Australia Attacks: Confused Indian Media

After seeing the reports in the print and electronic media in India (like Ammo Australia - Eenadu), I could not stop myself from writing this post. Staying in this truly cosmopolitan city of Sydney for the last two years, I want to write down few of my observations.

Let us not say that the students from India are coming to Australia for studies and the Australians are attacking them as they are unable to compete with them. Let us refrain from saying so and stop irritating and humiliating the Indian students coming to Australia, the Australians, Australian Universities and the mongrels attacking Indians. Once we stop saying so, we can identify a proper context to discuss these attacks. Connecting these attacks on Indians with studies and racism and discussing them is like talking about Rakhi Sawant in the world economic forum.

For those who are still in the view propagated by the media, here is some first hand information. Anyone who has the experience of meeting Indians coming here for studies will immediately agree with the fact that a huge majority of them come here with very low grades and qualifications. Study is just a gateway to enter the country. Once in, all the concentration will be on leveraging the 20 hours work time and if possible more through illegal means. Time will also be spent on doing courses like bar tending, cooking, cleaning, washing, etc which are covered under the immigration program and not to forget going to pubs and discotheques. Interacting with the students will not give any feeling that they are here for studies, but just ended up here due to lack of opportunities everywhere else in the world or have too much money to blast on studies or came here after watching movies like Salaam Namaste and Dil Chahta Hai (believe me I heard it from lot of students here). And for the readers who are already fuming, yes, there is a little minority of Indian students who come to actually study.

Australian Universities too are not much bothered regarding attracting the best of the talent. They are happy as long as the seats in their universities do not go empty. The scholarships and aids given to students are almost zero compared to other countries. The thumb rule is, come here only if you can find the means to study. It is nice that you have good grades. But, we do not care much about them.

Also, let us stop looking at Australians like the Indian media wants us to believe. Australians are very friendly people with some ifs and buts. Their traffic and public sense are beyond our imagination. Their way of interacting with temporary overseas workers is commendable and delightful compared to the interaction with our own Indian managers. Many of you might have seen on TV how the Australian police handled the Indian protestors. Just compare it with the AIIMS Doctors strike few years back and how the Indian police handled it.

Like any other country, there is a section of people with no skills to earn a livelihood and spend their time on drugs and alcohol. Especially teenagers and an alarming number of them fall into this category. Most of them do not receive any money from their parents as they are expected to support themselves. So, when you are moving late in the nights and you appear vulnerable they might ask you for money or other valuables you have. It mostly confuses them why we come all the way to Australia to do these menial jobs which we can happily do in our country itself. It appears to them that Indians are not adding any value to their country, but are actually taking up their jobs.

Here are some tips worth following

1. Remember that this is abroad and not India. Keep in mind not to speak loudly in regional languages with friends and on the phone in public places, trains and buses. Not just Australians, it irritates fellow Indians also. Make it a point not to disturb others.

2. Do not move in vulnerable areas especially on Friday and Saturday nights. Keep the emergency number 000 on speed dial on your phone.

3. Contrary to what is reported, the number of police per thousand in Australia is one of the best in the world and much, much higher than India. They respond very fast in emergencies.

4. Especially on Friday and Saturday nights do not show off your mobiles, ipods and notebooks.

5. If you can’t stay away from discos and pubs on weekends, get out before brawls break out. Sydney Morning Herald reported that many Indians get beat up for staring at others and breaking into others privacy. Refrain from doing so.

6. Do not appear vulnerable. Maintain strong poise like a true Australian does. Be a good brand ambassador of India.

Ramalinga Raju Scam and After

Now that Ramalinga Raju blew the lid off the biggest corporate scam (atleast of all the revealed ones, the word is that there are hell lot of them much bigger than Satyam) in the history of India, understanding how this scam was written over the years makes an interesting read. Until Ramalinga Raju himself revealed about the severe accounting frauds in the company, except for a few, no one knew about it. As usually the investigating agencies and the governing bodies (ICAI and SEBI in this case) are wondering how such a huge fraud went un-noticed all these years. There are quite a number of hints in the balance sheets Satyam was submitting to the board and the share holders, to identify that there is something seriously wrong with the accounts of the company. Business Today, a leading business magazine of the India Today group tried to probe through the last five years balance sheets and dug out some.

The most intriguing fact is, Business Today reports in its cover story, with almost $1.2 billion of cash, Satyam closed 2007-08 with $56 million of debt. An enormous amount of cash Rs 4,462 crore appeared to sit in the account unused. Excess cash is either paid back to shareholders in the shape of a dividend, or is earning valuable interest if it isn’t being utilized to pay debt or fund acquisitions. None of the independent board members or auditors thought to question any of this.

Satyam’s operating margin for the second quarter of 2008-09 was an abysmal 3 per cent, which is what forced him to pump the numbers up. That seems absurd, considering that Infosys recently reported a 33 per cent operating margin and Tata Consultancy Services a 37 percent operating margin and these firms compete for similar kinds of business in similar geographic locations. For a company like Satyam which has global operations spanning more than 40 countries and employees of more than 50,000, it is impossible to handle its day to day activities with such a low operating margin. Satyam has huge cash reserves, though not as high as reported, which were diverted without informing the investors and the board of directors which is unlawful. And where did the money go? As per the investigations and news coming out, it went into real estate investments in and around Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Kakinada and Rajahmundry. When state governments including Andhra Pradesh are vying with each other to provide lands to Satyam at through away prices, what is the point in buying lands investing such a huge amount of money? Clearly, the effort to fudge revenue figures had less to do with corporate pressure and more to do with generating cash for all the other dubious deals that Raju could have been involved in over the years—including the funding of the two Maytas firms, paying off political dons as well as land acquisitions. How was he able to implement such a colossal fraud?

It is not like no one grew suspicious about the accounting practices of the company. Business Today reports, CLSA (an independent brokerage and investment group) had originally put out a report way back in 2001 on Satyam’s “dubious accounting practices”. Then, RPI MP Ramdas Athawale accused Raju and gang of tax fraud and insider trading in 2003. But clearly, the independent directors on the board, the external auditors, the banks and the stock exchanges were either napping or in collusion.

Employees speaking to the media and blogging about the crisis unfolding say they had scented a crisis in the making, though not of such a huge scale. A mail to employees from B. Rama Raju, then Managing Director, dated October 24, 2008 contained stern warnings of sacking or demotion in cases where 80 per cent of targets are not met, and laid down cutting variable pay for the last two quarters. There are quite a number of rumors in the media and inside the company that employee sacking is planned in a big way, which was continuously denied by the company’s spokespersons. In 2007 some of the Business dailies reported that Satyam is on the way for takeover by IBM.

A summary of the indicators of a serious scam unfolding in the company compiled by Business Today, which can also be used as a checklist for other public limited companies you have invested in:

Mismatch in balance sheet entries: Starting 2002-3, the company's reported cash and bank balance, continued to swell without matching the growth in cash flow. In fact, Satyam's cash flow was negative in two years.
Auditor fees shoots up: Auditor fees increased three times in the past couple of years though other leading IT companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro continued to pay the same amount.
Non-payment of advance tax: Satyam did not pay advance tax in 2008-9. Payment of advance tax is an indicator of profitability and non-payment could imply that trouble has been brewing for some time.
Vanishing brass: In August 2008, many top officials left the company. This should have been a reason for further investigation.
Not using cash to acquire: It was puzzling that the company was proposing to invest $1.6 billion in real estate at a time when HCL was trying to expand its presence in the SAP market, essentially Satyam's area of expertise.
Cash idling in Account: Economic Times reports that, in Oct 2008, analyst Kawaljeet Saluja of Kotak Securities almost blew the lid off the scam when he questioned the rationale for keeping $550 million idle in a current account, but no one cared a damn and it was forgotten as soon as it was raised.

One reason why no one thought Satyam could ever go wrong is its star studded Board of Directors. Ramalinga Raju chose them well. No one would even think of questioning such illustrious members of the business community as Harvard Professor and corporate governance expert Krishna Palepu, co-father of the Pentium processor, Vinod Dham and Dean of the Indian School of Business, Rammohan Rao. None of these board members ever thought of finding out why Satyam had so much underutilised cash reserves or why Raju family’s share in the company was falling so precipitously, even after meeting seven times in last year.

The other is his connections in the industry and politics. Remember Ramalinga Raju shared the dais with former US President Bill Clinton when he visited Hyderabad. Raju was among the select few invited to share the podium with Clinton and then Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, when the likes of Ratan Tata were in the audience.

Is there anyway changes can be made in the system so that the Satyam lie could have been caught before it was blown off? A senior level manager working with the company informed Andhra Jyothy, a leading Telugu Newspaper that the issue lies with Vaastu, the traditional Indian science of construction. Ramalinga Raju’s new corporate office had the Chairman sitting in a portion of the building that was suspended in the air and there was a water fountain below. The implication, he explains: “It is considered bad because such structures make you lose touch with the elements!”

If you look for some logical solution that makes sense, the answer lies in XBRL.The tech savvy accountants investigating the Enron scam in 1999 were faced with similar question. Yes, accounting frauds can be caught by properly leveraging the use of Information Technology. Few years after the Enron and World Tel scams, a new business reporting language was born. XBRL, which stands for extensible Business Reporting Language. The XML (extensible markup language) properties of XBRL make the information machine-readable. The addition of business rules to XML creates XBRL, creating information that is more easily read. XBRL greatly increases the speed of handling of financial data, reduces the chance of error and permits automatic checking of information. XBRL is adopted by more than 100 countries and India adopted it very recently. XBRL implementation is happening at BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange), NSE (National Stock Exchange), SEBI (Securities and Exchanges Board of India), RBI (Reserve Bank of India) and MCA (Ministry of Company Affairs), with each of them working to their own schedule. The ICAI (Institute of Chartered Accountants of India) has taken the leadership to form an XBRL jurisdiction in India. But could the adoption of XBRL have helped in the early detection of the Satyam fraud? The answer is no. However, the use of XBRL can now help investigators unravel the Satyam story quickly. After adopting XBRL the information becomes machines readable and information can be summarized into easily understandable tables and graphs which can catch mis-representation of data very easily.

Since the Satyam scam is out and investigation is on, can we now breathe easy and relax? The governing bodies might have learnt their lessons and everything is going to be fine from now. If you have any such ideas here are two facts that can startle and rather shock you. As per the write up in the online edition of Chip magazine, the figures for software imports from India are $1.6 billion in 2002-3 as reported by the US Department of Commerce. CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) and NASSCOM (National Association of Software companies) state that India's software exports to the US were $6.3 billion and $9.5 billion, respectively. Other than the $1.6 billion where is the huge cash flow coming from? Do you smell a huge scam for laundering money? After all, revenues earned on software exports are tax free.

If this piece of information did not scare you, here is one more. CLSA, the global brokerage house, has compiled a list of companies that had adopted what it calls “aggressive” accounting policies for April-June 2008. It had some of Indian Industry’s super stars, including Reliance Industries, Reliance Communications, Tata Motors and Tata Consultancy Services.






Inputs for this write up taken from News Reports published in Business Today, Economic Times, Times of India, Andhra Jyothy, Eenadu and Wikipedia.

Communications in Kaliyuga

We are living in an age which the bearded sages categorized as Kali Yuga. You see, in this age you cannot expect anything to be straight. The world will be full of bad people and pitfalls. No one really speaks out what their heart thinks but expects you to be nice to them. However, listening to the people carefully for a few months would enable you to look beyond the words and see the real meaning. Women are experts in this and with some effort we too can learn it. Here are couple of findings from my research

1. What Happened: Your flat mate with out causing much noise is getting ready to go out one evening and when he is about to jump out of the house, you caught him red handed and asked where he is going? He replied that he is going to the super market to buy the groceries. He also enquired you might not at all be interested to come?

What he actually means: He is actually going to the strip bar. Either he doesn’t want your annoying company or he doesn’t want to erase the image of innocent gentleman he maintains back home in India.

What you should do: Join him if you would like to go and ask him instead of buying groceries shall we go to the city which he will gleefully agree to.

2. What Happened: It is late in the night and your flat mate just returned home after a hard working day at the office. He told that he is researching on a new technology and trying to understand the usage of new tool that the company has recently bought which was very interesting.

What he actually means: He is actually chatting with his friends over the messenger and making calls to India. He is also too bored to cook food.

What you should do: Ask him if he would like you to join on the research work every evening.

3. What Happened: One of your colleagues has just arrived at onsite and he informed you that he is actually not interested at all to come abroad. Only after the company requested and insisted on his presence, he finally agreed to come.

What he actually means: He created havoc and cried like hell at offshore for opportunity to come here.

What you should do: Agree with him.

4. What Happened: Your colleague enlightened you that the project you are working is not at all going good. It is being managed in an extremely bad way. The company is itself worse. His previous company is a thousand times better than the present one. He misses it a lot.

What he actually means: This is his first job. Everything else is faked.

What you should do: Enquire about an unknown friend of yours working there.

5. What Happened: An issue aroused in the production. Your colleague is shouting, running and punching the computer. He also informed that this is the most challenging production issue he ever saw.

What he actually means: He absolutely has no clue what the issue is. Restarting the server would fix it.

What you should do: Inform him to restart the server as they normally do for all the issues.

Scaring your pants off

Catching the attention of the viewer is a very difficult thing. Unless it is extremely interesting, chances are he would be switching the channel. As it is next to impossible to keep broadcasting interesting things round the clock, there is one more way to attract attention. Take some news that’s hogging the limelight, add spice to it and scare the pants off the viewers. They would surely forget to click the next button on the remote for some time. This works better for print media.

Check the news that the print media keeps publishing about the current financial crisis and its consequences. No one is going to read if they publish the financial jargon about why the world economy landed in the current situation. Instead keep publishing numbers of how many people lost jobs, going to lose jobs, what are the losses, what are the banks that are bankrupt, how many others are on the way and so on even if the numbers are contrived to present a real scary picture.

The Telugu media is a step ahead in this. Sample this news that appeared in Andhra Jyothy today. This leading Telugu newspaper is worried that around three lakh jobs are going to disappear in the travel sector due to economic slow down. I really wonder in the miniscule travel industry in our country if there are three lakh jobs. And there is no end to the news that keeps appearing regarding the job losses in the IT Industry. According to one report already ten thousand people in Hyderabad and Bangalore lost jobs. Really?

US Elections 2008: Obama winning speech at Chicago

Barack Obama clinched the much expected victory in the US Presidential elections as the world was waiting with bated breath, to become the forty fourth president of the United States of America. Until hours after the counting begun, media did not have the nerve to declare that he is on the way to win these elections considering the experience of what happened in the previous elections. However once huge margin started appearing, CNN and other media networks one after the other started flashing news of him winning the most defining elections of the current era. At the same time photographs and videos of people around the world celebrating, spread on the internet. From Software developers in Bangalore to the aboriginals in Africa, Entrepreneurs in Australia to Politicians in Europe, every one hailed the maturity people of America showed by electing an American with African origin,who spent his formative years in Asia and has a middle Asian middle name. Given below is the historic speech he gave at the celebrations in Chicago.

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Senator McCain.

Senator McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he's fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Governor Palin for all that they've achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.


I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton ... and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years ... the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady ... Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia ... I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us ...to the new White House.

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother's watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you've given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe ... the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best , the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod ... who's been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics ...

you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.


It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy ... who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime , two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage or pay their doctors' bills or save enough for their child's college education.

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

[Audience: Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!]

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.


But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years , block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people.

Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those , to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons: because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America , the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

[Audience: Yes we can]

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

Audience: Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

[Audience: Yes we can.]

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

[Audience: Yes we can]

America, we have come so far.We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves , if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Also Read: History to be created

US Elections 2008: History to be created

The US presidential election is being followed by people cutting across the nations around the world. Though, earlier too it used to attract the attention of international media, the scale is quite different now. The sub prime crisis and the events that followed leading to crash of financial institutions, banks, stock markets and economies around of the world made everyone know how important United States is to the world. Every one woke up to the fact their economic health and that of their country is dependent on the well being of the world’s largest democracy. A poll conducted by Readers Digest, a leading general magazine reveals that more than eighty percent of the people polled across the world are following the elections in the United States. They feel these elections are important and would affect their lives. Economist, another leading business magazine conducted an online poll in order to find out who would be winning in-case the entire world is voting. Barack Obama is having a land slide cutting across the countries winning 8842 votes compared to 31 for Mc Cain.

Who ever they vote, American voters are going to create history this November fourth by electing either the first African-American president or the first female vice-president. Going by the opinion polls and seeing the wave of opinions Democrat Obama should win enough votes to become the forty fourth president of United States of America. Though few months back polls were not so much in favor of Obama, the global financial crisis made the Americans think about the domestic issues and focus shifted from International policies. Given the performance of the current Bush administration, this in turn became the biggest issue for Republicans and to turn the attention of the voters they started to attack Obama on the alleged connections with terrorist Bill Ayers and his race.

What are the factors that are working in favor of Obama?, the way he came up in life aka the great American dream, his age and maturity he shows compared to Mc Cain. The first factor made him the darling of the masses not only in America but also in the developing world.

Polls suggest that India is also in favor of Obama. He has given enough signals in his recent interview to Outlook that his government’s policy would be giving sufficient importance to India as a growing economy and future super power. The Indian IT and services industry is jittery about how the policy of the government that is to be formed would be? Though he had not given enough information regarding this, he announced that there won’t be any tax rebates available from the government for the companies that have outsourced part of the process to overseas. He also added that he is not going to close the walls of America to globalization and thereby reduce the competitiveness of the country. It is the responsibility of the country to be ready to face the onslaught of global competition and his government is going to work to improve the skills of the future generations to compete on a global level.

Telugu Facts for you

As Andhra Pradesh celebrates the formation day and the central government gives the status of Classical language to Telugu, here are some facts for you.

• Telugu is one of the fifteen most widely spoken languages in the world.

• Telugu is second largest spoken language in India.

• Including non-native speakers Telugu is the most spoken Dravidian Language

• Though Carnatic music has a profound cultural influence on all of the South Indian States and their respective languages, most of the songs (Kirtanas) are in Telugu language.

• Telugu is one of the four classical languages identified by the Government of India along with Sanskrit, Tamil and Kannada.

• Inscriptions in Telugu date back to 400 BC

• Telugu is mainly spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh and in the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa,Chhattisgarh, some parts of Jharkhand and the Kharagpur region of West Bengal in India. It is also spoken in Australia,Bahrain, Fiji, Malaysia, Singapore,Mauritius,Ireland,South Africa, the United Arab Emirates,the United States and the United Kingdom where there is a considerable Telugu diaspora.

• Waddar,Chenchu,Savara and Manna-Dora are all closely related to Telugu. Dialects of Telugu are Berad, Dasari, Dommara, Golari, Kamathi, Komtao, Konda-Reddi, Salewari, Telangana, Telugu, Vadaga, Srikakula, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, West Godavari, Rayalseema, Nellore,prakasam Guntur, Vadari and Yanadi (Yenadi).

• In Tamil Nadu the Telugu dialect is classified into Salem, Coimbatore, and Chennai Telugu dialects.It is also widely spoken in Virudhunagar, Tuticorin, Madurai and Thanjavur districts.

• Italian explorer Niccolò Da Conti called it Italian of the east as all native words in Telugu end with a vowel sound.

• "...Among these five languages, the Telinga appears to be most polished, and though confessedly a difficult language, it must be numbered among those which are the most worthy of cultivation; its varierty of inflection being such as to give it a capacity of expressing ideas with high degree of facilty, justness and elegance..." - Rev. W.Carey.

• "...But those who may at first question the utility of so many letters in the Teloogoo, will perhaps relinquish most of their objections, when they find that the variety of sound in this language is greater, and better represented than English..." - A.D Campbell
  

• "Telugu Delayanna Desambu Telugu. Desa Bhashalandu Telugu Lessa." - Sri Krishna Devarayalu

and finally

Telugu also makes it to the UNESCO's list of languages that are on the way to extinction.

The onus is on us to see such a thing never happens.

Election Fever: Parties working on tie-ups

The writer is a Journo and Political Analyst based in Hyderabad with more than two decades of experience in Telugu journalism. In Election Fever, he would be covering and analysing the changing political scenario in Andhra Pradesh, exclusive to ohmyroots. His first write up to ohmyroots Mega Tremors in the state got tremendous response. It tops the most read articles on ohmyroots. It is also captured by various news capturing sites on the internet covering the elections in Andhra Pradesh, including Praja Rajyam Party. Stay tuned for more expert analysis as Andhra Pradesh moves ahead to elections next year. Readers can mail him at rameshmvatohmyroots@gmail.com

Expert Analysis: Mega tremors in the state

The writer is a senior journalist and political analyst with more than two decades of experience in Telugu Journalism. He is a one time colleague and family friend of our other columnist, Usha. We sincerely thank him for immediately accepting and writing this analysis exclusive to ohmyroots.

Mail your comments to rameshmvatohmyroots@gmail.com

Stay tuned for more expert analysis

Earth Shattering Experiment

Scientists will launch an experiment in a tunnel deep beneath the French-Swiss border Wednesday, hoping to find evidence of extra dimensions, invisible ''dark matter,'' and an elusive particle called the ''Higgs boson.'' And although leading physicists such as Stephen Hawking say the atom-smashing experiment will be absolutely safe, some skeptics fear the proton collisions could unleash microscopic black holes that would eventually doom the Earth. The most powerful atom-smasher ever built will produce collisions of protons traveling at nearly the speed of light in the circular tunnel, giving off showers of particles that will provide more clues as to how everything in the universe is made. In the $10 billion project -- the most extensive physics experiment in history -- the Large Hadron Collider will come ever closer to re-enacting the ''big bang,'' the theory that a colossal explosion created the cosmos. The project, organized by the 20 member nations of the European Organization for Nuclear Research -- known by its French initials CERN -- has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country that contributed $531 million. The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, moving around the 17-mile tunnel at 11,000 times a second at full power. Ramping up to full power is probably a year away. Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the atom. Scientists once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons, and that there were other forces and particles. The CERN experiments could reveal more about ''dark matter,'' antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle -- the Higgs boson -- which is sometimes called the ''God particle.'' It is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe. The two beams of protons will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space. Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets -- to guide the beams. The paths of these beams will cross, and a few protons will collide. The two largest detectors -- essentially huge digital cameras weighing thousands of tons -- are capable of taking millions of snapshots a second. Some skeptics have said the collisions could result in tiny black holes -- subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars. Micro black holes produced by a collider, the critics theorize, would move more slowly and might be trapped inside the Earth's gravitational field -- and eventually threaten the planet. ''It's nonsense,'' said CERN chief spokesman James Gillies. John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist at CERN, said doomsayers assume that the collider will create micro black holes in the first place, which he called unlikely. And even if they appeared, he said, they would instantly evaporate, as predicted by Hawking. Gillies told The Associated Press that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the collider itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel. ''On Wednesday, we start small,'' Gillies said. ''What we're putting in to start with is one single low intensity bunch at low energy and we thread that around. We get experience with low energy things and then we ramp up as we get to know the machine better.'' Huge amounts of data will pour in -- so big that the lab's computers can't sift through it all. So scientists, who will monitor the experiment at above-ground control centers, have devised a way to share the load among dozens of leading computing centers worldwide. The result is the ''LHC Grid,'' a network of 60,000 computers to analyze what happens when protons are hurled at each other. That computing power is needed if scientists are to find what they are looking for among the mountains of data. ''You can think of each experiment as a giant digital camera with around 150 million pixels taking snapshots 600 million times a second,'' said CERN's Ian Bird, who leads the grid project. Sophisticated filters discard all but the most interesting data, still leaving some 15 petabytes to be analyzed. That's enough to fill 2 million DVDs. The data will be sent to 11 top research institutions in Europe, North America and Asia, and from there to a wider network of 150 research facilities around the world for scrutiny by thousands of researchers. Collaborating on such a large project has proved invaluable, said Ruth Pordes, executive director of the Open Science Grid at Fermilab in Chicago. The U.S.-government funded project is among the major contributors to the grid. ''We are doing things that are at the boundaries of science,'' Pordes said. ''But the technologies, the methods and the results will be picked up by industry.'' Scientists expect grid computing to become more widely used, for research ranging from new drugs to nuclear energy. Eventually, consumers will start seeing it in daily life to regulate traffic, predict the weather or help a flagging economy. So even if the LHC experiment doesn't yield answers to the cosmic questions, historians may one day see it as a key step in developing networked computing. It wouldn't be the first time that has happened at CERN. In 1990, a young British researcher there created a computer-based system for sharing information with colleagues around the world. He called it the World Wide Web.

The Indian Connection

Indian laboratories, led by Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) at Indore, have contributed substantially towards construction of the accelerator (LHC) itself, with many components being fabricated by Indian industry and supplied to CERN. TIFR will be webcasting the event in Geneva through its bandwidth, for the benefit of media as well as the scientists.

Fearing that the scientific experiment to study the formation of the universe might have a negative impact on the earth, people in Orissa are flocking to places of religious worship to seek divine help.

Its raining great music this year

I was waiting for my friend at the airport. He is returning home after a hard earned annual vacation spent at home. The flight on which he is supposed to arrive already came an hour back. Not only that, two more flights scheduled after that have also come. The flight crew and the passengers have left. Then the desi passengers started arriving at the exit. Desi passengers take more time at the quarantine and the customs giving a tough time to them with their spices, pickles, medicines and lots of home-made stuff posing a challenge to the careers of the officials there. My friend finally appeared on the exit after an hour and half. The thing is he is able to successfully smuggle home- made pickle after an argument that went on for more than half-an-hour. In this time, I was able to sample the songs of the new albums that have released over the past few weeks. Expecting that there would be delay, I uploaded the songs on IPod and was hearing to them on the way to the airport.

The albums I sampled are Kotha Bangaru Lokam, Yuvatha, Ashta Chemma, Ankit Pallavi and Friends and Souryam. So, what they have in store for you?

Kotha Bangaru Lokam is the most beautiful album of all. Mickey J Meyer who gave okay kind of music to Hare Ram is back on track with this movie. It is absolute delight listening to the songs Nenani Neevani, Okay Anesa and Nijanga Nenena. Try playing them on some nice speakers with good bass and you will never want to stop it. Without any doubt Kotha Bangaru Lokam is the best album of the year till now.

Yuvatha is a movie starring Nikhil of Happy Days fame. Music is by Mani Sharma. The pics of the album are Yevarunnarani Naakaina and Maa Vooremo Cinna. Yevarunnarani Naakaina is a very good melody from Mani Sharma after a very long time, which can be compared with Chiguraku Chatu Chiluka of Gudumba Shankar. The song Maa Vooremo Cinna is vintage Mani Sharma folk Telugu song. It has the right mass orientation and folk beats that will drive you to dance in few hearings itself. Kotikokatila Ammayi is also good. Eelesi Nuvvu song tune is used from Mani Sharma’s super hit song in the Tamil pokiri.

Ashta Chemma is one better album of the year. Adinchindi Ashta Chemma and Tidathara Kodathara are the ones that will work for you in one or two hearings.

Ankit Pallavi and Friends album is a close second to Kotha Bangaru Lokam. Vinu Thomas arrived on the Tollywood charts with this album. Alagake Allari Vayasa is a very beautiful composition that is on par with Nenani Neevani (Kotha Bangaru Lokam) and Rama Chakkani Seethaki (Godavari). Leletha Puvvule and Aranavvulenduko are two more beautiful compositions. Dost Hey Dost is the pic for the ones who love fast beats. I was very disappointed when greatandhra.com wrote in the review of the movie that the music of the movie is not at all good. Did the guy who wrote the review have an ear for music at all?

Souryam is one more music album by Mani Sharma. It has all the right mass beats and yucky lyrics required for a movie starred by a mass hero. Some of the songs are good, though I do not exactly remember the track names.

One more album we have to watch out for in the next few weeks is Chintakayala Ravi, the movie starring Victory Venkatesh and Anushka. Music is by Vishal Sekhar who earlier gave music to the block-buster Sharukh Khan starrer Om Shanti Om.

The song I am hearing over and over these days is Om Namaste from Ready. I simply love the voice of Divya in the song. I just keep rewinding and hear her voice singing “Trendy Trendy Trendy......” and fall in love with it again.

Whatz the News

After the hungama of Chiranjeevi party meeting at tirupati, again the state went into lull. There is not much happening these days. Chiranjeevi is planning for a state wide tour meeting people across the state aka NTR’s tour during the 1984 elections. YSR also did a Pada Yatra before the previous elections. Recently Chandrababu Naidu also did. So this Yatra is nothing new to the people, at least it should help Chiranjeevi understand people’s problems at the ground level. Chiranjeevi is also meeting various leaders joining his party without any publicity blitzkrieg. He is continuing the programme of meeting people belonging to the various communities, religions and social groups. Yesterday a photograph of Chiranjeevi posing in Muslim outfits appeared in all the newspapers. Andhra Jyothy went a step further and used his photograph for the news that Ramzan month started. It is a great idea to bring him closer to that community.

The Audio of Kotha Bangaru Lokam, Souryam and Yuvatha released. The songs of Kotha Bangaru Lokam are great. “Neevani Nenani “and “Okay Anesa” are superb. Mickey J Meyer has one more musical hit in his kitty. Mani Sharma is becoming monotonous in his score. It really is not causing enough excitement even to check the music. Music of Yuvatha is okay and Souryam is absolutely average. May be I need some more hearings to start liking them.

Ashta Chemma and Ankit Pallavi and Friends are ready for release on September 5. Both of them look very promising. It would have been great had they been released on different days, both of them not eating up into the revenues of the other. Duvvuri Subbarao would be replacing Yaga Venugopal Reddy as the Governor of RBI. All Telugu newspapers celebrated another IAS officer of Andhra Cadre taking up the leadership role of the country’s most important bank. Andhra Jyothy published an article detailing how this miracle happened.

Waiting for my friend at the train station, I bought the latest issue of National Geographic on the stands there. It has one interesting write up about the probable meteorites and comets that might be on a collision course with the earth. One such meteor is on the way supposedly to hit the earth in 2036. The chances of it hitting the earth are one in one thousand. It discussed the previous such incidents in the geological history of the earth including the Tunguska incident in the early eighties in the previous century and the ways such calamities can be overcome. It made an interesting read. If I can find the link, I will post in the column “we caught it on the net”. That is all for now.

Lofty ideals but unclear means

Five thousand miles from India, at around eight thirty in the night, my friends and me sitting in front of our laptops were eagerly awaiting for the arrival of Chiranjeevi to deliver his maiden speech in his first ever political meeting. The venue for the meeting, tirupati remembered me a book I read in my grandfather’s library about the late NTR. It is an autobiography about him written by a journo of an English newspaper soon after he won the elections in 1984. In one of the pages is a photograph of the legend appearing as lord venkateswara and below it is a comment, when the movie “Sri Venkateswara Mahatyam” was released people actually used to give arathi and pray to him on the screen. Such is the aura of him. It should not create any surprise that he swept the elections in 1984. Now Chiranjeevi starting his political journey from the temple town (NTR also had the first political meet here) seems to be having the same kind of aura. How else can you describe around ten lakh people (numbers reported by IBN live and Andhra Jyothy) almost the size of the population of Vijayawada, one fourth of Sydney turning up for the meeting. Anyone’s heart will miss a beat seeing such a huge gathering of people waiting for a person they love. Chiranjeevi is no exception. He truly appeared to be amazed by the gathering and he started his speech with a gaze and words of gratitude.

I loved the way he carried over the press meet and was expecting another terrific performance from him as a politician. However, it can be said that his entire speech hovered somewhere around above average. It started excellently, turned average for some time and picked up at the end. Once greeting the people who gathered there he sspoke without carrying any written speech in his hands. He spoke in perfect Telugu informing people about his struggle as a child, student and in the early days of his career. He remembered how his mother worked hard to bring him up. He told the story of how he achieved success of becoming a megastar from being the eldest son of a police constable. He also donned Characters that are endearing to lowest strata in the society. He acted as a dalit boy in his debut movie “Pranam Khareedu”, a shoe maker in “Swayam Krushi”, a person who dedicates his life for the welfare of his village in “Rudraveena”. He had a great time with his fans trying to become one among them and raising the curiosity among everyone about the party’s name, before he declared it.


As he started revealing the ideals of the party, his speech lost the initial punch. He read them from a written speech and the way he read them it appeared that he himself had no access to it till minutes before giving the speech. He had lofty ideas to make the state Santhoshandhra Pradesh. If he had revealed them like the way he told his personal story, it would have had a wonderful effect. It would have instantaneously struck a chord with the people listening to him across the world. He had ideas to help economically backward people in the forward castes as well. Instead of considering the naxalism as a law and order problem he wants to work to affect the very roots of it. He is against selling government lands (which actually belong to the people) for the sake of getting funds for populist schemes. He wants to take steps to reduce the consumption and effects of alchohol, though he is not sure what they are. He is dedicated to whatever verdict people give regarding Telengana and he is going to stick to it. Though he has great ideas for the overall development of the state, the question is how his party plans to raise the necessary funds for it. As some leaders commented, it is a bit true that his agenda in some ways resembled that of TDP.

He inaugurated the party’s flag by the hands of a handicapped boy. Later, a song in the lines of “Nenu Saitham” specially written for the party by Suddala Ashok Teja was telecast on the screen. In addition to informing everyone his humble back ground (may be as a reply to the attacks of congress politicians that he does not know about people’s problems) he told that till now everyone has seen only one side of him. There is another side which would be revealed to everyone from now on. He is going to work with a proper plan (not clear what it is) to tackle the problems of corruption.


Chiranjeevi fans went wild in their frenzy to see him. They did not mind alighting the huge banners set up though they know they might fall down even killing themselves. They did not come down until Chiranjeevi himself requested them. They almost went berserk when he came forward on the Dias giving tough time to the police and the security. As per reports two people died of heart attack and around forty people were injured in the stampede. At the end of the meeting the mega star requested his fans to go home safely.

Advertisements of the state government came as speed breakers to the live telecast of the meeting. The congress government wanted to piggy back on the TRP’s of the programme to tell every one of the schemes it has started in its regime. I do not know whether they achieved it, they were really irritating.

The meeting must have surely caused a political earth quake with the huge turnout and Chiranjeevi’s above average performance as a politican might have given some hope to the politicians. One of the newspapers reported that a smile came on the face of Chandrababu Naidu after the speech by Chiranjeevi. What does all this signify? The next few months are going to be the most interesting and Chiranjeevi has to improve and prove himself to create history and gain a chance to serve the people as he wishes.

Tirupati is where the action is

I got hell lot of assignments today and I cannot say how much I detested staying in office. I really want to catch all the action back home in Andhra Pradesh, leaving everything atleast for today. There is no way I can go there now, atleast I want to keep myself updated about the happenings through the internet. For people like me who were bored that not much interesting news is coming from Andhra Pradesh, it is now time to quench the thirst. The biggest news to come in as everyone knows is the Chiranjeevi’s party meeting at the temple town of Tirupati. How did the media respond to it? How other parties are responding to it? Whatz the action in the mega star’s party and how are the arrangements? What is the speech going to be?

Eenadu tried reporting everything as it is. I really liked it. It would be great if it follows this approach for everything. It did not go overboard or wrote badly about it. It stuck to the fundamentals of reporting. Andhra Jyothy like a megastar fan is really excited about the meeting. Though the front page appeared normal covering other major happenings as well, the inner pages is where all the information is. As always the headings were impacting and the actual information will be written in the article. It wrote “Chiru mania every where” and analysed how many people are coming from different regions of Andhra Pradesh. It reported that around ten lakh people are expected to come. Again there is a report below that says fifteen to twenty lakh people are expected to come. It also gave some insider information on how the preparations are going? “The Hindu” as always posted information that every body already knows and would be bored of reading except for people who want to improve their English writing skills. Sakshi also reported the same way as Eenadu did. It also added some spice by publishing an article that the people who worked hard for the setting up of the party are now forgotten.



There were lot of disparities in the reports. While some reported that hell lot of special trains, buses, Lorries, tractors and every type of conceivable vehicles are carrying hell lot of passengers to Tirupati and that the city is already jam packed with people and vehicles, there are some which reported that the special trains starting from Rajahmundry and Kakinada are going almost empty. As per the reports the arrangements for the meeting include large digital screens, vinyl displays, digital audio equipments, helicopters, a private event management company to manage them all. Hey, doesn’t this resemble some movie awards related arrangement. Pavan Kalyan is moving in the area of the meeting bare legged and wearing white robed clothes. He is going to listen to the mega speech sitting among lakhs of people. The problem is, he really wants to convey something through his actions, but I really could not get a clue what it is. Chiranjeevi’s one more brother is down with a 104 degrees fever. A swamiji advised Chiranjeevi to do some kind of penance to ease the god of snakes as a number of snakes were killed in the preparations for the meeting. Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) arranged “Maha Laghu Darshanam” (the most hated of all kinds of darshanams available at the temple, where you would be having a telescopic view of the god for a split of a second) for the fans of Chiranjeevi visiting the temple at Tirumala. A CD named "Mega Prasthanam" is being sold and fans of Chiranjeevi queued up to buy their copy.

Congress party is trying hard to attract the attention of the BCs. It announced scholarships to some more castes belonging to the backward classes. It wants to win these elections by hook or crook and does not mind spending lot of money. Whatz the problem in that, the money is not coming from their pockets. It is coming from the people’s pockets and they are very good at claiming all they spent once they come back to power. A factory belonging to Chiru’s first daughter’s father-in-law is closed and its workers are now on the roads questioning Chiranjeevi to take care of family matters first before saying that he is pro-poor. The word is that TDP is behind their agitation. Communists want to tie up with Chiranjeevi if they like the Chiranjeevi party’s agenda. But how do they like Chiranjeevi looking for Lagnam, Varjyam, and Manchi Roju for everything?

That’s all for now, it seems my manager is calling. I got to give him the status of the assignments today. Catch you later probably in the live telecast of the meeting or sometime after that analysing it. Stay tuned.