Sunday, January 30, 2011

Gandhi's Death - Hey Ram

Few Excerpts from the book, The Men Who Killed Gandhi by Manohar Malgonkar.

On 20th January 1948, Madanlal had exploded a bomb at Birla House, where Gandhi lived.

When Lady Mountbatten, who had come to see him soon afterwards, had congratulated him on his coolness he had explained to her that he not even realized that something had been exploded in the grounds of Birla House. 'If somebody fired at me point blank and I faced his bullet with a smile, repeating the name of Rama in my heart, I should be deserving of congratulations.'

On 30th January 1948,

No one noticed whether Gandhi's face bore a smile as he faced his assailant. But Gurbachan Singh, a Sikh businessman from Panipat who was a devotee of Gandhi and who was only a few steps behind him as he fell, deposed that Gandhi's last words were, 'Hai Rama!'. Karkare, on the other hand, who stood within a few feet of Gandhi and saw him as the bullets struck him swore to the other that all Gandhi uttered was a cry of pain, a guttural rasp, 'Aaaah!'

It is of course, possible that both are wrong, and that what they heard, or say they heard, was conditioned by the one man's veneration for Gandhi and the other man's contempt. Then again it is possible that both are right, and the invocation 'Hai Rama!' uttered with his last breath may have sounded to Karkare like a cry of pain.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Awards

When an Italian is controlling India, Human Resource Development Ministry worried about a great indian chess player getting doctorate citing reasons that he has the citizenship of Spain also. Finally, he has rejected the doctorate, and he may not take it in the present government's rule.

Maharashtra Government and Prime Minister's Office have recommended Bharatha Ratna for a great Indian Cricket Player. But, he was rejected citing reasons that, he is too young to receive Bharatha Ratna. But, there is no problem in making 41 years old person as the Prime Minister of India, with a single reason that, his father, grand mother and great grand father were Prime Ministers of India.

One Prime Minister of India gave Bharatha Ratna to a Chief Minister after his death. Unfortunately, he did not give the Bhartha Ratna for his contribution to his state, but, he gave it to form the alliance with his party. Had that Chief Minister been alive, he would have rejected the Bhartha Ratna, because, it is written in Hindi only, and he does not like that.

Dr.S.P.Bala Subrahmanyam and P.Suseela are basically from Andhra Pradesh, and they are the top most singers of Telugu cinema and sang many songs in many other languages. Unfortunately, A.P. government is always busy with giving awards to the supporters of their party, and never cared about people like Balu and Suseela. Balu received Padmasri in 2001 and Padmabhushan in 2011. P.Suseela received Padmabhushan in 2008. All the three nominations were from Tamilnadu government only and not from A.P. government.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi have received Bharatha Ratna when they were Prime Ministers of India. Pranab Mukerjee received Padma Vibhushan when he was the Finance Miniser of Union Cabinet (After Prime Minister, he was the second most important person in the union ministry). Don't they know what is Conflict of Interest?

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Gandhi's Policies On Governance

An army should be non-violent.

Majority party should voluntarily withdraw from the business of governing.

Economy should reject all technological advances.

A society should abide by his own standards of austerity as well as humanitarian ideals.

Gandhi also wanted to close Congress after the Independence, since it served it's purpose. But, none of the other top leaders agreed to that.

Gandhi wrote the following in the Hind Swaraj.

India's salvation consists in unlearning what she has learnt during the last fifty years. The railways, the telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors and the such like have to go; and the so-called upper classes have to learn consciously, religiously and deliberately the simple peasant life, knowing it to be a life-giving true happiness.

Source:
The Men Who Killed Gandhi by Manohar Malgonkar
Gandhi - A Sublime Failure by S.S.Gill

Friday, January 21, 2011

Philosophical Speech By Mahathma Gandhi

On 20th Jan 1948, Madanlal had exploded a bomb at Birla House, where Gandhi lived. After Madanlal was arrested, Gandhi said the following in the evening prayer meeting.

No one should look down upon the misguided young man who had thrown the bomb. He probably looked upon me as an enemy of Hinduism. After all, had not the Gita said that, whenever there was an evil-minded person damaging religion, God sent someone to end his life?


Source: The Men Who Killed Gandhi by Manohar Malgonkar

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Paying Advance and Canceling - Who is Benefited?

I was searching for a house, and found one house, which suited many of my requirements, but not all. The rent for that house was Rs.6,000 and a deposit of Rs.35,000. I was not sure, whether I can get better house than that. So, I decided to take it, and paid an advance of Rs.1,000. After few hours, I realized that, it may be little difficult to adjust in that house, and I continued my searching for five days, and found another house. Immediately after finding the house that satisfied all my requirements, I told the previous house owner that, I would not take that house, and I lost the advance.

Who got benefited out of this?

The room rent is Rs.6,000 per month. For 5 days, it would be around Rs.1,000. Since, I reserved that room for 5 days, I paid Rs.1,000 for that. So, I was not in loss. The same thing with the house owner. But, the house owner might have more loss, if he was using paid advertisements, and he might have lost few potential tenants.

Many people do not understand this and think that I lost money in this, where as I did not lose anything.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Uncapped Players in IPL

IPL did not put the players who never played for India in auction. Players like Ambati Rayudu, Manish pandey have never played for team India, so they were not put in the auction. By the rules of IPL, they can get at max of Rs.30 Lakh and Rs.20 Lakh respectively. Those players can directly talk to the franchises and make agreements.

In the last few days, I have read so many news items and cartoons sympathizing them for getting so less money in IPL, where as players who played very few matches for team India are getting in crores.

If an important player comes just for Rs.30 Lakh, who would not want him? Every team would fight for him. If more than one team fights for him, what would he do? He would increase his price. Since, IPL does not allow him to take more than Rs.30 Lakh, he would take the extra amount as black. Finally, whoever can give him more money, he would play for that team.

The difference is, in the auctioning, the teams can spend at max Rs.45 crore for buying the entire team, where as in this case, there is no cap for the players. (That's why these players are called as Uncapped players. ;) )

There is no need to sympathize the uncapped players. All of them get good amount of money for their capability.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Shortcuts in Excel For Select, Add and Delete

Shift + Space -> To Select Row
Ctrl + Space -> To Select Column
Ctrl + + -> To add the selection (If you had selected a row/column, then a row/column would be added.)
Ctrl + - -> To delete the selection

Had I known these shortcuts few years back, I would not have hated Excel this much.

Friday, January 07, 2011

Excerpts of Sri Krishna Committee's Report


(v) Bifurcation of the State into Telangana and Seemandhra as per existing boundaries with Hyderabad as the capital of Telangana and Seemandhra to have a new capital
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Therefore, after taking into account all the pros and cons, the Committee did not think it to be the most preferred, but the second best option. Separation is recommended only in case it is unavoidable and if this decision can be reached amicably amongst all the three regions.


(vi) Keeping the State united by simultaneously providing certain definite Constitutional/Statutory measures for socio-economic development and political empowerment of Telangana region creation of a statutorily empowered Telangana Regional Council
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The Committee discussed all aspects of this option and while it acknowledges that there will be certain difficulties in its implementation, on balance, it found it the most workable option in the given circumstances and in the best interest of the social and economic welfare of the people of all the three regions.

Reading a committee report is definitely not like reading a news paper or a book.

Full Report of Sri Krishna Committee in PDF format (8.1 MB) http://www.tnsatish.com/srikrishna.zip

Full Report of Sri Krishna Committee in TXT format (950 KB) http://www.tnsatish.com/srikrishna.txt

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Why Did Dr.JP Contest From Kukatpally?

This is the question that is raised by few politicians. They say that, since, Kukatpally has more people from his caste, he contested from there.

For this, Dr.JP answered just in one statement.

If they are going to decide, where we have to contest, let them decide at all the places. We will decide where they have to contest.

However the transparent a system is, there are few things that are not disclosed, and few others are not disclosed after certain level. If you are giving awards, or doing performance review for your employees, or selecting the employees for different projects, you will not disclose everything that happened in the closed rooms. If you do that, it will lead to disaster only.

Let's suppose, you are planning to give awards to few great scientists. You thought, who are better than the scientists who received Nobel prize, and decided to give the awards to all the scientists who won Nobel prize. Since, it is not a good idea to disclose the criteria of the awards, you did not disclose it. Now, I criticize you that, you are biased to Jews, and you are discriminating others. [Jews won 20% of the Nobel prizes, but, they comprise of only 0.2% of the population.] After my criticism, would you change your criteria, or go-ahead with your original plan. If you are planning to change the criteria, you are a stupid.

Let's suppose, if Dr.JP contests from a different place, what would those politicians say? If he contests from Serilingampally or Malkajgiri, they would give the same reasons as of Kukatpally. If he contests from Khairatabad or any other high class area in Hyderabad, they would find appropriate word and criticize with that. If he contests from any part of Coastal Andhra or Rayalaseema (irrespective of whether it is his hometown or the places where he worked as collector), the same politicians criticize him as the supporter of United Andhra in a big way. Right now also they are criticizing him as a supporter of United Andhra. But, if he contests from outside Telangana, it would be even more. If you are going to change the place you contest, just because of some criticism from some leader, then next time you will not find any constituency.

For any political party, the transparency of selection of the candidate should be there within the working committee and to some extent to the potential candidates. For everyone else (even if they are senior members of the party), it is none of their business. If they make it transparent to everyone (or atleast to the other political parties), that party will not be there by the next elections.

For the question on why did Dr.JP contest from Kukatpally only, Namasthe Andhra has answered in a very nice and simple way in it's article. Educated people can easily understand the new politics and the politics without money, so he contested from Kukatpally and not because of caste.

If you still have not understood why I wrote about giving awards to the Nobel prize winners, read it once again.