The freeloading press continually highlights, what it calls, subsidies on petroleum products. We are told how the Oil Minister, Mr. Deora is fighting to decontrol prices of petrol and diesel at pumps so as to reduce gigantic deficits being piled up by Indian oil companies. That all these are total lies is proven by the fact that petrol costs almost double in India compared to the US where prices are completely free to reflect international prices. So how is it possible that our bleeding heart government is helping us with subsidies and yet we pay double of rich yankees? Of course, what the press never says is that oil is heavily taxed so the so called subsidy is a complete lie. In this year's budget the Finance Minister has further increased taxes on petrol which will probably increase pump prices by another Rs. 3. Apart from the inflationary cost this will do nothing to improve finances of oil companies. The government owns major parts of these companies so will lose out on dividends if they run losses. However all the companies, Indian Oil, BPCL, HPCL and ONGC have minority shareholders who will lose dividends and also because stock prices are declining. By getting its money from taxes and foregoing dividends government is looting minority shareholders. Sir Conrad Black is serving a long prison sentence for similarly using Hollinger International money for private luxury. Unfortunately politicians in India are above the law and citizens have no power to hold them to account. It remains to be seen if the minority shareholders have the guts to sue the government and force it to deregulate petrol prices. Only then will the lies be exposed.

M.F. Hussein, a painter of Indian origin, has accepted Qatari citizenship because their are multiple cases filed against him in Indian courts. They were filed by Hindu activists aggrieved by the painting of a naked picture of Goddess Saraswati by Hussein. As usual the freeloading press is distorting the debate by saying that it is all about freedom of expression with vicious abuse aimed at Hindus. We are being painted as ' Hindu Taliban ' thus playing into the hands of all those who think that they will go to heaven by killing Hindu kafirs. Mr. Hussein could have painted any number of naked women but he deliberately chose the Goddess. His aim must have been to provoke and thus get a very high price by selling the painting to the highest bidder. He had put the painting up in an exhibition showing his intentions. If a man bought the painting and used it for sexual fantasies would Mr. Hussein be able to stop him? Thus if the same painting had been executed by a Hindu it would still have been objectionable. We are repeatedly told of how much how much he loves India, his love of all religions and about his knowledge of Hiduism. In that case he could have converted to Hinduism but he chose the citizenship of a Muslim country showing that he is a Muslim fanatic. He could have made it clear that he has no intention of selling the painting and bequeathed it to a Hindu temple so that it would not be defiled after his death. This he chose not to do clearly intending to sell the painting to the highest bidder. The Goddess is above stupid actions by stupid men. His painting cannot insult the Goddess but definitely insults Hindus.

A chart comparing changing values of properties between some cities in India makes fascinating reading. This chart gives a comparison of prices between 2007, first and second halves of 2008 and the first half of 2009. Seems that property prices gained the maximum in Kolkata inspite of all the trouble in Nandigram and the relocation of the Nano car plant to Gujarat. Many industrial projects were cancelled or postponed on seeing the troubles faced by Tata. The property prices went up 14% in the first half of 2008, gaining a total of 40% in the whole of 2008. By June 2009 prices had gained a total of 59% compared to 2007. Why were property prices going up even though industries were pulling out of Bengal and there was a worldwide recession? It may be because general elections were held in May 2009 and people could see that the Commies were going to lose. So people decided to consolidate and hide their black money. Property is the easiest and the safest place to invest black money which maybe why prices have jumped. Yesterday the annual budget was presented with the usual hoopla and freeloading journalists are predicting India to achieve double digit growth rates in the next few years. The black economy in India is equal to or more than the official GDP and if growth reaches double digits then inflation should reach triple digits. If rents of commercial properties are higher in Mumbai than in Manhattan then there must be something majorly wrong somewhere. Can an economy built on the quicksand of black money survive? If we can invent the famous rope trick, why not.

Seems that Toyota has still not been able to understand what caused the sudden acceleration in their cars which resisted all attempts by the driver to stop the car. The brake problems turn out to have been a glitch in the programming which can be corrected in half an hour by reprogramming but they are still trying to work out the accelerator problem according to the testimony in front of Congress. For us, of the older generation, it is like a case of ' I told you so.' Computers are not to be trusted. Software problems are common and a computer often crashes for no accountable reason. There numerous malicious people creating viruses, malware, worms for no reason other than to cause pain to others. In Toyota's case is it possible that someone inserted a virus in the programs controlling accelerators and brakes. Say a disgruntled employee with a grudge against the company or the parts supplier. Or a person employed by a competitor who stands to gain by the fall in sales of Toyota cars. Or even a deviant who is thrilled by pictures of crashed cars. Could the glitch have been caused by electromagnetic radiation from a cell phone tower or even the owner's cell phone. One could argue that all cars today have such components and no other company has experienced problems so far. It may be because no one has been able to work out how to alter programs in cars until now but now that one person has learnt how to do it he could pass it along to others. Much like hackers do. Let us hope that it is just some dirt on the chip and nothing more serious.

In India when a politician, civil servant or a wealthy person commits a crime the ensuing events take the same course every time. The case is handed over to an investigating agency with great fanfare. If an officer actually makes any progress he is transferred, often with a promotion, as has happened in the Madhu Koda case where Ujjwal Chaudhary of the Income Tax Directorate has been transferred to Patna just as he was getting close to politicians with links to hawala criminals. This has been stopped for now by a Public Interest Appeal to the High Court. Often the investigating officers take years without any progress and the case is closed as in Bofors and Rathore cases. At other times the length of time taken for the investigation is used by the culprit to either bribe or threaten witnesses to change their testimonies as happened in the BMW case and the case against Bhagat. Unfortunately Ramalinga Raju of Satyam fame cannot be protected by these tried and tested methods because he made a full confession in public. However even though Bernie Madoff, who also confessed, is already serving a sentence of 150 years Raju is allowed to play badminton in jail while the investigation drags on. Even by Indian standards the non bailable warrant against Sajjan Kumar is a macabre joke. Mr. Kumar has been accused of orchestrating the massacre of sikhs after the shooting of Mrs. Indira Gandhi in 1984, yes 1984. He was on the Congress ticket for last year's elections but had to stand down because of an outcry. With Congress governments in both Delhi and the centre what hope is there that he will be found guilty. Stop the lies. At least save our money.

After recalling millions of vehicles for accelerator and brake problems Toyota may face criminal charges in the US. We have not heard of any recall of Toyota cars in India. And why should there be? Indians are dispensable, right? A few years ago Nokia batteries in certain models of their cell phones were catching fire. We were told to register online and replacement batteries would come by post. They never did. We had to visit Nokia dealers repeatedly and were told that they had run out of supplies. Possibly they were selling the new batteries in the open market and hoped that after wasting so much time and effort people would just give up. Politicians or civil servants were nowhere to be seen. Foreign banks regularly bully and gouge customers. If you cancel your credit card your instructions will be ignored and you will be sent a replacement card against your explicit instructions. Even if you send the new card back they will send you bills for renewal with threats of being blacklisted if you refuse to pay. Foreign banks regularly employ thugs to repossess vehicles with physical violence if the owners have missed paying one instalment of their loans. Price Waterhouse Cooper faced no charges as the auditors of Satyam even though Raju had been looting the company for years. In the US another accounting firm Andersons was liquidated because it failed to spot irregularities at Enron. It is farcical to celebrate Independence and Republic days with marches and a show of missiles when politicians and senior civil servants are ready to polish the white man's shoes. It is this servility that allows China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, anyone to attack us.

In a brutally honest confession Tiger Woods has said that his infidelity was because he thought that with so much money and fame he was ' entitled '. Sense of entitlement is probably responsible for most of the deaths in today's world. Americans refuse any reduction in CO2 production because they are entitled. The British, with US protection, are set to plunder the oil and gas reserves in the seas around the Falkland Islands which belong to Argentina. Because they are entitled. In India criminal politicians can fly with any number of companions and family at tax payers' expense. Chief ministers of states buy luxury aircraft and helicopters while farmers commit suicide. One senior IAS officer in Chattisgarh, B. L. Agrawal has been found to possess over Rs. 930 million in assets. Politicians refuse to entertain any possibility of term limits because they cannot maintain their lifestyles without plundering the exchequer for life. Not just the politician but his murderous children, wife, mistress, whore, all are allotted constituencies so that everyone can enjoy in the pillage. They are all entitled. Manu Sharma is entitled to shoot Jessica Lall dead for refusing to serve him a drink because, as the son of a politician, he has been entitled from birth. Rathore is able to justify tormenting Ruchika's family until the girl commits suicide because, as the chief of police, he was entitled to molest a 14 year old girl. The support and protection he received from his colleagues, superiors and politicians proves that they all supported the notion of entitlement. We, the people, pay with our money, properties and lives.

Seems that everyone from President Obama to my neighbourhood tea stall owner is impressed with the double digit growth of China's economy for the last two decades. Nothing seems to be able to put the brakes on this runaway growth which grew over 10% even in 2009 when the rest of the world was trying to stop the headlong plunge into depression. However political correctness prevents anyone from saying one of the main underlying cause of this growth and it is China's population control. Chinese leaders enforced a one child per family rule since the early 1990s and this has reduced the number of mouths to feed. It is perfectly logical that if the number of poor people declines poverty will decline in parallel. Also having just one child decreases expenses on children, allows both parents time to work and increase consumption helping the economy further. To be sure it was enforced brutally and the preference for boys has meant widespread murder of girl babies with a highly skewed population. However the same thing happens in India where ultrasound is used to determine sex of the unborn child and female fetuses then aborted especially in the north. No one in India talks about uncontrolled population growth especially in the BIMARU states. The talk is of uplifting the poor and the demographic dividend when majority of young people are unemployable because of poor education and lack of knowledge english. Surely no country in the world, no matter how rich, can go on feeding an infinite number of people. However for politicians vast numbers of illiterate naked hungry aam aadmi means easy votes. You feed them some garbage about caste, promise free rice and bingo, you are a big daddy. No food, no water, no education, no electricity and no hope.

While the freeloading keeps repeating in glowing terms how the economy is growing at 7.2% and may reach 8% growth nest fiscal it seems that the government is mulling possibilities of going back to the old system of everyone owning a ration card. In the past every Indian owned a ration card which could buy you substantard rice or wheat and sugar at rates much lower than the open market. The grains were of such poor quality that only the most desperate would avail of their grain rations. However everyone took their quota of sugar every week because you cold strain out bits of glass after the sugar was dissolved. Ration shop owners sold stocks at very high profits in the open market and adulterated the rest to make up the weight. Apparently the criminal politicians have woken up to the fact that 50% of children are underweight and 75% of women are anaemic so the thinking is that everyone should be provided with subsidised food. Food subsidy will rise from Rs. 524.9 billion to Rs. 1368.3 billion, a rise of Rs. 844 billion. At the same time the government is determined to increase indirect taxes, VAT and service tax, from 10% to 12% which was the rate before the financial collapse in 2008. The growth in the economy was only due to the cut in tax rates and increasing indirect taxes at a time when interest rates are also going up will reduce consumption and hurt growth. Also true inflation as measured by the cost of living will jump but, of course, the government only measures the wholesale index which hides the pain. It is the same old plan. Increase poverty by increasing taxes and then dole out alms. It is the tried and tested method for the Congress to win votes but the press would never tell you so.

On February, 8 a two bench Supreme Court heard the appeal of Mulla and others against the death penalty for murdering five people, including one woman, in cold blood about 14 years ago. The victims were working on fields when these men came armed and demanded that they be paid Rs. 10000. Being poor agricultural workers the victims had no money so one person was sent back to the village to bring the money but the villagers could not raise the sum. So the accused took the victims with them, slit their throats and left them to die. The trial court sentenced the four accused to death and the High Court upheld the sentence. The Supreme Court reduced the sentence to that of life. In a long reasoned judgement the judges held that the death penalty should be awarded only for the rarest of the rare cases where special reasons existed for such punishment. While accepting the murder was in cold blood the judges gave reasons for mitigation which included age of the defendants, family, length of incarceration already suffered and poverty. The judges held that a criminal who commits a crime due to economic backwardness is most likely to reform. Not once did the judges mention the victims or their families and what they suffered. These were also desperately poor people who could not raise a lousy Rs. 10000 to save their lives and were murdered while working hard to provide for themselves and their children. What effect the death of a parent will have on the children is hard to imagine. Regarding the length of a life sentence the judges said that it is upto the respective state government to suspend, remit or commute sentences which is chilling. That explains why Manu Sharma, convicted murderer and son of a Haryana politician, was allowed out on bail in the middle of his sentence. Seems that the entire justice system is falling over with sympathy for killers. The victims meanwhile cry out for justice. What a tragic joke.

Lots of learned opinions about the perilous state of the Greek economy. After being elected into office the new government discovered that the deficit is 12.5%, double of what was being thought. Appears that the previous government had fudged its accounts to hide the real extent of the trouble the country was in. Now Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain have been dubbed PIGS as opposed to the BRIC countries of the developing world. Greece's problems are being compounded by the common currency, the Euro which binds different countries with totally different economies into a straitjacket. If Greece had its own separate currency it could have run a bigger deficit, devalued its currency to improve competitiveness and taken IMF help to restructure. Tied to the Euro it is committed to keeping its deficit below 3% and cannot make monetary policy independently. Other countries in the euro zone are in some trouble themselves and reluctant to help. Greece has been told to increase taxes and cut public spending to decrease its deficit, precisely the things it must not do if it is to decrease its pain. People will suffer terribly through no fault of theirs. Taxes and unemployment will rise, benefits and pensions will be tightened and poverty will increase. No wonder the people are furious and are resorting to strikes to protest government policies. However this government is hamstrung and can do nothing. So people should unite to demand punishment for the previous government which brought them to this state. Politicians always get away with crimes. Time to demand a stop.

As I have been saying for years it was always about plundering natural resources around the Falkland Islands. That is why successive British prime minsters have crawled in humble servitude to US presidents. Turns out that there are an estimated 60 billion barrels of oil in the seas around the islands and Britain is going to start digging. Of course they will share the booty with the Americans. This will be the biggest anglosaxon robbery in history. In the first war for the Falkland Islands the Argentinians were thrashed because the US supported Britain and the USSR, as it was then, did not support Galtieri's junta because it was considered right wing. It was a monumental error on par with the sale of Alaska to the US. Now is the golden moment to set things right. Argentina should take the islands back by force which it is entitled to do. Britain is already upto its neck in Afghanistan and, its economy being in the gutter, is in no position to resist. The US is similarly involved in two wars and is also in economic trouble. Russia should help Argentina, which is now a democratic country, with the latest arms and aircraft. This will be nice payback for the US supplying arms to the east european countries to encircle Russia. Of course, the US and Britain will use the illegitimate UN Security Council to try and censure Argentina but Russia can always exercise its veto as the US does to protect Israel. The US and UK can retaliate by refusing to buy Argentinian beef or soya but will soon be begging for oil. If Ms. Kirchner has the guts and times it right she could go down in history as the ultimate hero of Argentina. After all what is sauce for the goose is sauce......

Seems that Mercedes Benz has decided to open retail network in towns smaller than metro cities in India because BMW sold more cars last year than them. Mercedes cars cost Rs. 20 million which is $ 400,000 about three fourths of which will be tax. Only the very wealthy will buy these cars and these people are anything but stupid. Still I wonder why they are willing to pay so much money to the government in the form of tax when they will get only grief in return. Road surfaces get washed out after just one heavy rain and cars scrape their undersides as they fall into huge potholes. Villagers build high speed bumps on so called highways because speeding cars disturb their children defaecating by the roadside. If somebody hits your car you can do nothing to him. Their are no traffic police or highway patrol. Most police are busy guarding criminal politicians and useless, parasitic kleptocrats. The rest just hang around at police stations and will promptly arrest the owner of Mercedes on trumped up charges because he can afford much more in bribes than the other fellow. Insurance is mandatory which allows insurance companies to gouge customers. You may have been paying insurance for years but will lose your entire no claim bonus if you make even a small claim. So the insurance company may actually take twice the amount it spends which is criminal but there is no recourse. A complaint to the Ombudsman will go unanswered because he is a sarkari fellow and does nothing for his exorbitant salary. My advice - buy a car made in India and pay as little tax to the criminals as possible.

Bt brinjal, as genetically modified aubergine is known in India, has been stopped by the minister in charge for the time being. He should ban it forever. Bt cotton was a disaster. The seeds were expensive and the pesticide marketed by the same company was very expensive causing the farmers to take loans in the expectations of bumper crops and profits. Unfortunately the cotton plants may have been resistant to boll weevil but were not resistant to fungus so yields were poor. In any event cotton is a commodity and if every country has a bumper crop the price crashes. Lots of farmers committed suicide. Now we are being asked to cultivate a food plant. As usual the freeloading press is not discussing the major concern and that is whether Monsanto, a US company should be controlling food production int the country. Since Monsanto has the patent it will have monopoly rights thus having a stranglehold on aubergine production. These plants are modified not to produce seeds, the so called terminator technology which was invented by the defence department of the US government. So every year farmers will have to buy seeds from the company. In the long term natural varieties of the plant will die out and the only aubergine available will be from Monsanto. The US is just testing the resolve of the Indian people. Once we give in we will forced to take all food items from Monsanto including wheat and rice. That day India will become a slave country of the US. Not only should we refuse to allow any foreign company control of food production but we should pass a law making it an act of war punishable by hanging. For once our politicians should show some spine.

Lot of froth in newspapers regarding Valentine's Day. Freeloading journalists take great delight in mocking people who see this day as an afront to Indian values. What puzzles me is what is love in today's world. Time was when men would fight duels to the death to protect a woman's honour. Not today. Love has become a four letter word with the same significance as other four letter words. Witness the booming sales of the ' morning after ' pill in India. It is available over the counter and women are using it freely. One anonymous single woman in Delhi claimed to have taken it three times in the past one month. Apart from the danger of diseases no one knows what damage these powerful hormones might be doing to her body. Men, as usual, love Valentine's day. Rs. 100 for a card and Rs. 100 for some roses and you have the girl in bed. Cheaper than any woman hanging around a roadside dhaba. Notice how alcoholics ply you with drinks and drug addicts offer to pay for the first injection of drugs? Women's sexuality seems to be along the same course. Women who have been around and are in a lot of little black books are the most vocal about sexual liberation of women. Unfortunately life always has one big caveat and that is the word ' but '. Women are more educated today and are earning big bucks which is very good but in trying to be the same as men they are only providing cheap entertainment for men. That is surely not the way to win the battle of the sexes.

The Congress party controls both the state government in Delhi and the central one and both are situated in the same city, New Delhi. Both governments are desperate to raise more money. At the centre because of the fiscal deficit which is likely to increase next fiscal and in the city because of the coming Commonwealth games. The lies are raining down on us. We are told that Delhi has too many cars and congestion charges, like the one in London, should be levied on cars coming in from outside the city. To emphasize, the freeloading press trumpets the fact that more than one hundred thousand cars were sold last month which makes a million and a half in the entire year. China sold more than fourteen million last year. London probably has ten times as many cars as Delhi and much better public transport. Problem is that collecting charges will cause even worse jams than now.The central government wants to raise prices of petrol and diesel at the pump so the freeloading press keeps on repeating that fuel subsidies must be removed. The fact is that petrol in the US is still around Rs. 30 a litre with taxes whereas we are already paying Rs. 50, all of which is tax. So there is no subsidy on petrol. However increasing fuel prices will make food inflation, already running at 18%, soar and hit the aam aadmi which the Congress is sworn to protect. So where does all the money raised in sky high taxes go? A quick look at neighbouring Haryana gives the answer. Here the civil servants from the electricity department have gone to Brazil during carnival time to study their transmission engineering. Lies cost money. Sadly the people pay.

Rajapeksa is following the time tested path towards dictatorship. First he uses his armed forces to decimate the Tamil Tigers. All captured and surrendering Tamil Tigers are carefully executed and a great Sinhala victory proclaimed. There is much rejoicing but he wants to hog all the kudos so he decides to fire his army chief who won the victory. Fonseca then stands against Rajapeksa in the presidential elections held recently and is soundly beaten, whether by fair means or foul we do not know. After all the Sri Lankans are still worshiping their hero so he faces no opposition. However the international community is accusing him of war crimes in indiscriminate shelling of ordinary Tamils and murder of unarmed Tamil Tigers. Despite his bravado he is scared of facing a situation like Omar Bashir of Sudan wherein he is branded a criminal and an international warrant is issued for his arrest. So he has to remove the man who has first hand knowledge of all the crimes committed on the Tamil people. Fonseca has been arrested and even before any trial we are told that he will be sent to jail for five years. Unfortunately memories of victims do not fade so easily and Rajapeksa will have to face elections again. To escape justice he will have to find ways to stay president for life. Perhaps he could ask Robert Mugabe how it is done.

Further to my last posting our most revered and esteemed Defence Minister has said that India will go ahead with talks with the Pakis inspite of the fact that infiltrations of terrorists across from Pakistan has increased recently. This is the man who is responsible for the defence of the country and he is quite comfortable with Paki terrorists as he is with Chinese cockroaches infiltrating across our borders. This inspite of the fact that the Paki foreign minister said a few days back that India has come on bended knees for resumption of talks. The Pakis know that the Congress is in power and has been doing ' bhai bhai ' with our enemies for over 60 years. They not only turn the other cheek but bend over in complete servility when ordered to do so by their white masters in the west. This time the US has ordered our government to make peace with Pakistan and our most respected elected
politicians have obliged. We remember that Bofors is a Swedish company and Quattrochi is Italian. We remember that Chandraswami and Narasimha Rao were in New York, US of A when Adnan Khashoggi got pally. Apparently big Q's son is offering his services for setting up business contacts in India and well he might. When you accept envelopes from the whites they surely keep records and you are sold for life. So if our policies are crafted in Washington or Brussels we should be thankful that they are not being crafted in Beijing. Perhaps the blackmailers have a bigger weapon. Is it true that someone is a poof and they know it. Wonder who it can be?

Unconditional surrender. India has offered to restart talks with Pakistan even though the Pakis have done nothing to arrest the planners of the Mumbai attacks. They have lied, stalled, evaded and even threatened India but we are going to hold talks with them anyway. I had suspected something was afoot when the freeloading journalists of leading english dailies started a campaign on how to love Pakis from the beginning of the year. Then came the completely false outcry over the rejection of Paki cricket players by the owners of IPL franchises. Lies came thick and fast on how the Pakis were snubbed completely ignoring the fact that the owners of the various teams had every right to spend their money as they chose without having to explain their actions. Couple of days ago a conference was held in London where it was agreed that talks should be held with ' good ' taliban as a preparation for the withdrawal of NATO and US troops from Afghanistan. India was thanked politely for the hundreds of millions of dollars we have spent in the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan and then told to push off. Our concerns that securing Afghanistan will leave the taliban and LeT free to send terrorists into India was met with a shrug. After all lives of white people are more important than our lives. Apparently the Americans exerted pressure on our government to make friends with the Pakis so that the Pakis can divert more troops to the western front. As usual our government caved in. I would dearly love to know what it is that the whites have on our politicians that they can blackmail them at will. Whatever it is we did NOT gain independence in 1947.

Sir Terry Pratchet, the British author has offered himself as a case for the study of assisted suicide because he has the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease. Read a couple of his books many years ago and found them to be strange but funny. Debate has been going on about assisted suicide or euthanasia for more than two decades and as yet no consensus has emerged on whether it should be made legal. And rightly so. It is legal in a few countries but not in others so, for example, the British have been going to Switzerland to be able to end their lives. This is not just an enormously emotional subject but a legal minefield because the scope for abuse is unlimited. If a person has left a genuine ' living will ' stating the conditions under which they would like a premature end to their lives it is one thing but very often it is only when a person is discovered with an incurable condition that they decide that they need assistance to die. Is it really because of intolerable suffering or is it because of depression or because the person does not want to be a burden on loved ones or because relatives are suggesting this course to get their hands on property or maybe because of subtle changes in the brain due to the primary illness who is to decide? As a physician I have no idea as to how assisted suicide can be made into law while protecting the very vulnerable terminally ill person. One thing I know for sure is that no doctor should ever be involved in this. Our job must always be to serve the patient and not play God. Would I want my life to be terminated if I have terminal cancer or Alzheimer's? Absolutely.

The situation in Mumbai is getting complicated. First we had the Shiv Sena wanting Biharis to get out. Then we had the present Congress government in Maharashtra saying that anyone applying for a new license to drive taxis in Mumbai must be proficient in Marathi. Now Rahul Gandhi has stirred things up nicely by saying that during the attacks on Mumbai in 2008 commandos from Bihar and UP fought to save Mumbai. The Shiv Sena have riposted by saying that it was an insult to all Marathis because many brave marathi officers had died fighting the terrorists. There is some resentment against Hindi in India. Many people feel that Hindi has been made the official language of India to give undue advantage to the Hindiwallahs who are looked down upon because of their tendency to have large numbers of children even today. Hindiwallahs are not asked learn to any other Indian language but others have to learn Hindi because central government work is done in that language. Also Hindi politicians like Lalu Prasad and Mayawati never talk about improving the conditions of other states. In fact when Lalu was the Railway Minister all he did was increase rail services and jobs in Bihar. So it is very hypocritical for Hindiwallahs to talk about India for all Indians. Reminds me of a story told to me by a Tamil doctor working in Saudi Arabia. He came to Mumbai and got into a taxi but then could not communicate. The doctor knew only Tamil and English while the taxi driver knew only Hindi and Marathi. After struggling for a few minutes the doctor said in exasperation, kalam arabi ( speak arabic ) ? And the driver said, aiwa ( yes ).

In the past few months every detail of all the affairs of Tiger Woods have been given wide coverage. Numerous women are claiming to have had sex with him and providing details to journalists. There are certain aspects of human behaviour which should be intensely private for instance what one does in the bedroom or the bathroom. Revealing such intimate details shows how low class and cruel people are, low class because they it is very, very cheap to jump into bed with a married man and cruel because such details are bound to hurt his wife and children when they grow up to understand. A few days back came the details of John Terry's affair with the then girl friend of his team mate. Terry was already married and this woman was in a relationship with another man. Now, apparently, she is preparing to reveal details to some tabloid for a large sum of money, thus twisting the knife into Terry's wife and her ex boyfriend. Making money from sex is prostitution, yet feminists who are outraged about honest prostitutes have nothing to say about this sly method. It is not just adults who are hurt by this disgusting behaviour but children probably more so. If they get divorced we will be given every detail of how one partner tries to get as much money out of the other. For most people marriage has become an entertaining activity, a party where you are the centre of attention and get to dress up in fancy clothes and wear a diamond ring. No wonder people of same sex also want to join the party. The time has probably come to stop marriages. People may just live together with compulsory prenuptuals laid down by law taking into account the interests of any children that may have been born. At least we could get rid of the lawyers.