Hindu vegetarians in India seem very proud of their diet. When asked they seem to puff out their chests when proclaiming loudly that they are pure vegetarians and would not touch meat or fish. Their pride comes from a feeling of being purer than non vegetarians and being somehow holy. They will indignantly deny drinking any form of alcohol but admit to drinking lots of milk and eating milk products. Unfortunately alcoholic drinks are pure vegetarian products and all bottles carry the green dot certifying them as such while milk comes from cows and has cow protein in it which means drinking milk is similar to eating beef. When we invite a vegatarian we make extra vegetarian dishes and make a special effort to avoid any contact with animal products but when we are invited by vegetarians we are served some leaves and paneer which I do not like. They can easily get a caterer to serve chicken or fish separately but this would cost money. Of course they never serve alcoholic drinks which means that I have to come home and eat. Would I be wrong in thinking that vegetarianism is a cover for mean minded misers?

Last week Mr. Aiyar, an economist writing in the Times of India, said that people in India do not default on their home loans because fifty percent of the price of every property is paid in cash or black money. The cost of the property is officially the amount paid by cheque and on which stamp duty has been paid. Therefore Indian banks are relatively protected and are sure that creditors will continue to pay off their loan regardless of how high the interest rate is. The reason people choose to pay in cash is because states charge whatever they like as stamp duty and registration charges. People hate paying because they know that most of the money will be looted by politicians and kleptocrats. State governments and municipalities are even more corrupt than the Central government. It is not uncommon to read that some low level municipal employee has been arrested with assets of billions of rupees. The citizens and the establishment are enemy camps. The people, quite naturally, want to keep their hard earned money and do not want filthy crooks to loot it while politicians want to loot as much as they can before they are booted out in the next elections. Will things ever change? It will take an economic catastrophe to bring about meaningful change but an awful lot of people will have to suffer.

Do we have a right not to be born? The answer to this question is urgent because people, especially women, seem to think that having a baby is a birthright without regard for consequences. To question this is to be accused of eugenics and of being a nazi but noone is talking about the right of babies. A woman in Australia has knowingly had a baby with her own father. A woman in the US took treatment to look like a man but retained her womb and ovaries. He/she then married a 'normal' woman and has now become pregnant probably by artificial insemination. It was grotesque and nauseating to see a creature with a full beard and in a state of advanced pregnancy. In India poor people have lots of children they cannot afford to feed so that they can send them out to work and live off their earnings. It is not because they are naive or helpless but as a deliberate act to live off their own children's labours. Politicians pander to this by giving ever increasing handouts in the interest of getting votes. Also having a huge uneducated underclass dependent on the mercy of politicians makes them easy to exploit. The end of the world, if it happens, will not because of ideological difference over 'isms' but because we might be traumatising the next generation so much that they might just want to end the whole rotten mess once and for all.

Recently India's footballer, Bhaichung Bhutia, has said that he will not run with the Olympic torch for what is happening in Tibet. In response to this many people, including well known film stars, have said that they do not support this view and will run with the torch. According to these people the Olympics have nothing to do with politics but is about all nations competing in a spirit of friendship and brotherhood. These people are not naive or stupid but are intellectually and morally blind. For the Chinese the Olympics are about politics and nothing else. The Chinese leaders want to show the power of their country and to show themselves in a benign light. For this they will kill as many as necessary. They have forcibly moved people from their homes to build hotels and to beautify Beijing. They have diverted river waters to build the rowing course. They want to take the torch on top of Everest to show their power and they will kill as many Tibetans as necessary to make sure that the torch passes unhindered through Tibet. That they have banned foreign journalists from Tibet shows their muderous intentions. The Prime Minister, Wan Jao Bao, or whatever the hell he is called, called the Dalai Lama a criminal. This from a man who is part of a government that routinely jails and executes human rights activists and then allows organs to be sold for transplants. The Chinese leadership is a bunch of vicious, murderous thugs but world leaders fawn on them for trade. Will these leaders show the same courtesy to the Capos of the Cosa Nostra? If not why do they show such consideration to the Chinese leadership? For once let us show some moral courage and boycott these Olympics.

Seems that the government fellows are beginning to panic. They are unable to control inflation and have no idea on what course to follow. Having inherited a growing economy from the BJP four years ago they milked it for all it was worth. Value Added Tax rates were increased, new services were taxed, old rates such as the tax on share transactions were increased and blatant larceny in the form of a tax on withdrawals from banks were introduced. This money was not used productively as, for instance, on new roads and power plants but on social programmes which means that most of the money was stolen. This is shown by phenomenal rise in property prices and a massive contruction boom driving the economy to higher growth rates in the last few years. While liquidity is a problem for the rest of the world there is excess liquidity in India. Inflation is in double digits. Cars, two wheelers and white goods are showing reduced growth pointing to a sl0wing economy. The increase in the salary of government employees will give a one time stimulus to the economy but may lead to increase in inflation. With stagflation a real possibilty politicians will be loath to risk an election at this moment and will try to stay in power for the full term so as to maximise their personal gains. This probably mens that the nuclear deal with the US will not be concluded. Perhaps only people with bad karma are born in this country.

There is little doubt that Robert Mugabe will steal the elections. If he is down while the votes are being counted the officials will ensure that he wins because their lives may depend on that. Western news channels will heap abuse and scorn on Mugabe but what is the man to do. He has murdered thousands of opponents and engineered massacres in Matabeleland. He has systematically beaten up opponents and stolen previous elections. He has brought the economy to its knees. What was once the bread basket of southern Africa is now unable to feed its own people. He knows that if he loses power then he may end up in a prison cell and feels he is to old to clean out the jail toilet. Taking refuge in another African country may not protect him because of what has happened to Charles Taylor. He is also sure that other African leaders will protect him because they are equally corrupt and have committed heinous crimes. From Mubarak in Egypt and Omar Bashir in Sudan down to Zimbabwe every president is a dictator and is clinging on for dear life because to lose power may mean the hangman's noose. Fortunately South Africa has term limits on its president so Mbeki will step down. A cartoon in the Times of India showed Sonia Gandhi congratulating the King of Bhutan for voluntarily stepping down as monarch and bringing democracy to his country to which the King replies 'when will India give up its Monarchy and bring in democracy'. Term limits are absolutely essential so that we can get rid of these ugly old garbage and bring in some younger garbage. Maybe they will stink less.

The shame of it. China has applauded India for its stand on the Tibetan crisis. India has reiterated its stand that Tibet is an internal problem for China and has arrested Tibetan exiles living in India so that they are unable to demonstrate in front of the Chinese embassy. This is a country that is still occupying upto 50, 000 squre miles of Indian territory in Kashmir and in the North East Frontier Province. It still claims that Arunachal Pradesh should be handed over to it. It will block any attempt by India to get a seat on the UN Security Council. It denounced the nuclear tests carried out by India while supplying Pakistan at the same time. Its people are like rodents in that they will eat anything that moves, from rats to human fetus. Chinese demand for tiger parts and rhinoceros horns are decimating polpulations of these animals. In short it is hard to imagine a greater enemy for our country. So one would have thought that the government would allow silence to show its displeasure at the genocide taking place in Tibet and allow peaceful protests by the Tibetan refugees. Instead it has sought to muzzle protests and support the murdering Chinese government. After all it was the Congress which refused a Security Council seat and allowed China to get it by default. And it is now in power with the arch traitors, the Communists. What have we done to diserve this lot?

Heather Mills walked out of a London court with a big smile having been given over 40 million dollars in divorce settlement from Sir Paul McCartney. In his judgement the judge called her a lying gold digger given to emotional mood swings. She proves male fears of having to pay huge sums of money for having been fool enough to marry a woman. Better to pay a whore who has at least some business ethics. On the other hand Britney Spears has been asked to pay over 300,000 dollars to the lawyer of her ex husband. She has lost her children that she bore after hours of labour pains and probably painful stitches and has had to pay 20 million dollars in divorce settlement. Maybe Spears was naive, even foolish but her punishment is extreme and has driven her into a psychiatric hospital. It shows that divorce laws are stupid and make marriage a crime worse than fraud. As women go higher up their career ladders there will be increasing numbers of women falling victim to the insane divorce laws. Thus for every unscrupulous Heather Mills with a wide grin on her face there will be a Britney Spears in a psychiatric hospital. The only people who benefit from this are the lawyers, vultures who fatten on the carion of other people's miseries.

Communists love conspiracies. They steal, plunder and kill but if anyone resists it is a CIA conspiracy. There are two juicy conspiracies concerning China for the comrades to ponder. The first is that China was set up by being awarded the Olympic games. Once the games are in sight encourage the Tibetans and, maybe, the Falun Gong to go on the rampage. Being inherently brutal the Chinese would respond brutally thereby giving the western countries excuse to boycott the games and humiliate the country. The second is economic. For years the West has been asking China to revalue the Renminbi to reduce the trade deficit but the Chinese have refused steadfastedly. So engineer a huge fiscal deficit by giving insane tax refunds which produces downward pressure on the dollar. Asian countries, including China, respond by buying dollars from the market to maintain competitive advantage of their currencies. Then give subsidy to the biofuel industry so that farmers divert their crops away from wheat thereby pushing up food prices across the world. The subprime crisis and the drought in Australia just hastened matters nicely. Now China is caught between runaway inflation if they leave their currency at the present level or risk losing market share if they allow it to revalue. Hopefully China will implode and break up like Yugoslavia, Chechoslavia and the USSR. Ancient Chinese curse - 'May you live in interesting times'. Interesting times ahead for the comrades, methinks.

The yearly circus, the Budget, is over and economists and commentators are exercised over the 600 billion rupees loan waiver for farmers with small holdings. People are debating whether this will win the coming general elections for the Congress party and whether this will halt a spate of suicides by indebted farmers. Only one commentator pointed out that this was an immoral act because it rewards people who have not repaid their debts, encourages all farmers to refuse to repay loans and wait for future amnesties. In short it will make every farmer a thief and will make rural banks reluctant to lend to farmers. Also it does nothing to help people who have borrowed from money lenders and used their land as collateral. The main reason why farmers become poor is because they produce large number of children. Thus if you own 10 acres and have five children then each child inherits only two acres. Within a couple of generations each family is dependant on little plots insufficient to feed their needs. Instead of rewarding honest farmers with small families the Minister is misusing taxpayer money for cynical electioneering. The Congress party is shamelessly holding large rallies trumpeting the loan waiver as a service to poor farmers. Had they given their own money I would also have aplauded but charity with our money is surely disgusting. No sharam, no izzat.

About a couple of days back a judge at the Delhi High Court asked the government to take serious action on doctors at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, AIIMS, for having gone on strike on three separate days in the last one year even though the court had asked them not to in view of the suffering caused to patients. It is nice to see the judge's heart bleeding for the suffering of patients but it would be little more credible if the judge had asked the government why, after sixty years of independence, people still lacked basic medical care. He should have asked why doctors had to resort to this extreme step which most doctors hate doing. They have to do this for their own protection because assault on doctors and molestation of lady doctors are common occurrences. The judge did not make it mandatory for the authorities to guarantee their safety while on duty. The judge should have asked why it is alright for members of parliament to disrupt proceedings on a regular basis and do very little work. He should have asked why lawyers frequently resort to strikes without any punishment. More than 30 million cases are pending in courts but that does not cause any shame. Last week judgement was delivered in a property dispute after 70 years of litigation. When the law is seen to be the tool of repression by scum politicians then people turn to Naxals. Before taking away the basic right to life away from doctors the judge should have remembered that Che Guevara was a doctor.

The Republican controlled media in the US have been very gentle with Barak Obama while trashing Hillary Clinton all the time. Now that John McCain is the chosen Republican candidate for November's election they are turning some heat on to Obama as the front runner and he does not seem to relish the challenge any more. Last I saw, Clinton was on course to win Ohio and neck and neck in Texas so she is still on course. Had she been a confirmed candidate she would have won against the aged warrior, McCain by cashing in on anti Bush feeling and her husband's economic record. Instead she has to expend her energies and money in fighting this Republican trojan horse, Obama. He is full of hot air. He talks about change and then talks about building a consensus with the Republicans to end partisan politics which essentially means more of the same. All he has ever done is to vote against the Iraq war and, since we cannot read his mind, we cannot know if wanted to save American lives or Iraqi ones. I am sure Mr. Rove is rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of Obama as candidate. Already McCain has used the word 'patriotism' several times. So while McCain conserves his energy and builds up his war chest the Democrats are tearing themselves apart. Good for India if McCain wins.

In an article in the Times of India Mr. Ronojoy Sen makes the point that Inidans have no regard for the law and will break the law if they can get away with it. He says that Americans and Europeans always stop at traffic lights, even in the middle of the night but Indians will jump red lights if there is no policeman around. He feels that we are somehow primed to be irresponsible and only respond to the 'danda' as during the emergency during Indira Gandhi's time. I do not know who Mr. Sen is but his article gives me the feeling that he is part of the ruling mafia, either a politician or a bureaucrat, who feels that the masters are entitled to pass laws, however stupid, and the people had better obey. There are two main reasons why Indians drive badly. The first reason is that no one knows the rules because everyone pays bribes to get a licence. And who is responsible for issuing driving licences? Why, the police of course. Even the police do not know traffic rules which is obvious if you see any accident on the roads. The second reason why Indians flout the law is because they have a deep contempt for authority and a deep rooted anger at the corruption in every branch of government. They see politicians, kleptocrats and rich people getting away with murder and rape everyday and do not see why they have to obey any law passed by this scum. Indians feel, with justification, that either everyone has to be answerable or no one at all. This is also the reason why we have armed insurrection in 160 of about 600 districts in the country. Unfortunately voting for another party is of no use because every party is equally crooked. There is a saying in Bengali, ' s*** smells the same from every side.' Crude but oh so true.

Seems that our esteemed Health Minister, one Ramadoss now wants to stop surrogate advertising in which companies advertise mineral water or music CDs bearing te same name as alcoholic drinks. In four years he has has run a vilification campaign against Venugopal, the Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, AIIMS the only world class medical institute in India. He has tried to ban smoking in films and tried to force tobacco companies to print pictures of cancer on packets of cigarettes. In Chandigarh smoking is banned on public roads and anyone caught will be fined. There may be some logic in banning smoking in closed spaces such trains and aircrafts to prevent secondary smoking in non smokers but there is absolutely no logic in banning it in an apen place. Also roads belong to the public and not slimy politicians. If they are so concerned about our health they should ban tobacco but they will not do so for fear of missing out on the billions they collect in taxes. Anything that is taxed must be legal and hence it is immoral to punish users. After all do they tax cocaine or heroin? The hypocrisy is unbearable. While the Minister is engaged in rubbish people are unable to afford routine healthcare because of poverty. Drug companies are pushing useless drugs or dangerous combinations for profit. Children are not receiving available vaccines. Nero was not the only one who fiddled while people died.

For the last couple of years or so we are constantly being reminded that India is growing in excess of 9% and how the economy is booming. Even at Davos India received a lot of attention, not as much as China perhaps, but enough to make headlines in news reports here. Easy credit and economic growth all over the world have been factors in our growth which is good but a large part has been due to a mind boggling rise in property prices. This has sparked a building boom of unprecedented proportions. Every rich man and his uncle is getting into the construction business and poorer people, from vegetable vendors to maid servants, have turned into property dealers. This has had a knock on effect on industries such as cement, steel, plumbing and electric goods industries. Labourers have been in great demand and have prospered relatively. Unfortunately half of the property business is conducted cash or black money which cannot be taxed or controlled. Consequently inflation is going up. To be sure rise in commodity prices such as oil is contributing to inflationary pressures but these factors can be accounted for. The black economy cannot be calculated and hence cannot be controlled. The Reserve Bank is holding on to higher interest rates, inspite of pressures from politicians, and has allowed the rupee to appreciate in an effort to control inflation and the government has kept petrol prices on hold inspite of rising crude prices. Is this a replay of the East Asian crisis of some ten years ago or will we have a soft landing is not known. Fear is that this house of cards is going to come crashing down.

A news item on the 19th of February said that the UN World Food Programme, UNFP has said that India has the largest number of undernourished people in the world. On the same day Gian Pietro Bordignon, country director and India representative for the World Food Programme, WFP said that malnutrition among tribal children in India is 44% compared to 25% for subsaharan Africa. Another news item on the previous day said that the Comptroller and Accountant General of India, CAG has found that only 3.2% of households surveyed in 513 panchayats in 68 districts across 28 states received full 100 days of employment under the National Rural Employment Scheme which was started by this government to ease unemployment and poverty among the rural poor. Clearly money is being siphoned off in a massive way. In the last four years food prices have risen by at least 50% and while this affects everyone the poor are affected most because a large part of their budget goes in food purchase. While sedentary people like us need less than 1500 calories per day manual labourers need in excess of 3000 calories per day and growing children need calories as well as essential vitamins and minerals for development. The Congress is in a panic with elections coming up and may decide to increase allocation to this and similar schemes with more loss of taxpayers money. So much for the aam aadmi.

In the eighties it the Sensex reached above 5000 points during the Harshad Mehta scam. The index kept on rising until retail investors started flocking to the market in large numbers and dubious IPOs raised many billions of rupees. When the market crashed many people were left bankrupt. In the nineties it was the turn of Ketan Parekh and the index reached above 6000 points. The same scenario was played out with the same results. When the Congress came to power some four years back the Sensex was just above 5000. Since then it reached 23000 before volatility set in. It finished last week around 18300 level. We are constantly being told by politicians and kleptocrats that our fundamentals are very strong but these people are liars anyway and speak through their fundament all the time. Fund managers and economists who come on as guests on news shows also say the same thing which makes it difficult to know whether this is indeed a rally based on strong economic progress or the mother of all scams. Since no other market in the world has risen so fast so far except the Shanghai Composite, which the Chinese government is doing its best to cool down, I am tempted to think that it is a huge scam. Is it going to crash? We do not know the answer to that one yet. Pointers may be found in the coming budget. Watch for giveaways and an early election.

About three days back a young man died, crushed by a crowd of about 25000 men. The reason so manywere gathered in one place was because CISF or Central Industrial Security Force had advertised for about 450 vacancies for constables. I had not heard about this particular police force before so it came as a surprise. There is the beat police. Each state has its own controlled by the politicians. Thus as you land at Delhi Airport you are greeted by a long immigration queue managed by Delhi Police. India is perhaps the only country in the world where its own citizens have to undergo the humiliation of immigration check. State Police is also incharge of granting driving licences. Then there is the CID or Criminal Investigation Department, CBI or Criminal Bureau of Investigation, EB or Enforcement Bureau, CRPF or Central Reserve Police Force, BSF or Border Security Force, ITBP or Indo Tibetan Border Police, RPF or Railway Police Force and NSG, commonly called the Bladk Cats, responsible for guarding or revered criminal politicians. I may have missed a few but we Indians are surely lucky to have so many police and one of the highest corruption rates in the world.

The Democrats are doing their best to lose the Presidential election later this year. Had Hillary Clinton been confirmed as candidate she would probably hve beaten anyone the Republicans put up. She would draw the traditional Democratic base of the unions, blacks and hispanics and with more women voting for her she had a very good chance. But Barak Hussein Obama is making sure that this does not happen. As a black muslim he has no hope of defeating the Republicans. His candidacy will unite all the Republican voters behind whoever their candidate is and draw conservatives away from the Democrats. Karl Rove may be invisible but has not disappeared and will devise any sort of dirt that he can conjure up. Remember the Swift Boat Veterans and what they did to John Kerry? Obama is said to be popular with blacks and young people and is raising an awful lot of money. I would not be surprised if, unknown to him, the Republicans are contributing to his campaign to see off the real danger, Clinton. On the Republican side John McCain seems to have the momentum. He is old and a Vietnam war veteran. Mike Huckaby is winning the Bible belt and iis popular with Christian fanatics. He believes in Creationism wherein God created all creatures at the same time and Adam used to play with a grass eating T. Rex. We might even get a dream ticket of McCain and Huckaby, an aged warrior and a fruitcake. Even if Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination after a long and bruising battle she may be so wounded and exhausted that she is unable to take on the Republicans. Seems to me that Republicans will win the November elections and we will be in for an interesting four years. At least it will be fun to watch.

For the last few days newspapers in India are full of stories about a doctor who was buying kidneys of poor people for small sums of money and selling them to foreigners for vast sums of money. He is supposed to have carried out some 500 such transplants and netted hundreds of millions of rupees. It is not clear whether this fellow and his friends are actual doctors or some ayurvedic quacks. In India anyone can call himself a doctor and prescribe drugs without any control and the illiterate poor are unable to distinguish between genuine degrees and fake ones. He was investigated once before and the anaesthetist involved was arrested about eight years ago but things seemed to have been hushed up. It is obvious that vast sums of money changed hands and police and kleptocrats bribed. We will never know the full extent of the villainy but certainly this has been going on for at least a decade. Apparently the police in one state arrested a few of the accomplices which allowed the king pin, a Dr. Amit Kumar to escape the country. Strange how all the top villains get visas so easily while innocent people like us have to queue up hours and are humiliated before our passports are stamped. The government has issued Red Corner notices to the Interpol to apprehend this Dr. Kumar. In time he will be arrested somewhere and court proceedings started in that country to have him transferred to India. Our police and CBI officials will frequently travel abroad at tax payers expense to present evidence. Inevitably the evidence will be incomplete and shoddy and the trial will drag on. He may be freed by one court only to be arrested in another country and the tamasha will start again. Remember Quatrocchi? Meanwhile a good time will be had by all. At tax payers expense of course. What fun.

A rogue trader at Societe Generale Bank in France runs up positions worth fifty billion dollars which is more than the net worth of the bank. The bank unwinds in panic in a falling market excerbating the falls and taking losses over seven billion dollars in the process. The French authorities have no idea about what is going on and neither has the Fed. Even though experts keep saying that the Stock Markets do not dictate policy and Wall Street is closed for the day the Fed reduces interest rates by seventy five basis points following up with another reduction of fifty basis points nine days later. Bank of England follows suit. Only the ECB keeps European rates unchanged. We are told that households in the US and UK are heavily into debt and falling house prices will result in bankruptcies. By reducing interest rates central banks want to encourage people to borrow even more so that increased spending can stave off recession. Do the bankers expect house prices to keep on increasing infinitely and people to keep on borrowing on top of all their debt? At what point will houses become too expensive for anyone to buy and people become so indebted that all their income goes into financing interest on their debts? Meanwhile in India we are repeatedly told that fundamentals are strong and that the market will keep going north. Last year there were headlines in newspapers saying that Azim Premji of Wipro had become richer than Bill Gates because of the value of his holdings in Wipro. While Wipro makes profits of some 300 million dollars Microsoft earns in billions. Seems to me that all our experts are happy on LSD. People have been led to believe that in 'Incredible India' the Sensex will reach infinity. Truly we are incredible. Are we incredibly gullible?

Heard the latter half of the State of the Union address by George Bush. Like our politicians he was shameless and arrogant. No appologies for the damage he has done to the US and the world. Having stolen the first election he started an war in Iraq which was not supported by the UN and is thus illegal. He is a war criminal and guilty of genocide. He has failed in his first objective of getting Bin Laden and both Afghanistan and Pakistan are now as dangerous as they used to be. His Attorney General condoned torture of captives, including water boarding, which gives every lunatic the excuse to torture captured Americans. When a former Ambassador reported that there was no truth in the allegation that Iraq had imported uranium from Nigeria Karl Rove exposed the name of his CIA operative wife and then Dick Cheney did everything to frustrate the resulting investigation. Bush has repeatedly ignored Congressional oversight citing Executive Privilege and used patriotism to bully opponents. The Dixie Chicks were abused and hounded for opposing the war in Iraq. He has allowed tapping of telephones of citizens without any safeguard against misuse and had the effrontery to ask Congress to continue doing it. He took over an economy which was strong and in surplus and squandered money in ill considered tax cuts which has created both fiscal and current account deficits. The dollar has fallen against most currencies and may cease to be the reserve currency of the world. Now he wants to give more tax cuts to ease the sub prime mortgage crisis which was brought about by excessive liquidity and very low interest rates. Well interest rates are falling fast and more tax cuts are offered to increase liquidity once more. No wonder the Democrats sat in stony faced silence as the Republicans gave standing ovations like demented schoolboys. Some legacy to leave behind!

About a month ago, in response to continual indiscriminate firing of Kassam rockets across the border, Israel started to blockade Gaza which is under Hamas control. Supplies of food, fuel and drugs became scarce and sporadic. Journalists on television reported about the suffering of the Palestinian people. With 70% unemployment Gaza residents are dependent on handouts from aid agencies and the blockade only made things worse. Then a few days back Hamas blew up the wall separating Gaza from Egypt and about seven hundred thousand people have crossed into Egypt to buy supplies. Jubilant Palestinians were shown carrying huge bags of grains, crates of soft drinks and large boxes of other supplies. Normally such an act would be construed as an invasion of foreign territory and invited a severe armed response but the Egyptian government is in a bind. It cannot be seen to fire on fellow Arabs who are being blockaded by the hated Zionists but cannot be seen to be a weak state unable to defend its borders. Despite pressure from Israel and the US Egyptian police have given way as the Palestinians have crossed over in their thousands. Today the authorities in Egypt have shut down all shops near the border to discourage the Palestinians from coming over. In all the news reports no one has asked the question as to where the Palestinians, who were supposedly without any money only a week ago, have suddenly procured enough cash to fill horse drawn carts with supplies. Who has given large sums of cash to the Hamas? The second question is who planned this particular exercise? By itself Hamas would not have dared to pull off such a stunt. Do I detect the foul hand of Iran who could have financed the deal and provided the technical guidance. Perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt helped. The Middle East continues to boil.

So India beat Australia at Perth and stopped them attaining a record seventeenth win. Naturally the players were overjoyed as no one has beaten the Aussies at home for a long time. The commentators were fulsome in their praise and Gavaskar was generous enough to say that this was the best win in forty years thus discounting the victories India achieved when he was playing. This was indeed a great victory after the disastrous Sidney test and the controversy that followed. This win does not end the supremacy of the Australians in cricket and one expects that they will try whatever to win the next one at Adelaide. That the Aussies are a great side is not in doubt. Even after the retirement of great players such as Glen McGrath and Shane Warne they have pulverised all opposition. Unfortunately their way of winning makes everyone feel that they are unworthy winners. Refusing to walk when the umpire has mistakenly given a batsman not out may seem like cheating but the umpire is there to do a job and the it is not the duty of the batsman to correct the umpire. Also the opposite team can adopt the same attitude and in time the mistakes will probably even out. Abusing batsmen to spoil their concentration is pure cheating. It is like tripping a batsman and then running him out. The allegation of racial abuse against Harbhajan was also a tactic to upset the Indian team. How is 'monkey' a racial abuse? It is much better than calling someone a ****ing bastard thus abusing their innocent parents. Just because Symonds says it is racial abuse does not make it so unless Symonds actually thinks he and his people have simian characteristics. Harbhajan says that he actually said 'teri ma ki' which, in fact, is much worse abuse but not to Australians. I suppose being a bastard is alright with them.

Seems that Citibank has suffered over ten billion dollars loss in the last quarter due to the ongoing subprime loan crisis in the US. Several sovereign funds such as Abu Dhabi and Temasek of Singapore have bought up hefty chunks of the company. They have also bought into Merrill Lynch and may buy into several banks and financial institutions in the US. These sovereign funds belong to the respective governments and hence do not disclose their holdings and functions to the public. They are opaque and cannot be investigated. All the fund managers are emphatic that they do not seek positions on the boards of the US entities and will not seek controlling interest. Which begs the question, why put in billions of dollars without seeking any powers to protect your investment. When the Chinese wanted to buy Unocal, an American oil company, there was such a furore about Chinese control of critical assets that they withdrew from the bid. Same was the case when Dubai Ports bought P&O Ferries which controlled ports in the US. By investing in banks and financial institutions, which in turn, can invest in any American industry these sovereign firms are getting in through the back door which is innocent. More interesting for me are investments in defence firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and such like. Will these funds get to have an insider knowledge of what is going on in the US defence industries by having hefty stakes in financial institutions. We will wait for the fall out.

The President of Kenya, whatshisname, has surely stolen the election but the US Ambassador saw nothing wrong in that and gave his support.Shakasvilli of Georgia most likely cheated but European observors saw nothing wrong. The reason why these men have been given support is because they are seen as supporters, or stooges as the opponents would say, of the West. Yet Western leaders are vehement in their abuse of Robert Mugabe because he rigs elections and connot stop criticising the Russians for voting for Putin. It is hard to understand why these idiots do not see that lies and hypocrisy get nowhere and Mugabe is able to survive for so long precisely because he exploits these double standards. Who is Bush to criticise Mugabe, Bashir of Saudan and the fellow in Ethiopia when he stole victory from Al Gore? Palestine is a different matter. The West has cut aid to the Palestinians for having voted for Hamas which is a criminal organisation. Critics say that it is collective punishment of the Palestinians for exercising their democratic right. But surely every right has a duty attached with it. If Italians were to vote in a government run by the Mafia should other governments deal with it? You may love your daughter and pay for her living but if she exercises her right to marry for love by marrying a thug that you dislike surely you have a right to cut off her allowance. She cannot claim to be a victim by saying that her children are going hungry. The Palestinians deliberately chose to vote for Hamas knowing full well that they would be unacceptable to the West as they should be to any civilised person. Now they should accept the consequences. Postscript : as predicted last time the Scotland Yard fellows have concluded that Ms. Bhutto was killed by the Al Qaeda and Mushi is blameless. What fun!

So Musharraf has asked the Scotland Yard to investigate Benazir Bhutto's assassination. He was probably trained at Sandhurst and may have friends in the British establishment. More to the point, he knows that the British are past masters at cover up and do it so efficiently that noone seems to question them. Take Iraq. The Americans have charged and punished soldiers for killing civilians and torture of prisoners. But stupidly they charge a soldier with murder and then allow him to plea bargain to a short sentence making them appear soft on crime and increasing the anger and hatred of their enemies. The British on the other hand do it very differently. First they start a propaganda campaign, faithfully reported by the BBC, that there is no evidence and all photographs are fake. Having destroyed all evidence they hold some farcical court case where they find every accused soldier not guilty. Thus they appear to have gone through the motions and the soldiers are protected for ever by the law of double jeopardy. The massacre of Irish Catholics, known as bloody Sunday, has still not been resolved and the millionth enquiry is in progress. IRA activists were shot in the back in cold in Gibralter and nothing happened. Enquiries into the scientist who committed suicide came to nothing and neither did the enquiry into the claim of Iraq being able to launch IMDs within forty five minutes. Recently Lord Levy was cleared of any wrongdoing in the investigation of Peers for cash. Jeffrey Archer was unlucky. Maybe he did not go to the right school. Musharraf has chosen wisely. Had he asked the FBI to investigate skeletons might have rattled out of the cupboard. With the Scotland Yard he can have a wee dram of Scotch and sleep like the proverbial baby. Cheers.

Tragic as the death of Benazir Bhutto is the aftermath is decidedly weird. In her will she has left the leadership of Pakistan Peoples Party to her nineteen year old son who is still studying at Oxford. This means that should the PPP win the elections in February he could become the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The amazing thing is that no one has found it unaccepatable that the leadership of a political party has been officially passed down from mother to son like some piece of land or a favourite crockery set. No Pakistani journalist or foreign one has said anything about this blatant feudalism which should cause outrage in this day and age. You watch BBC or CNN and every Pakistani from Musharraf to the friendly neighbourhood jehadi blabbers on about democracy and yet not a single person has questioned the automatic adoption of Bilal, or whatever his name is, as leader of PPP. The good thing is that the Pakis are open about their craven chamchagiri whereas in India they lie their heads off. Thus sons, daughters, sons in law, mistresses have all successfully laid claim to leaderships of political parties and occupied posts of Chief or Prime Minister. The Nehru- Gandhi clan still controls the power in Delhi. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi has formed an alliance with the Communists whose record at treachery is well established, installed a do nothing Prime Minister, a lawyer as Finance Minister who thinks it is his mission to go on increasing taxes infinitely to suck the blood out of all Indians and a President against whom there are serious allegations of fraud. Of course for sheer chutzpa no one can beat our Hon. Railway Minister, Mr. Lalu Prasad, who installed his illiterate, unelected wife as Chief Minister of Bihar when he was arrested for corruption. Politicians of other parties do not object because they see the great Indian public as chattels to be passed on as cattle.

Another political assassination and another mystery. The story seems to differ depending on who you listen to or read. According to the CNN fellow, he was standing in front of Benazir Bhutto's car taking photographs. She got into the car and stood up through the sunroof which is borne out by video footage taken at the time. The car started moving forward slowly and then suddenly surged forward at which this fellow had to take evasive action. At this time three shots rang out and Bhutto slumped inside the car and the the shooter blew himself up. Another version in today's paper says that she opened a car window to speak to her supporters and was then hit by shrapnel. I think the previous version is correct because video pictures taken just moments before show her head and the upper half of her torso above the roof of the car. The first government version said that she was hit by shrapnel but this morning the Paki spokesman was saying that she was hurled against a 'lever', which operated the sunroof, by the force of the bomb blast. Seems strange that the government does not want Bhutto's death to be due to gunshot wounds. The shooter certainly was a marksman. To be able to hit half a target in a moving car and with thousands of people milling round would seem to suggest professional assassin. However professionals do not blow themselves up which would suggest that he in turn was set up. Either his motorbike had been rigged or a jehadi had been instructed to blow him up at the right time. There will be many conspiracy theories but of one thing we can be sure, we will never get the right answer. Only time will tell if this is the end of Pakistan. God help the world if there is civil war in that country.

The first cricket testmatch between India and Australia started this morning and is being broadcast on Star Sports. Since it is being transmitted from outside the country our very own Doordarshan is unable to steal it. Neo Sports, a private channel, bid for and secured the rights to broadcast all cricket matches played in India but the government passed a law which compels the company to share its feed with Doordarshan. This is done apparently in public interest because the aam aadmi is unable to afford cable or satelite connection. Fact is the aam aadmi is so busy keeping his skin on his bones by slaving all day that he has no time to watch cricket. Not having paid a paisa for the broadcasting rights Doordarshan shamelessly makes huge money from commercial often missing the last and first balls of succeeding overs. If this is not an example of grand larceny I do not know what is. Up until about fifteen years ago Doordarshan had broadcasting monopoly in India but chose to dish out so much garbage on its two channels that apart from Ramayan and Mahabharat there was nothing to watch all day. Once private channels came in it has expanded to over fifteen channels some broadcasting 24/7. Still its filthy habits have not gone. About ten years I went to pay my telephone bill in Delhi. It was half past ten in the morning and at least twenty people stood sweating in a queue but the counter was closed because the fellow had still not come. When he arrived he sat under a tree and had a cup of tea before deigning to take our money. Today with private telephone channels offering better customer care the sarkari fellows are scrambling to save their jobs. Filthy habits die hard. If you try to phone one of the sarkari numbers from a private line you will find it almost impossible to get connected possibly because they block it on purpose. Politicians and sarkari fellows, hard to imagine a more evil collection.

Just read that Tony Blair has converted to Catholicism. Presumably he has been a Church of England protestant till now. A year or so ago a mixed school was opened in Northern Ireland, the scene of killings for decades between catholics and protestants. A little girl was being interviewed on BBC and she was saying how excited she was to be learning about a different religion. We should be forgiven for not understanding how people who call themselves Christians can claim to be following different religions and justify killing in its name. After all there was only one Jesus who pardoned his enemies while on the cross. For that matter Jews, Christians and Muslims all claim to follow the same God while differing in the legitimacy of prophets who were human. They have been killing each other for millenia completely ignoring the commandment given directly by God ordering them not to kill. Scholars have spent lifetimes speculating on the whereabouts of the Arc of the Covenant and Indiana Jones went chasing all over the world looking for it but when it comes to its commands they are completely ignored. And they dare to call us Hindus names such as kafir, heathens or pagans. We have many Gods and Goddesses but we do not fight each other saying my God is bigger than yours. We do not go around claiming to be greater than others and killing to convert them to our faith. Yet stupid freeloading joournalists are always abusing Hindus while keeping totally silent on the butchery of others.

Seems that the government in Delhi is thinking about applying tolls to 'two lane highways'. This a euphemism for tracks built in the distant past and repaired infreqently. The highway between Rourki in Uttarakhand and Delhi is a prime example. It is an extemely busy road which passes big cities such as Muzzafarnagar and Meerut in UP and leads to Dehradun and Mussoorie on the one hand and to Haridwar, Rishikesh on the other. It is, therefore, used by tourists going to the hills and by millions of pilgrims going to Haridwar and then on to Kedarnath and Badrinath, all extremely important sites for Hindu pilgrims. This highway is a single carriageway with frequent villages encroaching from both sides of the road, bullock carts, tractors, even chidren defaecating on the road. There are frequent indiscriminate speed breakers in the form of humps so high that cars scrape their undersides. After the monsoon rains massive potholes appear and in parts the entire surface disappears. To charge toll for such a filthy road is an act of monstrous banditry. With economic growth millions of Indians are buying cars, motorbikes and mopeds and paying trillions of rupees in road tax. The m0ney disappears into a black hole without any accounting of where it has gone. Since this government was formed with a coalition of some twenty ragtag parties new ministries were created to bribe poltical partners. These pseudo ministers demand government bungalows, armed guards and kleptocrats to loot the exchequer. There is an insatiable demand for more tax collection to pay for these parasites and so taxes keep going up. I will not be surprised if there is a secret committee whose sole work is to dream up new taxes or increase those in existence. We can easily get rid of 75% of the kleptocrats and pay triple salaries to the ones that remain which will increase efficiency and decrease bribery. To think that out freeloading journalists keep advertising that the Prime Minister is a noted economist.

There has been no water supply in the south of Delhi in areas such as Vasant Kunj for the last three days. As usual there was no warning, residents were not informed as to the cause of the failure or when normal supplies will resume. Also as usual all phones were taken off their hooks while Jal Board officials enjoyed three days of extra holidays. Whether they came to work at all is not known but no attempt was made to help residents. Water tankers made a killing selling 1000 litres of water for Rs. 500 when the normal rate is Rs. 100. How the booty was divided will never be known but we can assume the kleptocrats will not have missed such an opportunity. Fights broke out between residents desperate to survive. Filling your tank is also not the answer because your water will be stolen when you are out. Residents upstream have fitted what is known locally as 'online boosters' which are pumps attached to the mainline and pulls water at a greater rate. This means that those downstream receive less water because the pressure drops to a trickle. Downstream residents have disconnected their ball valves to increase the flow rate which means that when supply is adequate enormous quantities of water overflows into the drains. Delhi is normally a dry place and such waste water is a great loss. Very soon I foresee someone being killed over water. Then politicians will rush round like headless chickens and a commission of enquiry set up. A retired kleptocrat will earn a lot of taxpayers money by prolonging the enquiry to several years by which time it will be completely irrelevant and no one will read its report. I think next year is election time in Delhi. These same politicians will be round with folded hands asking to be reelected. No sharam, no izzat.

Couple of days back in Gurgaon, Haryana two fourteen year old boys had an argument with a classmate. One boy then pulled out a gun and shot his classmate four times in the back as he was climbing the school bus. He then passed the gun to his friend who fired a final shot into the already dying boy. A few days back a seventeen year old school boy received a new motorcycle from his father. That evening he was driving at great speed with a friend sitting at the back and crashed head on with another motorcycle carrying two other boys. All four died. It is a common site to see children, some as young as eleven years old driving cars and motorbikes often with passengers. What kind of monstrous parents would allow an underage child to drive or carry guns. Strangely you will never see police stopping and arresting underage drivers but they are busy catching legitimate car owners and fining them for not renewing thier pollution certificate every three months. Strange how everything comes down to politicians and the kleptocrats. These people and their friends have vast quantities of black money and do not know how to show their wealth. India has more property dealers per square mile than any other country in the world. Most of these are criminals engaged in land grabbing, illegal construction, selling the same property to many different people and crimes of similar nature. They generate the money which is used to finance their elections whereupon they become ' elected representatives of the people ' and immune from prosecution. No wonder ordinary people are also becoming increasingly violent. Reports of thieves or pickpockets being beaten to death is common. Traffic accidents are frequently followed by local people attacking the police. Such is the suspicion and hatred for all politicians that people will not allow companies like Posco and Tata to set up steel plants because they are afraid their land will be forcibly handed over by sarkari fellows. Hence Nandigram. Perhaps we will end up as a country of bandits.

The government has just passed a bill which will punish people who neglect thier elderly parents. Is it possible to make people more caring by threatening them with three months in jail and a fine of Rs 5000. Would it be possible to make politicians honest by passing a bill threatening them with jail? I think not. One old man, about eighty five years old, lived around here. He had prostate cancer and had to take frequent injections for relief of pain. He lived with his old wife and one son who was a drinker. Another son lives in Delhi while a third lives in the US. The drinker son developed cirrhosis of the liver and huge ascites which is water in the abdomen. He was gradually going downhill and last month was admitted to hospital in a moribund condition. The old man was so upset at the prospect of losing a son that he had a heart attack and died on Diwali day. The son died a few days after him leaving behind a wife a a four year old child. Now the two surviving sons came over from Delhi and the US. The first thing they did was to put their mother, who had just lost her husband and a son, in and ashram in about 200 km away and then started abusing their sister in law to make her leave the house so that they could sell the house and divide the money. I find it hard to understand how anyone can be so cruel and devoid of any sympathy even for his mother. The other question that comes to mind is why all three sons were such monsters. Is it because the old man and his wife treated their own parents badly and the boys grew up thinking that this was the correct thing to do. We are moved by the plight of the old and the infirm but have no way of knowing if they had been good parents in their younger days. If children grow up to hate their parents no amount of laws can make them care. Animals instinctively care for their young but most humans make lousy parents.

A new law has come into effect whereby anyone using an internet cafe has to provide full name, address, phone number and number of a photo identification card. It is now illegal to open an email account under a pseudonym. This is complete destruction of privacy and will no doubt will be used to hunt down anyone the sarkari fellows do not like as has already happened in China. No doubt they will claim that this is being done for our protection and to track down terrorists and criminals. Nearly all terrorists operating in India are under control of Pakistani intelligence and surely can open any number of email accounts abroad. Anyway they usually have large numbers of false papers and can change identity at will. They can easily obtain passports in India by bribing the same sarkari fellows. In the Bombay blasts case a police officer was convicted of allowing a truck full of explosives to pass for a relatively small amount of money. Clearly this is a way of surreptitously obtaining data on innocent and respectable citizens. To be fair India is not the only country which is spying on its citizens. The US has been doing it for years and is also snooping on telephone an internet traffic of the citizens of its allies. The UK is proposing to have a DNA record of all its citizens. All the more frightening because the British have lost personal details of 25 million people which was contained on two disks and now opens the way for identity fraud. No wonder people all over the world trust politicians the least.

Indians have always valued poverty because renunciation of material wealth is at the heart of our spiritual teaching. Our movies have shown how the hero, who is brought up by a widowed mother struggling to survive, is totally honest, patriotic and incorruptible. The truth unfortunately is not so romantic. Most poor people in India have a sense of hurt because the government ( govt ) is not doing enough for them. They are convinced that poverty is an entitlement and that they should be helped to a higher living standard without any responsibility. They do not see any value in education and are reluctant to put in the hard work to get a degree. Thus they will vote for anyone that promises them reservation in govt jobs without necessary qualification. We are told by the bleeding hearts that they have so many children because they want some insurance for old age because there is no social security in India. The truth is that they are well aware that their life expectancy being less than fifty years they are unlikely to want geriatric care. They have so many children so that they can send them out to work by the time they are ten years old and live on their earnings. Most violent crimes are committed by the poor often against their own kind. It is true that rich people cheat on taxes and commit other financial crimes but these do not directly threaten our person or property. Poor people vote for short term gain and have no sense of morality. Thus they will vote for a convicted murderer if he distributes free saris and bottles of booze. This is why we have so much scum calling themselves VIPs. Unfortunately it is in the interest of the same scum to keep the poor people illiterate and poor so that they can be exploited for generations. Is their anyway to force people to become less poor and more educated?

Big day today. Musharraf will cast aside his uniform and appear in civilian garb. As long as he does not not appear in his regulati0n boxers it is okay with me. He has been castigated as a dictator and Pakistan has been suspended from the Commonwealth, not for the first time. Only the British and the BBC seem to think that membership of the Commonwealth is important, nobody else gives a toss. All countries, except Britain, belong to the third world and meetings give the leaders an opportunity to go shopping with their wives at taxpayers expense. To me Musharraf does not seem to be any more of a dictator than Bush is or Blair has been. They all claim to have won free and fair elections and to have 'popular mandate'. In the case of Bush we know he won less votes than Al Gore and was elected through the means of Electoral College and hanging chads in Florida whose governor was and is his brother. Not to mention the biased Supreme Court packed with conservatives. As for Blair, he did win three elections with large majorities but with less than half the people exercising their right to vote he can hardly claim to have support of the majority. Also in the 'first past the post' system a candidate might win despite getting a minority of votes because opposition votes are split between the Liberals and the Conservatives. Despite all this it did not stop the duo from killing half a million people in an illegal war in Iraq. If you ask them they will claim to have the people's mandate just as Musharraf does. Berlusconi won quite illegaly by controlling the media and succeeded in subverting investigations into criminal activities by claiming immunity as Prime Minister. Jacques Chirac also claimed immunity from investigation because he was President. His predecessor Mitterand was able to suppress strong rumours of his involvement in the Vichy regime. Despite their despotic behaviour these gentlemen at least had the decency not to claim to be a Very Important Person or VIP. Whatever their actions they tried to maintain an outward show of humility and respect for the law. Not so our lot. These have labelled themselves not only to be very important but very, very important and cause a lot of grief and money with their security. No sharam no izzat.

There was no aam aadmi at independence. This was created in the last sixty years in four steps. Step 1. Keep people illiterate. More than half the people in the first Cabinet after independence were barristers educated in the UK and yet they do not seemed to have noticed that all children in the UK have to go to school compulsorily upto the age of 16 years. Step 2. Waste all tax collection on a huge army of donothing kleptocrats and ignore infrastructure. No roads, electricity, water or sanitation. If a man has to go to an open ground by railway tracks in the morning and bare the lower half of his body he loses his self respect and dignity. When he sees animals defaecating at the same spot with him he loses his humanity. Step 3. Keep saying ' India is a poor country ' and inflict crippling taxation on a list of ' luxury ' goods such as televisions, air conditioners etc so that they are beyond reach of all but a handful of citizens. After pressure of the WTO sales taxes have come down so new taxes called service taxes are being imposed. About fifteen years ago you would wait four years for a telephone connection and a call from Delhi to Chandigarh would cost Rs.100 per minute. Now every tea seller and his aunt has a mobile and a call to the US costs Rs. 5 per minute. This is giving too much freedom to the aam aadmi and is unacceptable so Service Tax was introduced at 8%. This has gone upto 12.5 % and may be pushed upto 20%. So everyone may own a mobile but fewer people will afford to use it. Step 4. Charity at tax payers expense. A politician will go to a village and announce free electricity or saris or televisions and the illiterate, dehumanised, despairing populace will come and touch his feet while he stands with hands upraised in benediction and a smile on his face ugly with debauch. The aam aadmi is here and politicians think they are Gods.

An American thinktank has said that Pakistani nuclear weapons are under American control since 2001. Apparently after the Twin Tower attacks President Bush issued an ultimatum to President Musharraf to place his nukes under US control or they would be destroyed with Indian help. It is natural that Musharraf would want to hide that fact but why were the Americans play acting all these years? Did they inform Indian leaders about what was going on so that India would feel reassured? After all we are the biggest sufferers of Islamic terrorism and Pakistan is the biggest state sponsor of terrorists. Countries such as Iran and Syria have been isolated for decades because they have been described as supporters of terrorists and Libya was under serious sanctions until recently but Pakistan has always been feted by the West. Of course I have some doubt as to whether Pakistan has ever been able to produce its own nukes or whether it has been supplied by China. After India tested its own nukes the then Paki Foreign Minister rushed over to Beijing and it is possible that the Chinese handed over six outdated nukes to him, three of which exploded and three did not. In that case the present report is rubbish and designed to create further chaos in Pakistan. But to what purpose? So we have Indian politicians, a lot of whom are convicted criminals, President Musharraf the criminal behind Kargil and a dictator and George Bush who talks to God playing football with nukes. In the background, the Chinese who like to crush students under tanks and create an economic boom by allowing their citizens to be used as slaves. We, the aam aadmi are probably less important than sacrificial lambs.

In recent months there has been a lot of debate about the nuclear deal with the US and the blocking tactics of the communists. Our freeloading journalists have written reams on perfidy of the commies, on how they are against progress at any cost and are taking India back to the dark ages. Some have alleged that the commies are taking orders from China to scuttle the deal because it is so good for India that it will make us immensely powerful and on par with the Chinese. If the commies are indeed taking orders from the Chinese to cause national harm they are guilty of treason and should be tried for such. However, no one has said if this delay and debate has been good or bad for the country. I have not read the details in the treaty but lots of pundits have gone through the details and most scientists seem to be of the view that it is good for India. In so far that it has drawn attention to what we have to give for nuclear assistance it is a good thing. After all we have to remember the record of the Congress party since independence. Apparently the first Chief of the Indian Army, General Cariappa, begged for twentyfour hours to repel all infiltrators from Kashmir but Nehru did not oblige. Instead he went to the UN and we have been left with the problem ever since. It was also Nehru who signed Panchsheel with Chou En Lai and coined the phrase 'Hindi Chini bhai bhai '. Well we know what happened and not only is China still occupying over fifty thousand square miles of Indian territory it is demanding Arunachal which is a part of India. Lal Bahadur Shastri signed away all Pakistani territory occupied by India at great cost for nothing in return and Indira Gandhi returned over 90,000 prisoners of war after the infamous Shimla Agreement which Bhutto had no intention of honouring. Although the intentions of the commies are suspect it was good to draw attention to what the Congress Prime Minister had signed.

Politicians are such liars. The whole world suddenly seems to have woken upto the fact that Gen. Musharraf is a dictator and has been for the past decade. Everyone is lecturing him for declaring a state of emergency in Pakistan but he seems quite relaxed and appears to be enjoying all the attention. After all look at his opponents. Main opposition is led by lawyers who are crooks anyway. Benazir Bhutto is a bull**** artist. Her husband, Zardari, was known as Mr. Ten Percent for skimming money off all govt. contracts. She is demanding that the constitution be changed so that she can have a third term as prime minister. So much for democracy and the sanctity of the Constitution. Nawaz Sharif is a big landowner and his whole clan is knee deep in the stinking stuff. Maybe Musharraf will be replaced by another army fellow who will continue along the same path. This is on the west. On the east it is altogether different. Burma is ruled by a bunch of ugly, lowlife thugs prancing around in uniforms. There is no way they are going to allow anyone to take power because they cannot afford to. They have committed so many atrocities and killed so many people that giving up power would mean trials and long jail terms. They will be looking at what happened to Generals Pinochet and Galtieri who thought they had immunity but were publicly humiliated. The thugs in Burma are much worse and uglier. India, unfortunately is stuck in the middle.

Oil will breach $ 100 a barrell within the next few days which will increase gas prices in the US and add to transport costs of everything, from food to toothpaste. The dollar is dropping to new lows against most currencies which should increase the price of imports. Meanwhile more people are finding jobs because of increase in exports and booming tourism. This should cause inflation but the Fed cut rates for the second time and has pumped more than forty billion dollars to relieve the credit crunch. Seems that they believe that recession is a bigger possiblity than inflation. Maybe that money is coming to the east because markets here are jumping from one record to another. Mumbai, Shanghai, Hong Kong all appreciating like mad. China Oil has become a trillion dollar company on listing after its IPO. Ali Baba dot com, also a Chinese company, is at 130 its projected earnings. Meanwhile Merrill Lynch have lost nearly eight billion dollars as have Citi Bank on subprime mortgages. General Motors have lost a mind boggling 36 billion dollars in the mortgage market. No one knows what the final bill is going to be and what effect it will have. Speculators and hedge funds move vast billions at the speed of wire transfer and globalisation has removed any controls that governments used to have. In this morning's paper it says that more than ten billion dollars have been invested in Indian stocks through PNs ( Participatory Notes ) which are use by anonymous investors. Some people fear this is terrorist money being laundered through the Indian stock market or it could be drug money. No one knows. No doubt it is hot money and could vanish overnight. Meanwhile ministers are smiling at the phantom market capitalisation of Indian companies. No controls and no one knows. Frightening way to run the world. A very happy Diwali to all my fellow citizens of the world.

I have often thought that teaching history in school is a waste of time. No one learns anything from the events of the past and the same stupidities get repeated over and over resulting in civil unrest or war with consequent destruction of lives and property. This time it is Pakistan. Musharraf thought he was too clever and pretended to be against Islamic terrorists while encouraging them to infiltrate into India and plant bombs. Americans had helped shape the Taliban phenomenon to trouble the Russians and are still paying the price. Americans have a long history of encouraging dictators such as Saddam Hussein and are now reaping the rewards. All this was happening right on Musharraf's doorstep but he thought he could get US money for helping the war on terror and support of the Islamic parties for killing innocent Indians for no reason. He may have to pay a heavy price. Will other countries learn from this. I do not think so. Even at this moment China is protecting the regime in Burma and will not support any sanctions against Iran. They are busy giving no-strings aid to dictators in Africa so as to get their hands on scarce minerals and oil. They are probably the largest investors in Sudanese oil industry and will block any sanctions on Khartoum regardless of the number of people dying in Darfour. They must be feeling pretty smug about their growng economy and power but they will surely pay in the future. The sooner that happens better for India.

Just got my driving licence renewed in Delhi. My British licence is valid till the age of seventy years but the Delhi licence has to be renewed every five years. First you have to drive fifteen kilometres to Janakpuri in West Delhi. The roads are potholed and the entire building is filthy. There is no public toilet so men use the back wall and the stench is so pungent that it is impossible to breathe. What poor women do I have no idea. You queue up at one counter to pay some fees then at other counters to pay for the photo fellow, for finger printing, for photograph, to submit your form and then wait at a point on the verandah for over an hour when suddenly a fellow appears and begins shouting out names and handing out new licences. By then most people are reduced to wrecks and pocket their licences gratefully, never mind the mistakes. As close to hell as you can imagine. Naturally touts abound and the officials earn twice their salaries in bribes. In Delhi all new cars have to follow European standards of emission to reduce pollution. All cars have fuel injection systems and you cannot tune your car higher like in the carbrettor. Still everyone has to get a pollution check certificate every three months which means wasting time at one of these places and paying Rs. 50 for the privilege. Nice way to earn money for friends of politicians and unnecessary harassment for people. Even new cars are not exempt. If a car gets stolen and the police find it they will only return after stamping the registration document with ' superdari'. Naturally you have to run around to get it cancelled before you can sell your car. Clearly you do not need guns to be a police state. India aspires to be a soft power in the world, it is already a soft police state.

Fellow come to the clinic with his wife who is complaining of dizziness. Fellow is eighteen years old, works as day labour and has been married two and a half years. The girl does not know her age. Looks about fifteen years old and would have been about twelve or thirteen when she was married off. Turns out she is pregnant. I get furious and tell the fellow he should be hanged but he looks completely blank. He has no idea that he has committed a crime by marrying an underage girl and is guilty of rape under Indian law. The girl looks bewildered not having any idea what pregnancy means or what the future holds. Even after thirty years of medicine it is heart breaking. Repeated pregnancies, chronic malnutrition, a long miserable struggle to bring up children and may be a merciful early death. Next day I attend the Annual Sports day at a local school. Girls of all ages laughing, screaming and bouncing around the sports field while proud parents took photographs. No confusion here. These girls looked happy in the present and confident of the future. Unfortunately such girls are in the minority in India. Even among the middle classes boys are prized while girls are seen as liability. Among poor paople girls are seen as curses and millions are aborted or killed just after birth. No one seems to realize that without women you cannot have sons. Two women are in the news this week. Both married without parental consent, one of them married a fellow of different religion who was found murdered. Although volumes of pious words will be written most people will think that these are prime examples of how girls bring shame on families and destroy honour. Is it better to be aborted, not to be born rather than face a life of hardship and misery? Wish I knew.

A item on the online BBC news site on Tuesday, 23 October, 2007 says that money collected for disaster relief has gone missing. Mr. Rehman, an employee of Coal India Ltd. says that all employees of that company had donated one day's wages for victims of Gujarat earthquake, Kargil war and the Asian tsunami but the money never reached the Prime Minister's Relief Fund. He found this out by persistently asking for information under the Right to Information Act. I doubt that any Indian will be surprised at this news. Few years back an American of Indian origin wanted to donate money to the college he had passed from but the then minister, Murli Manohar Joshi decreed that he could not donate directly to his college but had to go through the ministry. The fellow donated the money to an American college instead. Such is the mistrust and contempt for politicians and civil servants tht no self respecting Indian will have anything to do with them. Do these people feel insulted that they are seen as scum by their countrymen? Not at all. When they are able to commit any crime and live a life of luxury at tax payers expense they can afford to have skins thicker than that of a rhinoceros. Do mafiosi feel insulted by being called criminals? Some educated Indians say that a period of army rule would benefit the country by executing all politicians and civil servants but that would be even worse than what we have at present. There seems to be no solution.

So South Africa managed to beat England in the Rugby World Cup. What relief. I would probably have stopped watching the game had England managed to remain champions. Although they have the prescribed fifteen on the park, England have managed to make it a nine man game - eight big forwards and one goal kicker. Their game plan is simple, effective, extremely negative and boring. Kick long into the opponents half, disrupt their lineouts, prevent clean ball possession at rucks and hope that the referee will give a penalty for some silly reason such as coming in from the side. If the opponents knock on then use your weight advantage in the scrum and lay the ball back for a drop goal attempt. South Africa beat England at their own game. Their forwards disrupted English lineouts on at least three occasions, kicked long into English half whenever they had possession and defended with discipline to avoid giving away stupid penalties. Habana and Pietersen used their pace to tackle English backs forcing them to hold on and give away penalties. In Percy Montgomery they had a goal kicker as good as Johnny Wilkinson so they won by kicking five out of six penalties for fifteen points to Wilkinson's two penalties and one missed drop goal attempt. No tries and boring. If the authorities of Rugby Union want other countries to play and watch the game they must do something to encourage try scoring. For example they could have two types of panalties, three points for dangerous play such as high tackles or stamping in rucks and two points for silly reasons such as coming in from the side. This might discourage England from using their negative tactics and look to making it a fifteen man game.

So Nokia decided to recall forty million faulty batteries. Large advertisements in leading dailies promised that new batteries would come in the post if you promised to return the old ones in the envelopes provided. I registered online and filled in the correct name address and all details required. Another person in Delhi registered by text messaging and was promised that the new batteries would come by post in three weeks. Of course this being India that did not happen. After waiting for a month and a half I went to the Nokia service centre in Dehradun and was told that all batteries had finished and they did not know when new ones would come. So last week I went to a service centre in Delhi where I was told the same thing. Eventually after we became angry our batteries were changed. Would Nokia dare to treat customers in Europe or America with such contempt. There is no doubt that they saved a lot of money by not sending batteries by post. Whether they thought that all Indians are dishonest and would fail to return the old batteries I do not know. I also do not know if the company service centres had been instructed to say that they had run out of batteries but they definitely wasted a lot of our valuable time and caused great inconvenience. It is not uncommon for Indians to be treated with such contempt by foreigners who make a great deal of money in our country. Sadly there is nothing we can do and they know it. After all our politicians class themselves as VIPs which makes all other citizens unimportant.

The whole world is watching aghast as the despicable criminal junta in Burma kill and torture innocent people and defile monasteries. It is not the killing of a hundred, two hundred or even a thousand citizens that is most awful but the conversion of ordinary people into terrified monsters capable of shooting a Japanese photographer in cold blood at point blank range or inform on friends or brothers. Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao did the same thing to their people. The same phenomenon is taking place in India though in a much more subtle manner. People are being transformed into fearsome beasts capable of any crime however heinous it may be. Everyday newspapers carry stories of crimes whose brutality reach new nadirs beyond imagination. This morning's story is about the kidnap and murder of a ten year old for ransom. Yesterday it was about the murder of a 25 year old woman for dowry. Rape, incest, murder, paedophilia, served with your morning tea. Why not if the politicians do the same and get away with it. The police and other investigating agencies such as the CBI are toothless. Forensic experts corrupt evidence to secure release of the rich and powerful. Instead of improving the investigation and prosecution of criminals the govt tries to curtail free speech. First they tried to sneak in a Broadcasting Bill but stepped back because of enormous opposition. Now a parliamentary committee is recommending that Internet Service Provider (ISP) will be liable to criminal prosecution for third party content. Which means my ISP could face jail for this blog. Since it is not possible for anyone to monitor what millions of people are writing it means that ISPs will just have to shut down. Ergo no more blogs so no dissemination of information or criticism. Must admit our politicians learn quickly from the Chinese and the Burmese.

Last week in Bangalore a group of young men and a few women were out celebrating . One fellow had qualified as a lawyer from the prestigious National Law School and had just landed a job in Bombay. Around midnight they decided to go to a local lake. On the way their car developed a problem and they were waiting by the road side when a group of local louts came by. An argument developed and this young man was stabbed to death. When contacted the first question the police asked was why they were going to a secluded lake at that time of the night with young women. This was the first question that came to my mind when I read the news report. Had a bunch of young men gone to a dark lake there would probably be no danger but the presence of girls made it infinitely dangerous. It was an invitation to the thugs, probably high on alcohol, to show their machismo and try to teach 'educated fellows' a thing or two. It seems that girls today have no appreciation of appropriate behaviour. They seem to think that they can do what men can get away with. Had they gone to the lake it is possible that they would have been picked up by police and charged with indecent behaviour or even raped by the police themselves. This kind of thing happens regularly but girls do not seem to notice. Most women say that men are beasts and that they have a right to go anywhere at any time of the day or night. This is the stupidest thing to say. Theft is a crime and no one has a right to steal our property. Yet we have bars on our windows, elaborate locks on our doors and imported gear locks in our cars. Surely women should take care of their bodies as they take care of their possessions. Yet they would like to be more macho than men. Unfortunately men and women are completely different species and three billion years of evolution cannot be undone by ten years of globalisation.

There has been a spate of deaths in Delhi when people have been mowed down by buses run by private operators, the so called ' Blue Line buses ', so called because they are coloured a light shade of blue to distinguish them from the green ones of Delhi Transport, the sarkari fellows. Following headlines in newspapers politicians have come out with their usual lies and smokescreen. They talk about phasing out Blue Line buses which is utter nonsense because without private operators public transport will be crippled. Moreover the same fellows will paint the buses a different colour and start operating again. This has happened previously when Red Line buses were banned and the Blue Line ones started. The problem is that transport companies are owned by politicians who will never allow their profits to fall regardless of the number of people killed. Yet the problem is so easy to solve. A strict law that enforces proper maintenance of all public buses and heavy punishment for owners if vehicles are found to be faulty. Secondly all commercial licences should be centralised and the driving test stored on video to eliminate bribes. All licences in Delhi already demand prints of index fingers of both hands so it should be easy to compare prints of new applicants against the data bank to prevent applying for a new licence under a different identity. So easy yet impossible because the law concentrates on pollution control of cars with small engines every three months because this earns money and lets people be murdered by buses. Politicians need to enjoy.

Seems that a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court ( CJI ) helped his sons while on the bench. His sons were working for a company constructing shopping malls. The CJI ordered sealing of shops and businesses operating in residential areas and the razing of buildings considered to be built illegally. This resulted in panic and huge rises in the prices of shopping malls as businesses frantically looked to relocate. These orders have now been suspended. Three journalists of a tabloid, Mid Day, have been punished by the Delhi High Court for contempt of court. Apparently by publishing this story they sought to cast the entire judiciary into disrepute. The Court made no attempt to verify the truth behind the story so the judgement means that whatever the crime committed by a judge no one is allowed to talk about it. The Minister of Information and Broadcasting tried to introduce a bill which has united all journalists in opposition. They say that the bill is aimed at reducing the right to free speech. Meanwhile in Burma army thugs are beating up monks and nuns for expressing dissatisfaction with the criminal junta. Last year the Chinese had to release a blind activist, who had been jailed for protesting against corruption, because of the international outcry. No one would dare to criticise Ahmadinejad in his own country Iran but he had to sit and listen to the bad mannered rantings of the boorish Dean of Columbia University. Third world leaders have to understand that unless they respect their own people they will be insulted abroad.

Yesterday I was mugged inside Reliance Webworld where I go every Sunday to check my mail and update this site. The weapon used is called ' validity ' which wiped off Rs. 400 from my account because I was a day late in renewing it. The small internet cafes are safe. They charge Rs. 10 per half hour after you finish. This weapon is used by the big boys - Reliance, Satyam and so on. They will not let you do anything unless you open an account. Then you have to buy time for example 100 minutes for Rs. 100 or whatever is on offer. You think that since you have bought and already paid for those minutes you may use them whenever you like but therein lies the catch. There is a period of validity upon expiry of which your money disappears into a black hole never to return. To keep your account valid you must renew within the stipulated period whether you have used any time or not. This is like saying that the new car you are buying will be valid for, say, two years following which, if you do not pay some more, the engine will seize up. I had renewed on the 23rd of last month and was going to renew yesterday which was also 23rd. But sadly my validity expired on the 22nd and my balance of Rs. 400 was wiped out. If this is not larceny I do not know what is. Yet it must be costing little to maintain customer accounts indefinitely. After all Hotmail is free for billions of people and this site is provided free by Google, both enormously profitable. It is just greed on the part of Reliance and a contempt for its customers. In India the customer is a sucker to be sucked dry.

Hallelujah, India is the most perfect economy in the world. A substandard flat built by the Delhi Development Authority cost just over Rs. 3 million five years back but is now a cool Rs. 17 million. The Sensex has risen from around 3000 about two years ago to over 16000 two days back, after the FED rate cut and the talk is of 19000 soon. Vegetable prices have more than doubled in the last year and prices of commodities such as cement and steel are up about 50%. Basmati rice, which sold for Rs. 35 a kilo last year, cost Rs. 48 a few days ago. Potatoes were Rs. 10 last year but are Rs. 24 today. the list goes on. Miraculously and fortunately the government's inflation figure remains at around 5% year on year. Thank God for that. Had the inflation been any higher the beloved aam aadmi would have suffered terribly. Even at 5% India's inflation is twice that of the US. Unlike China, which has huge fiscal surplus, India runs a current account deficit due to increased import of capital goods and increasing oil prices. With all these figures you would expect the rupee to fall in value against the dollar but, in fact, the opposite is happening. The rupee has strengthened from 48 to 40 against the dollar and fell below 40 in yesterday's trading. The wise govt. is bailing out the exporters who are used to a continually depreciating rupee and are bleating in distress. All this is down to the wise policies of our genius politicians. I owe a sincere apology to Goldilocks. I did not think she existed.

Two large headlines in today's newspaper. One said that the government is going to increase taxes on new cars and on petrol. New cars will cost 8% more and a cess of Re.1 will be added to petrol. These new taxes will raise Rs. 50 billion which will be used to improve public transport in large cities in India. Alongside this piece of cheering news is another headline which says that Rs. 315 billion have been stolen from the Public Distribution System (PDS) in the last two years. The other name for PDS is Rationing and this was started in the 1960s when there was famine in India and we had to be rescued by the US (PL480). At that time everyone had a ration card and gradually this functioned as an identity card and proof of address and was required for obtaining a passport, car registration and in other interaction with govt. agencies. From the beginning it was ridden with corruption. The quality of rice and wheat was so poor that we found them inedible and ration shop owners used to mix gravel with rice resulting in many a broken tooth. As the green revolution succeeded anyone who could afford it started buying rice and wheat from the open market. A few years ago the govt. decided that rations would be only for the genuine poor. As we can see they have been stealing from the poor and one of the worst states is West Bengal where the commies are always going on about the poor. In the last three years the Central Govt. has been Congress supported by the Communists and they have been adding taxes frantically while the plunder goes on. No sharam, no izzat.

With the economy improving foreigners are arriving in increasing numbers to India. Imagine an Englishman arriving at IGI Airport, Delhi to be welcomed by a typical Delhiite. I imagine the conversation would go something like this - ' Good evening sirjee, myself Manish. Your good name John Makepiss? Welcome sirjee. You want bathroom? You want to do toilet or latrine? Don't know? Must be gas. My neighbourer had pijja and lady finger for lanch and was having terrible gas. Doctor said he has inphection of the cowlon. He died. Sad no? Now I am having his car. I buy it form his misses for 50000 bucks. It has no stepney and its self and shockers are slightly broken. My cobrother get me a driving licence for Rs. 500. Good to pay and get licence otherwise the RTO fellows send you up to the wall. No problem, all part of the game. My cobrother likes sports so I buy him two nikkers so he can play with his friends. Here is my car, sirjee. You sit in the front and I will put your suitcase in the backside. Don't worry sirjee, my dicky is very big.'
It is a fact that trade with the UK is not growing as the government would like.

Hundreds of millions of Indians are stupidly passionate about cricket. Repeated failures do not seem to reduce their enthusiasm. They have already forgotten the ignominy of the World Cup. In the recent Nat West series against England India were 3-1 down but recovered to 3-3, much to the delight of the broadcaster and the cricket boards, only to capitulate pathetically in the final at Lords. Because of these stupid millions sports channels keep showing cricket all day long. They show old matches from their archives, which cost them nothing, and rake in the profits. Genuine sports lovers are deprived of live sports. For instance only one sports channel is broadcasting selected matches of the ongoing Rugby World Cup even though regular matches are played in Calcutta and Bombay. Teams such as Calcutta Police, Armenians, LMOB, CFC, Bombay Gymkhana and teams from Sri Lanka play against each other but the sports channels ignore the sport thinking all Indians are stupid. A sizable chunk of these idiots bet illegaly ( called satta ) on the result of the matches and on such statistics as to whether Tendulkar will score a century. Instead of making betting legal and collecting a tax on it our criminal politicians have made it illegal. Result is that satta is controlled by criminal gangs, mainly that of Dawood Ibrahim. Dawood, in turn, is controlled by the Inter Services Intelligence ( ISI ) of Pakistan. Thus the vast amounts of money generated by satta is being used to finance terrorist activities in India. Pakistan does not have to spend any of its own money to kill Indians because idiots are hooked on cricket. There seems to be no solution.

Indians are understandably proud of our achievements in telecom. From the time when you had to wait at least 4 years to get a connection and, very often, only after dishing out heavy bribes to now when even a labourer whips out a mobile casually is indeed a great improvement. A call from Delhi to Chandigarh, a distance of 250 km, was a trunkcall at Rs. 100 per minute and you had to go through an operator, invariably a disgusting woman who barked at you while now you can call the US for about Rs 6 per minute. Unfortunately fellows at the other end have remained the same and therein lies the problem. You see thick fog out of your window and phone Delhi Airport to find out if flights are still landing and a fellow tells you that every flight is on time. When you reach the airport after a fingernail chewing, heart thumping drive you see on all the monitors that all flights have been delayed. You phone the helpline of the bank and cancel your credit card because you are going abroad and you are assured that you will not be getting any more bills. When you return you find that you have been sent a new card and then the bank starts a process of harassment and threats to make you pay Rs. 700 which is the yearly subscription. Since no one is recording the phone conversation you have no proof of cancellation. Happened with a foreign and a public sector bank. Foreign banks would not dream of treating customers in their home countries the way they treat us but they follow government controlled public sector banks in bullying us and giving substandard service. Celebrating sixty years of independence

Junior doctors at All India Institute for Medical Sciences ( AIIMS ) in Delhi have been on strike because they have not received their degree certificates for two years. This is a most crucial time for these young people because their careers and lives are at stake. The Health Minister is refusing to sign the certificates for reasons that have not appeared in newspapers. The High Court in Delhi instructed the Minister to sign the documents immediately but we will have to wait and see if he will do so secure in the knowledge that he can do anything he likes including destroying the valuable lives of so many young people. So what has His Majesty, the Health Minister done during his time in office. He has banned smoking in Indian films and he has been trying his level best to destroy AIIMS, the only premier medical institution in the country. He is trying to increase reservation for undeserving candidates and thus lower standards and he has been needling the Director, trying to get him to resign so that he can get his own man in. Has he done anything to improve the standard of medical care or reduce unethical marketing by drug firms? Where is the time for anything constructive?

Seems that in 1961 the Americans wanted India to develop a nuclear weapon before China so that China would not become too powerful. Unfortunately Nehru was against nuclear weapons and vetoed the idea. China repaid that by attacking us and is still occupying about 50000 squre miles of Indian territory. They annexed Tibet and India recognised their claim that Tibet used to be a part of China without any benefit in return. Now China is planning to divert the Brahmaputra river towards its own land with the threat of catastrophic changes in the North East. By facilitating the immigration of Han Chinese to Tibet in huge numbers it is marginalising the local population. The refugee Tibetans in India will probably never see their native land will will become permanent residents of India. Even now we see monks and nuns trekking for weeks through extremely hostile territory to reach India. Some of the stories are horrific tales of being shot at, beatings, rape, hiding in caves and trekking through dangerous snow bound paths for days while surviving on snow. Not just the people, even the wildlife of India is paying the price of Nehru's folly. Like cockroaches Chinese eat virtually every living creature and insist on the right to make 'medicines' from animal parts. Inidan tigers, bears, snakes and rhinos are being slaughtered to extinction by poachers to provide for their stupid medicine inspite of irrefutable proof that they are inactive. The same Congress party is now trying gain popularity for a nuclear pact with the US. Sadly for us it is 46 years too late.