Pink Slips in the Indian Context

The job scene in India is bad and probably getting worse. Mos people in the IT industry are working under fear, taking each day as it comes. You do not know when would be your last day at work.

This is made more difficult by the fact that loosing a job is an almost unheard of event till recently. There is a social stigma associated with it. What would you tell your friends, relative, neighbours, land lord etc.

The availability of a jobs does not seem to be good either. There are stories about people waiting for 7+ months and still without a job. Most people in this industry are having big EMIs which will be difficult to handle without a job.

The share market has tanked so badly eroding assets of many, the money in this would have been a good buffer to have in case of loosing a job. This is not the case now.

Keeping yourself updated in your area of work or being multi skilled is good. Very very few people do this, the rest realize this when its quite late.
There is a saying 'Everything that happens happens for the good', this will be tested in the days to come. Lets wait and see.

Election Drama again

Its election time again & all are witness to the party swapping activities again. This is the usual stuff before every election. Once the elections are over there is more realignment again as more oppurtunism comes to the fore in the name of 'secularism', 'communalism' etc. May be the dictionaries should be updated to make these words the synonyms for oppurtunism.

We have 3 'secular' fronts this time in addition to the 'non-secular' BJP.

2 fronts have announced PM candidates, the congress and the BJP. In my constituency I am thinking of voting for an independent candidate if I find a worthy one.

My prediction is that it will be congress in power again as a coalition with Manmohan as the PM again.

UP blasts & a bleak future

Its the night of the UP blasts. Simultaneous blasts across 3 cities at the same time shows the organization capabilities of the perpetrators. It is way past time that we dealt with this whole issues of terrorism on a very concentrated fashion. There would very soon be no city in India that is immune to terrorism. There are apparently these sleeping terror cells every where. We better act before its gets completely out of hand. All the progress that we have today and those that we dream of will come to a naught if this issue of terrorism is not handled.

We probably need more investment in terms of people and technology into central and state intelligence, better trained state policemen, a better co-ordination of the various departments.

The above approaches will probably yield some results, but a bigger help would be for the concerned communities to take some decesive action. They need to evolve a proper strategy to bring the misguided people of their communities back into the mainstream. If these misguided people are going to listen to somebody it is in all probability people from their own communities. Without this being done every other step will possibly not yield the reults of the order that are now necessary.

India as a country is probably the country most affected by terrorism, its is time the west publicly acknowledged this and joins India in its fight against terror.

One more act in the drama in Karnataka politics ended (with Yediyurappa resigning), the ppl there probably do not know how many more acts are on. The whole state is a stage for the fights of the Gowda family. The son & the father seem to be making moves & counter moves. The son tries to align with the BJP while the father wants the congress. If the son upstaged the father by aligning with the BJP while the father was in Delhi, the father managed to get a whip issues to vote against the BJP on the floor of the house.

Whats keeping the family together seems to be the belief that their ill gotten gains of the last 2 decades will probably stand exposed if there are multiple conflicting power centers. They believe in 'united we stand' :-) care a damn for the ppl of the state.

Are we not paying a heavy price for this so called parlimentary democracy, Karnataka now, West Bengal, UP, Bihar, Gujrat are all examples of states where the political parties cock a snook at the constitution.

The whole Nandigram episode is shocking to say the least. Its like state sponsored terrorism. What chance do people of that region stand when the govt supports the offenders. Its amazing that this party wins elections with the kind of margins it does. Is fear of the people of the state behind these victories?

This is one more post from me on Indian Cricket :-) A topic I like so much, a game that I watch a lot, a game I have almost never played, a game I love talking about & do talk about to a lots of friends and strangers. I watch it on TV when at home and in any shop on the street that has tuned into this when I am out.

This is a short blog on the captaincy issue & the effects of that on the forthcoming australian tour. In all likelyhood we will be heading into the australian tour with a captain as Kumble or Dhoni & what about 5 or 6 former captains and vice captains in 10dulkar, ganguly, Dravid, Shewag, Yuvraj. I am not sure if this is good for our cricket. This is a state that existed when Azar took over as captain. We then had Srikanth, Shastri, Vengsarkar (I hope I am correct), Kapil Dev etc. All the four mentioned were out of the team a couple of years after that, maybe their exit was a case of a natural progression, but I still feel we should not be in a state where we are likely to have multiple power centers.

I feel that the best person to captain us on the Australian tour would be Dravid or Ganguly, in that order. I put Dravid first because he is one player who is certain to play in all the test matches, we cannot say the same about Ganguly. The other two names could have been Tendulkar or VVS. VVS was probably not considered for captaincy & moreover the selectors love to drop him (and are likely to do so for the test matches). Dravid & Tendulkar have refused, Ganguly not seriously considered, so the mantle has gone to Kumble (at least for the pak tour).

Inspite of the fact that Kumble was a very successful player in Australia the last time, I am not sure of him playing all the tests. The same is the case with Dhoni, we might be better off having Kartick as the keeper and Shewag opening. I say Shewag openning simply because we need an aggressive chap in that position to counter the aussies.

We are in this captaincy mess simply because the selectors and probably the board did not repect Dravid enough. The ideal situation for us was to have had him continue. Thanks to Vengsarkar and co, we have a problem we did not need. Are we headed for a whitewash ???

Its probably a frustrating feeling for the people of Karnataka to choose between the 3 political parties in the state. They all rank very high on the oppurtunism. There is not one leader in any of the parties worth mentioning. All of they want the ministerial berths & thats irrespective of the party they represent. If U promise the chiefs of one of the parties the post of a chief minister & he would not mind changing parties !!!

What should the people of the state do when they face a such a situation? Even in the case of a fresh election it will still be one of these oppurtunists or a combination of these that will be in power. To add to it all we are turning out to be another state where we will see dynastic politics for years to come.

Would not a presidents rule under a fair and impartial governor be better? But then a fair an impartial governor, where do we find that ??? :-)

I write this a few hous before the match between Bangladesh & Bermuda is to start. A match that will decide India's fate in the 2007 Cricket world cup. Inspite of the fact that I know that the result is most certainly a Bangladesh victory & an Indian elimination, I am hopeful. I think that this is the problem with Indian Cricket. It has too many cricket fans & too few cricketers with skill & temperament to play at an interntional level & beat the best. Yes, we have cricketers who can showcase themselves at the highest level & pull of the odd surprise, but we do not have cricketers who can consistently beat the best.

Asfans we are blind to this fact & are eternally hopefull that our team will pull it off & are regularly dissapointed.

In the past 30 years or so that I have been following cricket we have never had a team that could be called world champs. Yes, we did win a world cup followed by a world series championship, but that was simply because we happened to perform well in those individual tournaments.

We need to strive to be the best team in the world in text cricket. We need to consistently beat teams in test cricket. Once we get there we will realize that we have probably won a couple of world cups. The West Indies & the Australians never set out witha vision of wanting to be the best team in One Day Cricket.

We have never been a sporting nation. Can we ever be one, its debatable. I would think not, at least not in the near future. We are mostly people that are looking for a secure career & hence try and take up safe jobs, for which the empasis is on education/academics. While this is not bad it curbs a lot of talent. This talent is not just in sport its in every field. We simply do not have as many entrepreneurs as we can have. Having been a colony for so long has hugely impacted our confidence & has destroyed any sense of adventurism that might have been in existance. It will probably take many more years for us to overcome this situation.

Coming back to the topic of the blog & a brief analysis of the debacle. I think we went in without a settled opening pair in both the batting and the bowling. After all the experimentation where we said that we are building the flexibility where anybody can bat anywhere, we had individuals that probaly could not bat anywhere (permit a bit of exagerration).

We had 4 people in Ganguly, Sachin, Uthappa & Shewag all of whom were only comfortable openning. We had 3 seamers in Zaheer, Agarkar & Munaf, who had just come together as a team what with Munaf's long absence due to injury. They were not a settled team either. Irfan never inspierd confidence & hence could not make it to the fianl eleven.

I fail to understand Agarkar's continued presence in the team. He is probably the puniest seamer (or do we call him a fast bowler) in the world. Probably Irfan would not have done any worse.

We cannot end a blog on Indian crictet's staytus without speaking of Sachin Tendulkar. Look at Sachins scores in the last matches India played in the last three world cup & U will only ask "Is he a big match player?". The answer is a big NO. Its always been a NO. Its again our craze for the game that has over hyped him. Compare him with somebody like a Vivian Richards & U know its no comparison, Viv is head & shoulders (literally also) above Sachin. Compare Scahin with aPonting & a Gilchrist & you will realize that its no comparison either. He is a very over hyped cricteker. If somebody could publish an analysis of his performances when we were chasing totals in the 4th innings of a test match or when we were chasing totals in one day cricket you will really know his 'stature'. He is a good cricketer & just that 'good' never 'great'.

If we have to produce world beating teams, we should have a bigger talent pool, a system to tap this talent pool in all departments of the game. Until & unless U can produce a Ponting, a Gilchrist, a McGrath and a Warne all in a single generation U will not have a world beating team. We have been a 6th or 7th ranked team for the last 30 years & that is where we will continue to be. It is just a question of accepting that reality.