Negative campaigning by NDA against Pratibha Patil..

Negative campaigning .....

It was real funny to learn that NDA comprising the BJP and other parties were putting up a site for Pratibha Patil in the Presidential elections in India. Never in the jistory of politics has there been such a " helpful act" by the opposition putting up a website for the winning candidate. www.knowpratibhapatil.com

They want Ms Pratibha Patil accept responsibility for the actions of her relatives. ( They want Ms Pratibha Patil to accept responsibility of their actions after losing out in sugar mills and to pay back their loans)

And the funny part is that NDA does not have any plans to put up a website for their own candidate, knowing fully well that he is a loser. Having served the British during the time when Gandhi gave the call to Indians to boycott British goods and launched the Quit India Movement, our Vice President joined the British police in 1942.

Pl read this expose from Outlook magazine " Is Shekhawat worth the salt ??

http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070716&fname=APresident+Election++%28F%29&sid=3

Adding injury to insult, Shekhawat was "suspended for taking bribe" on August 21, 1947 in free India and spent six months outside and through some influence was reinstated to the police force..

Do Indians need such a corrupt person to occupy the high post of President of the country which has been decorated by great respectful people ??

The ploy by NDA leaders of setting up the website for Ms Pratibha Patil will only hit back at them.. It shows the negative mentality of the NDA and it's constituents ..

george..

The growth of the emerging economies like India and China and the emergence of India as a software development destination can be attributed to the ' frivolous' (?) pace of globalization. Is it good or bad for the world. ? Only time can tell.

But we have had economists like Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz ( Nobel lauretes worried about this phenomenon) and an equally strong rebuttal of their stand by Prof Jagdish Bhagwati in his 2004 book In Defense of Globalization. Having been influenced by Thomas Friedman's book exhorting globalization and also the articles and books by Joseph Stiglitz against globalization, the articles written by this Gujarati brother of the former Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme court Justice P N Bhagwati is a sure eye opener. The Left calls him, the greatest Free Trader in the world as of today. He extolls the virtues of free and open trade, non-protectionism and so on.

A doyen among economists specialising in international trade and the phenomenon of Globalization.

Homepage at Columbia Uty. - http://www.columbia.edu/~jb38/

Through this recent artilce he says that it is technology not globalization which is driving down wages in the developed world.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jb38/FT%20Jan%203%2007.doc

On Protectionism - http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Protectionism.html

What wikipedia has to say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdish_Bhagwati

A good review of his book " In Defense of Globalization" http://www.boloji.com/bookreviews/043.htm

His book 'In Defense of Globalization' (2004), Oxford University Press is a worth read..

The greatness of this Indian is that he is next in line for The Nobel Prize in Economics.. Why is it taking such a long time for him !!

--

Sincerely

George Easaw

Race for teraflops ..or Petaflops .. ??

The 2007 bi-annual list of the world's top 500 supercomputers finds no mention from India.

The IBM machine Bluegene/L at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California tops the list with a speed of 280.6 teraflops. The Jaguar Cray XT4 at the Oak Ridge National Maboratory is a far second at 101.7 teraflops. IBM/HP Machines finds mention in the top 500 from within India, but no indigenous development.

CDAC by 2010 is planning to get machines working at 1 Petaflop, 1e 1000 teraflops( 1000 trillion or 1 x 10 to the power 15 floating point operations per second..

The IBM petaflop machine BG/P with 1 petaflop will be out in 2008.

At present speeds it will take almost 100,000 PCs to catch up with one of these 1 petaflop machines.

Single chip multiple core machines in the petaflop ranges will be available in 2010 with about 150,000 to 500,000 cores. The real challenge is to develop system software and scalable algorithms which can match these speeds..

The MDGRAPE - 3 from Japan already clocked 1 petaflop in June 2006 but being a special purpose computer does not find mention in the top 500 supercomps in 2007.

Your handheld calculator operates at 10 flops.. oops !!

info courtesy The Hindu, 5 July 07 + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS

george..

USS Nimitz drops anchor off Chennai ..

USS Nimitz, the nuclear powered carried dropping anchor off Chennai was a big news..

It is powered by two nuclear power plants and has 56 fighter jets on board, the 56 year old ship is one of the largest aircraft carriers in the world.

Fears of radiation from the ship have caused some fear among environmentalists and politicians.. But the visit is a sure shot way to boost US Indo military relations especially after the events of '98 after India exploded the nuclear bomb.

photo courtesy Times of India, photo taken at 6 AM 4 July, after it dropped anchor.

george..

Munnar evictions goes into top gear !!

It was quite good to see VS, CM of Kerala, going to Munnar today and personally overseeing the evictions processes. Today it was one of the big guns in Munnar, Tata Tea. Tata Tea has some 1,25,000 acres in Munnar under tea plantation. Actually the land was under the custordy of Tata, but two years back they have handed over the possession of these estates to their employees as they found that managing these estates were against their core competencies and was becoming more of a a liability than a resource. 50,000 acres of these do not have proper records and from a long time Tata has been occupying these lands.

The action today was spectacular in that about 2000 acres of this has been reclaimed from past Tata employees and govt has planted it's board there. Tata in a move to minimise damage has in turn said that those lands were govt lands and not occupied by Tata at all, which is not true.

A major blow for Tata, this is the best action by VS ever since the evictions stated. In due course of time more land being held by Tata for which Tata does not possess records, will be reclaimed.

Even though this smells of some vindictive action against big businesses, unless this was done the poor farmer in Munnar would never have been able to realise his dream of owning land in Munnar, everything was with the big boss, Tata. Under the shade of such big businesses the pinarayi faction in CPM has owned land in the name of farming and converted that to big tourist homes and party offices.

Like a very benevolent big brother Tata was giving employment to the poor people of Munnar on the land originally owned by these poor landless labourers. What an irony ?

In Kerala only such land ownership issues come under public scrutiny and action taken on it. Consider the other states inn the country. The poor still remain poor and the rich continue to grow rich !!

Eventhough the land no more belongs to Tata, it is being pulled into the limelight and it's reputation is getting damaged,. As the politicians see, there is lot of political mileage in regaining land from the Tatas than any poor peasant or shopkeeper..

In Bengal, the CPM govt is trying to get land for Tata at Nandigram while in Kerala CPM govt is trying to take away land from the Tatas !!

george..

NAM and it's relevance ..

The recent mention by US Secretary of State, Dr Condoleeza Rice on the irrelevance of the non-aligned movement and it's immediate rebuttal by the Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee deserves special mention.

From a bipolar world, the world has moved to a multipolar world, with the Islamic states on one hand and China, Russia, North Korea and other rogue / failed states on the other. With each passing day the US monopoly of freedom and justice is being challenged by these countries.

To court India at this point, 'a multiethnic democracy', to be led into the new world order by US was quite natural to expect from a politician like Dr Rice, particularly fresh from the experience of Gauntanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib. When US is ready to wage pre-emptive wars for the so called 'good of mankind' and support unsustainable lifestyles of it's citizens, weaponise space, fight for agricultural subsidies for it's farmers, covertly support regimes which terrorise it's citizens, how can emerging economies support such thinking and policies.

If US thinks it can influence India and Indian foreign policy, it is badly mistaken. Being the most vibrant democracy in the world and the birth place of democracy, ( accordiing to Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian), India can take care of itself and will hold on to it's sovereignity. India does not want any alignment or exclusive attachment to any country.

NAM can concentrate on South South ( meaning developing countries) collaboration, technology and economic and trade linkages .. Providing leadership in this area is definite to bring in lasting peace and a sutainable society, making this world a happy place to live for the coming generations.

george..

Rains continue to hammer Idukki..

Incessant rains that is how I characterise the rains which have hit Idukki this year. The last three days we have had heavy rains. for the second time during this rains, my kids had holidays for school as the school, lying in a low lying area , St Pius at Kuttikanam, got watersogged and classes had to be suspended.

Iduki as such is very prone to landslides and road blockages, The road to Munnar has been blocked for the past three days. Luckily on Saturday when we went to Kottayam, the roads were clear. The pain is only to reach the plains of Mundakkayam, after that it is ok.. The return journey was very tricky, Lucky I took a driver along.

This wednesday I have asked Binu to accompany me. Everything with God.

The backache is subsiding. Taking care. We also met Dr Rajan at Pallam on Saturday and he has advised me to take some medicines and gel to apply. The pain has gone. Started exercises too.

george..