Posts

Showing posts from October, 2011

You want numbers...here they are!!

This is one of the blogs that I wrote just after completing my MBA and never published it..Another example of how so much numbers make any article un-interesting..here is the one about my favorite topic..Power sector in India. The numbers are very interesting for any one concerned about the sector! Power sector reforms started off in 1991. But during the eighth 5 year plan the target for the power sector is scaled down from 48000 MW to 20,729 MW on the ground of resource constraints. And the actual became only 16,422 MW. The amendments are done to the existing Acts and Rules to woo the private and foreign companies to invest in this sector. The private companies are provided a 16% assured rate of return on their equity and a 0.7 % additional return for every 1% increase in the plant load factor over the 68.5% level. Foreign equity return will be in foreign currency and will be completely protected against foreign exchange rate fluctuations. Other concessions include an enhanced ra

Cultural Begging!!

I didn't know how to coin the term for this...you can help me with the right term after reading the blog During my childhood when high rise apartments weren't the norm and urbanization wasn't in vogue, lot of people would come across your street, perform and ask for alms..more than alms I'd say they were seeking money for the appreciation of their art. Some one would play a shehnai, some one would make a bull perform dance (referred to as gangireddu melam ) or there would be small drama etc.. At the end of all these acts people would contribute what ever amount they can, and the performers in turn would bless whoever has turned up.  In many cases, these performers themselves were considered divine and hence people would throng to see and give whatever they can. This helped many of these artists to survive and flourish in a few instances. They also brought the culture and folklore into limelight and ensured that traditional music thrived. But of late, how many time

Badness of roadology!!

Did you know that there is a term called as roadology, which means the study of the impact of roads on the areas through which it passes!! Anyways, the article is about "what should be the optimum amount of badness of the road to have a better impact on the society" Did you ever wonder, what is the good thing about Indian roads. They are bad and filled with pot holes in most cases, and hence what good they can offer. On the contrary, I'd say the roads are good because they are bad!! While I understand how a good road helps in commercial transformation of the society, I somehow think that bad roads will do more justice to India than good roads. I am actually referring to the interior roads and not the highways. The potential benefits to be accrued due to bad roads are: A bad road would mean that the vehicles travelling on that road will get depreciated faster, making people purchase a car earlier.  Because of bad road, the traffic slows leading to the potential f

I'd rather prefer Sarah Palin run my nation.

I was going through the Europe debt crisis and came across the topic that "investors are scared" so many times and then I wondered who are these investors and how many are these investors who seem to determine the fate of the world economy. Effectively these select group of people are determining the fate of 6 billion people. If Gini index were to be made for the influence of people, then I am sure it would be almost close to zero... But, for dumb heads like me, who are these investors whose opinion seem to fluctuate every day. One day the sensex rises on the hope that the Greece debt bail out talks are holding up, and the second day they are scared to the extent that they dump all their shares. Is it so simple that the world economy takes a U-turn every second day? If I look back, the topic of recession appears because either the Dowzone index crashed or a group of investors think that something tragic is going to happen the very next moment. So, I was trying to identi