Hello friends,

If you are living in India or have even a partial interest in India, then you must be aware of the latest wave of corruption scams which has completely jolted the country. The 2G Spectrum Scam wherein a loss of Rs. 1.76 lakh crore ($39 Billions) to the Government  owing to irregularities in allocation of 2G specturm to various companies has been estimated is being considered as the biggest scam in the history of India.

Just for all those who are interested in this issue, here is a simple explanation of spectrum and it’s allocation in India.

1. What is spectrum?

The word spectrum refers to a collection of various types of electromagnetic radiations of different wavelengths.  Spectrum or airwaves are the radio frequencies on which all communication singnals travel. In India the radio frequencies are being used for different types of services like space communication, mobile communication, broadcasting, radio navigation, mobile satellite service, aeronautical satellite services, defence communication etc.  Radio frequency is a natural resource but unlike other resources it will deplete when used. But it will be wasted if not used efficiently.

A look at following picture will make the things more clearer. Click on it to enlarge.

Spectrum Allocation

The spectrum allocated to Indian telecom operator is most crowded and inadequate to accommodate the usage by 650 million mobile subscribers as on date.  This has affected the quality of customer service and resulted in poor voice quality, call drop and undelivered messages of mobile services in India.

2. Agencies allocating spectrum

Spectrum allocation is important and necessary to ensure interference free operation for each radio service. All nations share the electromagnetic spectrum and reserve their right to its unlimited use. However, to facilitate international telecommunications cooperation to support trade, transportation, communications, and mutual protection against interference, all countries have agreed to an International Telecommunications Convention. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) at the World Radio Communication Conferences allocates spectrum frequencies for the use of various countries. Since the mobile communication technologies provide international roaming facilities, it is essential to allocate spectrum in the
common bands which are being used the world over. Secondly the mobile handsets which are manufactured are aligned to the GSM 900/1800 bands. If radio frequencies are allotted in any other bands then the handsets will not be compatible to those bands. The Wireless Planning and Coordination (WPC) Wing of the Ministry of Communications, created in 1952, is the National Radio Regulatory Authority responsible for Frequency Spectrum Management, including licensing and caters for the needs of all wireless users in the country. It issues licenses to operate wireless stations. WPC is divided into major sections like Licensing and Regulation (LR), New Technology Group (NTG) and Standing Advisory Committee on Radio Frequency Allocation (SACFA). SACFA makes the recommendations on major frequency allocation issues, formulation of the frequency allocation plan, making recommendations on the various issues related to International Telecom Union (ITU), to sort out problems referred to the committee by various wireless users.

3. India’s National Frequency Allocation plan

The National Frequency Allocation Plan (NFAP) forms the basis for development and manufacturing of wireless equipment and spectrum utilization in the country. Frequency bands allocated to various types of radio services in India are as follows.

i)      0-87.5 MHz is used for marine and aeronautical navigation, short and medium wave radio, amateur (ham) radio and cordless phones.

ii)     87.5-108 MHz is used for FM radio broadcasts

iii)   109- 173 Used for Satellite communication, aeronautical navigation and outdoor broadcast vans

iv)  174-230 MHz not allocated.

v)   230—450 Used for Satellite communication, aeronautical navigation and outdoor broadcast vans

vi)  450- 585. Not allocated.

vii)  585-698 Used for TV broadcast

viii)    698-806 not allocated.

ix)     806-960 Used by GSM and CDMA mobile services

x)   960-1710 Aeronautical and space communication

xi)  1710- 1930 Used for GSM mobile services

xii) 1930-2010 – Used by defence forces

xiii)  2010-2025 – Not allocated

xiv)  2025-2110 – Satellite and space communications

xv)  2110-2170 – Not allocated

xvi) 2170-2300 – Satellite and space communications

xvii)  2300-2400 not allocated.

xviii)   2400- 2483.5 Used for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth short range services

xix) 2483.5-3300 Space communications

xx) 3300-3600   not allocated.

xxi) 3600-10000 Space research, radio navigation

xxii)  10000 – used for satellite downlink for broadcast and DTH services

4. Telecom spectrum policy in India

In India GSM technology works in the frequency bands of 900 and 1800 MHz and CDMA technology works in the 800 MHz band. Presently, 100 MHz spectrum is ear marked for GSM services and 20 MHz is earmarked for CDMA.  Out of this 65 MHz of GSM band is still with Defence forces. The minimum amount of spectrum required for launching GSM services is 4.4 MHz. In 2002, the government introduced a subscriber linked spectrum allocation process, which provided for a maximum allotment of 12.5 MHz of spectrum per operator in each service area. The initial allotment of spectrum along with the licence was 4.4 MHz for GSM and 2.5 MHz for CDMA. This could be further scaled up to 6.2 MHz for GSM and 5 MHz for CDMA operators depending on availability and the operator’s ability to justify the need for it. For additional spectrum they had to meet the subscriber linked criterion laid down by DoT.

However due to the deluge of over 570 UAS licence applications, in Dec 2007, DoT delinked spectrum from the telecom licence and implemented a policy of first come first served basis for spectrum allocation. It depended entirely on submission of licence fees to DoT’s WPC wing for a spectrum licence. In 2008 DoT revised the criteria for additional spectrum allocation.

According to this, the subscriber base required for additional spectrum allocation was hiked two to six times for different circles.

5.  Defence Band

In India significant quantum of radio frequencies required for telecommunication is used by the defence forces. The telecom and defence ministries are in discussion for transferring the radio frequencies for telecommunication. Last year the telecom ministry signed a MOU with defence ministry as per which Defence ministry will surrender 45 MHZ of spectrum to telecom ministry. Out of this, 25 MHZ is identified for 3G services. In order to compensate the loss of spectrum, the telecom ministry agreed to provide fibre cable network for armed forces across the country at a cost of Rs 10000 cr (US $ 2.2  billion). The telecom ministry also agreed for a waiver of Rs 938 cr (US $ 208 million) to the defence ministry and agreed to allocate 30% of the all frequencies in the non communication bands.

6. 3G and BWA spectrum allocation

Over the years the government has been taking steps to frame policies to ensure efficient utilization of spectrum, which is a scarce resource. However efforts of DOT and TRAI have resulted in controversies. Therefore the Government decided to go ahead with the auctioning of 3G and BWA spectrum with a open and transparent format which resulted in the Government earning Rs 67719 cr (US $ 15.05 billion) for 3G spectrum and Rs 38543 cr (US $ 8.6 billion) for BWA spectrum. Spectrum required for the launch of 3G and BWA services is yet to be vacated by the defence department and is expected to be available by September 2010,   TRAI has now recommended that the excess 2G spectrum with the operators also need to be valued at the 3G prices and recovered from the existing operators, which is strongly opposed by the GSM operators.
7. Conclusion

The operators need additional spectrum to improve the quality of services. The Government should formulate a spectrum policy which will promote efficient use of spectrum by developing market incentives and differential pricing of spectrum in congested areas. An open and transparent auction format will ensure that the government realizes the best price for spectrum as per the market forces and at the same time the telecom operators minimize and efficiently use the spectrum.

Article Courtesy : ArticleBase.com

The author can be reached at vsmoni@hotmail.com. To read more articles on telecom, visit indiatelecomonline.com

Another important article Specturm is at HowStuffWork.com.

Read it here :  How the Radio Spectrum Works

KBC 4 the  legendary ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ series has started influencing India in a big way. Right from its second day itself, it has dominated the search engine Google’s top searched queries at night.

Just see this figure of Google Hot Trends :

Do the search terms have any similarities?

If you have seen  the today’s episode of KBC, you must have remembered this question:

Which among the following personalities have been a pilot in Indian Air Force?

(a) Rajiv Gandhi (b) Jaswant Singh (c) Suresh Kalmadi (d) Captain Satish Sharma.

To the disbelief of the majority, the right answer of this question was (c) Suresh Kalmadi.

You can see that how frenetically these personality  were searched during the time this question was being asked in KBC.

The term ‘ Suresh Kalmadi profile’ attained Volcanic proportion during 9-10 PM today on Google. This is because the just about everybody with a simultaneous internet and TV access was searching for the answer of this question.

Not even Kalmadi, the colour of an Octopus’s blood (another question at KBC)  also dominated the search scenario.

KBC 4 has arrived with a bang.

Nation’s heart throb Salman Khan is an Idiot. When his popularity is touching unprecedented levels and his latest blockbuster Dabangg has set the silver screen on fire, his interview given to a Pakistani News Channel  3 weeks ago has generated huge amount of bad publicity for him.

What did he say in the interview :

“Too much hype has been created around the 26/11 attacks because elite people were targetted. Attacks have happened in trains and small towns too, but no one talked about it so much.”

“Everybody took this up because the Taj and Oberoi hotels were involved. The attacks happened because our security failed,” he added.

“Everybody knows that the Pakistani government was not behind it and it was a terrorist attack. Our security had failed. We have had lot of attacks earlier, and all of them were not from Pakistan. They were from within also.”

Since I have not heard the entire interview, I could not say whether he actually said the last statement (Everybody knows that the Pakistani government was not behind it….) or not. However,  the news percolating in media seems to indicate that he indeed said these lines.

Salman, you are an idiot. A big one.  You have the love of 1.25 Billion people. Yet you did this interview to make a good name for yourself in Pakistan. It is not for you to decide whether Pakistan was involved in the 26/11 or not. By the way, everybody knows that the Pakistani government was not behind it. It s as clear as the box office report of Dabangg.

Though he has tendered an unqualified apology, the damage has been done.  Criticism has begun from all quarter.  Shiv Sena has already started opposing him.  I don’t know what the MNS people will do from Monday.

If it was a stunt to give a boost of extra publicity to Dabangg, it is a very very cheap stunt.

Actors should only do what they can do at best. Acting !

You can watch Salman’s  interview with Pakistani Channel  here

You can watch Salman Khan’s apology here :

I came to know about this in the morning through Times of India. A leak of 91000 classified documents by wikileaks which clearly demonstrate that Pakistan and its notorious ISI is fuelling terrorism in Afghanistan and India. You can read about this in Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010.

For we, Indians, this, in fact, is no news. It is a common knowledge here. ISI works very closely with separatist elements to perpetrates heinous crimes of violence against Indians – in India and abroad.

We Indians often find ourselves totally helpless in the midst of such attacks. India, who is a very soft target for terrorist is suffering from the callous and insensitive attitude of its successive Political leaders, who are just incapable of developing a winning strategy for winning this war.

Often I think as if common man in India is condemned by destiny to live in perpetual fear with no surety whether he will return home safely in evening or not.

Well enough of India and its bad luck. There is something which I want to say about Americans.

The wikileaks reports have shown that Washington is blindly paying Pakistan massive amounts of money for access to Afghanistan even as Islamabad uses its spy agency ISI to plot the death of American and Nato troops, allied Indian personnel, and undermines US Policy.

Now I want to ask two question

Number one : Where are the patriot Americans?

Those we see in Hollywood blockbuster who always emerge as the savior of the man kind.

Will those American now arise to take notice of this leak? Can we expect that something will be done now?

Number two : Is President Obama any different from Mr Bush ?

He may be the most charismatic leader of our times, but can he bring justice to those martyrs US soldiers who were died because the US money which was expected to help them was diverted to plot their killings?

I hope world’s most powerful democracy will try to look inwards and have an introspection.

In one of my earlier posts, I wrote about the causes of global recession. This post become quite popular and hundreds of people thanked me for the simple explanation of this phenomenon. This is article is in continuation of what I wrote in that post.

Sub-prime mess which was the main theme of that post and the prime reason that eventually sparked a world wide recession is at best an immediate cause of the recession. In this post, I will throw some light on the reason behind the very emergence of a sub-prime situation and why despite pumping of billions of dollars into the world economy, it is still not showing any sign of recovery.

In my first post on recession, I told you about how availability of an easy credit situation prompted the US lending institution to lend money to sub-prime borrowers and how these risky deals turned into a nightmare for big financial institution. In this post, we will be discussing three main issues :

(1) How American economy became so full of cash that made availability of loans for almost everything so easy?
(2) Why American banks could not foresee the risk involved in sub-prime loans?
(3)  Why the situation is not improving as fast as expected despite stimulus package of billons of dollars?

From where the Cash came in US ?

In order to understand how US economy got flooded with dollars, we need to go back in time by a decade. In 1997-98, the tiger economies of Asia (a term used to refer the countries of South East Asia like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia etc) suffered a major economic crisis. Though it is not necessary to know the details of this crisis, a brief overview of that crisis will help us understand the current mess in world as it is all linked.

During those years, several countries of South East Asia had developed worrying financial weaknesses which were the results of heavy investment in highly speculative real estate ventures, financed by borrowing either from poorly informed foreign sources or by credit from under regulated domestic financial institutions.

The crisis began with wrong banking practices.  In those countries crony capitalism (where borrower had the connections with government) became too dominant.  The minister’s nephew or the president’s son could open a bank and raise money both from the domestic populace and from foreign lenders, with everyone believing that their money was safe because official connections stood behind the institution. Government guarantees on bank deposits are standard practice throughout the world, but normally these guarantees come with strings attached. The owners of banks have to meet capital requirements (that is, put a lot of their own money at risk), restrict themselves to prudent investments, and so on. In Asian countries, however, too many people were granted privilege without responsibility, allowing them to play a game of “heads I win, tails somebody else loses.” And the loans financed highly speculative real estate ventures and wildly overambitious corporate expansions.

This bubble was inflated still further by credulous foreign investors, who were all too eager to put money into faraway countries about which they knew nothing (except that they were thriving). It was also, for a while, self-sustaining: All those irresponsible loans created a boom in real estate and stock markets, which made the balance sheets of banks and their clients look much healthier than they were.

However, this bubble had to burst sooner or later. At some point it was going to become clear that the high values Asian markets had placed on their assets weren’t realistic. Speculative bubbles are vulnerable to self-fulfilling pessimism: As soon as a significant number of investors begin to wonder whether the bubble would burst, it did.

So Asia went into a downward spiral. As nervous investors began to pull their money out of banks, asset prices plunged. As asset prices fell, it became increasingly doubtful whether governments would really stand behind the deposits and loans that remained, and investors fled all the faster. Foreign investors stampeded for the exits, forcing currency devaluations, which worsened the crisis still more as banks and companies found themselves with assets in devalued baht or rupiah, but with liabilities in lamentably solid dollars.

In 1996 capital was flowing into emerging Asia at the rate of about $100 billion a year; by the second half of 1997 it was flowing out at about the same rate. Inevitably, with that kind of reversal, Asia’s asset markets plunged, its economies went into recession, and it only got worse from there.

Eventually International Monetary Fund (IMF) had to step in to save these economies. How these economies later recovered and at what cost is a different story.  However, this crisis brought with it some major lessons for the Asian economies. One of the most important lessons for them was to create a solid Foreign Exchange Reserve so as to withstand the most volatile exit of the money from their markets. High reserves promise safety in a storm. Therefore, most major economies of Asia (including the big China and India) adopted a strategy of maintaining high forex reserve so as to ensure safety from any such crisis in future.  This shift in priorities created a very interesting situation.

In the mid-1990s, the emerging economies of Asia had been major importers of capital, borrowing abroad to finance their development. But after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 these countries began protecting themselves by amassing huge war chests of foreign assets, in effect exporting capital to the rest of the world.

To say in other words, the Asian economy came in to a Saving mode. In order to maintain huge foreign reserve, they also started buying US securities. This resulted in a huge inflow of dollars into the US economy. As more and more dollars kept coming into the US economy from world over, the American investors started devising very sophisticated and innovative methods to convert the flood of money from Asia into a borrowing and spending spree for American consumers.

Now instead of writing as to how and why this saving tendency of Asian Economies has resulted into the current global mess, I would like to point you towards two excellent articles on this issues written by two of my favorites economists. These articles are very well written in a layman’s language and they will clarify all your doubts about the role Asian economies in current global recession.

The first article is : High forex reserves can worsen recession

Written by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar who is Consulting Editor, Economic Times, the popular financial newspaper of India. He is my favorite columnist.

Second article is :  Revenge of the Glut

Written by noted economist, the Nobel winner Paul Krugman. In this article he has concluded that the world is suffering from a global paradox of thrift.

The above two articles provide useful information on how a global saving glut is worsening the recession. I did not feel the need to write on these topics as these two excellent articles are sufficient in explaining the role of Asian economies in the present global recession.

So let us again reconsider the three issues we started with:

(1) How American economy became so full of cash that made availability of loans for almost any thing so easy?

It was all because of the insistence of Asian economy to generate a huge Foreign Exchange Reserve that ultimately created an imbalance of global money flow. If you read the above two articles, you will understand this clearly.

(2) Why American banks could not foresee the risk involved in sub-prime loans?

As Paul Krugman has pointed in his article, it is because of the depth and sophistication of the country’s financial markets. In his own words, “American bankers, empowered by a quarter-century of deregulatory zeal, led the world in finding sophisticated ways to enrich themselves by hiding risk and fooling investors.”

In America which has such a long history of free capital markets, financial institutions have mastered the art of hiding risk and fooling investors. When a huge inflow of money is coming your way, a sense of wealth and greed becomes dominant in our mind. After all capitalism is all about profit and maximizing your return. Isn’t it?

(3) Why the situation is not improving as fast as expected despite stimulus package of billions of dollars?

One of the top global economist of the world (I don’t know his name)  has declared that the present crisis is a structural one , reflecting a serious global misallocation of money in recent years, which had created many bubbles that had now burst. Pumping in more money could not resolve the problem, since it amounted to an attempt to reflate the old bubbles. Instead painful structural change are the need of the hour, he said, and this could take years.

What we are seeing the world today is a global saving phenomenon.  American who were the front runners of global borrowing and spending spree have started savings seriously.  The national savings rate of America has bumped up to 5% in January from 3.9% in December. A year ago, it was at 0.1%.

Saving is not a bad idea. But if everybody on earth starts saving and no one choose to spend, the saving will lose all its meaning. It is a well documented theory in economics known as the Paradox of Thrift.  Suppose people decide to become more thrifty, that is, they decide to save more at each level of income, one might expect that this would increase the total amount of savings. But the simple Keynesian multiplier model predicts a paradox of thrift that total savings will remain the same and income will decline.

So when the situation will improve?

I believe in the spiritual mantra of “This too will pass”. This is not the first recession the world has ever seen and certainly this is not going to be the last. I think the need of the hour for individuals is to not loose hope and prepare themselves for future. Keep learning new things, improve your skills and above all don’t loose heart. The best brains in the world are at work to find solution to this recession. Eventually, we’ll find a cure. And even if nothing works, the greatest healer of all – the time – will subside this recession one day.

For every problem under the Sun,
there is a solution or is none
if there is one, try to find it,
If there is none, never mind it.

We all have a limited time span on this earth. A Recession, not matter how lengthy or worse it appears now, is a momentary phenomenon when compared on the global scale of our entire life time. Don’t allow this momentary phenomenon to overshadow the wonderful days of happiness and wealth which will definitely come in your life in the days to come.

I got this email forward from my brother today. 

It is claimed to be from a Satyam employee, who has a slightly different opinion on the whole Satyam Debacle ?  A very interesting read indeed …..

At a time when almost 90% of my Satyam friends are cribbing about the fraud and betrayal by Ramalinga Raju, I have a slightly different opinion. It’s bold of me to write this in black and white but this comes straight from my heart and experience.

Let me start by quoting an example of 2006. Most of my friends were unemployed with 50-60% plus marks in BTech, with a degree from an average University and hunting madly for a job. Whether people accept it today or not but the truth remains that Satyam was the ONLY saviour and the only mass recruiter who was ready to accept students who had back logs but had cleared them and also it did not put a very strict minimum marks criterion. And this was true not only for my small college at Lucknow but also those across India . Satyam is the fourth largest in IT in India. Looking at India’s population I really want to thank Raju for giving some 54000 Indians jobs atleast for all these years . He was the reason for the revival of confidence and the reason for the bread and butter for many a families.

Satyam training was renowned all over India. Their STC training centre created numerous love stories and unexpected rekindling of a youthful environment where girls and boys were more indepenent than their college days . I remember most of my Satyam friends felt that they made better friends at Satyam’s three to six months training than those in the four years of BTech.

Unfortunately people forget to thank God in sad times . I understand that what Raju did is deplorable and unpardonable. He should have treated business more formally and not dealt with it like a family affair . He should have been strict a couple of months or years before itself. Why did he hire so many non potential candidates and keep them on bench? When were the managers and the team mates last told that if they dont work hard, they will lose their job? Business cannot be run lousily.

I have been staying with some 200 odd girls for the last 2 years and many of them are from Satyam. Moreover I network a lot and I have lots of male friends at Satyam . I have seen how people tail gate to Satyam, how they give their swipe cards to others to swipe it on their behalf , how female employees have gone home sharp at 6am irrespective of when they landed at office, how employees sit at home for months at a stretch, prepare for all kind of post graduate entrance exams and still enjoy a full month’s pay, how often they went for movies at local theatres at office hours, how often employees went to office just to sign on registers in the morning and at evening, how often they faked their certificates , how often they put unlimited fake medical and house rental bills.

How can we blame just one man when EACH AND EVERY person was disloyal ? How can we exclude Auditors like PwC ? How can we exclude the Board of Directors who have washed their hands off so clean? How can we exclude banks who gave hefty loans without true verfication? How can we exclude the Chief Minister of AP who allowed leniency for Raju’s fellow businessman? How can we exclude managers who were never able to trace which bench employee under him had been away from office for how long ?

Yet how can people forget this is the same man whose ideas and potentials gave them an identity for the past several years? How many couples found the right match at an IT industry , courtesy Satyam and how many Andhra farmers benefited from their crores of investments in Satyam shares .How can people forget that Satyam launched its offices right at the doorsteps of a residential colony, where people can simply walk to work ?

The most gruesome experience that I can recollect was when a Satyam tag wearing person was waiting to attend an interview and I overheard him saying that he was in a business meeting at the My Home Satyam ( Madhapur) office when he was sitting right infront of me at a totally different company. When employees themselves show such a lousy attitude and dont care a damn for the brand that they carry around their neck, how can they expect others to care?

I am not saying that ALL Satyam employees are bad. I have known very dedicated people too, but my point is very clear, before pointing fingers at others, introspect .There are thousands of people who have completed certifications at the cost of Satyam, got trained at Satyam. Satyam made several freshers stand on their feet to get better jobs elsewhere across the globe and attain onsite exposure through Satyam.

What Raju did was to keep the business of Satyam going at any cost. I see a very smart man in him when he understood that he should rather accept his mistake than be caught by the USA laws . I see a selfish father in him too that he put a lot at stake for Maytas. However, he resigned with a lot of dignity and his letter of resignation shows humility. It takes a mammoth amount of courage to accept your mistake in public at a time when the media is ready to blow everything out of proportion. If humans dont make mistakes who else would ?

My last salute to this man is for creating such mass employment in India for 57k employees and 57k families when even opening a beetle(pan) shop in a lane in India is a challenge !! Thanks to him for creating income for all the thousands of families who benefited through food chains, the tiffin wallahs, the transport people and all those who made money by renting their houses.

I read he donated Rs 12000 crores from his personal pocket to give the January salary of his Satyam employees. Today Satyamites call Raju a FRAUD. The true and loyal Satyamites surely have all the reasons to say this word. But all the rest who sucked every rupee out of Satyam without doing any value addition need to understand – who was a bigger fraud.

Ghajini the much awaited Aamir Khan’s latest flick is going to be released on 25th December. The movie has been marketed extensively and Aamir has succeded in creating a buzz around it.

Recently a friend told me two interesting things about Ghajini.

The Aamir starer Ghajini is a remake of a superhit Tamil movie of the same name where the Tamil Actor Surya played the lead role. Interestingly, the same guy (Allu Arvind) – who directed the Tamil version – has also directed the Hindi remake. Even the actress (Asin)  is also the same. However, what is more interesting is the fact that even the Tamil Ghajini was also inspired from a Hollywood thriller ‘Memento’ . This Hollywood movie was so confusing to general public that in the opinion of most viewers, one needs to watch it at least twice to understand the entire movie.  The film has got some exceptional reviews which can be read here :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/

It is yet to be seen how the Hindi Ghajini will fare at the box office. Some comparisons are bound to be there.

The another interesting thing my friend told me was about an SMS which is going around for last few days.

“Someone killed Aamir’s girlfriend and he lost his memory. Then he tries to find out the killer. Suspense Aamir himself is the killer. Now enjoy ‘Ghajini’!” says the SMS.

Whether the SMS is true would only be clear once the film releases on Friday. It may be a publicity stunt from the film makers. But let me tell you that the original movie ‘Memento’ was considered as on of the top top 5 movies with the best twist endings.

So you can expect a surprise twising end of the Ghajini.

The verdit will be out in next few days.

The website of DDA  (www.dda.org.in) and Urban India are down because of huge rush of traffic.  However, there is an easy way to visit the result of DDA Housing Schemes 2008 for the much awated 5000 flats right now.

Here is a pdf file which contains all the 5000 names of those lucky persons who have secured their names in the lucky draw. The file is in pdf format, has 310 pages and contains entire details about all the lucky winners like their name, flat allotted, category with full address of the flat.

Download the entire results of DDA Housing Scheme 2008 now by clicking on the following two links :

Rapidshare Link :

http://rs226.rapidshare.com/files/173869331/DRW_RSLT_DDA08.pdf

Mediafire Link

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ezieegnmtqn/DRW_RSLT_DDA08.pdf

One more Rapid Upload Link

http://www.rapid-upload.org/PZ4AX8IHQMK5/DRW_RSLT_DDA08.pdf.html

My name is not in the list but ….

My best wishes to all of you !

Today as I wrote this I feel ashamed to call my self Indian. I feel really disappointed, helpless and above all hopeless to think as to why my desitiny decides to give me a birth in India.

We have just witnessed the biggest terrorist attack in the history of India. More than 125 people have killed for the past 24 hours and nobody knows when this ordeal will end and how much more lives it will take.

Do you know what is more tragic than the brutal killings of innocents on the streets of Mumbai? More tragic  than the death of some of our finest police officers? More tragic than the devastation of our premium hotels? More tragic than the fear on the face of a common Indian?

The most tragic thing than all the above is the fact that all of us will forget about this just after a few weeks. Period.

You can see for yourself as I write this. Just after a few weeks this tragic and the most devastating terrorist attack on the soil of India will be conveniently forgotten by our media, our politicians and our people. The life will go on as usual.

We Indians have become the biggest idiots in the world. A matter of joke for the entire world. We have developed an uncanny habit of not learning from our mistakes. We are so happy with our stupid TV serials, our senseless movies, our mindless reality shows that we have even forgotten what ‘SELF RESPECT’ means. We are the biggest nincompoop people in the world.

Those who don’t take a lesson from history are condemned to repeat it.

India has not learned any lesson from history. Let us admit it now. We are a nation of most selfish people on earth. We are senseless, emotionless and the least patriotic people on earth. Just about anybody can come here and humiliate us. Anybody can kill our loved ones and can destroy our properties. But we are so short of any self respect that we will not even raise an objection. We will discuss about this, we will write about this (just as I, an idiot myself, is doing right now), but we shall never take any action against those who challenge our sovereignty.

With all the talk about our so called great democratic system, let us admit that Indian democracy is world’s biggest hypocrisy. Our constitution has all the safeguard to protect the basic right of common man. Yet, here the only person who suffers  at every point of his life is the common man. He is humiliated by police, harassed by corrupt officials, forced to wait in queue, killed in bomb blasts and forced to live a life of uncertainty.

Our politicians always think in terms of vote banks. There every statement is a calculated one with only one aim – to appease one community or other. Our corrupt, selfish and impotent politicians have no concern for the image of India in world’s eyes. They are more concern about their vote banks than to do something meaningful and decisive to fight terrorism.

In a recent news discussion, one of our news channel asked an Israeli expert about  what can be done to fight terrorism in  India. The expert’s answer was simple and straightforward – “Nobody will come to rescue India. It has to fight it’s own battle.”

However, the biggest irony is that though India is capable of fighting its own battle, the politicians of India will never allow that to happen. We are condemned to be lead by a bunch of idiot jokers who don’t give a damn about their country. For them the entire issue is to secure, maintain and enhance their votebanks so as to ensure the control of power in their hand. Nobody is concerned about giving a final blow to the terrorist.

Dr. Manmohan Singh is one the most intelligent economists of the world. However, he is not a person we can look forward to in such time of distress. He is too soft to become Prime Minister of India. He is a very good academic but has turned out to be a very bad Prime Minister. Nobody takes him seriously. His presence does not instill any confidence in us.

In a recent interview, International terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said about India’s terrorism problem :

“The only way to prevent that, the only way to reduce the threat is to develop high-quality, high-grade intelligence on these groups, on the individuals, and to detect and disrupt those organisations – either to incarcerate or kill those individual leaders.

“Unless that is done, the threat of terrorism will grow in India. So India must rethink, must totally revise its counter terrorism policy and strategy as a result of this attack.”

But let me tell you in advance, don’t expect any rethink on India’s strategy to fight terrorism. Unfortunately, we Indians are not made up of that stuff. We are the most selfish people in the world. For us our castes, our communities, our religion and our voters comes first. There is no nationalism left in us. It has died long ago. The kind of people you see in today’s India are not the ones who used to be here once. Now you’ll only find stupid people who can blame each other, who can give money to terrorist so that they can fight a legal battle, who will blame Hindu sages for  terrorism, who will shamelessly support the minorities and reject every finger that points towards them, who will very conveniently forget all attacks on mother India.

I am really ashamed to be a citizen under this coward leadership who have lost all sense of purpose.

My dear India, you are great….

but my heart weeps as…..

your leaders have failed you.

Images Courtesy: Reuters

Not long ago, on August 28, 1963, a great black leader of America Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the most memorable and emotional speech in the history of mankind.

It was a speech filled with pain  and hope. Pain for the conditions of blacks in America and hope that one day they will be treated equally. 

Here are some excerpts of that speech : 

“We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for white only.”

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up… live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Martin Luther King Jr. could not live up to see his dream come true. He was assassinated in 1968. 

However, his dream came true today on 5th November 2008. After 45 years of this historic sppech, Martin’s dream came true. The strongest nation in the world has choosen a black President to lead them.  It was a historic day for the whole world. Blacks who did not have the right to vote there just 50 years can feel proud on the achievement of Barack Obama. 

Congratulation Barack Obama !

You are a child of destiny. Never ever in the history of world someone has risen so high in so little time.  Your achievements have made Martin Luther King’s dream a reality. 

This is something that I like about America. Such unbelievable  success stories are possible only there. 

Congratulations to all friends in America