Vishing

Apparently there is this new form of defrauding people and it is called vishing. The word is a portmanteau word formed by combining 'voice' and 'phishing'. In phishing, a fraudster can create an email id or a website that seems to be legitimate while it is not. Do a similar thing over a phone and you call it vishing. Sounds like such an innocuous word! Here is more on this.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-303175.html

Financial Year

There was a recent discussion on Facebook about the financial year. So I thought I might put this up for more people to see.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=512720983&v=feed&story_fbid=106382850983

The initial doubt was about the US financial year. In my previous company it is followed from October to September. Google follows it from January to December, coinciding with the calendar year. So after a lengthy discussion and some googling(!) I have finally decided that the government has a fixed financial year. It is upto the business entities to decide whether or not they will follow the same. The following links can also be checked for further reference.

http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/gdsc/html/frames/UKgovernmentFinancialYear-2-0-Release.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_year

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/financial-year.html

The Indian Elections and Their Aftermath - Part 2

Also what does the future hold for the opposition? I got the following tidbit of information from a TV channel, maybe IBN7 - in 2004, the NDA had an ultra-positive campaign in India Shining, this time it was ultra negative in Bhay Ho, neither worked. In 2004 the NDA was a poor loser stalling Parliament proceedings. I hope they behave better this time round. It is surely going to be a sorely demoralized lot. Advani has already said he is not interested in being the leader of the opposition.

I am also curious about the next general elections, which will hopefully be held only in 2014, not before that. Who are going to be the key players? Rahul Gandhi is declining a ministerial post right now. The Congress is (in)famous for its sycophants, one among who had once declares "Indrira is India". It is not beyond the 'Gandhi family loyalists' to exhort him to stand for the PM's position the next time round (he will be 43, Rajiv Gandhi became PM at 40). Manmohan Singh will probably be as old as Advani is now but will the Congress choose him over a member of the Gandhi family then? So it would seem advisable for Rahul Gandhi to take up a ministerial post, as we are sure that he will one day become the PM of this nation. But what about the opposition? Advani will not be in the picture. Modi does not have national acceptability now, I am doubtful about his acceptability in 2014. Is there another leader today in the BJP who has a mass appeal? I don't think so. There are potential candidates like Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Shourie (a friend pointed out Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh) but I cannot say for sure that there will be anyone who can compete against Rahul Gandhi, except Modi. And we are back to square one.

And what is up with Andhra Pradesh? I cannot claim to have followed even decently what has been happening in AP over the last five years. But from what I heard there was widespread corruption everywhere, missionary activites atop Tirumala hill (for the uninitiated Tirupati is the town and Tirumala is the actual hill where Lord Venkateswara's temple is located and the CM is a converted Christian) and rampant nepotism. Rajasekhara Reddy's (the CM) son has become an MLA this time round. He is a controversial figure in his own right, owns a paper, I forget its name. It has a pro-Congress tilt (obviously) and I beleive it was started to take on Ramoji Rao's Eenadu, which was highly critical of the COngress govt and which is pro-TDP. Another thing that I am aware of is that anything and everything is being named after either Rajiv Gandhi or Indira Gandhi, whether it be Hyderabad's new international airport (a Visakhapatnam-Hyderabad flight takes about 45 minutes, it takes an hour to get into town from the airport), a housing scheme or a health scheme. Someone please tell the CM that there were other leaders in the Congress leaving out those two. There is not even a mention of P V Narasimha Rao (maybe a stretch of a Hyderabadi ring road has been named after him) and this was the person responsible for giving us Manmohan Singh, for bringing India out of the risk of sovereign default and for providing the first stable government after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination.

There was Chiranjeevi with his Praja Rajyam Party. I do not say he would make a great CM but at least there was an opportunity for a change. There was the ex-civil servant Jayaprakash Narayan with his Lok Satta Party promising clean governance. There were huge turnouts at Chiranjeevi's rallies. It was the same when Balakrishna (NTR's son) and Junior NTR (Balakrishna's nephew and NTR's grandson) campaigned for the TDP. Where were these votes? The TDP and the Communists had formed an alliance. The people ignored all of these and voted for the COngress! My father quipped that people get the government they deserve.

Forget for the moment the next general elections. What do the next five years hold for us? I would describe myself as an Andhra middle class liberal Hindu right-wing citizen of this nation, and these are my anguished thoughts.

The Indian Elections and Their Aftermath - Part 1

This is going to be a lengthy post, hence it is in two parts. The elections are over. What is up with the Indian electorate? I have not exactly understood why the UPA govt has been voted back to power and that too with such widespread support. One theory I have heard is that Muslims have voted unitedly for it this time which has caused this swing. But, does no one hold the government responsible for the spate of terrorist attacks that took place over the last 2-3 years? Or is everybody hoping that Manmohan will work his magic on the economy and bring it out of the slowdown? Do people believe the NREG scheme and the nuclear deal are wonderful examples of the UPA government's achievements? I don't know.

One question we have to ponder is that what is happening to us as far as terrorist incidents go. When the Mumbai attacks took place, there was national outrage? I do not see any manifestation of it in the electoral outcome. Have we become resigned to the situation? Do we believe we cannot do anything about this? South Mumbai where the attacks took place saw a voter turnout of 47% I think. What is happening here?

One good thing with the electoral results is that the verdict is not fragmented as it has been in the past couple of years. Regional parties do not seem to have a strangle hold over the govt that is to be shortly formed. So we can hopefully look forward to a decisive govt (consider the irony, the BJP was giving ads about a decisive govt). Now it remains to be seen if Manmohan Singh can stand by two promises he had made. Unless I am mistaken he had said in an interview that he would get India out of its slowdown in 100 days if the UPA came back to power. He had also said the same thing about bringing back Indian black money stashed abroad. Will he stand by his words or has he also learned the art of realpolitik? Will we have more farm loan waivers (God forbid)? Apart from the effect on the fiscal deficit of the country, I hate seeing the money that I as a middle class member pay going into farm loan waivers. I am all for helping farmers. But do it properly. Improve irrigation facilities, consolidate land holdings, improve seed quality. Sharad Pawar seemed to be as (or maybe more) interested in the BCCI as he was in the agricultural ministry. Will there be a repeat of this? Whatever one might say, I am happy that it is Manmohan Singh and not Sharad Pawar, Mulayam Singh Yadav or Mayawati that is becomming the PM.

The stock markets seem to have given a thumbs up to the UPA's victory, so much so that trading had to be halted! Does this portend good times to come?

freedom of speech

We pride ourselves on being the world's largest democracy, though we are far from being a mature one. Freedom of speech is a very important requirement for a democracy to function effectively and I am not sure how far along that road we have come when compared to let us say the US (to be fair, the US has had a long time to mature since it became a democracy, we got our independence only in 1947).

The reason I said this how anyone can lampoon anyone in a cartoon or in an artistic manner and get away with it in the US. If a similar thing happens in India, there are immediate threats of defamation suits (jadu ki jhappi anyone?) Watch American comedians and you will understand my point. A case in point is given below.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/05/10/tim-geithner-the-never-ending-target/?mod=rss_WSJBlog

Outsourcing and the nuclear deal

Yashwant Sinha says the BJP will link implementation of the nuclear deal to outsourcing decisions by the US. He says why should India provide jobs to Americans who make nuclear reactors when Obama is taking away outsourcing jobs from India.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/BJP-to-link-N-deal-execution-to-US-outsourcing-move/articleshow/4492192.cms

Even if India goes in for serious expansion of nuclear power, I seriously doubt the number of jobs that would be generated in the US because of making nuclear reactors for us, at least when compared to the number of outsourcing jobs in India. The reason is that I believe the nuclear reactor manufacture is highly technology-intensive with not very huge labour requirements. Also, there are non-US players like Areva who are also possible manufacturers.

Also it is WE who need the energy. India's growing energy requirements demand newer or at least bigger sources of energy. So Sinha's reaction is like cutting off the nose to spite the face.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_the_face

Obama's move might not be very palatable for us but still it is justifiable. A recent newspaper report mentions a KPMG senior management guy saying that even after the proposed tax measures on US outsourcing companies are implemented, it will still make business/monetary sens to outsource. If Obama decides to actually impose additional (or punitive) taxes on outsourcers, that is when we have to seriously worry. The US economy is in a bad shape. So Obama's measures are understandable. Are these issues so ununderstandable to the former civil servant who has been a former finance minister as well as foreign minister of the country, or is this simply political posturing?

Solving the fin crisis or creating a new one?

This was a doubt that I had a few days back. Everybody (at least central banks) has been trying to infuse 'liquidity' into the world markets. Governments are pumping in billions of dollars to infuse cash into the market. Also nobody was lending to one another not because of lack of monet but because of a lack of trust.

My doubt goes like this. The world was awash with liquid money some time back. Because of the sub-prime crisis, assets esp. property have lost value. This only means that the realizable amount a house owner will get if he sells his house has gone down. But there is already money in the system which must be locked somewhere. Now we are trying to infuse extra cash into the system. Some time in the future confidence will return and people will start lending normally and engage in transactions as before. Will the cash being pumpd in right now not add to the cash already existing in the market? Further - right now there is no inflation as such, so the need to pump in more money to counter the loss of value is not there; also no cash is being 'physically destroyed', so what is to stop inflation from arising in the future because of the money being pumped in right now? Can anyone clear this up for me please?

India's elections

The EC set up a voting booth for just one person in Gujarat. This was for a priest in the Gir region.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/05/01/stories/2009050157680100.htm

This is probably what is meant by following principles/rules in spirit and deed! On the one hand we have our election commission which tries to have free and fair elections. On the other we have well, our own political parties. As I have mentioned earlier once somebody defined politics as "poly means many and tic are blood-sucking insects". One can only wonder at the power-hungriness and unprinciples nature of politics and India is a case in point. Next door in Pakistan we have an absence of democracy while here it is abused.

A lot of voters are poorly informed. A few years back a magazine carried a report. An old woman in some part of te country said she was voting for Indira Gandhi. She did not even know the woman was dead! Then there is general voter apathy. Appeals by film actors and the Mumbai carnage did not bring out voters in Mumbai. We curse our government all the time, are we not responsible for that?

http://www.ndtv.com/news/india/2611_little_impact_on_voters.php

Finally we have our politicians, the less said the better. I have a confession myself though that I did not vote. I am registered in Hyderabad and I am in Kota. I am not Amir Khan to fly back to Hyderabad to cast my vote (like he came back from the US to India). I think some kind of provision must be made for people like me (if there is one, I do not know of it). A lot of people keep moving around for various reasons - job, education etc. Some provision should be made to allow these people to vote also. If I am not mistaken we need a postal ballot system like the one for the US military personnel stationed outside the US, or something along those lines.