What Am I

It was in 2005 that Reliance Industries made big news with the discovery of the largest gas deposits in that year. The gas deposits are found off-shore near the Eastern Coast of India. While the gas discovery was made, there were/are no major pipelines connecting the eastern coast of India with rest of the country. Hence there was a need to setup a major gas pipeline from Eastern Coast to the Western Coast and beyond (~1500 kms). So Reliance Industries with no prior experience in either of these two areas floated two companies: Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) owns the gas well. Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure Ltd. (RGTIL). Every one was gungho about the discovery of gas and the progress of the gas pipeline because the gas production was estimated to reach 80mmscmd by FY2013 and the pipeline also planned to extend by another 1500 kms towards South & North Eastern India. Investments by various players also ensured that RIL got a decent return on equity. Alas,...

Either you have sex and get pregnant or not have sex at all. Interesting stance that the so called forthcoming religion in the world has. ( Religious views on Contraception ) “This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency,”.. so says the spokeswoman of Mitt Romney - the Republican  presidential candidate in US. ( And the reason she says so is to appease the conservative catholic Christians.) Another statistic (Source; NY times) is that 50% of the pregnancies in US are unwanted. And among those 40% end up in abortion. Going by this the 3 million addition to US population last year would have meant ~2 million children unwanted!! So, guess people cannot experiment with this fantasies to without getting pregnant. Not that every time one has sex she will get pregnant, but without emergency contraception or birth control pills, the population explosion would be unstoppable.  Even in India no political party has the co...

I could see that the gate opened into a small ground followed by two rooms with not even a concrete slab. We were waiting for some one to open the lock of the gate. Some guy came with keys. He looked alright..well built and decently dressed and with a badge in his neck. I appeared to be overly dressed up for the occasion in a suit and the laptop. He didn't bother to look into our eyes and was trying to unlock but it didn't happen. The person with me signaled him in some unfamiliar signs and the guy went in, brought another set of keys which opened the lock. I wondered what did the person tell the guy!!  The guy went away with no change of expression in his face as if he has ignored our presence and that he didn't care whether we came in or not. I was bemused at the least! I walked in and I met the lady of the place and the guy, who heads the center, invited me inside. For a place handling the students from Below poverty line, the place was well furnished. It had a...

Kill the  market The general RoE for the power sector itself is around 15-25%. Not a great sign!! Rupee depreciation by almost 15% ... a big blow to the industry!! On top of that the huge interest rates... Heartbreak to the industry!! Now GOvt. plans for tripling the custom's duty .. Thats it, industry is dead!! ..  Guess its time to run to fixed deposits

If only we were honest, to ensure sanity we should have stuck to 100 cents. Most of the socialist states, have tried to tweak the 100 cents barrier by re-defining their own benchmarks to a lesser number of 55 cents or another value. Confused!!! I am referring to the definition of Poverty line. While the 100 cents itself isn't accurate, but it probably provides some consistency across the world.  But to ensure that the government in power boasts about the economic growth, most countries have come up with their own version of Poverty line. With the divide between rich and poor increasing by the day, it was obvious that the poverty line had to be increased to ensure that people who are not reaping the benefits can actually get access to the welfare schemes. But instead countries like India, rather political parties like Congress have re-defined the poverty line to 64 cents , thereby trying to ensure that the welfare schemes are addressed only to the "Real Poor", but not ...

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...

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...