Elections, promises & Common Man!

Results of Delhi Assembly election are finally out and congress has come out triumph. It comes as a surprise to many. So what made the congress win the Delhi elections for the third time in a row!

Has congress done some remarkable work in recent times...well maybe not, but it had its own moments. The moves that touch common man's life are generally critical in the end result. The speedy work at Metro and infrastructure build up are few of its more notable achievements. BRT corridor was a noble thought went horribly wrong, but hopefully, it will get corrected over a period of time. But it(congress) did just enough in the nick of time to keep people interested. And of course the build up for Commonwealth games helped to keep the govt on its toes.

But did BJP do everything it should have to create a real threat to congress. I feel BJP missed a good opportunity to come in power in Delhi. Let's face it, in the recent times, we haven't seen a ruling party which has actually done something out of the ordinary to uplift the system as such. It’s generally bits and pieces stuff. So lot of times elections are won and lost because of the mood of the nation at that point of time. And with Inflation at 12 % and crashing of stock markets, the general sentiment wasn’t great. But it (BJP) chose to play it cards wrongly.

"Jeetegi BJP, Haarega Aatank" "Inflation at 12%,Can't Afford congress, vote for BJP" were among the slogans flashing various parts of Delhi as Elections campaign started. They even went to the extend of using Mumbai tragedy for the political gains!!. But there was one thing missing...... a promise!! Remember the votes are given on the hope of a better future. You can't win an election by abusing the ruling govt. Actually congress learnt the same lesson at the time of Gujrat elections, where none of their speeches could start or end without the mention of Modi which actually went in favor of BJP. In marketing, we call it a brand recall.

On the other hand congress talked about the good work it has done over the last 5 years ranging from creating infrastructure to introducing more schools for basic education. Its slogan said “Cant Afford to stop Progress, vote for Congress” . well it’s not just a wonderful promise but a good jingle too!

In the end common sense prevailed and congress set the mood of people in its favor. So will Delhi benefit out of this result. Well, not all promises are meant to be fulfilled...
In the end hats off to the brave Indian soldiers who laid down their lives to save Mumbai.
PEACE

Bomb the Garbage!

It's 16th of September. I am out in the usually crowded market of "Lajpat Nagar" of New Delhi. There is an undertone of silence in the visibly empty market. The usual bustling has given way to an imposed calmness. There is more security in the market than usual (which is still quite inadequate by the way!).
But there is one pleasant difference there too. The market has suddenly gone bigger. The big portions of garbage, which we have been so accustomed to, are not there anymore. There are various vans of MCD looking to do a clean up job. Well, there have been numerous calls from general public to MCD in the past, to clean up the market but in vain. It took few bomb blasts to finally open their deaf ears and hopefully rusted minds too! So actually we should thank terrorists (Garbage of Society) for cleaning up less harmful garbage.
So what are we doing to tackle this disaster? After couple of days of blasts, BJP has asked for the resignation of Shivraj Patil as Home Minister and Congress is doing a press conference to tell the people that there were more blasts in NDA ruling time and no one resigned. As usual this human tragedy has also become a part of their cheap politics. I wonder if any of these "elected fews" would have lost their dear ones in these blasts, would they still have been talking this rubbish!!
But the big question remains...who will clean up this more harmful garbage of society? I am not too optimistic about the answer. After all we all have learnt to live with the garbage. So will it take another blast to open our ears. I hope not.........

Peace.

What a Masterstroke!

Hi,
Hope everyone is enjoying the "parliament tamasha" ove the last week or so.. Govt finally survived the trust vote(or the distrust vote!) as was expected. So where does the situation stand for the govt right now. Well definitely it is better than being with left parties. There are some good reasons for that:
1. Left parties had opposed the govt on lot of reform related issues. Now, having divorced from them, it will be easier for the govt to push the reforms like disinvestment of PSUs and pension reforms, which were pending for a long time.
2. Having won the trust vote means there's no opposition to the NUKE deal that govt is after. So it can speed up the process smoothly.

So we can say that govt(or you can say congress..) have played it's card really well. They probably have got themselves in the best possible situation.
So where do left parties go from here. Well they were in a strong position in the center which they are unlikely to achieve in near future. Had they gone against the govt at the right time(when govt didn't have support of SP etc..) then things would have been more interesting. But then probably they were in the mood to "Make the hay while sun Shines". But now it's a quite long night ahead of them. Have a nice sleep!

Politics of Convenience!

Hi Friends,
When I was in my high school I used to find politics very "boring". I always thought what is the fun in knowing which minister is doing what, how many children Lalu has, why politics is called a "dirty game".....
But over the period of time as I started waking upto the realitites of life I came to know that Politics affects the common man from all quarters in a democratic country( Thats what we "proudly" call ourselves..) . And quite interestingly I started "enjoying" the twists and turns of this never ending soap opera.
Well we are witnessing another episode of melodramatic Politics these days. Left has "finally" stood upto its threat and has actually taken the suppport back from the govt. Left says that it has real concerns over the Nuclear deal with US, so it's taking the support back on "moral grounds". So far so good. But in the meanwhile govt has found new allies in Samajwadi party and others.... Congress is quite confident of getting the vote of confidence on July 22nd(ie the scheduled date) and no points for guessing that it will get that in most probability.

Now the real question arises that why Left parties took so long to withdraw their support. When the whole world knew that govt was going ahead with the deal and looking for support from all possible quarters, why did left gave the chance to the govt to get enough allies which can sustain the govt even without Left's support?
...now when govt will get the vote of confidence they will be able to get the deal through anyways. So what was the fun of showing the "morality" to the nation at a wrong and delayed time.

So is it really that Left is opposing the govt?.... or has it actully given enough time to govt to save itself and the deal??

Well I couldn't understand at first why they call politics a "dirty game", I think I am getting to know it a little better now. Do you?

Falling markets,rising Stars

Hello Friends,
I was listening to one of leading mutual fund managers last week and couldn't help myself laughing at his comments and worse he was on the panel to advise the investors how to invest in the stock markets, and I thought of sharing my views on this interesting scenario of falling markets and rising number of experts....
Lots of leading mutual funds raised money around December-January period this year. All of their prospectus and ads talked about how well the Indian economy is doing and there is a huge potential for growth. They claimed that all the investors should provide their money to "experts" who know it better where to invest it. And also the investors were encouraged to put this money through SIP(Sytematic Investment Plan) which means that an Investor shouldn't try to "time" the market but invest systematically to get better returns. All this was happenning when the Sensex was hovering around 21000 mark. So far so good...
Come June 2008.... Market crashed from January highs to around 15000 odd level. Mutual funds are sitting on a whopping amount of cash of approximately 20,000 crore and are not investing this money in the market. Their explanation is that market is now "Overvalued" and "Overheated". It is not safe investing the money now because share prices might further fall and then they will invest. Can you imagine the same "experts" who were singing growth stories when Sensex was at 21000 are now afraid to invest as suddenly market is overvalued at 15000!!
They advised the investors to go for SIPs because it isn't prudent to time the market and now they are refusing to invest in the good stocks at such low valuations because they think market might fall more and they will "time" it better by investing at that time.
Well one can only draw two conclusions out of the whole situation...
1. Either these so called "experts" are a bunch of fools whose judgements and statements change by the way market swings.
2. or they know the real situation(that the markets were overvalued at 21000+) and made fool of the investors by luring them with false claims.
I can only say that in either of the cases, it is the common investor whose hard earned money they are playing with. The market might have fallen but these experts have made good money for themselves. So next time you see an ad of mutual fund scheme, don't just blindly trust it because there's lot more than what meets the eyes!!
Happy Investing...

Games govt play....

The headlines today say that govt(read PM) is trying very hard to get the Nuclear Deal through despite of all the opposition of the Left parties and even Manmohan Singh has "threatened" to step down in case it doesn't go through. Well I thought this issue was in the as there wasn't much noise about it in the recent days,infact PM himself has said few days back that there are few "ironies" of life one has to live with. Now what possibly has happened over last few days that this thing has surfaced again.There are two things that have happened in the recent times which could have jolted the govt..

1. Congress has lost state election in few states which have gone to elections in last year or so.
2. Inflation is rising like never before in the recent weeks(latest figure that came out today is at 11.05% which is much higher than RBI limit of 5%). And needless to say common man is feeling the heat. The rising oil prices all over the world have made the matters worse.

Now we can probably understand the latest "concern" of PM about the nuclear deal. As this govt doesn't have anything meaningful to show to the Indian citizens(Elections are only 6 months away) so this seems like a last throw of dice. They want to show that power doesn't matter to them as much as nation's "welfare". Well this attempt is more out hope of than realty. You can't hide your face under a "cosmetic make up" for too long, as finally it will start coming down and I am afraid this has already happened with present govt. Now let's see how much "make up" they are left with. By the way there has been a huge campaign being run by govt cuerrently to show its "achievements" and the good work it has done over the last 5 year. I can't understand if you have done something nice for someone(common man) why you need to put it on a poster for him to know it? Well govt is "hoping" to come to power again this time by "advertising" their achievements. There was something called "India Shining" campaign that came 5 year's ago from BJP led govt. It couldn't convince the nation then. So what are the chances that UPA will come to power this time again. Well there's an old saying "History repeats itself..."

Hi Everyone!

Hi,
This is my first blog.
Lot more to come.
Cheers:-)