Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The fuel fiasco


There were lot of rumblings in recent times about the fuel price hike. Almost this is roughtly 6th or 7 th time there has been a revision in the fuel prices and the fuels sprialled like anything. It was around Rs. 35-36 in 2004 and now it stands at 50. The major point which has been put forth for its act of "biting the bullet" is the international crude prices. With every increase in cents the government releases figures mentioning the losses or dip in the profit lines of the major oil companies [ or Navratnas ] and now one more term has been added in this band wagon. " The Under Recoveries" of the oil companies.

Though there has been varied arguements regarding whether this is unavoidable or a fiscal gameplan, the most obvious point to put up is the cost break up of the fuels. It would be surprising to know that oil prices is pretty low in countries like Pakistan,Nepal and Bangladesh irrespective of the value of the respective rupees, this amounts to direct conclusion that indian oil has been exorbhitantly taxed. the rought notion is that taxes amount's to roughly 60 percent of the oil sold. And for sure, Chidambaram and co can play a part and bring down the numerous excises,duties and taxes and in addition to it the local sales taxes. With the oil finance ministry tasted the money and especially chidambaram would never give up his share from excises and duties of the fues to have a dent from his kitty. As rightly pointed in frontline this amounts to parent safeguarding themselves by putting their wards in trouble....

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Sorbonne and AIIMS



Chirac and Villepin




The recent strikes and string protest spearheaded mainly by the AIIMS doctors, in no way can be drawn parallel with the SOrbonne incident , the fight by the students against first employement bill which authorises "hire and fire" policy to the corporates and contemplated to
give solution to the spiralling unemployment problems.





The street protest in France



The protest by the elite doctors of the prestigious institute ( This tag is unquestionable as AIIMS attracts upto 75000 applications for a mere 45 seats.. which is highest amoung any scale in the world) The crux of the issue for the protest is entirely diffarent but the issue is quite discussable. The first employment bill assures the employer to fire the employer without any circuitous procedure provided he is within 26 or so.. years age. Already reports are there that it is common to spot graduates living as dependents and the students feared that the first employment bill will lead to more unsecure environment and the protest had the perfect line of thinking amoung all the students with the entire student community of the France registered a protest and an additional point is that it had the backing of the opposition benches.







The indian action


This made the lord of the bill Dominique de Villepin to bowed to the protesters with Villepin addressing the nation via tv. The protest or struggle succeced as they fought for the cause which everyone thought a threat. This can be in no way compared with their Indian ounterpart. The protests by and large was the outcome of the thinking of a select few. (The
notions were discussed in my previous blog) The protests lost the sting it should have. A quick
glance through the charter by the forum called "Youth for equality" would make us clear that they were very much unclear. The charter lacked the content. Whether to go for a no reservation stance or against the obc reservation or aginst the numbers????? The support it got from the selfish electronic media was an advantage for the protesters but that alone would never be sufficient. In short, the protest turned out to be a bombastic toothless exercise which was given a final whip from the supreme court which ordered the medicos and resident doctors to take back their steth...

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

The Mandal II

We had lot of rumblings over the OBC reservation in the central universites proposed by the Ministry of human resource. And recently I went through some diffarent perspective towards the notion of merit as claimed by the elitest of the elite( These include a handful of doctors from the AIIMS and select few from the Indian Institutes of Technologies). As far as the whole set of events the light and fanfare which the agitating Doctors and other leads who got from the news hungry media is very much palpable when compared with the coverage for the pro-reservation group.














This simply put, is the "domination of the class with the merit cover" Praful gives a diatribe with clear points sufficient to convince anyone who does have a wavering mind about the whole issue. The first and foremost point to quote is the time and money spent by the upper middle class elitist students who will be the prospective students of AIIMs and IIT's The mere coaching and training for a student towards an IIT cost him money in several thousands and that would remain only in his dreams for his counterpart who forms a chunk of the Indian Youth. And there itself the arguement "Youth for Justice and Equality " ends with no credible fact in hand to bolster the arguement that the soceity has to shed of inequality"