Seems that multinational Indian companies are going to need government bailout to the tune of some $ 10 billion. Hindalco needs Rs. 154 billion, Reliance needs Rs. 67 billion, Tata Steel Rs. 55 billion and Bharti Telecom Rs. 20 billion and so on. Nice mixture of metal, manufacturing and service companies. Commercial vehicle sales are down. In september Tata's sales are down 22%, Ashok Leyland down 26% while Eicher is down 38%. In october Eicher sales are down 55%. Auto sector sales are down 14% and auto companies are delaying payments to their parts suppliers by upto 100 days. Event the festival season of Diwali failed to perk up sales of cars and two wheelers. This will have a knock effect on suppliers of parts down to steel and plastics industries. Assocham reckons that 25% of jobs may be lost but had to withdraw that claim after severe mauling from politicians and civil servants. Inflation continues at around 12% and the rupee is flirting around 50 to the dollar and may sink if the RBI reduces interest rates further. The only silver lining is that oil has fallen to $ 56 per barrel because of fears of global recession which is not good. In desperation to win the coming general elections the criminal politicians may try for some very risky short term measure which may damage the economy still further. We can only pray that they fail.

Yesterday three Indonesian Bali bombers were shot dead for their crime in which over 80 Australians died. The only Khmer Rouge leader to be put on trial is there because he killed a British journalist. Yesterday the US government received $ 500 million from Libya as compensation for the Lockerbie victims to be distributed to relatives. However we have not heard anything about the civilian aircraft full of Iranians deliberately blown up over the Gulf by a US Navy ship. French social workers arrested in Chad for trying to kidnap scores of children with living parents had to be freed under pressure from Nicolas Sarkozy. US forces have been executing civilians, raping and bombing indiscrimantely in both Iraq and Afghanistan with British and Australian support. Yet the US insists on complete immunity for its soldiers while demanding Bosnian Serb leaders be put on trial. Seems to me that whites can kill thousands of Africans or Asians with impunity but woe betide anyone who would dare to touch a white skin. Any form of violence is unacceptable and no matter who gets killed it is an immense loss but as long as this monstrous conspiracy persists there can never be any peace in this world. Obama, are you listening?

The freeloading journalists are frothing in their mouths in their attempts to vilify Raj Thackeray of the Shiv Sena for his hounding of North Indians working in Mumbai. Certainly what Thackeray is doing is a disgusting and cynical ploy to whip up some sort of perverted Marathi pride to increase his political power base. What the freeloading press conveniently choose to forget is that this kind of politics was started right at the beginning by our first Prime Minister, Jawarharlal Nehru. Being more English than Indian he chose to divide the country along linguistic, caste and regional lines. He instituted Hindi as the national language without any consultation thus alienating the South. This gave birth to regional parties such as the DMK and TDP fragmenting and polarising the people of the country. Today children with other mother tongues are required to learn Hindi but Hindiwallahs are not required to learn any other language which is grossly unfair. Anti Hindi sentiments have caused many deaths in Assam where locals see Hindi speakers as aliens. Surely if any language deserves to be the national language it is Sanskrit which is the mother language for all Indian languages. Every child would thus learn Sanskrit, English and mother tongue making education equitable. Also knowledge of Sanskrit would enable people to conduct their own religious ceremonies thus erasing the difference between Brahmins and all other castes. However this would be anathema to our criminal politicians who will not be able to occupy reserved seats in colleges and employment. Do we really deserve this garbage?

Congratulations to Obama for having won the elections. The hard part begins only now. John Bolton, the previous US representative at the UN, said on BBC that since the Democrats have won all three, the President, the Senate and the House, they will have no excuses for failure. The Republicans will regroup and focus all their attention on Obama. They will conserve their ammo and wait for a chink and then go in with all their guns blazing. If Obama succeeds he will have improved the lot of the African Americans for ever but if he fails then there will be no black President for the next hundred years. Since his father was from Kenya he should look at Africa and see all the things that he should not do. Africa is full of leaders who came to power promising change and better times ahead but have sadly turned out to be despots like Mugabe or buffoons like Idi Amin. Perhaps he would be better off looking at the whites to emulate. We can only hope that Sarah Palin is around for a long time to come. A little bit of oomph is always welcome.

According to the pundits the entire world is in for a prolonged period of recession although most qualify their predictions by saying that the US would suffer for only a short period and the US economy will start to improve from the second quarter of 2009. The US is in as much debt as Iceland, about three times its GDP, but whereas Iceland has declared bankruptcy the US is in the happy position of being able to print as many dollars as it likes. No one is explaining why, when the US has about $ 15 trillion dollars of deficit and is shortly going to lower interest rates to one percent, its currency is rising against all other currencies except the Japanese Yen. Oil prices have fallen to below $ 60 a barrel which is causing enormous problems for Iran. Iran may be unable to continue with its social welfare programmes giving rise to enormous resentment among its people. China's economy is also slowing down as demand in Europe and the US falls and increasing unemployment may spur the normally supine Chinese to rebel against the regime. A decade from now George Bush may be considered to have been the greatest President of all time for having caused the fall of both China and Iran. He will actually fall into greatness.

On Friday of last week the Sensex collapsed by over 1000 points to below 9000. It is hard to comprehend that it had reached over 21000 in January of this year. For the last few years it has been obvious that a gigantic bubble had been built up in the stock and housing markets. Low quality flats in Delhi were being priced at over Rs. 10 million and we were being told that prices would rise even further. Only about 12% of Indians pay income tax which starts at a paltry Rs. 1,20,000 per year. At this level of income it would be hard for a single person to pay rent and buy food let alone pay for a mortgage. Properties in India are sold on a 50:50 basis that is half the total price is paid by cheque or 'white money' and the other half is paid in cash or 'black money'. This is because of extortionate rates of stamp duty and registration taxes. It follows that there would be very few people able to afford Rs. 5 million in cash to buy properties in major cities and towns. Clearly most of it was speculation and a few genuine buyers were taken in and are now ruing there impulse. Our great Prime Minister has claimed that he warned world leaders about the financial crisis at least 18 months ago. Pity he did not warn our great Finance Minister or the Indian people who are paying for his food and living. The free loading press keeps banging on about what a great economist he is. Only Indians cannot see it.

Hurricane, tsunami or earthquake do not refer to natural phenomena anymore, neither do the words mayhem, massacre or bloodbath refer to the latest Holywood blockbuster. These are words used to describe the recent ructions in the financial markets of the world in recent weeks by serious nerdy looking women and men. Iceland has suffered the shock and awe of bankruptcy producing collateral damage to savers in the UK. In response the British government used antiterror laws to freeze all assets of Icelandic banks in the UK. Ireland broke the coalition by guaranteeing all bank deposits thus threatening to draw scarce liquidity away from others. Faced by friendly fire the US pumped in over a trillion dollars into its banking system but the FED Chairman is asking for more. The British bought controlling shares in banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and yesterday the Dutch did the same for ING, thus effectively nationalising these banks. Everyone is now discussing monetary as opposed to fiscal stimulus and Keynes versus Voodoo economics. Who has caused such a commotion in the world? More than Gengiz Khan, Alexander and Mao Ze Dong combined? It is my hero George W. Bush of course. He has finally found his legacy. Shit happens!

Though the fat lady is yet to sing it is now accepted wisdom that Obama is going to be elected President of the US in november. It is shameful that a country that preaches ceaselessly to the world continues to deprive the majority of its citizens. Women constitute 53% of the population yet did not support Clinton. Now the Democrats are trying to tarnish Sarah Palin in Alaska, a woman who has just seen off her older son to service in Iraq. Obama never went to Iraq until he became Democratic candidate and then went on a cosmetic tour just for appearance. He promised to accept public financing and then went back on his word and is now spending $ 4.5 million a day as opposed to $ 1.5 million by McCain. This shows that he is a liar. Has he contributed anything to the cause of veterans of the Iraq war? Surely if he wants to be the Commander in Chief he should have shown more interest in the young men and women who are putting their lives on the line. It is not enough to vote against the Iraq war and say that you will bring the troops back home early. If civil war breaks out after the Americans leave then all the sacrifices would have been in vain. Being a lawyer qualified from Harvard he can answer any question in hundred different ways without saying anything. It took Joe the Plumber to pim him down and get a straight answer. The Americans are going to vote for him because they do not like Bush and because they do not want to appear racist. What pathetic reasons to elect a president with his finger on the nuclear button.

After spending Rs. 15 billion in paying compensation, building the factory and putting machines in place Tata finally admitted defeat and pulled out of Singur in West Bengal. For weeks Mamata Bannerjee had been adamant that 300 acres of land must be returned to the farmers. Her supporters were camped outside the site and were threatening workers who reported for work. Maybe she was hoping to resell the land back to Tata at hugely inflated price and become a heroine for poor farmers? For Tata it would have looked like extortion. If they gave in to her then every villainous politician would find a reason to hold up production and they would be vulnerable for ever. The question remains as to who was financing Bannerjee who was rumoured to be spending Rs. 10 million a day to keep her agitation going. A UP politician visited the site a few times and could have been woeking for another industrialist who is keen to manufacture small cars and would have wanted Tata's project to be stalled. The Congress was smarting from CPM's opposition to the nuclear deal and and certainly did nothing to help. Unfortunately for all three protagonists it backfired spectacularly when Tata went to Gujarat and gave a huge fillip to Narendra Modi who is hated by them. As for Bengal, it is sliding towards becoming the worst state in India. All the clever, ambitious and hard working Bengalees have left the state and only the lazy and the useless are left behind who continue to vote for the CPM to get assured but lowly government jobs. Unless they get rid of the commies Bengal will become the beggar state of India.

Like a jilted lover who marries on the rebound only to regret it later the American public are all set to elect Barack Obama because they feel let down by George Bush. This is a man who seems safe because he has done nothing of note in his entire life. He keeps banging on about change when he shows no evidence of changing anything. He has picked a career insider, Joe Biden, as his running mate. He rejected state financing so that he does not have to disclose the source of his funding. Surely $ 200 million could not have come from $ 5 cheques from little grannies in New Orleans. He will be just as much in hock to big business and the NRA. He talks about women but trashed Hilary Clinton and is now trying to tarnish Sarah Palin who has just seen off her son to Iraq. He talks about tax reduction for 95% of the people, increased funding for education and health care and rescuing those who have lost their homes to the financial crisis without saying anything about where the money is going to come from. He talks about the environment and then gives off a lot of hot air about this 'journey called America' whatever that may mean. This is a one man cause of global warming. We, in the rest of the world, have to watch anxiously who the Americans are going to pick because it affects all of us. Unfortunately it seems that they will reject a war hero and a popular governor for a windbag.

Panic? What panic? It is all calm in India. Everyday we are being told that the fundamentals of our economy is sound, that, except for ICICI, our banks do not have any significant exposure to foreign banks and that our economy is driven by internal consumption with exports being only a small part of the GDP. All correct except that it is only a small part of the full picture. Since this government was elected four years ago it has increased indirect taxes, expecially on services, by a huge amount. This gave rise to a hidden inflation but as long as food prices remained reasonable and the economy continued to grow because of easy credit in the whole world it was able to get away with the bluff of 'Incredible India'. The Sensex reached 21000 and house prices were rising on a daily basis. Then oil and commodity prices went stratospheric and inflation zoomed to 13%. The Reserve Bank raised rates to 9.5%. The consumer is hit by a triple whammy of huge inflation, high taxes and high interest rates leading to high interest payments on outstanding loans. The rupee has collapsed from 39 to the dollar to 47 which will further fuel inflation by increasing import prices including oil. The Reserve Bank will have to maintain a high or higher interest rate which will cut growth. A weak rupee would have stimulated tourism except for this government's pathetic failure to deal with terrorism. Our freeloading press continues to repeat the lies of the politicians. Incredible India or Imbecile India?

As expected Tata Motors have decided to leave West Bengal and set up their factory in a friendlier state. After ruining the industrial base and infrastructure in the state over a period of 25 year the communists had realised that Bengal was close to becoming the poorest state in the country. During this time they have corrupted all the institutions of government including the civil service, the police and the teachers. Communists are structured like organised crime. They have a capo called general secretary and button men called cadres. They run extortion and protection rackets and anyone objecting is silenced with force, often permanently. During elections voters are told not to go to the polling stations and ballot boxes are stuffed with the help of police who owe their jobs to their allegiance to the party. Over the years they had become used to taking everything by force and never expected any resistance. They forgot the simple fact that for a farmer losing his land is akin to losing his livelihood for ever and there is noone more dangerous than a man who believes he is going to die of hunger. Of course, Mamata Bannerjee exploited the situation for her own advantage without regard to the welfare of the state but that is what the commies have been doing for a long time. It is time the people of West Bengal showed some guts and drove out the commie thugs permanently.

From today no one is allowed to smoke in any public place including restaurants, pubs, hotels and even public parks. This malicious peace of legislation curtails individual freedom and opens innocent citizens to harassment by the police. If the criminal politicians really wanted to do public good they would have banned all tobacco products and I would have applauded it. But that would have meant foregoing enormous taxes raised on cigarettes and less money to loot. If I pay tax on a product it automatically means that the product is legal and that I have every right to use and enjoy without hindrance. Millions of people are employed in the tobacco industry, starting from farmers to workers in cigarette factories to dirt poor people engaged in rolling bidis for a few rupees per thousand. Banning tobacco would lose votes which is impossible. Even more dangerous than cigarettes are 'khaini', which is tobacco mixed with lime and kept inside the lower lip, and gutka which is chewing tobacco so addictive that I suspect that some cheap drug such as amphetamines are mixed in it. Khaini causes cancer of the lip and tongue and gutka cause a jump in blood pressure especially in middle aged men. These two products are used mainly by the poor who are least able to afford the serious consequences. Yet no restriction is being placed on these products proving that the Health Minister is just a shallow, petty man who has wasted public money for the four years in office. The law should be changed so that the tax payer can claim back all the salary and expenses paid to a minister who has been useless and a nuisance to public safety.

Bill Clinton left office with a balanced budget and a fiscal surplus which Bush has turned into a deficit of 11 trillion dollars with his moronic tax refunds and the Iraq war. Now the US government proposes to rescue banks with a bail out of over one trillion dollars. The danger is that the dollar may collapse and inflation jumps in the US. Asian countries are sitting with huge dollar reserves. China has about 2 trillion dollars, Japan has 1.5 trillion and other countries together another trillion. If the dollar collapses all this will become confetti, oil and commodity prices will surge and exports will plummet bringing the entire region into recession. Asian countries should get together and raise a trillion dollars from their reserves and give it to the US on easy terms. This will rescue the US economy and every one can get back to making profits. Unfortunately politicians are small minded people incapable of generosity. They are enjoying US discomfort and may kill the goose with its golden eggs in the process.

More than 50 thousand children taken to hospital and at least six already dead, this is the latest crisis in China. It came about because water was added to milk to inflate volume and profits and, to disguise the dilution, melamine powder was added to the milk to enhance its nitrogen content. The situation becomes critical because of the harshly imposed one child policy of the government. The head of quality control has been sacked and a few low level officials of the milk supplying firms will be found guilty in due course. After a dubious trial they will be executed with one shot to the back of the head and a bill for one bullet will be sent to the respective families. Their organs will be sold to wealthy foreigners in need of transplant. The state always wins. Angry parents will be threatened into silence and things will revert to normal until the next crisis breaks. During the recent earthquakes schools collapsed killing thousands of children but government buildings stood firm. Parents protesting against corrupt local officials colluding with builders were arrested, threatened and bullied into silence. In the last few decades China has become enormously rich. Huge buildings, fantastic roads and the Olympics blind people to its reality. A person just returned from there was awed at their progress but remarked that he did not see any birds. He presumed they had all been eaten. These are a brutal, uncivilised, barbaric people incapable of humanity and will probably never be democratic.

Charles Taylor, Idi Amin, Bokassa, Mobutu and on and on, the list of murderous thugs running countries in Africa is endless. However even in this rollcall of villains Thabo Mbeki of South Africa holds a special place. Not because of anything that he did but because of all the good he could have done but chose not to. Becoming president after Nelson Mandela he inherited a country in peace, still basking in the afterglow of the end of apartheid and the best economy on the continent. During his tenure a few blacks have become rich but inequality has increased. Crime has exploded and everyone with money has to have bodyguards or face being mugged, raped or murdered. Mbeki has stubbornly denied the existence of HIV saying that it is a nutritional disorder. He sacked Assistant Health Minister, the widely respected Routledge but has supported Msimang, the Health Minister, a woman accused of corruption and of getting a fast track liver transplant to treat her alcoholic liver disease. He waited for two weeks, while mobs were killing immigrants, before calling the army to restore order. His support of Mugabi has meant the death of thousands in Zimbabwe and the peace treaty he has brokered still leaves Mugabi with control of the army and is bound to fail. The ANC have voted to oust him but the man they have chosen is Jacob Zuma who was accused of raping a HIV positive woman. When asked if he had taken any precautions he said that he had taken a shower. Africa still remains the Dark Continent.

After bomb blasts in Delhi in 2005 CCTV cameras were installed in markets in Delhi but not one was found to be working on saturday when the recent outrage took place. A car stolen in Navi Mumbai was found loaded with explosives in Surat but the CCTV cameras at the toll station through which it had come were not working. Meanwhile Customs fellows investigating evasion of duties by wealthy individuals in importing aircraft for personal use accidentally stumbled upon airplanes entering Indian airspace illegally without permission. Apparently six planes, a Boeing 727, 3 Challenger aircrafts, a Lear jet and a Gulf Stream have been flying in and out of India and landing at smaller airports for years without permission. I feel confused, perplexed and stupid. An airport is not a petrol pump where you drive in, fill up and drive out. How can any plane fly into our airspace undetected? What about radar and satellites? Why were they not challenged by our Air Force and forced to land? Why were they allowed to land at any airport without filing a flight plan? How did they pay landing fees and refuelling costs? I am too terrified to think of what cargo or passengers they may have been carrying. In 1995 a Russian built AN26 was captured dropping arms into Purulia in West Bengal and yet six planes are able to fly in and out of the country unchallenged and, shockingly, undetected. Worse, there is no concern among politicians, civil or defence personnel. Politicians are busy abusing each other in preparation for the coming general elections while the kleptocrats, police and army officers are occupied in matching pay packets and whining about getting less. Useless parasites with no sharam, no izzat.

Another day of carnage, this time on the streets of Delhi. While the rabid muslims continue to kill innocent people the government is assuring them that Haj fights will be subsidised as before with taxpayers' money. No doubt the criminals were equipped and financed by the ISI of Pakistan, a moribund state being kept alive by US help. At last the US has woken up to the fact that Pakistan is the source of 90% of terrorism in the world and Bush has authorised cross border raids. Unfortunately Bush is not the only moron to occupy the White House. Support for Pakistan and a blind eye to all its abominable crimes have been the policy for decades in callous indifference to the slaughter of innocent Indians. It was the US that poured money and weapons to Zia Ul Haq to oust the USSR from Afghanistan, a hellhole with no resources and an illiterate and murderous people. Today NATO soldiers are paying the cost. When the USSR broke up Russia embraced democracy but instead of embracing it as a partner and helping it to become prosperous the US continually insulted and humiliated it. It helped break up Yugoslavia and Chechoslavia and expanded NATO to Russian borders. Today Russia is fighting back. Bolivia, Venezuela and Honduras have expelled US ambassadors and Ethiopia is on the brink of famine with its soldiers dying in Somalia in a US inspired war. The next President of the US has to understand that Pakistan and China are the main threats to the future of the world and not Cuba or that buffoon, Hugo Chavez. If he does not the future will indeed be bleak.

When is a pig not a pig? Depends on your culture. When Harbhajan Singh was accused of calling Andrew Symonds of Australia 'a monkey' there was a huge furore in Australia. Singh's defence was that he the words ' teri maa ki' which means 'your mother's *****.' Australians are probably used to their mothers being friendly with many men and an allusion to their mother's organs was not as offensive as calling Symonds a monkey which was deemed to be a terrible racial insult. For Indians abusing your mother will probably elicit a violent response whereas many parents lovingly address their children as 'little monkey'. So to Obama. The Republicans have objected to his quip about putting lipstick on a pig as an insult to Sarah Palin. Obama has aggressively denied the accusations accusing the Republicans of falsehood. So who is right? The answer lies in Obama's middle name which is Hussein. He converted to Christianity from Islam. In Islam the pig is considered unclean and pig meat is 'haram' or forbidden. The thing to do is to find out if Obama eats bacon, ham and pork. If he does then he may be forgiven. If, however, he absolutely never has pig products then he is guilty of serious abuse. On man's meat etc. etc. as they say.

The Indian Institutes of Technology, IIT, are prestigious institutions and are even recognised abroad. There were five such institutes in five different cities in India but seven more have been set up this year without buildings, faculty or infrastructure. Thus the students enrolled in the newly set up Rajasthan IIT are being taught in Kanpur. It is doubtful that Kanpur will have the resources to suddenly handle double the number of students and standards of teaching are bound to fall. Students to the IITs are recruited through an elimination examination called the Joint Entrance Exam or JEE. This year's results are shocking. The last candidate in the General category got out of 200 in each subject 63 in Maths, 72 in Physics and 45 in Chemistry for a total of 180 in 600. The last candidate in the Scheduled Caste, SC, category got 38,8 and 58 respectively for a total of 104 while that in the Scheduled Tribes, ST, category got 36,12 and 56 for a total of 104. The really shocking thing is that the General category candidate had an all India rank of 6773 while the SC one had a rank of 689 and the ST one was 159. This is extreme injustice. Next year cut offs will be lowered still further which will allow SC/ST candidates with zero in Physics to secure a place in IIT. Professors will be forced to pass these students or they will be accused of bias. Their certificates will not show their JEE marks and they will be treated as equal until disasters happen. How long before IITs are seen as rubbish? Genius is unique and hated by the garbage who want everyone to stink like them. Sadly India will be seen as producer of only garbage.