The grand Indian Railways budget for the year 2008-09 was presented by Hon. Minister of Railways Lalu Prasad Yadav in the parliament on 26th February, 2008. The budget seems to be totally decided in view of the elections that are due in 2009. But, it is necessary to go through the budget carefully to really understand that Lalu Prasad has not really cut the fares or offered any thing out of the blue. He actually just got a platform to announce that he would be offering certain things which can be bargained for votes later.
Consider his lowering of fares. These fares will actually be applied only in the off season and non-popular trains. So, basically, the cut in fare is not applicable to most of the trains. The Rajdhani's and the Shatabdi's and trains between metro stations are all categorized as popular trains and hence there will be no fare cut in these trains. The middle class people living in these metros who cannot afford a plane ticket or rely on sleeper class and AC-III tier won't get any benefit. The 5% fare cut in second class doest serve any purpose because a normal ticket costs around Rs 100 and a 5% cut will mean it costs Rs 95. I know, I shouldn't be underestimating the value of Rs 5, but still, is it really going to help?
The second thing that caught my attention was Lalu announcing free suburban tickets for girls up to graduation. Minister, don't you thing that in India, Suburban trains are only used in Mumbai and the Maharashtra government already has concession in place for all students (not only girls) up to graduation level. The concession means that second class suburban pass for a month will be free. The student still has to shell out money for quarterly pass. The same is now going to be applied all over India but do students outside Mumbai actually use trains? Is the city network of trains that good as it is in Mumbai?
The next thing that really angered me was his announcement of Smart cards being introduce in Mumbai in the coming year. Mr. Lalu, it has already been done and thanks for letting us know that you are still not aware of this.
I really don't understand the meaning of garib rath's. The middle class is having access to it and not the poor man. I guess instead of having AC coaches as garib rath's and having a lower fare, he should have actually introduced Sleeper class at a lower rate. I personally dont like the name garib rath's as it is actually not ment for "garib's". We can have a number of names for these garib rath's. Also, I guess the charges that are levied for internet booking ought to be totally removed. It is saving man power and machinery of the railways when one books through the internet and gets a print out of the ticket himself.
But, even tough these points came up, I have liked the budget. Lalu has promised that by 2010 all coaches in Indian railways will be made up of stainless steel. He promised that 50 stations will have escalator and elevator facilities and that is the need of the hour. He announced that a company which was in loss 4 years back has made a profit of Rs 25K crores. His aggregate profit over 4 years has been Rs 78K crores. What he has done good here is, he has allowed the oficers to implement all programmes that they wanted without any fuss. He has not interfered in their working and hence he deserves this credit. He even alked abt food in railways not being upto the mark and thats good that he accepted faults in the railway service. The cleanliness issues in railways really need someone to address and he did it and I guess privatization is the best way out.
I feel the budget has been a balanced one even tough Lalu's attempt to fool people to a certain extent, he has offered many gains to people too. Kudos Lalu for your four years in the ministry. The Indian railways is getting a face-lift and that what is the needed and fast. I hope, the next minister of railways is as good as Lalu or better. Lets hope for the best and remember, success of railways is dependent on us as well up to a certain extent. Lets try to make the Indian Railways which employs 14lack employees, India's largest employer the ebst in the world. Many such budgets, will surely make it one.
Feb 27, 2008
Feb 25, 2008
LEWIS IN THE WRONG RACE
What happened in Barcelona, Spain during the F1 off-season testing was the most shocking case of racial abuse in recent times.
Lewis Hamilton the worlds first Black Formula one driver was racially abused by the Spanish crowd . The reason being Lewis ,in his debut season ,out performed his team mate Fernando Alonso who happens to be of Spanish origin and more importantly a white.
Lewis Hamilton is a resident of Britain and he entered the world of F1 in the2007 season . He became the first F1 driver to have a podium finish in each of his first nine races and missed the championship title by single point finishing second ,behind Kimi and in front of Alonso. It is truly disheartening that a skilled and an excellent racer like Hamilton who impressed the likes of Ron Dennis (the Mclaren boss) and Sir Frank Williams should be looked down upon just because he belongs to another race
This show the general white mentality of racial superiority and their inability to see a human deeper than his skin. It is neither a one off incident nor is it a new phenomenon. From the times of Jesse Owens ,sports has always been plagued by this lack of racial tolerance and baseless racial pride. No sporting body can,however hard it tries, stop it as it is in the minds of the fans(or fanatics I may add) and just too deep rooted and too widespread .
The only solution is an awakening,a revolution of sorts, among the fans and the sportsmen alike , to strive for a world where people love and respect a sportsman for his skills and not for the colour of his skin
But all this remains a Utopian dream, or it shall be as long as our eyes see no deeper than the skin. For when we see deeper ,that's when we realise and appreciate the beauty of the soul .
I'll end this by respecting Hamilton's attitude as he kept mum about his reactions to this incident and avoided the media attention which he could have easily used for his advantage. By doing so he did good for his race ........no not the black race .........the human race
Hey there
My name is ranjith. I am the third person to be posting on this blog.As they say the third person to do anything is always the best.................Okay so may be i made that up ,but hey! I will give blogging a try.I've got nothing to lose. I am not gonna blabber about myself as I know that frankly none of you are really interested in a charcter sketch of a person who is still a stranger to you .For those who read this completely THANKS A LOT . I will post as soon as i get a topic to post on . till then Adios Amigos
Feb 23, 2008
The Lost Wonder.
On the 11th of September,2001, the Taliban crashed two planes into the WTC, New York, sending tremors down the spine of the world....The whole world described the event as one of the saddest, in the history of mankind...............
In the shadow of this event, however, the world also lost the memory of one of the greatest monuments in the history of mankind...the symbols of love and amity, serenity and reflections of our past.....THE BUDDHAS OF BAMIAN.
I'm sure most of you did'nt know that:
The Bamian region of Afghanistan was home to the tallest statues of Gautam Buddha in the whole world.......
These statues built by the Indo-European aryans were 180 and 121 ft. tall, and were collectively worshipped by the Indians, the Chinese, the Mongolians, and even the Greeks.....
Also, the Bamian region is home to the most peace loving tribe of Afghanistan. The Hazarat tribe.
It is compulsory in each Hazarat family to educate their children..
I'm not writing this blog to tell you the facts about The Bamian Buddhas...Even Wikipedia can do that...............
I'm writing this, to remind you of this wonderful monument and the beautiful people surrounding it........ALL OF WHOM WERE MERCILESSLY CRUSHED BY THE TALIBAN.
In March 2001, the taliban dynamited the Bamian buddhas for days,.....massacered thousands of innocent Hazarats............................. all because of the whims of a certain man called Mullah Omar, the de-facto head of the Taliban.
He did this, to uphold Islam...and to show that there is only one God.
He said that crushing other religions is the duty of the Islamists and they should be proud of the destruction of the statues.
Even today, the Hazarat people do not get jobs in the cities,cannot move freely, and are treated like dogs.........
I have pasted the Wikipedia pageto the Bamian Buddhas below....i urge you to read about these wonderful creations....
Bamyan lies on the Silk Road, a caravan route linking the markets of China & India with those of Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Until the twelfth century AD, Bamiyan was part of the Indian kingdom of Gandhara. It was the site of several Buddhist and Hindu monasteries, and a thriving center for religion, philosophy, and Indo-Greek art. It was a Buddhist religious site from the second century up to the time of the Islamic invasion in the ninth century.
Monks at the monasteries lived as hermits in small caves carved into the side of the Bamyan cliffs. Many of these monks embellished their caves with religious statuary and elaborate, brightly-colored frescoes.
The two most prominent statues were the giant, standing Buddhas, measuring 55 and 37 metres (180 and 121 feet) high respectively, the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. They were perhaps the most famous cultural landmarks of the region and the site was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site along with the surrounding cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamyan Valley. The statues were represented wearing Hellenic tunics, an echo of Alexander the Great's contribution to the Central Asian mix almost a millennium earlier.
The smaller of the two statues was built in AD 507, the larger in 554.[2] The statues are believed to have been built by the Kushans and Indo-Hephthalites (both eastern Indo-European peoples) at the heyday of their empires. The above mentioned groups were the ancestors of the Hazaras, the most persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan.[3] Physical and facial features of the Hazaras are greatly similar to those in the frescoes found in the ancient relics and caves. Furthermore, considering the historical importance of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, unsuccessful claims over the Buddha's heritage have been made by all the ethnic groups in Afghanistan.
A monumental sitting Buddha similar in style to those at Bamiyan still exists in the Bingling Temple caves in China's Gansu province
In March 2001, according to Agence France Presse in Kabul, a decree declared, "Based on the verdict of the clerics and the decision of the Supreme Court of the Islamic Emirate (of Afghanistan) all the statues around Afghanistan must be destroyed. All the statues in the country should be destroyed because these statues have been used as idols and worshipped by people. Only God, the Almighty, deserves to be worshipped, not anyone or anything else."
Information and Culture Minister Qadratullah Jamal told Associated Press of a decision by 400 religious clerics from across Afghanistan declaring the Buddhist statues against the tenets of Islam. "They came out with a consensus that the statues were against Islam," said Jamal.
Dynamiting and destruction, March 2001
The statues were destroyed by dynamite over several weeks, starting in early March, carried out in different stages. Initially, the statues were fired at for several days using anti-aircraft guns and artillery. This damaged them but did not obliterate them. Then the Taliban placed anti-tank mines at the bottom of the niches, so that when chunks of rock broke off from artillery fire, the statues would fall and be blown up again. In the end, the Taliban tied ropes around some local Hazara men, lowered them down the cliff face, and forced them to place explosives into holes in the Buddhas.[8]
On March 6, 2001 The Times quoted Mullah Mohammed Omar as stating, "Muslims should be proud of smashing idols. It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them." He had clearly changed his position from being in favor of the statues to being against them. During a March 13 interview for Japan's Mainichi Shimbun, Afghan Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel stated that the destruction was anything but a retaliation against the international community for economic sanctions: "We are destroying the Buddha statues in accordance with Islamic law and it is purely a religious issue".
Then Taliban ambassador-at-large, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, said that the destruction of the statues was carried out by the Head Council of Scholars after a single Swedish monuments expert proposed to restore the statues' heads. Hashimi is reported as saying: "When the Afghani head council asked them to provide the money to feed the children instead of fixing the statues, they refused and said, 'No, the money is just for the statues, not for the children'. Herein, they made the decision to destroy the statues".[10]
Feb 20, 2008
INDIAN PAISA LEAGUE (IPL)
The players auction and the huge amount that various franchisee spent on buying cricket players actually drove me to write this article. The highest bid was for the present India ODI captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni of about Rs 6crores. Many other players fetched round Rs 3 crores to be a part of a particular team. Forget the players earning money, the main revenue generated will go in the account of our very own BCCI which is led by none other than Sharad Pawar.
Sharad Pawar, out Hon. Minister for Agriculture can fetch over 1000crores for the IPL but when it comes to debt ridden farmers, there is no way we can fetch money. BCCI was never as rich as it is now. If Sharad Pawar, as the President of BCCI can bring about this change in BCCI, why can't he do the same thing for our farmers? Certainly, there is lack of will power. Any ways, the purpose of this article was to highlight, the way cricket has progressed and has been changed into a money making business.
It all actually started with Sachin Tendulkar bagging the 100crore contract from World Tel in the year 1998. There mite be (as I was too young, I don't know) many people opposing this or voicing their concern over this contract during those days. But why should our sportsmen not earn as other sportsmen for other countries do? From then on cricket has seen a number of changes and more and more money has been involved in cricket. The recent one being, BCCI's idea to form a Indian Premier League, which will have a 20-20 tournament between 8 teams and players from all round the world. Basically, BCCI got to earn more money through this. They just had to give out television contract, a sponsorship deal and lease out the teasm to private players and sit back and count the mullah generated. That's what the BCCI has been doing for the past 3 years from the time Sharad Pawar came into power in BCCI. Where has all the money generated gone? Isn't the BCCI responsible to asnwer this question. It;s good that the players are earning more, but thats only the international players, who already get hell lot of money through sponsorships. What about the Ranji players who don't have enough talent to come upto the international level. what has the BCCI done for them?
We all know the pathetic condition out stadium's are in. You cannot walk inside the Wankhede Stadium during the match. There are no facilities for the spectators. This is the condition,just because the BCCI knows the spectators are going to come in no matter what is the state of the stands. Can't the BCCI shell out its money to change this state? We all know, how school cricket is played. 4-5 matches are on on a ground that is not even as big as one full ground. The outfield is in a even more pathetic state. Well, changing this isn's going to bring in moolah for BCCI, itz only going to bring in good players. Who cares about good players. money is all that matters.
Coming to the pathetic state of other sports in India. The shooters don't have ammunation and the shuttlers don't have shuttles. One big country cant afford even these small things. I am fed up of writing against our pathetic politicians. The reason why Sharad Pawar became the president of BCCI was that he was intrested in sports and not cricket as such. If this is his interest in sports, why cant he even hand out 5% share of BCCI's earning to other sport bodies. I feel, even if that part is put to good use we can have world class sports persons. I personally feel the recent committee in BCCI is doing a fabulous job in getting in money for BCCI, but they have been a total failure in channelizing this money. We can have a separate group of people ie. ex cricket players to channelize this money. I am pretty much sure, we will be able to change the standard of cricket in India and take it to a new level.
BCCI has been turning into the Indian Paisa League. It is a good change, but the Paisa has to be put to proper use. That is what has not been happening. Lets hope, by the end of this decade, at least we have a very good cricketing authority and India is the number 1 team in the world.
~Harshad
Sharad Pawar, out Hon. Minister for Agriculture can fetch over 1000crores for the IPL but when it comes to debt ridden farmers, there is no way we can fetch money. BCCI was never as rich as it is now. If Sharad Pawar, as the President of BCCI can bring about this change in BCCI, why can't he do the same thing for our farmers? Certainly, there is lack of will power. Any ways, the purpose of this article was to highlight, the way cricket has progressed and has been changed into a money making business.
It all actually started with Sachin Tendulkar bagging the 100crore contract from World Tel in the year 1998. There mite be (as I was too young, I don't know) many people opposing this or voicing their concern over this contract during those days. But why should our sportsmen not earn as other sportsmen for other countries do? From then on cricket has seen a number of changes and more and more money has been involved in cricket. The recent one being, BCCI's idea to form a Indian Premier League, which will have a 20-20 tournament between 8 teams and players from all round the world. Basically, BCCI got to earn more money through this. They just had to give out television contract, a sponsorship deal and lease out the teasm to private players and sit back and count the mullah generated. That's what the BCCI has been doing for the past 3 years from the time Sharad Pawar came into power in BCCI. Where has all the money generated gone? Isn't the BCCI responsible to asnwer this question. It;s good that the players are earning more, but thats only the international players, who already get hell lot of money through sponsorships. What about the Ranji players who don't have enough talent to come upto the international level. what has the BCCI done for them?
We all know the pathetic condition out stadium's are in. You cannot walk inside the Wankhede Stadium during the match. There are no facilities for the spectators. This is the condition,just because the BCCI knows the spectators are going to come in no matter what is the state of the stands. Can't the BCCI shell out its money to change this state? We all know, how school cricket is played. 4-5 matches are on on a ground that is not even as big as one full ground. The outfield is in a even more pathetic state. Well, changing this isn's going to bring in moolah for BCCI, itz only going to bring in good players. Who cares about good players. money is all that matters.
Coming to the pathetic state of other sports in India. The shooters don't have ammunation and the shuttlers don't have shuttles. One big country cant afford even these small things. I am fed up of writing against our pathetic politicians. The reason why Sharad Pawar became the president of BCCI was that he was intrested in sports and not cricket as such. If this is his interest in sports, why cant he even hand out 5% share of BCCI's earning to other sport bodies. I feel, even if that part is put to good use we can have world class sports persons. I personally feel the recent committee in BCCI is doing a fabulous job in getting in money for BCCI, but they have been a total failure in channelizing this money. We can have a separate group of people ie. ex cricket players to channelize this money. I am pretty much sure, we will be able to change the standard of cricket in India and take it to a new level.
BCCI has been turning into the Indian Paisa League. It is a good change, but the Paisa has to be put to proper use. That is what has not been happening. Lets hope, by the end of this decade, at least we have a very good cricketing authority and India is the number 1 team in the world.
~Harshad
Howdy!
HI Fellas...this is Yash!And thanks to Harshad , I will, from now on, be sharing a bit of space with him on this blog.So, lemme give ya'll an intro..(though Harsh did a great job of it!)
I was in the King George School, Matunga.And then i was with Harshad in Khalsa College. And we had a great time together...troubling our dear Tronix Profs., right naa???
Well yes as Harshad writes...my hobby is writing.(though i won't be any better than Harshad...he gets all the best topics to write on!!!) . But i'm a dull writer on the comp. cuz i take a huge time writing a single goddamned virtual line!!!
So when i heard Harsh has started this blog...i volunteered to write!!!And so now i'm here!!!
So, Let's make this a revolution!!!
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