Investing in Mutual Funds through MF House Website or Broker Website?

If you directly invest from the websites of the Mutual Fund houses, and select Direct Plans, you will save 1% commission that would otherwise go to the Broker Site. But, the advantage with the Broker is, they will handle all the paper work for all the Mutual Funds, and you need to do one time paper work with the broker web site.

If you want get best of both, you can do one thing. Create an account with FundsIndia [It is free]. From that, invest for Rs.500 in tax saving MF of all the Mutual Fund Houses that you want (like Axis, Reliance, HDFC, Birla Sunlife etc.). When you do this, FundsIndia does the paper work for all the mutual fund houses, and they open an account in each of those. Once Folio number is created, you can create an online account in all the MF websites with that Folio Number. With that online account, you can start investing in Direct Plans. By this, with single time paper work, you can invest in any no.of Mutual fund houses, and also you will not lose 1%.

The Tax saving MF is locked for 3 years. You can invest in other Mutual Funds also, but, the minimum for others is Rs.5000.

Raghuram Rajan on When Will Indian Policy Affects Other Countries

Question: With the near rumour of the US cutting down on the federal stimulus, rupee value crashing, when will we see an Indian policy affecting other countries so intensively?

Raghuram Rajan: I have been saying that, the US should worry about the effects of the policies on the rest of the world. If I stood by that, we should not be very happy down the line when Indian policies affect rest of the world adversely. We would like to live in a world where countries take into account the effect of their policies on other countries and do what is right/wrong rather than what is just right, given the circumstances of their country.

Courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153397445190782

Criminalization of Marital Rape

This post may be disturbing to few readers. Reader discretion is advised.

I did not want to comment on this, mainly because, it requires explicit wordings. But, after seeing many people's support on this, I decided to write on this.

I see many people asking for criminalization of Marital Rape. I am unable understand what are they trying to achieve other than to keep significant unfair power in their hands.

What exactly is the definition of Marital rape? Is it just like any other rape except that, it happens between husband and wife?

If it is not like typical rape, then how we can call it rape? It would be just consensual.

If it is just like a typical rape, then is the woman going to do the same things which she would have done in case of typical rape. Is she going to shout, go out and call neighbours for help? If the family is living in a typical location, won't there be anybody in the neighborhood to help her? If she does not even call neighbours to help her to avoid the crime, but, later on goes to court to punish him for the crime, won't that be ridiculous?

Typically before a person does a big crime, he/she would have definitely done multiple small crimes. If a husband is raping his wife, and if it is a punishable offence, then typically, he would have done some smaller mistakes with his wife. At that time, what did the wife think about those small crimes? Typically, when there are problems between wife and husband, initially, wife stops talking to her husband. If the problem increases further, she leaves the house. If it still increases, she would take divorce, and if it does not stop even then, she would try to imprison him. In this case, the husband was good enough to live with, till yesterday, but, today, he is so horrible that, he has to be imprisoned immediately. He was a normal person till yesterday, but, became violent psycho overnight. If it was gradual, why did not the wife choose option of leaving the house and taking divorce. Why sudden jump to imprisonment?

What does a typical wife want by criminalizing marital rape? Imprisoning her husband for couple of years? I can safely assume that, once the husband is imprisoned, their marriage would break. [If the marriage does not break, it only means that, wife is threatening her husband by using other sections of Indian Penal Code, and the husband does not have any option.] When the marriage is going to break, and husband is going to leave anyway, cannot she forgive this one last mistake?

Let's assume that, Husband has really raped his wife like a typical rape. They were staying at far away location where they did not have any neighbours, and the husband behaved properly till a day before and suddenly became violent overnight. Wife did not have heart to forgive him for that one mistake. Even in this case, if the wife is even little physically injured, with the present laws, husband can be arrested with non-bailable warrant, and can be imprisoned upto 3 years. Is that not enough? Do we need yet another law? [Are feminists going to say that, it was a rape, but there were absolutely no physical injuries?]

I did not want to bring another section of law, by which the wife can arrest her husband with non-bailable warrant, with a just a signature, for absolutely no mistake of the husband. It would be a hell for any husband to escape that case. Probably the feminists might be thinking like, very good people who have not done anything bad, and have good financial background, are getting away with just 14 days imprisonment and few rounds of courts. They may want a strong law so that, they cannot escape.

If any political party supports criminalization of rape, I will not vote for that party as long as I find some liberal alternative. Fortunately, Modi's government is not supporting this.

Expecting Equality

If somebody is expecting equality, the first thing that I expect from them is, giving up the "unfair" advantages that they have.

When they have "unfair" advantages over me, to have equal level playing field, I have to treat them inferior wherever I can. After I get equal "unfair" advantage, I will treat them equally. But, till then, why should I suffer for somebody?

Net Neutrality

I am NOT supporting Net Neutrality, and I am fully supporting Airtel Zero Plan which is not Net Neutral.

From the Government, I am expecting only the fair allocation of the spectrum (Whoever pays more money should get the spectrum). Other than that, I do not want Government to interfere in any actions of the telecom companies.

There are two types of Net Neutrality. One is giving special disadvantage to few sites, and another one is giving special advantage to few sites.

Some time back, Airtel introduced special charges for calls over internet (like skype), where there is increase in the price. So, customers would have to pay more for the same usage. Many people were unhappy about this and Airtel has withdrawn this. Eventhough, it is increasing the cost, I do not want TRAI or some other government organization and interfere in this. Interfering by TRAI would make things worse in the long run. If the customers do not like Airtel, and if they switch to other providers, that is enough. Either Airtel will revert it or it will be out of business. When the spectrum is allocated in fair manner, I am sure, there would be atleast one telecom company which wants to capture the group that is effected. Even if there is no one, Government should make BSNL to offer in fair manner rather than TRAI introducing new rules.

I can understand that, giving special disadvantage to few sites would make people unhappy, since, people will have to pay more for the same thing. However, I could not understand why giving special advantage to few sites would make people unhappy.

In Airtel Zero plan, if any company registers with them, then their app can be accessed for free by all the customers, and the company pays for their data charges. The end user will never need to pay anything for using the apps. I simply cannot understand why a normal user would object to this.

Of course, small entrepreneurs may be unhappy with this, saying, they do not have fair chance to compete in the market. I am not a fan of Antitrust laws. In business, the fair chance should be always seen from the customer's point of view and not from the company's point of view. If somebody is giving me something for free, or donating me some money, I never want anybody else to obstruct that. I encourage them to give everything for free or donate to me as long as they can give. The market has changed so much that, there is no place for small business people. Unless the new companies are indirectly donating money to the consumers, they are unable to retain the customers. Can anyone think that, they can beat Foodpanda or Ola cabs without having 1 Billion Dollars? [By the way, I saved Rs.600 from ola cabs, and I don't want to mention how much I saved from Foodpanda. Foodpanda would have lost hell lot of money by my transactions.] If any other company says, "they are giving everything for free. Because of that, we are unable to do business", then only bad words would come from me.

Flipkart has withdrawn from Airtel Zero plan in support of Net Neutrality. If I were in the decision making board of Flipkart, the only reason why I would have supported is, to get some good name, and for not losing some (Communist) user base. [Did it hurt anyone? ;) ]

I don't know whether Ola cabs is going with Airtel Zero Plan or not. If they go with this plan, it would be very useful for people like me. When I am outside, except google maps and Ola cabs there is hardly anything else that I use on mobile. For everything else, I can wait till I reach home/office to access. If they provide free packs or less expensive packs for these, it would save me lot of money. [On a side note, two days back when it was raining, I had to take a net plan on road just to book a ola cab.]

I was recharging for my parents for special whatsapp pack and not the normal data pack. That costs less than normal data pack, and since, my parents were using only whatsapp, it was economical for me. In the name of net neutrality, if they remove all those, it would be definitely not economical for me.

I saw many petitions to support net neutrality. For obvious reasons, I did not sign any. If anyone starts a petition on Freedom for Telecom companies on offering different services, then I will definitely sign on it.

If Airtel is not Neutral, then why cannot you just move to other Net Neutral providers like BSNL. Why are you not asking to ban Toll Free numbers? (For those who are of same age as me or older than me), Why did not you ask to ban the letters which says "No postage required" from selected companies?