I subscribe to a newsletter from a non-government, non-profit 'National US INDIA chamber of commerce', which reports 'clear-and-accounted' lobbying of some Indian companies in the US for easing US stand on its restrictions..

India Inc paying millions on lobbying in U.S.

Wednesday,6th May 2009

Washington: Indian companies, including top corporate entity RIL and industry body Nasscom, are paying thousands of dollars on lobbying with lawmakers and government departments in the U.S. on issues ranging from immigrant visas to bilateral trade and individual business ventures.

Four Indian entities - Reliance Industries, Nasscom, Sun Pharma and Orchid Chemicals - have together paid close to $2,75,000 (about Rs 1.4 crore) towards lobbying their causes during the first three months of 2009, says the disclosure reports filed by lobbyists firms with the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Out of this, RIL has paid $1,90,000 to BGR Holding, a high-profile lobbyist group that has many Fortune 500 firms and foreign governments as its clients, for providing 'strategic counsel on issues related to trade.'

Incidentally, the U.S. Congress and House of Representatives are currently considering new legislations to penalize companies that supply petroleum products to Iran, which includes RIL. The penalty could include a ban from doing business in the U.S. Besides, Nasscom has paid $70,000 to the same lobbyist, BGR, in the first quarter of 2009 for lobbying on international technology and immigration issues.

Indian software industry has reacted sharply to the recent moves by the U.S. administration to put curbs on H1-B visas, a skilled foreign worker visa that have largely been given to Indian IT professionals in the past.

While the payment made by Sun Pharma in Q1 2009 is below $5,000, Orchid Chemicals has paid $10,000 for lobbying on issues related to the U.S. drug regulator FDA's policies. Sun Pharma's lobbying issues have been related to the citizens' petitions and FDA reforms. While there are no past disclosures about RIL's lobbying attempts, Nasscom, Sun Pharma and Orchid have been quite active on this front in the past.

Purnima Voria, Founder/CEO
National US India Chamber of Commerce (NUICC)

My take:

US 's recent restrictions on trade is more so like war-time Restrictions / Sanctions which could have very serious reverberating summary effect on the industries.. especially in India, because India's software industry and general economy itself is very much dependent on business with the US.

While US is doing this as a economy-saving measure for themselves, they are actually making it worser for them without realizing it, because these restrictions would mean many US industries or products built there will be more costly than in recent past, though there will be advantage that unemployment problems in US will get a breathing, and also US people will grow more mature to have competitive salaries in their jobs and more drive to make cheaper products or services.. rather than thinking cheaper always means outsourcing or allowing the markets to import.

An important thing of Note about US: I don't know How and Why the US legalises things like Lobbying the senate and lawmakers, spending billions for election campaign taking money through donor companies/industries itself, and all..

If bribing a senator to help work on a law is accounted as legal as 'Lobbying' or such people as 'Lobbyists', accounting those costs, then it is like just running a Casino.. not a government I think.

Also, if companies/industries can donate huge sums legally (after paying taxes) to the republicans or democrats, and if the parties can spend any amount for election campaigns, then I think they are just making all their hard earned money flow into forming a government which will then run the casino.. and all politicians and lobbyists make lot of money, and people make "nothing".. all this legal.

It is typically a routing that politicians in america have created over the years to bring all the money to their coppers.

There are presidential campaign reported expenditure websites and accounted statements online, which have something like 20-60 billion US$ being spent by the ruling party's next presidential campaign. That is a horrifying canal route bleeding every American's pocket to make that sum. The capitalist organizations bleed the people by over-pricing their products, then donate it to presidential campaign funds. .. This happens in every country.. but then, it will only be a few hundred millions.. not any close to the figures that americans pay to their president and his people.

First Americans have to correct all this, rather than stupidly thinking that buying services from India / China is costing them their economy. Buying from these countries could only make their economy stronger because of cheaper costs.. Is it real that they don't understand that ?, and they still believe all their president's and governments words about where all the money has gone ?..

Many of you, my friends, graced the occassion with your presence, or phone call wishes,.. or even through emails.. it was nice of many of you to do that, finding time.. I can't remember how many times I have missed attending friends marriages or even dropping in an email.. so it was great.

And so, whether you are a friend or a foe, relative or a stranger.. you might be interested to see the photos of my marriage and the wedding reception.. in the below link. The marriage was a traditional fare and you will find 40-50% of the process same as what any average hindu marriage follows in India.

You can find photos here:
MyPhotos.HarishPalaniappan.com

I / Triveni will be excited to see your comments on the photos if you get time. Thanks.

Finally, I have fully moved to using windows vista from xp for... everything.. from development, to blogging at home, to browsing the internet... and I am happy I made this shift soo much later after vista arrived (what a couple of YEARS back already!!).

The shift to vista, more than anything else, becomes more safer an OS for me to rely on these days, after going through all kinds of childish viruses.. if they were intelligent viruses atleast i would have had nice time trying to find a fix.. but these childish viruses would come in through a weakness of firefox or internet explorer, write some dlls on my laptop, overwrite explorer.exe to create those dlls everytime explorer.exe did anything.. and what for all this.. just to make more channels open, close firewall blocks, disable antivirus .. to just have fun having taken over some space on my laptop..

other than that the writers of those viruses achieved nothing.. typically nothing.. i didnt lose any files, i could even work normal offline, and only when i connected to internet they used my internet bandwidth to spread making my laptop a host.. again all that for nothing, but just to go to another system or a usb key, or a cd written.. on my system. Children who learn software try all this, trying to disable something and say 'wow my code shutdown the computer' like stuff when they learn new programming areas.. and get happy about the *achievement*.

so, with vista's security features, which is like even if you open a program on your laptop, vista will ask did u try to open this to verify security.. the childish safety issues which eat up a looot of productive time is now secured.. but only for now.. i think with simple modifications in the code of those children.. even the 'did you want to run this program' request could be avoided or already answered programmatically.. and the children will be back.

anyways.. giving me back my productive time... and for sometime allowing me to not bother about the best way to block children viruses.. which is installing a personal firewall managed by me with a password on my laptop.. and allowing or blocking each and every port and request on the computer .. this would be pain to do.. so i am happy that i don't have to do this for sometime.

also, i think Microsoft is fully focussing on supporting vista and malware affecting vista or program updates and security updates for vista.. so much that .. I really see a lot of windows update items available every now and then when my laptop automatically checks, which is far more than what windows update items or frequency of updates are available for windows xp off late..

Vista, in the US costs close to 50$ if I am right.. and with a decent firewall + antivirus like AVG/ mcAfee internet suites.. for a few extra bucks.. should be all that is neccessary for a pain-free internet access laptop.

Why a firewall.. windows firewall is easy to hack.. Microsoft has clear specs and allows programmatic control of windos firewall which a hacking program can easily manage without your knowledge.

Though those 'Do you want to run this program', 'Did you try to open network properties, if yes, press continue' are frustrating.. I think this is going to be the order of the day hereafter on windows OSes, and that should be good news for MAC-OS or linux based systems which are at present less vulnerable to viruses or hacking..

I was initially not talking much with trivy though I like her, because I thought Ravi was a boyfriend.. she had brought Ravi to a CRY meeting and this guy's chatter was so much for me to ignore his presence and try to like trivy.

Geetha was a friend at Cry.. who I met there too.. and my flirt in me makes triveni think I had a crush on geetha rather than her.. trivy was always sitting close to geetha if they both came for any of the meets. So, trivy also didn't try talking to me.

Geetha and I spoke now and then .. ofcourse on things related to CRY... of which geetha still thought I was trying to make a move on her. Though I liked geetha, I wasn't sure of her or neither was I trying to talk to her with intentions other than just feeling nice about meeting or talking to her.

It turned out that geetha now and then mentioned to trivy about my moves or thoughts... from what she assumed as my intentions. This only got trivy keep out any distant thoughts about me from her head..

I couldn't get any closer to knowing or liking trivy.. because Trivy was not a regular to Cry.
Later I found she was not a regular to.. "anywhere".. not college, not her mom-dad's place.. not to her friends places.. except for one place.. and that place is not on the planet.. orkut that is.

Ravi turned out .. to be her orkut friend.
Trivy turned out to be not a regular at cry.. because she liked going to orkut (you should hear her say that as if that was like going physically to some place).. and reading out who did what from there.. from photos, peoples names (ya, orkut people change their first and surnames often to show what they are doing or feeling like more than their real names)... and importantly learning things from something out of this world called "crap".. er er.. its "Scrap" in orkut.. trivy thinks that orkut crapping.. er er. scrapping is out of the world idea.

An year and a half of advice later she "goes to" orkut less often.. but still can't avoid it.. she and her ridiculous list (read gang) of friends on orkut scrap each other.. like scrapping each others head.

That is how ridiculous I feel still about her habitat, her living area.. her orkut page.. and now one more step ahead.. her facebook wall, she is trying to get that going.

Going back to history of me meeting trivy.. At the end of the wait.. I think I decided, if you want to talk to triveni, you should install gtalk and try. That happened one day, and I was talking to her initially about how we can help CRY .. and later about .. like they say "all things under the sun".

Chatting with trivy was more interesting than liking to talk to geetha who mistook my intentions with her and even turned down twice or thrice my offer to drop her off even 500m away in my bike.

And more than that.. trivy turned out to be interesting because, she listened with an open mind and blabbered with an open mind about herself when she knew I was not asking things with intentions.

We started to talk about brothers, sisters, whose childhood was most difficult, how we got into what fields of study for what reasons.. and all that.. including whose doggie pisses longer.

If you are curious.. its her doggie that pissed longer... and her brother used to have the "doggie pissing" photo as a thumbnail image on his orkut page.. which trivy would point you to go see if you spoke to her those days.

Yes... they even take photographs of these things these days... even though they know the doggie will do that again 4 hrs later.

On another chat, I told trivy I studied in AVM school and she was like "whaaaat" "OMG".. and all for a while on chat.. then she tells me "I also studied there.. can you believe it".

If you are curious.. yes, I believed it and it was true.. she could tell all teacher names, who thought what and still wonders why I didn't know her or any of her batchmates, while she seemed to know (not me) but some of my batchmates.

She is a classic "remember-all" when it comes to people, what they do, and all her gossipy stuff.. and the "forget-all" when it comes to remembering what she was saying a second earlier if you even cough while she talks..

Our story developed this way, and I was eagerly praying for that day.. which did come.. the day I don't have to type to talk to trivy but "really" talk.. the day internet was not neccessary for our connection to exist.

She did share her number.. and one or two blunt, what-to-talk calls later, we both were fine. .. I had a terribly good feeling about trivy though I hadn't dated her, or, neither have I did the 'wait in that corner of your house without the risk of being noticed by a neighbour so I can pick you up' kind of stuff.

It was this time, she met with a mild accident in an autorickshaw, and she cried at her house, and chatted all that with me on gtalk before going off to cry more.. She was unhappy about nobody caring about her accident and stuff like that.. and I started calling her and telling her to go consult a bone specialist immediately to check for fractures.. which all she liked to hear.. except that I was telling her to consult a doctor at around 00:30 am.

The next day, I called up trivy in the morning, made her come to the busstop, ride with me to a doctor.. only that I didn't tell her which doctor and all, and went direct to one of the best hospitals in chennai the Apollo specialities in nandanam.

I further went directly to the "emergencies" ward with all the right intentions, got a pointer to a doctor's desk.. rushed her there.. and then the doctor was not there, or he would come only in the evening they said. Only that all this was happening for a mild fracture as later it turned out to be.. and trivy was having pains in her joints because of straining more than the accident which only triggered it. The doctor who trivy calls 'chocks' (chockalingam) and his attendee nurses were all smiles the way I was jumping at them for saying doc is available only in the evening and my girl had met with an accident and having fractures everywhere... that was my feeling though trivy didn't have one fracture...not till this day. :o)

Trivy was surprised about all the attention I was showering at the hospital .. in that she is an emergency ward patient just from a big major accident, although she was not looking a bit like a patient, leave alone an emergency ward patient. I was telling her, "whaat .. did I make too much a scene for this with the nurse.. and look at you, nobody would agree you met with an accident, you are not even looking dull".. and she blushed and giggled for all that.

Soon after, a couple of days, and,
I was out of chennai for a relative's marriage after strangely calling up trivy more than once to tell her how long i am gone, and when I am boarding the train, going to come back and set foot in chennai, etc., in detail... which I had never done before with anybody.. it was like I didn't want to go.

And from my relative's marriage I was finding things unbearable until I called up and spoke to trivy for only 10 mins... or one hour I don't remember.. :o)

Trivy was on the call itself like indirectly saying "you are going to have tough time with me.." for me interestingly advicing her to take her medicines properly.

Once I was back I thought.. I shall propose to her to marry me.. and I planned an evening nice enough for it.. I started at 3pm itself.. for a 5pm or later meeting with her.. bought her more than one card.. went to coffee day (where the incident was to happen).. wrote down what I wanted to write in all the cards.. prepared the gift and things wrapped in a cover, called her up around 530 and met her.. she was only coming with me for a coffee.. and was telling stories about her day around chennai, and all that.. and we were in coffee day around 7 or something I think.. I don't remember the time of the incident, but because of repeated brickbats from trivy I remember the day was november 17th.. (hope it is correct, or she is going to kill me when she reads this)..

I gave the cards one by one, she was all glee and bright with cute eyes wide open.. trying to read them without showing off excitement.. the first 4 cards I had planned would tell only jokes about her.. and the fifth one makes the proposal.. so as to cool her down in case she didn't like the idea.. and more so to cool me off in case she has to only return one card out of five. Isn't that a nicely thought of plan.. pat me on my back. .. and No you may not copy the intelligence behind this approach.. I am gonna patent and copyright it.

If you are curious.. First thing trivy said was.. "I wanted to propose you first maaaan".. and then she made a call and told her bro. about it.. and that stupid fellow in all his mind was asking her for some pocket money I guess, instead of wishing her well. She never said "Yes" and all that day.. like it happens in movies.. though she mentioned indirectly she was accepting it..

To this day, she still thinks and tells me "you were supposed to give those to geetha na.. " about the cards... whenever I take up the sweet many ways I proposed her.. Stupid idiot goose she is.. that is how she scolds me when I do something. so, this is my turn. :o)

Thanks for reading.. how Harry met Trivy..

But I never knew it came out so interesting... as Jai Ho (You are my destiny)

The interesting part of the music is.. I could see the album as a celebration by the world, of India's vibrance... and the celebration of India's interest to grow and work and celebrate with the world as a mature country with globalized indians.

Ofcourse, India is poor.. and all this can be seen as falsification of the country's image.. but take it straight, probably working with other nations is what is going to teach how to eradicate poor, keep clean, make less babies and all that.. like all those foreign banks and supermarkets came over and made our own business people do their kind of service, eventually raising the bar now in banking and retail sector to an unbelievable amount in just a span of less than 10 years.

Must watch Mac-vs-PC Ads

But what is the truth in it.. Numbers shown in balance sheets are more so becoming unreal after each economic recession when companies which have shown big numbers every year suddenly seem to fall off the line or if they manage to stick on they remove 'Tissue paper' from their monthly purchase orders to cut costs.

So, are there similarities like Enron, satyam in Indian railways, or are they really making that money ?

I guess they do make the money, though some of the numbers might be exxagerated.. but they are definitely making the money at the cost of "NOT upgrading" any or all of the services, cleanliness at stations, helping commuters with city or town transport into-outof railway stations.. and importantly without upgrading the rail systems and ticketing systems itself.

It is 2009, and India is still fore-seeing its first bullet train far away in 2015. Better services or food / toilet / waiting room facilities in railway stations is still a long or even unforeseen dream. All you can do today is go 15 mins early to catch the train and get out of the train in a station and hurry out of the station in 15 mins.. If you try to look for waiting rooms, night-sacks, nice clean toilets, or even a decent honest commute to somewhere and back, you are going to find all things that are wrong with the railways.

Recently I went 1 hr early to send off my fiance at the station. She was going from chennai to hyderabad. We found rats, we found so much dirty linen strewn around, no dustbins at regular distances along the platform, biscuit wrappers and coffee cups strewn around as if there was just some shooting in the station and everybody threw it all off and ran.. it was so much so dirty, abandoned, .. and the proper word would be "UNCARED FOR"..

At one instance I was seeing an fully plush A/C coach just standing on the dirties rail tracks possible on earth... with shit, rats, some sewage too, all on the track... definitely smelling something so bad but I wasn't feeling it because probably we Indians are all used to such smells always.

Anybody, who had a few bucks more, and travels to other countries in the world, would prefer to avoid going by train because of these more than for the sake of a sign of status. I was thinking so already to save money for travelling by flights rather than go to such places and get demotivated and un-attitudinal.

It is by allowing all these "uncared for" stuff that the railways is making its money and showing off in the centers of governance as an achievement.

Ratan Tata has done a show to launch the car, on 10th of this month in Delhi.. Some videos of this are posted on youtube.com here

p.s. You may not be able to view the video already from youtube because either youtube.com has deleted it, for copyright reasons or for avoiding too many hits. I was able to view two parts of the video, but the 3rd returned a 'sorry' message from youtube

More than the car, I was worried about the inspiring, but aeging Ratan Tata.. he definitely seemed unhealthy and I-may-fall-anytime kind of postures during the entire show at the launch. Bless him well.. and here are some pics.

Though probably this will be my first auto-review post.. I am so encouraged to type my opinion of Nano if you care, I guess Nano will have a slow start.. and might take an year or two to have expected kind of boom in numbers in sales.. because of the friction every innovative product has in india (remember indians are a demanding audience).. How big a success and revolution Maruthi 800 created when it was launched and for so many years later that.. is something we all know... so we can expect a repeat of that kind of history very very much with nano.

The car, to be honest, to keep away my or even your critical / sceptic thoughts about it.. in comparison to cars and their costs like a Maruthi or Hyundai or Ford ones... nano looks good, affordable, as safe and economic as a Maruthi or Hyundai or Ford is. Not bad or sceptic at all like we careful, demanding indians critic about.

Another thing I observed on the launch function was, almost all employees of Ratan Tata seem to share a fright to get near him or be near him, probably not fear but having worked for him, they know the bigness of him and respect him so. Anyways, nice to see a dream indian project completed, that too when the whole world challenged that it is not possible.. I remember how somebody said from some country they are going to make a $100 laptop, and never were able to keep the promise.

I am going to remember the last photo above.. Tata with the Nano like a pet by his side.. look at the size of them.. cute little creature it is.

Starting with being the manager for the team that designs .Net, and its related technologies, to also listening up or helping users of the technologies directly through blogs or communities, and as if that wasn't enough work, Scott goes the last step in wrapping up his team's work by doing the marketing and sales kind of speeches for the technologies too.

While being inspired by Scott Guthrie, I also notice that coincidentally or not many top guys in Microsoft are Scotts.. or their first names are Scott as well.. You can also put it differently.. that many people with firstname Scott in microsoft seem to be making interesting technology breakthroughs or represent something nice about the company Microsoft.

Though that last one of finding a coincidence of the name Scott with Microsoft is only a fancy observation of mine, I am really inspired by seeing more of people like scott guthrie on the web, to keep that geeky thing motivated in me... that someday I too might try hard and do/become what scott is today.

My recent view of scott guthrie was from here where he talks about release of Silverlight 3, an Uer-Interface technology of Microsoft.

And Indian politics in general has always mixed with cricket.

We have seen one or more politicians becoming chairmen of the Board of control for cricket in India
We have seen politicians making selections for the cricket team. etc.,

While we were wondering what we haven't seen yet in cricket... the Indian ministry of Home affairs, a totally government body run by politicians, is involving itself in the scheduling of the IPL. Not just ad-hoc involvement... the home minister addresses a press-meet to announce possible dates for the IPL. If at least the sports minister did that, it would have been diplomatic.

Anyways,
Looks like the congress-led government at the centre, has more interest in IPL for political reasons, than for sports reasons... that is in the interest of getting people glued to IPL a happy thing, and have people busy thinking whether rajasthan royals will win or super kings will win..
and finally vote for congress again in the coming polls (april -may) .. forgetting congress's handling of '26/11 mumbai attacks' or 'nuclear deal'

Already we know that the congress diverted attention of the nation from the alarming inflation rates, by making the nuclear deal drama.. which the CPI-M really wasted their time on and severed ties with congress.

End of day, both IPL and politics exist for the money and the power they can generate from people.. who cares what people become... and no wonder they are united. But are we people united in anything that stands against us? right from questioning why the women's bill can never be passed, or an anti-corruption bill never taken up. Does going to the voting booth all that we can do.. ??

How many times have you cribbed losing money or shouting back at politicians and local organizations demanding you money to organize a local political meeting or fund their campaign, or develop a building or infrastructure like a temple in your locality... "for your growth why should I lose my hard earned money" you would say when they throw a cheeky smile and say "madam, we are doing this to help you, society and well-being of everyone.. we promise".

And you thought that is something illegal they are doing and you sometimes have to do with it because they are powerful people.

Now its all legal with the recent news item.

As a traveller you hardly spend time at an airport, and it is only the airplane that transports you more than the airport's involvement in your transport, but still delhi airport will charge you for developing their services, not for using their service, but because you landed at the airport.

They are charging passengers rather than doing this to the airliners.. because airliners in India are already poor and begging on the next street corner it seems..

End of day, every corportation wants to exist well right from citibank, to delhi airports, and politicians will exist and help the corporations exist, but people have to pay for existing.. though the former's source of income is purely the latter.

This horrible trend, if it catches up, which I guess it definitely will, is going to make you not just pay tax, but toll charges on the road, airport usage charges at the airport, part entry fee at the government maintained parks, and much more.. you earn your money, and pay tax.. and politicians and government officials, get the tax, their salaries, the scam loots, various bribe/extortion money, etc.,

-------

News two says: Finance ministry of Indian government has decided to let loose funds from FDI as local funds with a new scheme..

And all business newspapers are hailing the idea as a good one.. which is to be announced in the forthcoming budget session.

Capitalism is required but only as long as we can control the gates from being wide open.. but this move suggests they are removing the entire compound wall and trying to put a one-time entry fee at the gate alone.

---
For example, until now, walmart USA can start operations in the name of walmart India with 51% of administration held with the Indian management, the remaining 49% administration (or the actual ruling administration) from the USA. ... and all funds they invest in india are considered foreign-investment and have limitations on how it can be used or what ROI they can take back...

But if the news becomes real, it suggests walmart can invest in a 100% indian managed company called talmart India. and invest huge sums of money, and actually do whatever an indian company can do, though they are actually foreign investments which should have limitations. This is because their FDI on talmart will be considered local investment since they have already existed and invested like an FDI on walmart India.

Because there won't be limitations, they can challenge all of indian market, like reliance fresh challenged all hawker based grocery in india.. and finally at the end keep or take all their earnings from india back to their country without any issues.

Practically speaking it is correct that they are investing and they are taking back their profits.. out of their hard work.. but ethically speaking we are allowing a larger economy to suck blood from a 48+ times weaker economy assuming they will push more and more money to make india larger.

Taking competition head on from foreigners and still surviving is fine.. US does, UK does, but we have a huge band of poor, dying, or weaker sections in soceity than what the west has.. and rather than helping these bands from thinning.. even after so much light as from somebody calling an indian community "slumdogs", the ministry of finance goes bang-bang with capitalism to impress americans to work more with indians..and share each other's markets..

Who does it help?
The rich obviously.. so the rich get richer. When the west allows indians more space in their market for goods and services, it is the rich set of indians who do exports that get benefitted.

The poor get more poorer.. because when the west comes into india and takes away a share of our market for goods and services, growing companies or small industries lose work on competition.. and more companies means more employment for the partly or fully educated poor which will tempt them and keep them out of agriculture and other important industries that the un-educated poor survive on.

The basic truth behind businesses coming to India, is:
1. Survival of the fittest.. more money, bigger economy, they will survive, even if we indians compete with all our money with them..
2. Foreigners would invest in India.. not to serve indian economy, but only to make themselves more richer, or to shift their recession here.

-----------

Long live the Indian polity and the finance ministry's executies with all how-to-suck-people's-money ideas.. they sure should get ready retirement pensions and jobs from corporates for helping them loot the people who serve as their vehicle to office.

If the finance ministry gets time, they should sit and think what reforms they are doing as equal to what they are doing for corporates, or FDI, and tally the numbers to understand that they are doing negligible to raise India's poor.

It is simple math.. and here's a crude sample of the numbers.

End of day, waive a 6000 cr farm loan, 2000 cr NREGA and show that on Television as achievements to raise the poor.. but are we forgetting the fact that 6000 cr farm loan waiver was debt not new fund injection for poor..and that in no way will raise the bar, but only encourage them buy more loans.
And the 2000 cr NREGA project is used by people who are unemployed only because of all the other anti-poor / capitalist reforms.

So, you make the fire and then after sometime send the fire service to douse it, doesn't mean you are serving the people.

And finally, the reform worth given to corporates would be nothing less than 200,000 cr in any financial year.. which overcasts a huge shadow over the 6k+2k above making it entirely negligible.

Best, it is watched with family, especially the oldie-types/ mid-age mom-dads in your family who might not have seen the world or many people of the world, to understand the goods and bads of inheriting different cultures.. especially when it comes to allowing kids to become adults, make their own decisions in life.

I happened to go with my mom to the theatre complex(yes very very occassionally I take her out) expecting to see 'Padikathavan' a masala(read no-story) movie .. but because we were late and that movie had already started, I landed up taking my mom to this wonderful movie.. wonderful for my mom..it was though boring for me except that I was enjoying prakashRaj(lead actor) at his best of expressions

I actually don't enjoy much of philosophical movies or motivating movies at the theatres, I like to be entertained if I watch one in a theatre, like cartoons ;) Bond 007's,

My mom loved the movie and was within it so much, that I could see her hands folded(in prayer) when trisha(actress) was getting married at the marriage registrar's office (in the movie).

Enjoyable.. Moving.. for a family audience.

Actors Trisha - PrakashRaj - Aishwarya (play the very composed daughter - dad - mom in the movie)

I actually don't like the idea of movie people taking a series.. like part 1, part 2... except if the different parts have isolated stories, jokes, and don't require the audience to have followed all movies in the series to understand the next one.. like they do with Harry potter movies.

Most of the comedy's(or entire movie's) context in Madagascar 2 goes back to you having seen the earlier movie, or at least having a friend next to you explaining you the context of the jokes. I went with a friend who hadn't seen the earlier part and was not enjoying the movie as much as me.

Children will love it I think, I found many children in the hall laughing out or screaming understanding the sequences in the movie..

And here actually I have an observation.. Children seem to like or relate to, or identify animals and characters in animation movies that are low on graphics.. just like they see in comic books.. more than understanding movies like 'Incredibles'/'Finding nemo' which I would say requires you to be an adult to enjoy it fully. Just like how Ice Age series are also popular with children.

So, maybe the crew of madagascar were indeed doing a stripped down comic book like graphics for animation rather than the other way like I was wondering in the first part of this post.

In a different perception, those movies can make you tougher if you relate yourself in to the characters of the students rather than the teacher characters I related myself to in both the films.

Both the movies are real-life based stories.. and as far as I have read, they have not exaggerated the story to make it good for the movies.. but may have in-turn been unable to bring everything that happened in real lives of the people involved into the movie format.

I cried when Hilary swank cried..
I smiled when Denzel washington smiled.
..

When the movies got over.. I was amazed at the presentation of them, and what changes such great movies could bring if they were shown to children and teachers all around the globe...

and then..
google tells me that the movies have already inspired people all around, and you could spend a day or two reading so much of the good changes the movies had already created.. organizations, funds for education, better teachers.. etc., all in america of-course.. and since both films talk about racism, black-white problems, you would see how they have helped the american culture. Like the 'Freedom Writers Foundation', something that has become immensely popular after the movie on Freedom Writers.

If you like teaching/mentoring, and you haven't watched either of the movies, I bet you should.
Because these are not just movies, they are powerful movies.

Its been sometime since I wrote anything here on my blog. Here are quick updates.

> I got financially broke, this time around I found up some interesting job for myself in Bangalore and worked there in a company called craftsilicon.

>Yes, I am no more an independent consultant, though I have now quit this bangalore company to join another..

>Yes, you read it right, I quit that company already, I joined in august, and quit recently now in december, because I guess I can't work the way people want me to : "inside the box, strictly"... without doing anything out-of-the-box, innovative, and importantly without thinking big.

> What I observed working with craftsilicon, a product-based company with a few microfinance and banking products, is the product space in India is in a state which has all symptoms and can be easily called the nascent stage of a "boom". Indian companies have grown up to the idea of buying Indian software.. "Didn't they always do that?" you ask, and yes, there was always a market for indian software, but only for the cheapest and the basic most applications, not for something like an enterprise application. Yes there were these 'Financle' kind of products which are big for a long time, but not many products like that... and if I remember right, Finacle had its first indian customer also only after many foreign customers.

> So, that is something very interesting.. the product space growing simply means, Indians are now seen more mature in software development space...importantly by Indians itself. As a whole country, we always were considered one which lacks attitude and self-confidence. Now the tables are changing.

> Soon we can expect more software products, servers, who knows even operating systems churned out of India.

(Isn't this supposed to be a brief update... yes yes I remember)

> Then, I am now going to work in chennai .. back home. and I guess I found myself a very very interesting project in a new company. I can't share more details, but briefly, it is a home automation system, with your TV, and a few other equipments going IP way, and pushing service delivery say some 10% into the futuristic dreams we have seen in movies like wallE, where people sit in their couch and do a lot of things over the screen and touchpad, and probably get fat at the end of day.

> And then,
And then, I might be getting married soon. Ms. Right though can't still believe she has decided to marry me, and things are going that way for now, with 50% of my earnings going to telephone bills... and if I even ponder slightly towards that angle of discussion on the phone, the call gets cut with a bye only to provide for a longer call to make up for the fight with her.

> Who is she? .. the name is Triveni.

> Got very disturbed atleast a few times, a few minutes about what happened recently in Bombay, talking about the terror shootings which lasted "3 days" in a so-called "transforming" country, killing many, and with politicians still failing to understand/attach any serious thought to it, except for making new arrangements to win state elections shortly happening or already completed in a few states.

> The world media ripped Indian police system / intelligence system / security system inside out, going on to mention that Indian police still use the world war II extinct .33 pistol for their major operations.

> The ruling politicians just took to a 'sorry', 'we learnt our lesson', 'it will be better next time', etc., thoughts instead of keeping just quiet and show that they are badly embarrassed that they did just "Nothing" so far, that can't even give basic protection to people, and that too in places in bombay which are known as high-security zone.

> Everytime you switch on TV, still, you see some politician carelessly answering 'yes we couldn't do anything.. we have learnt our lesson'.

> Yet again, and still still still for so many years, so many times, Indian governance systems want an accident or problem to know when to change things.. The governance system, the police system, or any public system here in India, goes not by a process...but only by events that happen... that's the "if it happens, we will see what to do" attitude.

> While I felt bad even bombay wasn't secured to freak shooting, that too for 3 days, the 4th day, it was revealed it happened even after repeated security and intelligence warnings from many many numerous intelligence agencies around the world and from the country's own intelligence systems. It simply showed that people who received the warnings ignored it amidst the movies they wanted to see that day, or the election preparations they wanted to do, or just lazily thought they are just warnings 'if it happens we will see'.

Horrible..
I decided I am not going to vote here on.. I guess there is a new system in the electorate system in India, where one is going to be allowed to go mark their name on the electorate on the voting day, and just return without voting which will then become a 'no vote' and add to a 'no vote' count... instead of voting for any existing party which has ever been in power atleast once so far and couldn't use their opportunity when they were in power to fix anything...just anything.

That we are still having to be so dumb a country, not addressing anything that is required to help us grow. And probably here on I am going to see what best I can do directly to my environment and country rather than voting for some idiot or the other and expecting them all to deliver even one of their promises that means upgrading the lifestyle, rather than giving something free to make votes and degrading the lifestyle with freebies and freebies and freebies.