of the people to encourage tax officials to go out to harass and bully tax payers into paying more. Isn't this what rajas and zamindars used to do in the past, set an exorbitant tax rate and then send out the pahalwans as collectors? Isn't it what Dawood Ibrahim does now, pay a percent of your earnings for his services? Why is it called extortion and protection racket when Dawood does it and is applauded by the freeloading press when the finance minister does the same thing? It is all in the name of the naked aam aadmi. Sixty two years after independence the aam aadmi remains naked, is easily bribed with promises of handouts with taxpayers' money and then provides the excuse to bully the taxpayers. Whoever thought up this wheeze is surely the greatest con artist the world has ever seen and deserves statues erected in his image. Charles Ponzi was a two bit player compared to this fellow.

In a scathing article ' The swine flu and the cuckoo's nest ' in the Times of India yesterday one Bharat Kewalramani pointed out the callous stupidity of politicians and kleptocrats in India. His daughter had flu and tested positive for Influenza A at a private hospital at which point she was referred to the only government hospital authorised to test for H1N1 in entire Mumbai. The article is logical and although seething with fury is well written. As physicians we have not been given any guidelines to follow in a suspected case of swine flu. Problem is that the monsoon season is the time for seasonal human flu anyway and I am seeing at least 10 cases of flu everyday. Clearly every patient cannot be screened for H1N1, which is said to cost Rs. 10000, as it would be an impossible financial to bear for the government. In any event the government has not allowed public sale of osseltamivir because the rich will buy up all available stocks leaving nothing for the poor. In any event the poor will not be able afford the tests and the cost of ten tablets at Rs. 1000. It would be cheaper to vaccinate the entire population against seasonal human flu. Rich people will pay for the vaccine from private doctors while the poor can queue up at government dipensaries for free shots. If seasonal human flu is eliminated then any patient with flu like symptoms may be tested for H1N1. Unfortunately in India policy is decided not by politicians but by criminal politicians and chamcha kleptocrats.

Amused or bemused, what should we be? The US is the richest country in the world with some of the best brains. There is probably one Nobel laureate per square mile of its territory yet the stupidity of its people continues to amaze us who watch from a distance. The present confusion over Mr. Obama's healthcare plan is truly amazing. The Republicans are presenting the plan as a government takeover of healthcare and loss of choice for ordinary Americans and the people are so ready to accept such lies. They should be asking why healthcare companies, which rake in billions from the misery of people, are so set against the plan that they are spending millions to undermine it. Surely it is not for the benefit of the sick and the poor. If the cost of treating any major illness is to drive you to bankruptcy then surely it is no choice at all. Only about ten years ago Americans visiting India would quickly fly back home for treatment if they fell ill. Today they are happy to be treated here. Lots of Americans visit this small hill town and seem quite happy to be operated, get treated for major infections such as typhoid or deliver babies. Indeed some see doctors and load up on all the medicines they may need before returning home to the US. It is the same kind of stupid irrational fear as the H1N1 panic currently prevailing in India. People are the same everywhere.

With great fanfare the government has announced a new law prescribing greater punishment for those who make spurious drugs and for scientists conducting unsafe and unethical clinical practise. Strangely there is no attempt at punishing widespread abuse by pharmaceutical companies. India has thousands of companies making and selling drugs and new ones are being set up everyday marketing medicines of dubious quality. However the big companies are a much bigger problem. Every company markets commonly used drugs under a different name but not one is interested in very useful old drugs because of low margins. I find three things particularly dangerous. First is the practice of pushing drugs for conditions for which they are not indicated such as ondansetron for any vomiting when it is only for vomiting after chemotherapy. The second is combining two different antibiotics used for completely different infections in one tablet. For instance cefixime used in typhoid with cloxacillin used mainly for skin abscesses. Third is marketing completely different molecules under the same name for instance ceftriaxone which is injectable and cefixime which is a tablet to use the brand value and confuse the doctor. The marketing is targeted mainly towards illiterate doctors such as quacks and those who obtained their degrees with money who constitute 80% of all doctors. Who knows how many people are being killed everyday because of criminal pursuit of profits by the pharma companies but no doubt they cover their backsides by oiling the politicians and kleptocrats. After all it is all for the aam aadmi.

In India teachers work the least number of hours. Two months for summer vacation, another one month for winter and exam holidays, around 40 sundays and various other religious and statutory holidays add upto a total of around 150 days of doing nothing. If teachers worked regular hours like everyone else parents would be free to work fulltime. This would be especially useful for women who would not have to take career breaks to have children. At least teachers are poorly paid. Not so bank officers. After the Sixth Pay Commission last year public sector bank officers are highly paid, work in airconditioned comfort and have large number of holidays. Earned leave, casual leave, medical leave, sundays, half day working on saturdays and all the religious and statutory holidays mean that sarkari bank fellows work less than six months in a year. For instance Valmiki wrote the Ramayana before Lord Rama was born before which he did 40 years of tapsya before which he was a bandit called Ratnakar. Who knows his exact birthday? Yet bank fellows take a holiday every year. So shameless are they that they regularly go on strike for increased salary. They were on strike last two days and there were huge queues in front of banks this morning. The strike must have affected business for two days and milions of people wasted valuable time outside banks today. Every time these selfish shameless people go on strike they should be made to pay for national loss from their own pockets.

Reading the freeloading press one would assume that India is the only country in the world without any difficulty resulting from the recession affecting the rest. Our growth is going to be around 7%, Sensex is climbing ever higher and the government will soon come out with a way to sell parts of public sector companies. Thank God the Congress won the election is the feeling conveyed. The gems are in the little bits. If Anil Ambani is to be believed RIL, his brother's company, is deliberately underproducing gas to keep prices high to maximise profits. The monsoon is around 40% deficient in the whole country and with food inflation over 20% year on year the aam aadmi can expect major hunger. Sugar prices are expected to double because farmers have moved away from cane production. This is because the last government banned export of sugar in 2007 because of high prices and then the prices fell so low that farmers switched crops. Inflation is at minus 1.58% and exports have fallen 9 months in a row. Public sector banks have accumulated Rs. 440 billion of non performing assets or bad loans. Yet so stupid is the press after admitting that problems were many one pundit cheerfully wrote that everything will be fine because Dr. Manmohan Singh has always been a lucky Prime Minister. Excuse me but Dr. Singh has been prime minister only once when he did nothing except sign a one sided nuclear deal with the US which is going nowhere unless we bend to the US demand to sign the NPT and the CTBT. If only we had a free press.

There seems to be a consensus among paper pundits that this is going to be an Asian century and that Asian economic growth will ultimately make Asia stronger than the US and Europe. Seems to me that they are taking bits from here and there and put together a picture. The US is one country and although Europe consists of many the European Union has made it the second largest economy in the world. The EU is now trying to formulate a common defence and diplomatic policy which, if the member states can agree, will make it enormously strong. Asia, on the other hand, is a geographic collection of totally disparate states which will never form a strong union. There is Australia which sees itself as a white country and supports the US blindly in any misadventure. In any future diagreement between Asia and the US or EU it will surely join the white men's club. The Jihadists will attack any soft target wherever they find it whether in India or in Indonesia diverting attention away from growth and trade towards self defence. Then there is China. A brutal uncivilised people feared and hated by all its neighbours. Like a cancer it is growing exponentially consuming vast quantities of natural resources without caring for the source or natural damage it is causing in the process. It is building its armed forces and is planning to use force to take over natural resources such as oil in the Spratly Islands and water from Tibet. By the end of this century there might just be Asian rubble left.

Seems like Venezuela is slaloming down towards becoming a basket case. Over the years its oil wealth had only enriched a few while keeping the majority in poverty so the people voted in Hugo Chavez who promised a more equitable distribution of public wealth. He brought in Cuban doctors and teachers and ensured poor people had education and health care they could afford. He nationalised the oil industry so that the billions earned from this national asset went to the state and not into the pockets of the robber barrons. This enraged the robbers who felt so aggrieved that they organised a coup which failed miserably and Chavez won the next election comfortably. He blamed the US for the coup and turned into a paranoid buffoon using his country's oil wealth to support leftist governments in Latin America. There is evidence that he is supporting guerillas against the Columbian government because it is a friend of the US and he sees it as a traitor. Unfortunately oil prices fell and suddenly he cannot finance his social schemes. Crime has become uncontrollable. He is suddenly realising that once you relaese the genie of expectations you cannot bottle it again. He nationalised rice mills and is ranting against pharma companies for high prices. His goons have been attacking tv and newspaper offices for criticising him much like his friend, Ahamadinejad, is doing in Iran. Perhaps the lesson is that once you bribe the people it becomes standard and impossible to stop. Is it happening to India too?

The lot of women in India is bad but nowhere is it as bad as in the north and west including Delhi. The preference for boys is so intense that in Haryana there are just 822 girls to 1000 boys. This means that large numbers of young men can find no girl to marry. One way is to buy a girl from poorer part of India such as the north east and then share her between several brothers. The young woman is made to do all the housework and raped by one of the brothers in turn. Such misery is hard to imagine. Seems that an alternative is to exchange girls between families. If a family has a son as well as a daughter then they demand that the groom's family give a girl to the son in exchange. The groom's family will then give any girl they have even if she is 11 or 12 years old. Yet even in this shortage of girls the evil of dowry still persists. The greed for material wealth is such that the grooms family tries to gouge whatever it can and will torture the young woman if their demands are not fulfilled. Often the girl will be killed or will commit suicide unable to bear the torture. The shocking thing is that it is women who are the prime movers in this systematic degradation of other women. Is it because they want to avenge the rough treatment they underwent in their youth or something genetic like the totally irrational love of gold among Indian women it is hard to tell. Sadly it is probably the girls killed off before birth who are lucky.

Harry Truman was a mass murderer. Kennedy was a serial philanderer. Richard 'I am not a crook' Nixon resigned. Ford played golf while Carter dithered. Ronald Reagan was dementing in his second term so Nancy ran the country with the aid of seances. George Junior and Uncle Dick have been a total disaster so I fail to understand the hostility towards Sarah Palin. Sure she is rambling and incoherent but it is nothing that cannot be solved by a little intellectual makeover. India has the complete solution to all her problems. We have the best private tutors in the world at chinese melamine prices. After all our teachers do not teach in class so as to give private tuitions in private. They are great at it. So come and stay in India, Sarah, between november and march. Great weather, great food and learn everything from geography to economics to politics. Our chamcha politicians and press will give you such a build up as you have never dreamed of in your life. On your way back shop at Dubai, watch a few football World Cup matches in South Africa and have a few beers in Georgia and you will be feted as a seasoned authority on world affairs when you return home. After all americans still think that the world stretches between Coney Island and Sunset Boulevard. So come on Sarah. Let your presidential quest begin in the land of the famous rope trick and, in four years, you will do to the Paki loving Democrats what you did to that moose. And you are way prettier than that Bobby Jindal.

Private airlines in India have called a strike on August 18 because they are running up huge losses and cannot continue to function. Airline fuel is heavily taxed, upto 30% in some states as opposed to 4% elsewhere in the world. In the past when the sarkari Indian Airlines was the only option it was cheaper to fly to Bangkok or Hong Kong than from Delhi to Kerala. Private airlines introduced competition and brought down costs by decreasing aircraft turnaround time. Now the filthy hand of the government came to play. Even if airlines sold tickets cheaply, say at Rs. 100, the tax was calculated at the original price of the ticket so the customer ended up paying Rs.2000. Add another Rs. 400 as airport improvement tax and air travel becomes much more expensive than first class train fare so forcing people to travel by train. This meant that first class passengers could be fleeced to subsidise second class travel. Of course, the politicians claimed it was all for the aam aadmi but it only allows politicians to run trains to their localities at huge losses only to gain votes. The great news is that the Air India-Indian Airlines combine has losses of around Rs. 40 billion because of overmanning, unnecessarily high salaries and pure thieving. So now it is a question of allowing Air India to fail or reduce taxes and allow all airlines to flourish. With fiscal deficit out of control it may be difficult to throw taxpayer money at the corrupt airline. Is it possible that corruption at many levels can produce a good result?