I am convinced that India will take another 100 years to reform itself or we need exceptional strong leaders.

No great reform will happen after this attack in Mumbai. India has all the power to fight back, unfortunately Indian government has no guts to attack these terror camps like US did in Afghanistan after 9/11.

Pathetic Indian Law System is a biggest threat than terrorists. Firstly, India must weed out our own home-grown criminals.

Real criminals never get convicted here! criminals become honorable celebrities or politicians. Indian Election Commission is a big joke, thousands of candidates who were alleged to have committed a wide range of crimes stood for election. These varied from murder, theft and rape to extortion and banditry.

What reform are we talking about?

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Analysis: India’s criminal politicians
By South Asia analyst Alastair Lawson, BBC News 

PV Narasimha Rao, is the first Indian Prime Minister to be convicted in a criminal case. But few if any Indian politicians actually spend time in prison. A recent study by the Indian Election Commission put the problem of crime and politics in India into stark perspective. It said that the nexus between the two threatened every area of the nation’s life. As a newspaper report put it, the support of hardcore criminal gangs to political parties and candidates had become an unsavoury reality.

Legal failure
The Indian Election Commission has in recent years tried to tackle the problem by making it harder for candidates with criminal records to stand for election.

But the trouble is that the cases against many candidates have not been proved.

In fact, it is hard to find a single case of a politician being sent to jail for corruption in independent India.

In early October, the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalitha, was sentenced to three years in jail, but legal observers say that she unlikely to serve her sentence in the immediate future because she can spend many years appealing to higher courts.

Likewise the former chief minister of Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav, has for many years been accused of wide-scale corruption yet has still not been convicted, even though he has been detained on several occasions for questioning.

Criminal MPs 
Both Mr Yadav and Jayalalitha figured prominently in India’s last general elections as did other candidates well known for their criminal activities. MP Phoolan Devi - otherwise known as the Bandit Queen - was again elected to parliament, despite a previous conviction for banditry and possessing illegal arms.

She was allowed to stand because her previous convictions were deemed by election commission officials to have lapsed. Even so, there are still numerous outstanding cases against her. In the last general elections held in October, it’s estimated that around 1,000 candidates who were alleged to have committed a wide range of crimes stood for election. These varied from murder, theft and rape to extortion and banditry. The states worst affected were Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. In the state of Uttar Pradesh alone, there were several hundred candidates with alleged criminal connections. In recent years there have been newspaper reports on a series of kidnappings in the western part of the state, allegedly carried out to meet the expenses of politicians.

Source: BBC News, UK

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India is the World’s 12th largest economy at market exchange rates and the 4th largest in purchasing power. Economic reforms have transformed it into the 2nd fastest growing large economy; however, it still suffers from high levels of Poverty, Illiteracy, Malnutrition and Communal Discrimination.

Does minority has any definition? The term 'minorities' is completely been politicize by politicians and they are busy extracting mileage from it on the name of 'religion'.

Why do people fight on the name of religion? No nation should be divided in the name of race and religion.

Why not we all try to become 'Global Citizens'. The global citizenship is motivated by local interests love of family, friends, communal fairness as well as global interests a sense of universal equality, and care for fellow humans as well as human rights and human dignity. As participatory action, global citizenship entails a responsibility to reduce International inequality both social and economic, refrain from action that hinders individual well-being, and avoid environmental degradation. The notion of global citizenship is linked to an understanding of globalization and cosmopolitanism.

Think Global. Be Global.

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Mr. Politician don't quit! your punishment is not yet over by quitting responsibilities. Let's make them work at half the salary, take all their fancy mobiles, gadgets, air-conditioned cars and give them limited power to manage this mess which they have created over the years. Put them in military camps for months to experience the real life outside luxury apartments.

India must collaborate with international community to weed out these terror camps from the Earth. These brainwashed fanatics don't understand language of 'peace talk' or 'any kind of diplomacy' this is a war to save humankind.

Let’s think rational for a minute, why these young men get hypnotized by such camps? India and International community must find out the reasons and save these youngsters from getting brainwashed by these real culprits who are behind world wide attacks on humankind.

Terrorists are not stupid like our 'politicians', 'intelligence' and 'security personals' who want written letters from the authorities before taking any action or saving our own people lives.

If India wants to fight terrorism ' India must get them where ever they are. We just cannot wait like an idiots holding our old rusted guns near the airports, hotels and other public places. Terrorists must have already joined our own Indian Army, Navy, Airforce and other public places, duties to attack within, never know.

In Mumbai one can buy cops at Rs.50, at Check Nakas Octroi, hundreds of vehicles enters in the city 24/7, nobody checks if arms, terrorists are entering in the city. Solution could be: why not government increase cops salaries to reduce the corruption level.

There are many terrorists and their supporters must be roaming around freely in our country looking for the next target.

India's only fear would be is our neighbor is a Nuclear Power State and anything can be happen if fanatics takes control over Nuclear Warheads!

Only United States has guts to control or safe guard their Nuclear Warheads before any attacks. Our neighbor government must support India and international community to weed out terror camps.

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The citizens of India must stand together to fight war against terrorism. We the people of India are responsible for harboring terror, corruption by voting the most cold blooded politicians without questioning them. Because of government's idiotic policies we don't want to remain a soft target state of terrorism. We want actions against all those culprits who declared war against India and its innocent citizens.

Dirty political tactics costs millions of lives, worthless politicians are hungry for votes for their own good. The politicians who are dividing our country by all means, the people of India must unite and raise their voices. We want to see governments capabilities to take strong actions against these bunch of fanatics, what US did after 9/11. We don't want any threats from these bunch of psychos. Their ultimate goal is to kill innocent people, create terror and create panic among people. We are not terrified after all these coward acts.

Terrorists entered Bombay using our own boats, our coast guards must be sleeping then. Now this is the time India must react with full force, these fanatics knows India doesn't have guts to attack back. If we don't attack NOW they will keep killing our people for years to come. They will never stop.

Coward politicians and their corruption for money is killing our Jawans, Police, Security Forces, Firemen and innocent people of India ' why cannot they have enough protection, their bullet proof vest jackets, clothing are not bullet proof! helmets doesn't have front bullet/fire proof cover, arms, forearms, legs doesn't have cover either. Where all our TAX money goes? in the pockets of politicians?

For India this is the time to wake up! and by not making religion as a battle ground. Religion is nothing to do with terrorism and terrorists.

We all are united India and will remain united to fight against corruption, terror, poverty, health issues, unemployment, hunger and we will make sure that we don't get ruled by idiotic politicians.

Ever wonder a small group of fanatics making entire world as a battle field and killing innocent people every day?

God bless India and the World.

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DNA-Daily News & Analysis
28th November, 2008 

The citizens of Mumbai are fed up. If there is still no raw anger to be seen on the streets, it is because Mumbaikars know many of their near and dear ones are still in danger, being held hostage by ruthless fidayeen. But once this ordeal is over, they will be asking tough questions. Why did this ghastly incident happen? Who is responsible? Why is the government unable to protect them effectively when it can spend crores on protecting worthless politicians with Z-category security? Why should the city’s policemen be wasting their time providing security to the likes of Sonia Gandhi and LK Advani when they have better things to do?

The prime minister, who addressed the nation on Thursday, hinted darkly about “neighbours” being involved in the Mumbai terror acts. But he forgot to pinpoint one major culprit: his own government, which has been dithering about taking decisive action. No one can wish away the murderous instincts of extremists, but one can always do sensible things to protect oneself from them. Unfortunately, that’s what the Manmohan Singh government has not done. It may be true that states are wary about ceding power to a federal agency to investigate terror, but what about doing things that are entirely within your competence? For example, what stops the Centre from depoliticising the central investigative agencies and the intelligence bureau? What stops it from making these agencies accountable? What stops it from ordering its own state governments to insulate the police from political interference?

A government which doesn’t do what it can is merely looking for alibis for inaction. After Mumbai, there are no alibis left. We all saw how poor our anti-terror systems were. Mumbai’s most famous anti-terror expert went out to fight with hardly any protective gear - and paid with his life.

Our rulers must not think of this as just another terror strike to be investigated and then forgotten till the next time. This is the frightening face of the future. This is war. We have to win it. If Manmohan Singh can’t do it, he should let someone else do it.

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Q: What does it take to become a successful investor? Brilliance or Smartness?
B: Neither, Success in investing doesn’t correlate with I.Q. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that gets other people into trouble in investing.

Q: When do you decide to invest in a firm?
B: The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble. We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table. (Mr. Buffett bought Coke when it had its biggest fiasco after launching New Coke; he bought American Express when it went through a loss making phase in the early 60’s)

Q: What do you look for in people when they come to sell their firms to you?
B: I don’t look for the usual credentials such as an MBA, a pedigree (Harvard, Wharton), or cash reserves or market cap of their firm. What I look for is just a passion in their eyes; I think that’s the key. A person who is hungry will always do well. I prefer it when people even after selling stay on and work for the firm; they are people who can’t wait to get off their bed to get to work. Passion is everything; there is no replacement for innate interest.

Q: Mr. Buffett, you told us that Berkshire Hathaway has $ 45 Billion in cash. Why aren’t you investing?
B: Up until a few years back I had more ideas than money. Now I have more money than ideas.

Q: When do you plan to retire?
B: I love my job; I love it so much that I tap dance to work. Mrs. B, the founder of Nebraska Furniture Mark worked until she was 104, she died within 6 months of her retirement, that’s a lesson to all my managers, don’t retire! I personally am going to work 6-7 years after I die, probably that’s what they mean when they say- “Thinking out of the Box”!!

Q: Why do stock market crashes happen?
B: Because of human nature for greed and insecurity. The 1970s were unbelievable. The world wasn’t going to end, but businesses were being given away. Human nature has not changed. People will always behave in a manic-depressive way over time. They will offer great values to you.”

Q: What are the things that are taught wrong in Business school and the corporate world?
B: I like such open ended questions, I think Business schools should refrain from teaching their wards about profit making and profit making alone, it gives a sense of 1 dimensional outlook to the young students that loss is a curse. In reality, in the corporate world, failure and loss making are inevitable. The capital market without loss is like Christianity without hell. I think they should teach the student on how to buy a business, how to value a business? Not just on how to determine the price of a business. Because price is what you pay, value is what you get.

Q: Do you still hate Technology stocks?
B: With Coke I can come up with a very rational figure for the cash it will generate in the future. But with the top 10 Internet companies, how much cash will they produce over the next 25 years? If you say you don’t know, then you don’t know what it is worth and you are speculating, not investing. All I know is that I don’t know, and if I don’t know, I don’t invest.”

Q: How to think about Investing?
B: The first investment primer was written by Aesop in 600 B.C. He said, ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ Aesop forgot to say when you get the two in the bush and what interest rates are; investing is simply figuring out your cash outlay (the bird in the hand) and comparing it to how many birds are in the bush and when you get them.”

Q: How do you feel after donating $ 40 Billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation? You are a hero to us!
B: I feel nothing. I haven’t sacrificed anything in life. I have had a good life. I donated after I turned 75. I think I admire those people who sacrifice their time, share their food and home, as the people to be emulated not me. Besides, what is money before a man’s life?

Q: What do you think are the pitfalls in donation?
B: I have never donated a dime to churches or other such organizations; I need to believe in something before I end up doing that. I have been observing the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation for years now and I am confident they will do a fantastic job of making use of the money. I am a big believer in Outsourcing, others believed in me as an Investor and gave their hard earned money to invest. I believe in Bill Gates, he is a better donor than me.

Q: Why do you work from Omaha and not Wall Street, New York?
B: Wall Street is the only place where people alight from Rolls Royce to get advised by people who use the Public transportation system.

Q: You seem to be so well read, tell us how it all started.
B: My father was a stock broker, so we had all these financial books in our library. He introduced me to those classics and I got into them. I am lucky that my father was not a fan of Playboy! Reading is the best habit you can get. Well, you can learn from teachers too, and have mentors but there are so many constraints attached- they will talk fast, talk slow, they might talk like a pro or they might be terrible communicators. Books are a different animal altogether, I love reading! The beauty about reading and learning is that the more you learn the more you want to learn.

Q: People who join Berkshire Hathaway seldom leave. How do you get along well with all your executives?
B: I try to get quality people. I always say - Hire someone in your organization who is better than you are. If you do that, you build a company of giants. If you get people worse than yourself, you build a company of dwarfs. And do not try to do everything yourself. Delegate the jobs and look out of the window. The results will come. That’s how you build institutions. It happens only when you empower others, believe in others. I am an investor, I am very secured at that, I have no clue how to make Coca-Cola or how to dole out credit cards (Mr. Buffett owns 8% of Coca-Cola and 13 % of American Express). I understand the wisdom of the aphorism that you cannot please all the people all the time. Of Course, you will always find qualities that you don’t like in people around you, but if you observe carefully the love of the work unites you both. There is no point in being obsessive about a bad quality in a person, whom you otherwise respect.

Q: I am a small time businessman from Dallas, Texas, what do I need to do to hit big time?
B: Be patient, Achieving your financial goals and dreams will not happen overnight. As much as we would all really love to accomplish our goals in a few years, this is an ongoing process. Defining your financial goals is not a one-time task; you need to keep adding new plans at different stages in your life. We all admire the skills of Olympic ice skaters, pro golfers, and concert pianists. But do we remember that they didn’t acquire their skills overnight? They had to practice hours on end for years to achieve their dreams. The key to success is to continue learning throughout your life with a voracious appetite.

Q: I think it is marvelous that you have had a golden run with investing, how did you do that? B: My rule is to be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. Besides, I call investing the greatest job in the world because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate; the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! And nobody calls a strike on you. There’s no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it. Stay dispassionate and be patient. You’re dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it’s like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with drinking Coke, you should be OK. First the crowd is boozy on optimism and buying every new issue in sight. The next moment it is boozy on pessimism, buying gold bars and predicting another Great Depression, most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.

Q: Mr. Buffett you have seen so many crashes and recessions, your take on facing recessions and stock market crashes?
B: If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. Every scenario is different. But always remember, Tough times do not last. Tough people do.

Q: What is the 1 biggest advice you would impart to a young investor like me?
B: Think for a moment that you are given a car and told this is the only car you would get for the rest of your life. Then you would make sure that you car is taken care of well, it is oiled and detailed every now and then. You would make sure that it never gets rusted, and you would garage it. Think of yourself as that car. You just get 1 body, 1 mind and 1 soul. Take care of it well. Invest in yourself that would be my advice.

Q: You personally know many of the Financial executives who are engineers of the current turmoil in the financial world, surprisingly even after record losses, those executives receive astronomical salaries and bonuses and arrogantly declare that they deserve it, why dint you advice them from making such decisions and what’s your view on their justification for their pay?
B: I like sharing my ideas but don’t like imposing my ideas on anybody. It doesn’t make sense and is a waste of time. If somebody has decided that they know everything that is there to know, nobody can help them. The best way to learn and succeed is to know that we know nothing. There is an entire universe out there and still some of us think we can know everything. In the world of investing a few people after making some money tend to imagine they are invincible and great. This is the worst thing that could happen to any investor, because it surely means that the investor will end up taking unnecessary risks and end up losing everything - arrogance, ego and overconfidence are very lethal. Personally I don’t feel too comfortable with too much extravagance, because I always think like an investor. My thought process doesn’t see a lot of value in a fancy car or a designer suit. Thinking like an investor always is very important to bring in a sense of discipline and focus. Before reading balance sheets and investing you need to make sure your outlook and mindset is that of an investor. Never let ego, arrogance and over-confidence control you - not just as an investor but also as a human being. You will never have internal peace if you are unable to look at everybody around you with love, compassion and understanding. Irrespective of who the person is, he or she can teach you something you don’t know. I have learnt so much from people all around me and I wouldn’t have been able to learn all these wonderful things if I had not spoken to them with a smile. To quote Sir Isaac Newton- If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.

Source: Mail Forward

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Five hundred years of progress packed into a sack of flour.
By J. Bradford DeLong, Wired Mag

Here’s some food for thought.

A smart shopper can buy a 5-pound bag of Gold Medal flour for 69 cents. That’s enough to feed three people for a day - 7,500 easy-to-digest, relatively nutritious, and potentially tasty calories. All for less than 0.7 percent of an average American’s income.

Compare this American to one of our ancestors half a millennium ago, a typical person living in the span between 1400 and 1600. Back in those days, less than one-tenth of humanity lived in cities. The most basic problem of material life - the fight to put food on the table - took up the majority of everyone’s working time and energy: Three-quarters of human economic production consisted of growing or procuring foodstuffs. Well-nourished preindustrial populations with abundant land double in size every generation, but our ancestors were lucky to see their population grow by 10 percent in 30 years. Back then people were hungry, malnourished, and disease-ridden.

Our ancestors were on the Malthusian edge, where you lack the calories and the nutrients to equip your immune system to do a first-class job controlling infectious diseases, where women’s body fat levels are low enough that ovulation is a hit-or-miss affair, and where you spend a lot of time thinking how hungry you are. (Consider the monumental role played by food and big, bad appetites in that era’s fairy tales. Now consider the language still used by wage earners that echoes a hungrier time, from bringing home the bacon to being the breadwinner.)

The 7,500 calories in today’s bag of flour would equal the diet of a four-person peasant family for a whole day; the difference is that it would take three days of medieval work to afford.

From 300 percent to 0.7 percent: By the bags-of-flour standard, we are some 430 times wealthier than our typical rural ancestors of half a millennium ago. Today - at least for the average American - getting enough calories to stay healthy has dropped off the radar screen. Quite the contrary: The surgeon general has warned that obesity is a literal threat to national security.

Impressive as it is, the steep rise in bags-of-flour wealth probably understates the magnitude of transformation we in the US have already been through. Harvard economic historian David Landes’ Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some Are So Poor points out that the richest man in the early 19th century, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, died in his fifties of an infected abscess that we can now cure with $5 of over-the-counter antibiotics. Was Rothschild really “richer” than a guy today in his fifties working behind the meat counter of Safeway and making $15 an hour?

Suppose a group of theatergoers in Elizabethan England had decided one evening that they wanted to see a performance of Macbeth. Queen Elizabeth herself might have been able to pull it off if Shakespeare’s acting company had the play in its current repertory. But she was the only person in England who could have done so. Go back before Gutenberg to 1400, and a single copy of a book costs as much as two months’ income of a skilled craftsman - the same share of that society’s productive potential as $6,000 is today. Even the richest of our late-medieval and early-modern ancestors were appallingly poor. Indeed, the shift in what kinds of goods we can produce may be as big a deal as the extraordinary drop in how efficiently we can produce them.

However, there’s plenty to quarrel about in the very optimistic view of the present. There is still famine in the world.

It is true that most famines today have political causes. It is true that the cause of remaining famines is not that food production is insufficient but that the hungry have no land and no income, and if you have no income the market economy doesn’t care whether you live or die. But a human race that has surpassed the food-producing capacity of our preindustrial ancestors more than 400-fold per capita ought to have also solved the social engineering problem of using this productive potential to eliminate hunger. A humanity that can produce powerful doses of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals for pennies should be one that delivers these drugs to the truly sick, whether they live in Buckinghamshire, Brooklyn, or by the banks of the Zambezi.

William Gibson once famously said that the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. Guess what: The present isn’t evenly distributed, either. The human race today has a tremendous degree of wealth and productivity, with an extraordinarily unequal distribution. There are still more than a billion people whose lives look very similar to those of half a millennium ago. Bringing the future to the world’s leading-edge cities is a piece of cake. The challenge is bringing more than a few bread crumbs’ worth of the present to the rest of the globe.

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Ratatouille French pronunciation: [ʁata'tuj] is a traditional French Provençal stewed vegetable dish, originating in County of Nice. The full name of the dish is ratatouille niçoise.

Ratatouille is a 2007 animated feature film produced by Pixar and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It tells the story of Rémy, a rat living in Paris who wants to be a chef.

County of Nice: Nissard Occitan: Nissa or Niça, is a city in southern France located on the Mediterranean coast, between Marseille and Genoa, with 986.903 inhabitants in the metropolitan area at the 2007 estimate. The city is a major tourist centre and a leading resort on the French Riviera (Côte d’Azur). It is the historical capital city of the County of Nice.

The word Ratatouille comes from “touiller,” which means to toss food. Ratatouille originated in the area around present day Nice. It was, originally, a poor farmer’s dish, prepared in the summer with fresh summer vegetables. The original Ratatouille Niçoise did not contain eggplant (which would not have been available during the same time period as the other vegetables used). Instead, it used only zucchini (courgettes), tomatoes, green and red peppers (bell peppers), onion, and garlic. The dish known today as Ratatouille adds eggplant (aubergine) to that mixture.

French ratatouille may be served as a meal on its own (accompanied by rice, potatoes, or simple French bread). It is usually served as a meal in a lunch setting, with bread. It is often accompanied by a potato dish as a complement. It is most usually served as a side dish. Tomatoes are a key ingredient, with garlic, onions, zucchini (courgettes), eggplant (aubergine), bell peppers (poivron), some herbes de Provence, and sometimes basil. All the ingredients are sautéed lightly in olive oil.

A well prepared Ratatouille requires cooking the vegetables in separate stages, and then combining for the last simmer. First, the eggplant is cut and sautéed at a mid-high heat until browned. It is then removed to a bowl lined with paper towels to drain. Next, the peppers are sautéed until just tender, and the zucchini, which cooks much faster, is added near the end of this sauté. These are removed to a bowl. The onion and garlic are then sautéed lightly. When they have cooked, the tomatoes are added. Seeds and peel are removed from the tomatoes before use. This mixture is cooked down until the tomatoes are soft and cooked. At that point, the zucchini and peppers are added. In a careful preparation, a separate casserole should be oiled lightly. Alternating layers of the eggplant, then the tomato/zucchini/pepper mixture, are put down. This is simmered for about ten minutes, while basting the top with the juices. Excess moisture is removed if necessary, but not the flavored oil.

- Wiki