Vaccines prevent infections, wealth prevents death.

The BJP government has apparently announced 4 new vaccines. A Rotavirus vaccine for diarrhoea, an injectable Polio vaccine and a Rubella vaccine, and a Japanese Encephlitis vaccine for adults. That is a little confusing. Presumably Japanese Encephalitis is capable of killing children as well as adults so we presume that adults have been specifically mentioned because all other vaccines are normally given to children. But Rubella is already available with Mumps and Measles in MMR and Polio, according to the WTO, has been eradicated in India. Polio is still prevalent in Pakistan where Polio workers are regularly shot to death by the Taliban. This is because the US used a fake Polio vaccination program to hunt down Osama bin Laden.  The Taliban believes that Polio eradication program is a western conspiracy to spy on them and have been targeting workers ever since. In a shockingly callous display of indifference to the health of innocent children the US has been pressuring Pakistan to release the treacherous doctor from prison. But then, for the US, Asian children are ' collateral damage ', just so much dross to be blown up by drones whenever they need target practice. To reduce the load of genital cancers the  vaccine to the Human Papilloma Virus should also be routinely administered to all children. Public health is not just vaccines. To really improve public health sanitation, clean water supply and a nutritious diet are essential. A nutritious diet improves growth in children, reduces infections and improves performance in school. Poor nutrition of the mother during pregnancy leads to lifelong health problems in the offspring. Tuberculosis and Rheumatic Heart Disease are diseases of poverty and overcrowding. Although heart disease is the biggest killer in India, as in other countries, respiratory diseases were the second biggest killers. The reason is pollution, as an ever increasing population means cutting down forests for land and increasing numbers of vehicles in congested cities. Life expectancy in India is 66.4 while in Norway it is 81.5 but, what is really shameful is that, mean years of schooling in India is a mere 4.4 years as opposed to 12.6 years in Norway. Poor living standards contributes 44.8% to poverty, poor health contributes 32.5% and poor education to 22.7% to poverty. However, how can anyone earn enough money to afford a high living standard and good health without education? Reduce population, improve education, improve infrastructure and create proper jobs. Poverty creates poor health and poor health increases poverty. Wealth is health.

Isn't it time to stop all flights to Africa?

Ebola, a viral hemorrhagic fever with a death rate of over 90%, is affecting 4 countries in west Africa. It started in Guinea and then spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone. In Guinea 319 out of 427 patients have died, in Liberia 129 out of 249 and in Sierra Leone 224 out of 525 patients have died. Last week a Liberian Finance Ministry official, Patrick Sawyer flew onto Lagos in Nigeria where he was found to be suffering from the disease and died. There was panic in Britain yesterday when a man travelling in Africa returned with a fever. He was cleared of the infection. Like most viral infections it has an incubation period of up to 21 days and starts with nonspecific symptoms of cold and cough. At this time the patient will be contagious and spread the disease just like the H1N1 swine flu which started in India in 2009 and was still killing people last year. People wipe their noses with their hands and then touch objects such as door handles, shake hands or sneeze without covering their noses. Since you do not know who is infected there is no defense. The cleaner of the school bus could infect your child, the fellow selling movie tickets could infect your daughter and the helpful shop assistant could infect you. People have been infected at funerals. There is no treatment or vaccine. Animals act as reservoirs. The virus jumps to humans who handle animal flesh or blood. Africans eat bush meat, which could be monkeys or bats, but we Indians are very selective about the meat we eat and about 50% of Indians are vegetarians. It would be a crime to allow this disease to enter India where it is sure to spread like wild fire because of the enormous population we have. In Africa, because of repeated outbreaks, they have knowledge of how to limit spread of the infection. You see doctors and nurses covered from head to toe in space suits while health workers wear masks, overalls, gloves and rubber boots. But has anyone seen such protective clothing in India? The US has the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta which is fully equipped to handle the most dangerous pathogens and identify them. It has a budget of $11.3 billion this year. Our only hope is to stop all flights to Africa, at least to west African countries. Ever increasing numbers of poor people means that Indians are willing to go to the most God forsaken places on earth to earn some money. So there will be Indians in the affected countries and they will be cut off as well. If such people want to return to India they should be collected at one place where they will be tested and special fights can bring healthy ones home. Infected people would be treated on site. One infected person coming into India could lead to a catastrophe. Do politicians and civil servants read foreign news?

Must have an exit plan before you enter.

In Mahabharata, Arjun's son, Abhimanyu knew how to fight his way into the maze of warriors called Chakravyuh, set up by Dronacharya to capture Yudhishtira, but did not know how to break out of it. He was killed. Today we see countries with powerful armies making the same mistake time and again. The US should have learnt from its abject defeat in Vietnam and the ignominious flight from the embassy in Saigon with heroic marines, in blind panic, hanging from the landing skids of helicopters. That did not stop the US from entering Afghanistan and Iraq and again, despite repeated genocides, it has been forced to run with its tail between its legs. Years after George Bush declared ' Mission Accomplished ' Iraq is on fire. Iraqis who helped the US were discarded behind and are now in grave danger. The judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death was badly tortured and executed by the violent jihadi group, the ISIS. The Taliban is salivating at the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, knowing that it will easily win against Afghan forces. Now the Israelis are finding out that it is easy to start a war but you need the cooperation of your opponents to end it. It started when 3 Israeli teenagers, on their way home from school, were kidnapped and killed on 12 June on the West Bank, which is ruled by the Fatah faction, and not Hamas. Hamas leaders denied any involvement in the killings but it is possible that some Hamas members carried out the attack. Instead of treating it like any other heinous crime Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel immediately blamed Hamas and police started to arrest Palestinians who had been released according to an earlier accord. Hamas started firing rockets into Israel, Israel attacked with aerial bombing and, when that did not stop the rockets, sent in ground troops. In Gaza, where 1.8 million people are packed into 360 sq km, there were bound to be lots of civilian casualties. As pictures of little children with horrific injuries were shown on TV screens around the world there was a surge in anti-Jewish sentiment, prompting the Israeli ambassador to Germany to compare today's situation with that in 1938. The only way that Israel could win against Hamas would be by pushing all Palestinians out of Gaza. That is not going to happen, so now Israel is desperate for a face saving ceasefire. But Hamas knows that the longer it goes on the more intolerable the pressure will be on Israel to stop, giving Hamas a victory. The danger to Israel is that the Holocaust generation is dying out. Museums do not have the same impact as a number tattooed on an arm. Very soon it will be accused of the same crimes as those of the Nazis. It should look for a permanent solution. We wish it well.

Why would anyone pay to be a government employee?

In the last one week north Delhi has witnessed clashes between Delhi police and candidates appearing for the selection exam to join the Indian Administrative Service. The IAS was described as a ' steel frame ', which would support the rest of the government administration, by Sardar Patel. All the top secretaries in every government department are IAS officers, they are responsible for implementing government policies, they are highly paid, they maybe transferred but cannot be sacked and they are promoted automatically according to seniority. They do not allow other services any representation in government and have become like an Indian version of the Freemasons. The question is, are people, who burn cars, fight with police and try to break into parliament, fit to join the IAS? Do we want a bunch of thugs running the entire country? They are agitating because the selection exam has been changed to include an aptitude test. This test requires English language comprehension up to Class X level and has just 8-9 questions, out of 80 questions, related to English comprehension. The candidates say that this discriminates against Hindi speakers. But India has 22 official languages so the test should cater for everyone of those as well. The aptitude test also includes test for interpersonal skills; logical reasoning and analytical ability; decision making and problem solving; general mental ability besides English comprehension and basic numerical ability. By resorting to violence the candidates have failed in every category and should be failed en masse anyway. The real reason for the anger is that these people have taken loans to come to Delhi to appear for the exams. " My entire village came with band baaja at the railway station," said one Raj. What is so great about being an IAS officer as opposed to working in the private sector? Hindiwallahs in Bihar and UP have the highest birth rates and probably high unemployment so they need jobs. Young men pay bribes to be selected as jawans in the armed forces but the attraction of the IAS and the police is the unlimited scope for taking bribes. In recent years we have heard of many scams involving trillions of rupees. Politicians in charge of ministries have been blamed, and rightly so, but the scams would not have been possible without the active connivance of officials, who have cleverly kept out of sight. No doubt these candidates are aware of these scams and the eye-watering amounts involved. A tiny fraction would make a family rich for generations. Definitely worth fighting for. What?

Filth can never be attractive.

India prides itself as an ancient civilisation, going back at least 5000 years. Sadly almost no one, except illegal Bangladeshis, wants to come here. Last year we attracted a mere 6.84 million foreign tourists while tiny Singapore got 14 million and China was out of sight with 132 million. Foreign tourists bring foreign money so a flourishing tourism industry will boost our economy. So how to encourage more tourists to visit India? One suggestion is to build a huge Ferris wheel like the London Eye. That surely would be an absolute disaster. It will draw hordes of Indian families with their screaming children, who will be fed sweets and ice creams by their indulgent parents while waiting for their turn, and then vomit copiously when the wheel starts to spin. Where families come so will the chai wallah, the chaat wallah, the ice cream fellow, fellow selling aphrodisiacs and another selling cheap plastic trumpets for the children to create a racket with. Plastic tents will go up and the whole place will rapidly fill up with trash and smell of urine. Our politicians and civil servants visit foreign countries all the time with our money. Do they wear blinkers when they are abroad? Tourists will never visit a country with broken roads, chaotic traffic and filthy toilets. To enter any historical place, such as the Taj Mahal, foreigners are charged many times what Indians pay. It is shocking to be accused of racism by an American. As it is everything is extremely expensive because of extortionate taxes. Why should anyone want to come here if they can enjoy far superior facilities in China or Thailand at far less cost. It is not surprising that few tourists come here, it is surprising that so many do and some come repeatedly. India is a poor country. We have just refused a Trade Facilitation Deal at the WTO because our food security concerns were not addressed by the perfidious western countries. Why then are taxes so high, making everything so expensive? Because our politicians like to live like aristocrats, which costs a lot of money. Also because our munificent judges have ordered free drugs for a child with Gaucher's Disease, a genetic disease of metabolism. The child has lost 3 brothers and 1 sister with the disease so why did the parents give birth to him? The child should be treated but surely the father should be put in prison for child cruelty. We do not need gimmicks. What we need are wide roads, clean trains, nice hotels, clean food, clean bathrooms and helpful police at reasonable rates. Most of all we have to get rid of the noisy dirty crowds. Does anybody want to see foreigners holding their noses when leaving India?

A gasbag always dreads a pin.

You have to feel sorry for Obama. At home the Republicans are preparing to win both the House and the Senate in November, which would make him completely ineffective, while foreigners ignore anything he says. He is under pressure to confront Russia over Ukraine but he needs Russian help to pressure Iran on its nuclear weapons. He is expected to force Iran to stop its centrifuges but he needs Iranian help to stop the rampaging ISIS in Iraq. He must stop ISIS from attacking Saudi Arabia but he does not want Iranian troops in Iraq, which shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, and he cannot put American boots on the ground. He cannot stop ISIS in Iraq unless he attacks them in Syria which, with the Free Syrian Army in shambles, would give Bashar al-Assad a victory. Of course, he cannot control what others do but he should have resisted his so called allies. He should never have allowed David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy to talk him into bombing Gaddafi's army in Libya by misusing a UN Security Council resolution allowing the use of force to protect civilians. That angered the Russians and the Chinese who refused any resolution on Syria. The Orange revolution in Ukraine in 2004 was a western creation which failed. This time the Russians were not going to fall for it. In November last year Viktor Yanukovych was faced with a choice. He could accept a severe austerity deal for joining the EU or he could take $15 billion in aid and a 33% reduction in gas price from Russia. Naturally, he chose the latter. This was the cue to start an armed revolution by ultra-nationalist Svoboda and the neo-Nazi Right Sector thugs. Yanukovych fled to Russia and Russian speakers in the east of the country revolted against the government in Kiev. When Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashed on 17 July Russia was immediately blamed for shooting down the plane. The US has had to admit that there is no evidence for such accusations but relations with Moscow have disappeared as long as Obama remains in office. Western support for the neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic government in Ukraine has probably created the condition for the hate campaign against Jews in Europe which has prompted an Israeli envoy to compare the situation to 1938. Why has Obama become so irrelevant in the world? Because he is motivated solely by politics and has surrounded himself with spin doctors. He is also mean. Although Bill Clinton's speech set the Democrat National Convention on fire in 2012 he is not supporting Hillary Clinton for president. His wife has been knocking Hillary in private conversation. Perhaps that will be his legacy. A mean conniving gasbag.

Black is black, we want our money back.

Our Finance Minister is keen to get rid of black money from the economy. " The government is making full efforts to bring back the black money stashed abroad, but the officers of the ( income tax ) department have to make equally serious efforts to unearth black money within the country," he said. Between 2002 and 2011 around $344 billion of illicit funds were transferred abroad. Depending on who you ask the estimate of the amount of money stashed abroad would vary from a few billion to trillions of dollars. The Finance Minister has plenty of help from western governments who, because of tottering economies, are taking increasingly tough action on banks that help with tax evasion. As the noose tightens wealthy people will seek to repatriate money in foreign banks. They can do that through Participatory Notes which is how foreign hedge funds invest in Indian stocks. How will the minister stop illicit money coming into the country through this means when a past attempt resulted in a crash in share prices and a quick surrender by the government? Our stock market indices hit record levels yesterday, who knows how much of the foreign money is black. The other way to bring back money from abroad is the hawala system which is used for money laundering by criminal gangs. You hand over a sum of money to an agent in any foreign country in any foreign currency and you get the equivalent in Indian rupees delivered to any address in India. No bank charges, no taxes and no delay. The trouble is that it is dangerous to keep vast sums of cash at home so this money has to be invested somewhere. That is where the property market comes in. Property prices have risen by 10-20 times in the last decade and show no sign of meaningful correction. This is the black hole in which trillions of rupees in black money have disappeared. But then house prices are shooting up all over the world which has the IMF worried enough to issue a warning. The difference is that these countries have virtually no inflation while CPI has been running at over 10% in India. The inflation rate was 2.1% in the US in June while the ECB is more worried about deflation. Rising prices mean that the rupee is able to buy less, so is the rise in real estate prices a reflection of the weak rupee? The rupee has fallen by around 50% but property prices have increased by 1000%. A precipitous fall in the rupee will send inflation skyrocketing so the only option for the Finance Minister is to engineer an 80% fall in property prices. But politicians will never allow that. States are collecting more taxes by increasing circle rates and politicians will see all their black money, which they have collected so strenuously all these years, suddenly disappear. Blackguards, black arts, black money. Great.

When in Rome

With front page headlines claiming a scoop an English daily claims that car companies are forsaking safety features, such as airbags and anti-lock braking systems, to keep costs down, thereby endangering the safety of car users. The writer is surprised that some of these companies include all safety features, such as 6 airbags even in a compact car, in their export models but omit them in the cars they sell in India. At 10% of deaths due to road accidents India has the highest number of road fatalities in the world. The World Health Organisation estimates that we have 18.9 deaths per 100,000 population compared to 8.7 in rich countries. Even our neighboring SAARC countries do better than us. The huge population, large numbers of 2 wheel vehicles, potholes on roads, no traffic police, non-functioning traffic lights and driving licences for bribes all contribute to the high mortality rate. There is no coordinated trauma service even on highways where you pay toll every 30 km. Almost no one will take an injured person to hospital but will leave that to the police, wasting valuable time. This is because of police harassment and the endless appearances as witness in case there is a trial. All companies in India are crooks, always looking for short term gains at the expense of fellow citizens, so foreign companies copy them. Not one company will provide you with a phone number or email address where you can complain. Phone numbers will take you to call centers, which have no powers, but only after being thoroughly frustrated by recorded instructions to press one number after another before you can talk to a person. But the biggest responsibility falls on the government which should be working to protect citizens but functions on an adversarial system left behind by the rapacious British. It is shocking to learn that of the base price of Rs 1 million, or 10 lakhs, for a SUV, 90%, that is Rs 9,01,267 is the tax on a diesel variant and 84%, that is Rs 8,42,021 is the tax on the petrol model. For a compact hatchback costing Rs 400,000, the tax on the petrol model is Rs 2,33,178 or 58% and on the diesel variant Rs 2,53,978 or 63%. Total number of cars sold in 2013 was only 1.9 million in India while in China an estimated 20 million vehicles were sold last year. With the government acting as a bandit we cannot blame car companies for trying to eke out some profit. Finally, we should not forget our munificent judges whose pity for criminals floweth over. Fines are derisory, a pedophile is let out of prison after 6 months and murderers are allowed out on parole to attend nightclubs. Foreign car companies are only following our rules. When in Rome etc.

The last bastion falls.

Former Supreme Court judge, Markandey Katju has alleged that a judge known to be corrupt was appointed Additional Judge at Madras High Court in 2005 despite the Collegium of Judges being informed by the Intelligence Bureau of corroborating evidence. Apparently the Collegium, which appoints judges, was unanimous in wanting to discharge this judge from service but were pressured by the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh who, in turn, was pressured by a party which was a partner in the coalition at the time. The then Law Minister, HR Bhardwaj passed the note from the Prime Minister's Office to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, RC Lahoti who then allowed the corrupt judge to continue in office. The next Chief Justice, YK Sabharwal gave the judge another extension and the one after, KG Balakrishnan made him permanent but transferred him to another court. In 2007 the Delhi High Court sentenced 2 journalists, one publisher and one cartoonist to prison for writing that Justice Sabharwal, while Chief Justice, shut down high street stores to benefit his sons' business in building shopping malls. The Income Tax department has confirmed that Justice Balakrishnan's daughter and son in law were involved in land grabbing generating millions in black money but the good judge steadfastly refuses to resign from his sinecure as Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission. What conclusions can we draw? 1. Dr Manmohan Singh would do anything, including protecting criminals, to hang on to his seat. His spectacular success in hanging on for full 10 years was because he was unaware that ' coalition dharma ' was grave adharma. 2. The highest judges can be easily tempted by juicy sinecures after retirement. However if a judgement went against the government you would lose, as Justice AK Ganguly quickly found. 3. Why is Justice Katju speaking out after all these years? Obviously, with the Congress in power, he did not want to lose his own sinecure. " He did not raise it all these years when he had no qualms in misusing his position as Chairman of Press Council of India to attack BJP and its PM candidate Narendra Modi. The fact that he has chosen to go public now gives rise to the suspicion that he could be making a career move because his term as PCI chairman gets over in February," said a BJP leader. Meanwhile a law intern who filed a complaint of sexual harassment against a Supreme Court judge, now retired and recently appointed to a tribunal, has requested that the trial be transferred outside Delhi because no lawyer is willing to fight her case. We Indians despise politicians and civil servants, we lost respect for doctors, then the army and now the judges. How sad is that?

A laugh is better than a lecture.

Poverty is big business throughout the world. You may win a Nobel Prize by your work on poverty.
Thousands of people enjoy comfortable lives raising money for NGOs. Politicians win elections, which bring great power and wealth, by promising free goodies to the poor. Thousands of people are earning millions in tax free salaries working for the World Bank which is dedicated to development work in poor countries. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have committed most of their wealth to eradicating communicable diseases and development of vaccines in the third world in the belief that healthy people can earn a living which will automatically reduce poverty. But when so many extremely clever people have been studying poverty, when there are so many organisations working to reduce poverty and when so much money is being spent on alleviating poverty why are there people so poor that they cannot afford 2 full meals a day? Is it because no one is asking the poor what they want and then working with them to achieve it? Just because the poor are illiterate, malnourished and dependent on handouts does not mean that they are helpless or stupid. As the Congress found out in the recent elections after distributing so many handouts which, they were convinced, would be a ' game changer '. It is probably because their view point at the bottom of the pyramid looking up is completely different to all those at the top looking down. There is a great debate in India on what constitutes poverty. One Tendulkar Committee estimated that anyone earning below Rs 32 per day in urban areas was really poor, which set off an uproar. Reporters went out to see what kind of food could be bought with that amount of money and whether a man could survive on it. Now a Rangarajan Committee has set the lower limit at Rs 46 per day. But can human condition be defined by mathematics? In a country with 1.2 billion people the government cannot provide cheap food to everybody so it needs a figure so that subsidies can be targeted to the vulnerable population. However, within that population people are different. There is difference in build, in age and in the amount of labor a person is doing. Giving cheap food saves such people from dying but does not bring them out of poverty. The only way to get rid of poverty would be to create good jobs with respectable wages but the tragedy is that with so much poverty Indian companies cannot find enough talent to employ. Which means good education for everyone. But the poor need their children to work to survive so poverty carries on from one generation to the next. The poor watch TV. Instead of lecturing them we need to make entertaining serials showing the advantages of having fewer children, childhood vaccination and good education. If we make them laugh maybe it will work.

It is a delicate balancing act.

At last a Finance Minister who is talking about lowering taxes instead of constantly looking to burden people with more taxes on every type of goods and services and then releasing the tax hounds on citizens to coerce people to pay more than they should. This is reflected in the large numbers of cases going to appeal, leading to trillions of rupees stuck in litigation. That is the worst possible outcome. People are unable to spend, which reduces consumption, the government has to refund vast amounts of money with interest, thus reducing its revenues instead of increasing them, and enormous amount of time is wasted, leading to frustration and anger. Trouble is that the Congress has left a completely bankrupt state, having spent money from this year's revenues. Contracts to build highways were awarded to private companies after collecting billions in ' premium '. In return these companies have been given the right to collect toll from all vehicles using the highways. Although called highways driving is a slow frustrating experience because frequent toll booths waste time, the price of fuel is very high and there are no restrictions on primitive modes of transport such as bullock carts. So companies are not making as much profits as they expected. Roads had been built with massive bank loans which they are unable to repay which has seen bad loans at public sector banks rise from Rs 600 billion in March 2010 to over Rs 2 trillion in March 2014. Private companies are now refusing to take on new projects so the government is being forced to pay for road construction. Good roads improve business and trade and eventually lead to higher taxes but that takes years so innovative ways of raising funds have to be found. Businesses always want very high prices to increase profits and shareholder returns but infrastructure is a national asset and very high charges for the end user add to inflation and reduce demand. So, mines, oil and gas fields and spectrum for telecom must be given, not by levying very high licence fees, but on a profit sharing basis so that companies make fair profits while the nation gets a fair return on its resources. This will keep costs down while encouraging more private investment. We understand that we have to pay for utilities or else they will fail but it is also true that if the cost of energy is too high manufacturing costs will also rise. We have massive coal reserves so we should be able to produce cheap electricity. The economy is completely toxic so it will need a delicate balancing act. We hope they have the wisdom.

No more alien mystery please.

Conspiracy theories are born when people either do not understand what they are told or they do not believe. More than 50 years after the shooting of John Kennedy people continue to believe in the theory of the ' grassy knoll '. After MH370 disappeared from radar in the early hours of 8 March we were told that it had crashed into the sea despite the fact that not one piece of debris from the plane was ever found floating on the water. This was so against common sense that relatives, especially the Chinese, still do not believe what they are told. Common sense would suggest that the plane crashed on land and the Chinese probably think that the Chinese government shot it down somewhere over Chinese territory and Malaysia is helping in the cover up. They are too scared to say so because they will be put in prison on a charge of treason so they are filled with rage. As Sherlock Holmes said," Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." So we come to another Malaysian Airlines flight, number MH17 which was in all probability shot down over Ukraine on 17 July. The western countries, orchestrated by Washington, are trying to convince us that President Putin of Russia is responsible in some way. They say that the rebels in the east of the country shot the plane down with Surface to Air Missiles supplied by Russia. But they do not tell us how. A plane flying at 33,000 feet cannot be seen or heard by men standing on the ground. To accurately locate the plane you need sophisticated radar which the rebels do not have. It is possible that the rebels fired the missile at a government plane bombing rebel territory, missed the original target and hit the civil airline. After all neither the rebels nor Russia have anything to gain from shooting a Malaysian airliner. The government controls airports with radar to locate all planes and has the same SAM missiles left over from the Soviet Union. Russia claims that the Ukrainian government wanted to shoot down Putin's plane which flew over Ukraine sometime later. That would be extremely foolish as it would invite immediate Russian attack. The doomed flight was apparently 300 miles to the north of the correct flight path. An Air India flight from Delhi to Birmingham was within 25 km of MH17 and heard the tower's instructions to fly ' direct routing ' instead of the normal zigzag route from one navigation tower to another. That can be easily verified by the cockpit voice recorder. The truth will out but the extremely aggressive reporting by the western media, calling Putin a child murderer, makes you smell something rotten. When a serial killer like Obama takes a moral stand it is laughable. Hope we get a proper answer this time. The dead deserve it.

They realize they were wrong. We agree.

In the Foundation trilogy Isaac Asimov propounds the theory of Psychohistory which is based on the premise that taking a vast number of people it will be possible to predict future events mathematically. This theory was proved spectacularly wrong when the arrival of one person, The Mule, completely changed events. Modern macroeconomics is also based on mathematics which is why it crashes time and again by not taking human behavior into account. Yet Adam Smith, whose book ' The Wealth of Nations ' is the basis of classical economics, said," It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Thus economic behavior of human beings depends on self interest and not on altruism. But does a person decide his self interest based on reasoned logic? Turns out that people make economic decisions based on how they perceive a situation and not on pure logic. Stock market brokers have know this for a long time. Now in a book called ' What Have We Learned ' a bunch of very famous economists acknowledge their mistakes and describe what they have learnt from the recent financial crisis in the world. Apparently past experience had not prepared anyone for the financial meltdown on 2008 and central banks had to resort to new measures like zero interest rates and quantitative easing to avoid a 1930s type depression. They agree that banks need cyclical capital buffers to avoid bankruptcy like Lehman Brothers and countries like India need to manage exchange rates, which is what the RBI doing by buying dollars from the market, to control the effects of pro-cyclical flows. What that means is that extremely loose monetary policies in western countries is causing a flood of dollars into Indian stocks and bonds, making the rupee stronger, but could cause a collapse in its value if flows reverse, as happened last year. Why did they not learn from the humiliating exit of the sterling from the EU's Exchange Rate Mechanism more than 20 years ago? The currency is our asset so it would be silly to let speculators control its level. Already asset prices across the world are rising so fast that they are causing alarm. " Overall, it is hard to avoid the sense of a puzzling disconnect between the markets' buoyancy and understanding economic developments globally," said a report from the Bank of International Settlements. Fed Chairman, Janet Yellen talked about " pockets of increased risk taking across the across the financial system ". Human beings will always be unpredictable. There is no mathematical formula for greed, cunning and stupidity.

Death is final. Think very carefully.

A Public Interest Litigation filed in front of the Supreme Court by NGO, Common Cause is asking that patients should be given the right to die, either passively by withholding life saving treatment or actively by injecting a lethal combination of drugs. Surely it is inhumane not to allow a person, suffering from excruciating pain from an incurable disease, the right to die with dignity. The knowledge of how to end human life already exists and those of us who have received anesthesia for operations have experience of complete freedom from any pain or distress while our tissues were being cut open. We have our pets put down to save them from distress then why should we not allow the same comfort to human beings whom we love. " If medical interventions fail and the process of death has commenced, why should the patient not have the right to die," asked Prashant Bhushan, counsel for Common Cause. If the patient has made a ' living will ', which is made when a person is healthy with full mental faculties, asking to be allowed to die if there is no hope of recovery then we should respect his wishes. But how do you know when the ' process of death ' has begun. Prof Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1963 and given 2 years to live. Since there is no treatment for motor neurone disease his ' process of death ' had begun. From 1979-2009 he held the Chair of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge which was held by Isaac Newton in 1663. Even though he is restricted to a wheelchair, needs help with breathing and uses a computer assisted voice machine to communicate he is still active in higher physics. Obviously such full time nursing care must be costing a fortune, which most people do not have. So if a man with the same disease requests help to die because he has no money should he be so helped? Should an old woman feeling guilty about being a burden on her children be assisted to die? As Oregon in the US is finding out the number of cases continues to rise once the law is passed. Prof Theo Boer of Netherlands was a supporter of assisted suicides but now believes he was " wrong - terribly wrong ". " I used to be a supporter of the Dutch law. But now, with 12 years experience, I take a different view," he said. " Whereas in the first few years after 2002 hardly any patients with psychiatric illness or dementia appear in reports, these numbers are now sharply on the rise." With property prices at stratospheric levels it would be natural for children to want a parent out of the way so that they could enjoy their inheritance. Doctors could be bribed. People should have the right to die in comfort and with dignity but the law has to be exact. Doctors should not profit.

Talk about everything except Gaza.

Why is the opposition clamoring for a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on the fighting in Gaza when it should be concentrating on the economy? Those of us who are old enough remember a time when Indian support for the Palestinians was so complete that we  were not allowed to visit Israel. Now we have good relations and trade with Israel. More than that, the middle east is a mine field which even the locals cannot negotiate. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of Indians stuck in Iraq, some in ISIS, who are Sunnis, controlled areas, some in government, who are Shia, controlled areas and some in areas controlled by Kurds, who are Sunnis but are fighting ISIS and may have to fight government forces over control of oil fields in Kirkuk. Criticising Hamas for firing rockets into Israel could invite instant retaliation on Indians in Iraq but criticising Israel, which the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, is itching to do, may not be as safe as they think. Hamas was supported by the Muslim Brotherhood while Mohamed Morsi was President of Egypt but the present President, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi , a former army general is hostile to the Hamas. In fact, Hamas flatly rejected a ceasefire proposed by Egypt saying that it was pro-Israeli and did not address any demands of the Palestinians. The Muslim Brotherhood is involved in fighting the Alawi government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria which is a Shia sect supported by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon and by Iran, which are both Shia. Before the emergence of ISIS Hamas sought support from both Hezbollah and Iran to fight the common enemy, Israel. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal took refuge in Syria in 2001 to be safe from the Mossad of Israel. He has fled with his family from Syria to Jordan. The puzzle is that the Syrian government is theoretically at war with Israel over the Golan Heights but Jordan and Egypt have peace treaties with Israel. The ISIS is a fanatical Sunni group so violent in its jihad that even the Al Qaeda is distancing itself from the group. They are not only killing Shias in Iraq but have even killed 300 Sunni imams and preachers.

Indian nurses stuck in Tikrit and Mosul are unable to leave their hospitals because of the fighting and, with no power, cannot charge the phones. Imagine the anguish of families who are unable to contact their daughters. 

If no one has understood this blog then be not surprised. Because no one does. The middle east is motivated by hate, everyone hates everyone else so who is friend and who is enemy is completely foggy. Do our politicians, however corrupt they maybe, really want our citizens to be slaughtered in a remote land by their stupid talk in parliament just to score political points over the government?

Excess supply reduces value.

One year back police fired on bikers in Delhi, resulting in the death of a 19 year old boy named Karan Pandey. Adding insult to injury the National Human Rights Commission has ordered Delhi government to pay Rs 500,000 to his widowed mother as compensation. A magistrate has found inconsistencies in the police version of events and CCTV pictures belied police allegations of stone throwing. The mother naturally has refused to accept the paltry compensation and wants justice for the death of her son. If we assume that he would have lived up to 70 years that works out to Rs 10,000 for every 10 years of life. Is that the price of a 19 year old with his life in front of him, 19 years of educating, feeding and clothing him and 19 years of worrying about him if he developed a fever or was late coming home? In contrast New York city is to pay $40 million to 5 men who spent 10 years in prison for a crime they did not commit. That amounts to Rs 480 million or 48 crores per person. How is the price of 10 years of a person's life worth Rs 48 crore in New York and just Rs 10,000 in Delhi? Because life is cheap in India, because there are too many people and the population just keeps rising. With so much supply the value keeps dropping. In over a week's fighting only one Israeli has died from Palestinian rocket fire compared to 200 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombing on Gaza. Rate of deaths are so high because 1.66 million Palestinians are crammed into 360 sq km of land while there are 8 million Israelis in 20,770 sq km. So, many of the rockets land on empty fields while any Israeli bomb is almost sure to kill someone. Just as the government in India finds Indian life cheap so the Hamas government of Gaza finds its people of little value. Yet Palestinians could win the war against Israel if their leaders wanted. An article in the Wall Street Journal makes the point that if Palestinians and their supporters in the west stopped seeking the destruction of Israel and adopted Gandhian non-violence then they would win the moral battle and force Israel to compromise. We would go further. They should recognise the Holocaust and sympathise with Jews for the pain they have suffered and then compare their own lives under the occupation to that of Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen concentration camps with pictures and statistics. Israel will surrender in one week. But they will not do that. Partly it is because they are fanatics and partly because the population is growing so it is easy to sacrifice a few. If people stopped producing children Hamas will find that without people they will not have a government. That will concentrate their minds. The lower the supply the greater the value.

They are like us only.

In 2012, former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy was questioned by a judge for accepting illegal campaign donation, in the form of envelopes stuffed with cash, from Liliane Bettencourt, the richest woman of France. Couple of weeks ago he was questioned by police for 15 hours on a charge of corruption and influence peddling. Apparently the police were tapping his mobile phone and picked up a conversation in which Sarkozy was asking magistrates about the status of the previous case and even promised a magistrate a high-powered job in Monaco if he passed on legal secrets. If convicted he faces 10 years in prison. Sarkozy was the president when the then Chief of the IMF, Dominique Strauss Kahn was arrested in a flight out of New York and marched off to prison in handcuffs on a charge of rape on a hotel maid, which could not be proved in court. Strauss Kahn was to be the candidate for the Socialist Party against Sarkozy in the coming presidential elections and was sure to win. He could not stand because of the false case against him but Sarkozy lost to Hollande anyway and is now alleging that all the cases against him are politically motivated. Sarkozy would probably have been safer with a complete debauch like Strauss Kahn. Meanwhile a totally biased Supreme Court in the US has ruled against providing cost of contraception by private companies under the Affordable Healthcare Act, also known as Obamacare. This was apparently a very important religious issue although it is hard to understand why any employer should have to provide the cost of contraception anyway. An employer would be required to pay for cost of travel, hotel stay and food if you are engaged in business for your employer, because you are working to increase his profits but sex is never part of any business. On the other hand if the employer has to pay for maternity leave then it makes eminent sense to pay a few dollars for contraception, thus saving a lot of money. In another confusing case the Speaker of the House, John Boehner is going to sue Obama for postponing implementation of some parts of Obamacare to 2015. The House has become completely inactive because the Republicans, who have a majority in the House, hate Obama so much that they will not pass any bill however sensible it maybe. So Obama has been administering through Executive Action, known as Ordinance in India. The Congress passed 61 Ordinances in 10 years. So, cash under the table, false cases, police bias, wrong Supreme Court judgement, politicians squabbling, sounds exactly like India does it not? Only difference is that if you go to prison you complete your sentence. Not be allowed out on parole to attend nightclubs.

Taxes are necessary but can be lethal.

When we are ill we are prescribed medicines to get better but taking double the dose does not make us better in half the time. It gives side effects and may kill us. Taxes are a necessary evil, we understand that, but too much taxes strangle the economy and kill it off. Strangely this very simple fact seems too complex for ' liberals ' to understand. The Congress thought that giving handouts to the poor through various schemes would increase growth by increasing spending which would increase profits of manufacturing companies which would then have to employ more people to increase output. Win win all round. However, handouts need trillions of rupees in a country of 1.2 billion people. Increasing direct taxes are of mo use because only 35 million people pay income tax and the vast majority are salaried workers, including government employees. So indirect taxes, such as excise, customs, value added tax and service tax were levied on everything they could dream of. To make it easier a small list of services, mainly government and agriculture, were exempt from service tax and we were forced to pay tax on anything else we did. That had exactly the opposite effect to what the handouts were supposed to accomplish. Prices sky-rocketed, demand fell and growth tanked. It is a mystery why hotshot economists could not understand the simple fact that as prices rose the increase in prices was also being taxed. This meant that the government was taxing inflation and inflaming it. Sadly, this simple fact seems to escaped the present Finance Minister as well. " In recent times, among indirect taxes, service tax has shown highest rate of growth....To broaden the tax base in service tax, it is necessary to prune the negative list and exemptions to the extent possible. Accordingly, the negative list has been reviewed," he said in his budget speech. We understand that India desperately needs to upgrade our infrastructure. It is not enough to have 4 lane highways. If we want to be like Germany we need 10 lane highways. The government plans bullet trains, starting with one between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. This will connect Mumbai, the financial capital, with Surat, the diamond polishing center, Vadodara, with its industrial hinterland, and Ahmedabad, the capital of Gujarat. Excellent idea. But it will kill off flights between these cities because airlines are burdened with huge taxes on everything, from fuel tax to airport charges to service tax, and will not be able to compete. It is possible the BJP is hoping to steamroller a Goods and Services Tax bill through parliament which will combine all taxes and ease the burden. We shall see.

One woman will win but Dilma has surely lost.

Chess died the day Garry Kasparov lost to a machine, Deep Blue. Football ended the day Brazil lost 7-1 to the German machines. Even a lower division team in the Brazilian league would not have given up 7 goals to Germany so why the national team was so helpless is impossible to know. All the players, except Fred, play for the top clubs in Europe so they cannot be that poor. In the 1998 final against France it was rumored that star striker, Ronaldo had a fit before the match, so clearly he should not have played. The whole team seemed to be standing around demoralized. Brazil lost by 3 goals to France, with 2 goals coming from corners. It is possible that the whole team suffered convulsions this time for the defending to be so abysmal. Germany will probably win today and the ' Beautiful Game ' will be replaced by ' Vorsprung Durch Technik'. What it does is to damage the chances of Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff to win the reelection in October. She is still ahead of her opponents, Eduardo Campos and Aecio Neves in opinion polls but this humiliation maybe too much for the people already protesting against corruption and uncontrolled inflation. Apparently in the past defeats at the World Cup have not influenced elections results but a humiliation at home will be too much. One woman will win tonight. Either Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany or Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, President of Argentina but Dilma Rousseff is a sure loser. In this triangle even the loser tonight will be ahead of Dilma. For us the interest is gone so we will get to know the result from television news tomorrow. But there is happy news. Seems that Tracey Emin has sold an unmade bed called ' My Bed ' as a work of art for $4.7 million. It features a bed with rumpled sheets, empty vodka bottles, cigarette packets and condoms. What it says about a woman who is so slovenly that she has not made her bed, smokes in bed, is a drinker and clearly of loose morals we do not know but it is reassuring to know that there are people rich enough to pay over $4 million for garbage. Any rubbish that someone will pay millions for is deemed a work of art. Meanwhile a female dermatologist has blamed William Shakespeare for the female preoccupation with a flawless skin. Apparently old Will was forever cursing people with carbuncles, boil and plague sore. So, all the women in India buying buckets of Fair and Lovely are lovers of Shakespeare. Wow! Who knew that all our girls are so highly educated? To end with football hope the referee is spot on tonight and we do not have to say," A pox on him."

A race to the finish.

Seems that the terrorist group, ISIS, which has seized large parts of Iraq and Syria, have got hold of low grade uranium from a research lab in Mosul University. This material cannot be used for making nuclear weapons but, if used in a ' dirty bomb ', could contaminate a neighborhood or a water reservoir. US experts are downplaying the dangers of such a bomb. They are sure because they have contaminated large parts of Iraq with depleted uranium already so a little bit more is hardly going to make a difference. Right? For generations babies will be born with severe birth defects but who cares. Saddam had it coming. He dared to insult George Bush Senior so his son had to get even. The US also used white phosphorus and napalm on civilians in Iraq. It used napalm on Koreans, napalm and dioxin on Vietnamese and, the biggest bombs of all, nuclear bombs on the Japanese. These are all gooks so they deserved it. ISIS rebels have already destroyed 10 ancient Shia mosques, Sunni mosques in Nineveh province and Christian churches. One rebel has tweeted that they intend to destroy the Ka'ba at Makkah, the holiest shrine for Muslims and the site for Hajj pilgrimage. " I will tear down the Ka'ba, the place of worship," said a tweet. What that will do is hard to imagine. Will it draw every Muslim in the world to Saudi Arabia to defend the Ka'ba? On the other hand the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has called on all Muslims to come to Iraq to join his forces. He has declared himself as the new Caliph and wants all Muslims to swear allegiance to him. I would be easy to dismiss him as a lunatic whose only weapon is sheer brutality. Not so. ISIS is getting lots of recruits who are born citizens of Europe and the US. They publish a glossy magazine in English justifying their actions based on the history of the middle-east. They are active on Ask.fm and Twitter and even have an app for Android phones called ' The Dawn of Glad Tidings '. They market their own merchandise, including T shirts, hoodies, baseball caps and cuddly toys. There is nothing as quintessentially American as baseball so they seem like any large US corporation. They have released a video mocking Obama, asking him if his soldiers will need diapers. There is new panic in the US and Britain as a new ' stealth bomb ' without metal parts has apparently been created by terrorists. Long delays are expected at airports and any mobile or laptop not fully charges will not be allowed on airplanes. So what will the US do? Drones, cruise missiles or nuclear weapons? In the race to the finish only the most ruthless will win. We are spectators.

First stop the downward plunge, then try to go up.

Why were the pundits expecting a budget with radical reforms? This government has been in office for less than 2 months. That is not enough time to find out the damage to every sector of the economy inflicted by the Congress, before trying to heal it. It is like a car driven up to Shimla by the Vajpayee government and then allowed to freewheel down the mountain by the Congress. If brakes are applied suddenly it will skid out of control down into a ravine. It has to be slowed down gently, brought to a halt and then driven back up. That will take time, so to call it a ' Chidambaram budget with saffron lipstick ' is intellectual dishonesty and utterly shameless sycophancy of the Congress. Those of us with slightly longer memories will remember the panic stricken ' big bang reforms ' of 2012 after threats of a credit downgrade to junk status by Moody's and S&P. That involved raising the prices of diesel and cooking gas which were required to prune the subsidy bill but with the CPI already at over 10% it only added fuel to inflation fire. Foreign investment in insurance was raised to 49%, in defense to 26% and in multi-brand retail to 51%. There was great rejoicing in the Congress about how billions of dollars will pour in as Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour rush in to build huge stores. Farmers would become rich as these stores would source fresh produce directly from farmers, food inflation would fall as they would eliminate middlemen and infrastructure would improve as they would build cold stores. Nothing happened. Only Jet Airways received a lifeline of $600 million from Etihad Airways. That was it. The economy cannot improve without infrastructure but there is no money. So Rs 378 billion has been allocated to the National Highways Authority and Rs 140 billion for rural roads. This will increase employment of labor as well as ease movement of goods. Rs 70 billion has been reserved for building smart cities. You cannot build any city, let alone a smart one, without electricity, water, broadband and cell phone connections. So this maybe a hint of private, public sector cooperation. The lowest slab for income tax has been raised to Rs 250,000 to give a gentle push to consumer spending without adding to inflation. More tax savings have been encouraged by increasing the limits of Public Provident Fund and other small savings. If savings improve it may help reduce the Non Performing Assets in public sector banks. The biggest difference with the Congress is that there is no announcement of more handouts. Instead previous schemes will be made more efficient by reducing theft. First stop going down then go up. Eminently sensible, we say.

A noisy media is the best hiding place.

Seems that the Prime Minister is going to visit Brazil with a stopover in Germany. Last month he visited Bhutan. No big deal. He is not just a new prime minister he has never held a ministerial post in the central government so he has to talk to world leaders personally to formulate his foreign policy. The previous Prime Minister spent Rs 6.50 billion of taxpayer money on 70 foreign trips, 28 of those when the parliament was in session. We have not been told how many times Dr Singh took along his family with him. The big deal is that Mr Modi is taking very few journalists with him, only a few from the official organisations, as he did on his trip to Bhutan. Dr Singh used to take over 30 journalists with him every time. That explains why the English press was consistently highly critical of Mr Modi while making excuses for the crimes committed by the Congress coalition. We only hear about the ones that run into trillions of rupees because there are so many.
The Comptroller and Auditor General has reported that the Congress government in Delhi has not provided any of the basic services that cost Rs 30 billion. No wonder the previous Chief Minister is refusing to resign her post as Governor of Kerala. But why are our politicians so contemptuous about our welfare? Because they are still using laws enacted by the British to loot India. It seems that our life insurance industry is still regulated by the Insurance Act of 1938, which reads," No insurer shall invest or keep invested any part of his controlled fund otherwise than in any of the following approved investments, namely: (a) approved securities; (b) securities of, or guaranteed as to principal and interest by, the Government of the Untied Kingdom..." An amendment in 1999 removed the reference to the Government of the United Kingdom but the Act has stayed essentially the same which means that our life insurance money is used to finance wasteful government spending. Rs 5.1 trillion is in central government securities, around Rs 10 trillion in ' state government and approved investments ' another Rs 2 trillion in ' other securities '. The total investment is Rs 17.44 trillion. So the government used our life insurance money to plug its budget deficit incurred by expenditure over which we have no control. In 2012 the Congress forced Life Insurance Corporation of India to buy shares in various Public Sector companies for Rs 164 billion. Agents are paid 40% of the premium for the first year to encourage them to sell policies to the gullible. Bribe the freeloading journalists by taking them on foreign trips at taxpayer expense and they will create enough noise to confuse the people. After all they share in the booty.

Low prices lead to a wealthy nation.

The US exports $1.84 trillion worth of goods every year, which is almost equal to our entire GDP of $1.9 trillion. Average cost of living is 176.94% higher in the US than in India, with rent it is 222.60% higher. The reason why Americans are so much richer is because average monthly salary in a colossal 583.62% higher in the US compared to India. This is after tax which means that disposable income is nearly 6 times higher. The inflation rate in the US is 2.1% while it is over 9% in India which means that our purchasing power is being continuously corroded away. In the Railways Budget yesterday the minister announced that from now on Private Public Partnership and Foreign Investments will be encouraged. Trouble with that is that Indian businesses have been based on government protection, rent seeking and restrictive licenses which allow them to charge very high prices for low quality products and shoddy services. The Comptroller and Auditor General estimates that companies are looting Indian consumers to the tune of trillions of rupees, facilitated by politicians. Whether for sweeteners we do not know. When airports at Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore were being modernized companies were guaranteed a fair rate of return on their investments. That encouraged them to increase costs astronomically by what is known as ' gold plating '. Cochin cost Rs 43,333 per sq m and Kolkata cost Rs 78,167 per sq m to modernize but Mumbai cost Rs 115,650 per sq m and Delhi cost Rs 123,419 per sq m. Now a company is asking for Rs 145,318 for Bangalore airport. Clearly our business fellows care nothing for the people or the country as long as they can loot as much as possible. In 2012 the private consortium running Delhi Airport asked for a 775% increase in airport charges. This was so blatantly shameless that even the Congress baulked at it and allowed a 346% increase in charges. Politicians in India swear by socialism which means that, apart from basic foods and cheap clothing, everything is classed as luxury and taxed to the stratosphere. They will not acknowledge that the poor do not want to be poor. They do not want to go by cheap passenger trains without air-conditioning or clean toilets. They want to fly. They do not want to eat a cocktail of bacteria at roadside dhabas, they want to eat at 5 star restaurants. But high prices by selfish businesses augmented by extortionate taxes make everything out of reach. The reason the US is the richest country in the world is because it has the highest exports despite very high labor costs and that is because businesses compete to innovate the best products and costs, including energy, are comparatively much lower. The people want to become rich while the politicians want to keep us poor. Is Mr Modi listening?

At least the barbers are happy.

Barbers in north Waziristan are elated as business has boomed in recent weeks as Taliban fighters have rushed to have their hair shortened and beards shaved off to escape the Pakistani army assault. With limited knowledge of the local lingo Uzbek and Tajik fighters are requesting, " Mulgari ( friend ), machine, zero, Islamabad ". Meaning shave off everything so that they are not stopped at Islamabad airport, so desperate is their desire to escape. Who knew that they would have to face actual fighting. " They were very keen to buy foreign branded shampoos, soaps and perfumed sprays," said Hikmatullah Khan, a shopkeeper in Miranshah. " They had a lot of eagerness for French and Turkish perfumes and sprays." Aah, so all they wanted was to smell nice and we were calling them terrorists. The government of India should open shops along the Pakistani border and distribute perfumes, soaps and free shaves in exchange for guns and RPGs. A Kalashnikov for a soap and a bob. Meanwhile in Iraq the army has been doing some shaving of its own, as reported by Muqibul and Raqibul. The Iraqi army seems to have withdrawn from the 900 km Saudi border leaving the Saudis feeling extremely naked. The Saudis, along with their Qatari friends, had been encouraging rebels in Syria with money and arms to fight against Bashar al Assad because he belongs to the other minority, which they hate. They should know you can let the genie out of the bottle but you need a fragrant princess to put him back in. No fragrant princess today, only fragrant Taliban. Not the same thing at all. Now an extremely violent group, ISIS has conquered a large area of Iraq and declared a caliphate with Abu Bakr al Baghdadi as the Caliph. This group belongs to the same minority as the Saudis but what is scaring the bejesus out of the Saudis is that a caliphate cannot be complete without control of the 2 Holy Mosques in Makkah and Medina. The Saudi King derives legitimacy by being the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. The problem is that the Iraqi army belongs to the other minority, the same as Assad, and Saudi Arabia is having to depend on them for its protection. Saudis have deployed 30,000 troops along the border with Iraq but no one knows its fighting capabilities. It is hard to know the plans of ISIS. If it starts to lose to the Iraqi army it could threaten Najaf and Karbala which will immediately draw Iranian forces into Iraq. That would terrify the Saudis even more because they have quietly given permission to Israel to fly over their territory to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. King's gambit accepted. But by who? Absolutely fascinating.

NGOs would be unnecessary if the government functions.

A leaked report by the Intelligence Bureau has blamed NGOs for reducing GDP growth in India by 2-3% by inciting unnecessary agitations against industrial projects. NGOs receive in excess of Rs 100 billion in funding from 150 countries and are blamed for agitations against everything from nuclear power plants to dams to mines, holding up huge operations such as Posco and Vedanta. There are an estimated 2 million NGOs which means 1 NGO for every 600 people while there is an average of 1 policeman for every 943 people in India. They do not submit any accounts so they would make wonderful opportunities for money laundering. No wonder lots of politicians and businessmen in India are running NGOs. Some 22,000 NGOs receive $2 billion from abroad of which $650 million are from the US. Vast amounts go into conversion and to fund minority organisations such as the Indian Mujahideen. On the other hand NGOs would not be necessary if the government was doing its job by making life easier and comfortable for people. This can only happen if inflation is brought down to 2%, as in western countries, if taxes are reduced to affordable levels, corruption is eliminated, so that we get the services that we pay taxes for, and the country becomes wealthy through innovation. The government plans a food grid to move food from surplus areas to scarcity areas quickly so that prices come down and farmers get a good price. But what happens if the conflict in Iraq pushes up diesel prices, increasing transport costs, or if local moneylenders force farmers to sell their produce to middlemen who maybe their friends. People living in Delhi have seen electricity bills triple over the last few years as the previous Congress government allowed 2 private companies monopoly control over electricity supply. We are suspicious that our meters are rigged but the companies keep saying that they are fine. Despite a High Court order these companies are refusing to provide their accounts to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Strange that Subrata Roy continues to languish in prison for contempt of court while these fellows continue to defy court orders with impunity. Selective justice. School education in India was destroyed when the Congress got rid of all exams in schools and made Class 12 board exams so easy that thousands have received 100% marks. Now colleges in Delhi do not know who to select for their limited numbers of seats. Since meritocracy is seen as an enemy of socialism better to have large numbers of donkeys. Sadly donkeys cannot innovate. If our politicians and civil servants do their jobs properly we could send the NGOs to the US and Europe where they are needed.

Nurses are forced to go to conflict zones.

The nurses trapped in Tikrit by the swift advance of ISIS in Iraq are back in India, another 200 Indians are expected back shortly. There must be many others still left there, some wanting to hang on to their jobs for as long as they can while others wanting to get out without having the means to do so. Why do Indians travel to conflict zones in search of work? Obviously because they can earn a lot more money than they can in India. If they get jobs here in the first place. But another very important point is the ease of living. There is no income tax and any surplus money invested in NRI accounts in banks in India earns a high rate of interest completely tax fee. Accommodation, electricity and water are provided free of cost. Roads are wide, petrol is cheap and there is no need to pay bribes because no one is seeking buy assets there. There is not the daily struggle for survival that you get in India with power cuts, erratic water supply and having to fight through thousands of people to get from point A to point B. The only way to improve the quality of life is to reduce the number of people. That will reduce the strain on resources and improve the economy. In a recent interview our new Petroleum Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan says,".....it is our responsibility to maintain that the first right over resources is of the poor." It is a shocking statement which means that taxpayers have no rights, that there is no equality under the constitution and that the poor are a class of parasites who have first claim on resources without any responsibility to the nation. In Delhi, private hospitals which have been given land at concessional rates are required to provide free treatment to poor patients. Surely it is a good thing. The cost of land in Delhi is prohibitive so if a company is allowed to build a private hospital on land provided cheaply by the government then they should provide free treatment to the poor. But what about us. We are told to get medical insurance. Which is useless. Medical insurance has a lot of conditions, premiums are expensive and insurance companies refuse to pay when a claim is made. What is the point in being insured for Rs 200,000 when a coronary bypass costs Rs 300,000, cancer may cost anything up to Rs 5 million and kidney dialysis costs Rs 10,000 every week. So if you are middle class stay at home and die. Under the Right to Education private schools have to reserve 25% of seats for poor students so fees for middle class children have doubled. What civilised country penalises its children depending on where they are born? And our Supreme Court agrees. If the Constitution or our courts cannot guarantee equality then nurses will have to return to conflict zones to survive. A paradox, what?

Softly softly catchee monkey.

The Congress has not only left behind a bankrupt government it has left behind unpaid subsidy bills of over Rs 1 trillion. The new government is faced with problems which look impossible to solve. Infrastructure needs $1 trillion over the next 5 years because without roads, power, railways, airports, healthcare and education the economy cannot grow. The poor are used to handouts and will raise an enormous howl if they are stopped, giving the opposition a stick to beat the BJP with. The previous Finance Minister cooked the books to meet his target of fiscal deficit but failed to meet his revenue deficit target. The falling growth rate meant less tax collections, looting vast sums from Public Sector Undertakings made their shares unappetizing for private investors and very high taxes reduced consumption, reducing growth further. Tax rates in India are already very high and everyone is screaming for tax cuts. Tax cuts will immediately stimulate the economy by increasing consumer spending and may bring down inflation as cost of goods and services go down. But then where will the government get money for projects which will make the country rich in the long term. The government can start by making huge savings on political beggars who get elected to milk the taxpayer. The previous Chief Minister of Delhi had 31 Air Conditioners in her official residence, 15 air coolers, 16 air purifiers, and 12 geysers. So what, you say, it must be a very large house. There in lies the wonder of the story. The house has only 3 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, one very large drawing room and one dining room. So where do you fit 31 ACs. It also has 6 quarters for servants. Presumably they also had ACs and, being free, would have been running them 24 hours a day. So electricity charges more than doubled for ordinary citizens and we suffer regular power cuts because this woman was guzzling all the electricity while not increasing the power supply of the capital in the 15 years that she was the queen bee. No wonder the Congress hastily made her the Governor of Kerala before being booted out by the people. If she had any sharam or izzat she would resign and face us. But, of course, she won't. Then there are allegations about interest free loans and prime land in Mumbai given to Associated Journals Ltd in which Ms Sonia Gandhi apparently has significant interest. So there it is. Lots of money to be had. But these are powerful people with connections to foreign governments so Mr Modi has to be careful. Softly, softly catchee monkey as they used to say in Ghana.