Skyrocketing Prices

If you are a frequent visitor to the grocery store you would have noticed the steep rise in prices of goods, especially Indian goods such as dal and rice. It's amazing how quickly the prices have risen. Rice which was being sold for $8 is now $30 within a matter of 7 days. And same for dal. As usual many people have started panicking and they are stocking up on rice from all possible sources. Costco and BJs have run out of rice stock. And even ordinary shops where no one used to bother buying rice from have put notices indicating one customer can take only one bag of rice. What a turn of events.

What puzzles me the most is this - did all the rice and dal just disappear on one fine day? What stopped the suppliers from rationing the supply initially itself to stop such a steep rise and subsequent stampede of customers? Isn't the supplier playing a foul game by suddenly declaring that we have been hit by a shortage? Some where there has been a black marketing of these commodities and now we are left with the shocking prices.

The funny thing is that the governments of various countries are now doing what they do best always - Playing the blame game. They are trying to figure out which country ate into the world's supply of food instead of forming a strategy to avoid further shortage.

One thing is true though. We have been neglecting farmers for a long time and slowly forcing them into extinction. Now we are paying the price and a little heavily. Let's hope this stops soon.

Bogus Tamil New Year

I was happily celebrating the Tamil New Year on April 13th. Little did I know that as of 2008 the new year has been changed. It has been moved to the month of January to coincide with Pongal. This "wonderful" change has been made by the all knowing scholar, the crusader of all Tamilians the world over - Mr Karunanidhi.

Baisakhi is observed as the Hindu New Year in Haryana, Punjab, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, West Bengal, Orissa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Myanmar, Kampuchea, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. It marks the first day in the Hindu solar calendar dating back to Aryabhatta and the Surya Siddhanta (fourth century CE). Hindu seers calculated the earth's distance to the moon, sun and other planets at a time when most of the world was unaware of the value of the integer zero. But our so called CM knows more than them.

This change has been the worst thing that has happened to Tamilians ever in this century. It just proves that M.K has finally lost all his thinking capacity and this is a very good example of how power can be misused totally. Why is it that he is only meddling with Hindu festivals? If they claim they are not meddling with the Hindus then why was the reading of the panchangam prohibited in most temples? Why were orders sent that no special pujas were to be performed commemorating the Tamil New Year? It is a shame that such things happened in Tamil Nadu while Tamilians all over the world celebrated the New Year on April 13th. How was MK planning to stop the NRIs from doing so?? While he is changing the festival dates why doesn't he just change the new year to coincide with his birthday and why not celebrate his son Stalin's birthday as the new Diwali?

I believe all his talk about love for Tamil and Tamil scholars is all just a big lie. If he is bent on propagating Tamil and the great scholars of Tamil then why don't we have a special day for Bharathiar? He is one of the greatest poets in Tamil. He was a revolutionary and made many enemies due to this nature. But whatever he followed are the same ideologies MK claims to follow. Bharati was a great freedom fighter and motivated many people to join in the freedom movement. So being the case why does Tamil Nadu not allocate a special day for Bharathiyar?

The only fault of Bharathiyar is that he was born as a Brahmin. That obliterates all his valuable contributions and makes him just another Brahmin who was no good. That's the only reason for the absence of any recognition. MK is no advocate of Tamil. He and his party are just anti Hindu and anti Brahmins. They are not secular. Such prejudiced people should never be allowed to hold any post of power. The dangers of such a thing has been demonstrated time and again. Yet these people rule us. God help the Tamilians. It's scary to think of what he will do next. Let's pray we are able to come through it all.

Africa

After a hectic day we decided to watch a movie to relax a bit. The only twist being that the movie was not a humorous one but rather a thought provoking and serious movie - The Constant Gardner.

The story in short for those who have not seen it - A British high commission diplomat, posted in Africa, investigates his wife's murder and in the process unearths the illegal and non humanitarian process of human testing of drugs in Africa. The movie portrays painfully how life of Africans are discounted easily and are not held of any importance. Those who stand to protect them are killed by selfish corporates which want to make money.

I remembered another movie I saw sometime back - Blood Diamond. This also shows the poor state of Africans - how they kill each other for diamond and fight to establish power and how they are utilized by diamond merchants for their own profit.

These two movies clearly show how Africans are taken for granted and manipulated by the various developed countries for their personal progress. Africa is such a rich country in terms of natural resources and this is the main reason why it is manipulated so much. Due to all the manipulation it is a very poor continent where many people have a tough struggle for even a single meal. This is really sad. There's so much they can do to improve themselves and become a super power.

What stops them?? The high level of corruption and the money involved it is not easy to get peace in these troubled areas. Everyone wants to make a quick buck and hence they don't allow anyone to stay in power for long. There is some internal conflict or the other as one group after another tries to get total control over everything. All we can do is just observe how and when they resolve their disputes and focus on progress. Till then they will continue to be manipulated by the various super powers. They will remain the dumping ground for all the useless medicines and be the human guineas for the various tests till then.

Olympic Fever

The Olympic torch was lit two days ago in Athens as usual. This got me thinking about India's participation in the Games. Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to find out about India's participation in the Olympics this year.

Like millions of other people I went to my favourite site google.com and searched for Team India. After about half an hour's search all my enthusiasm wore down and was instead replaced by frustration and anger. Even after 30 minutes I was unable to find one proper site which listed the people who have been shortlisted to participate this year.

All I got was one lousy site which I believe is the official site for Indian Olympic team. For all eager Olympic followers the site is

http://www.olympic.ind.in/

I don't know where to start commenting about the site. Before that just go through the following two sites as well.

http://www.usoc.org

http://www.olympics.org.uk

Well let me start with the layout and format. This is probably the worst site designed ever for big government. Any 5th standard kid could have done a better job. Some links are broken and the whole look and feel is horrible, to say the least. They have given a number of external links which point to the official Olympic site for Beijing 2008, Commonwealth games, etc. If only the designer had taken some time off and visited these sites the design would have been much better.

Once I thought about my initial quest I forgot about the poor appearance of the site and decided to start the hunt for Team india. Alas I was up for more disappointment. The site had wonderful photos of all the committee members of the association but failed to even mention the members of the team. Not a single scrap of information about anything to do with the team that's supposed to go nor about the accomplishments of Indian athletes in previous Olympics.

Now I'm left wondering why no names are mentioned... Is it because no one is going? Have the old athletes been forgotten so fast? Is it because the committee members are so self absorved that the site is serving as a publicity portal for them? Who maintains these sites? Doesn't anyone bother to update them??

All this when India is supposed to be brimming with software professionals who are filled with talent. Can't the govt find just two people to bring the site to a decent shape and maintain it with constant updates???

I guess these are questions which will never be answered. Questions asked in vain...