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बाप्पापरवा भेटला बाप्पा, जरा वैतागलेला वाटला
दोन क्षण दम खातो म्हणून माझ्याघरी टेकला
उंदीर कुठे पार्क करू ? लॉट नाही सापडला
मी म्हंटलं सोडून दे, आराम करु दे त्याला
तू पण ना देवा कुठल्या जगात राहतोस ?
मर्सिडिस च्या जमान्यात उंदरावरून फ़िरतोस
मर्सिडिस नाही निदान नॅनो तरी घेऊन टाक
तमाम देव मंडळींमधे भाव खाऊन टाक
इतक्या मागण्या पुरवताना जीव माझा जातो
भक्तांना खुश करेपर्यंत माझा जीव दमतो
काय करू आता सार मॅनेज होत नाही
पुर्वीसारखी थोडक्यात माणसं खुशही होत नाहीत
इमिग्रेशन च्या रिक्वस्ट्स ने सिस्टीम झालीये हॅंग
तरीदेखील संपतच नाही भक्तांची रांग
चार आठ आणे मोदक देऊन काय काय मागतात
माझ्याकडच्या फ़ाइल्स नुसत्या वाढतच जातात
माझं ऐक तू कर थोडं थोडं डेलिगेशन
मॅनेजमेंटच्या थेअरीमधे मिळेल सोल्यूशन
एम बी ए चे फ़ंडे तू शिकला नाहीस का रे ?
डेलिगेशन ऑफ़ ऍथॉरिटी ऐकल नाहीस कारे ?
असं कर बाप्पा एक लॅपटॉप घेउन टाक
तुझ्या साऱ्या दूतांना कनेक्टीव्हिटी देऊन टाक
म्हणजे बसल्याजागी काम होइल धावपळ नको
परत येउन मला दमलो म्हणायला नको
माझ्या साऱ्या युक्त्यांनी बाप्प झाला खुश
माग म्हणाला हवं ते एक वर देतो बक्षिस
सी ई ओ ची पोझिशन, टाऊनहाऊस ची ओनरशिप
ईमिग्रेशनदेखील होइल लवकर मग ड्युअल सिटिझनशिप
मी हसलो उगाच, म्हंटल, देशील जे मला हवं ?
म्हणाला मागून तर बघ, बोल तुला काय हवं !
पारिजातकाच्या सड्यात हरवलेलं अंगण हवं
सोडून जाता येणार नाही अस एक बंधन हवं
हवा आहे परत माणसातला हरवलेला भाव
प्रत्येकाच्या मनाच्या कोपऱ्यात थोडासा शिरकाव
देशील आणून परत माझी हरवलेली नाती
नेशील मला परत जिथे आहे माझी माती
इंग्रजाळलेल्या पोरांना थोडं संस्कृतीचं लेणं
आईबापाचं कधीही न फ़िटणारं देणं
कर्कश्श वाटला तरी हवा आहे ढोलताशांचा गजर
भांडणारा असला तरी चालेल पण हवा आहे शेजार
य़ंत्रवत होत चाललेल्या मानवाला थोडं आयुष्याचं भान
देशील का रे बाप्पा माझ्या पदरात एवढं दान ?
"तथास्तु" म्हणाला नाही सोंडेमागून नुसता हसला
सारं हाताबाहेर गेलंय पोरा "सुखी रहा" म्हणाला बाप्पा माझा. Stable Pakistan not in India's interestStable Pakistan not in India's interest Capt. Bharat Verma is the editor of Indian Defence Review. A quarterly journal read by leading policy makers at senior bureaucratic, political and military levels, the IDR is renowned as the "most-quoted Indian defence publication" . Capt. Verma is also the founder and current editor of Lancer Publishers, a publishing house dedicated to defence and security matters.
Indians pose the biggest threat to the Union of India.
The reason is simple. An average Indian is merely an individual. His personal well-being overrides all other considerations, including national interests.
This is perhaps why many have begun to propagate parting of Kashmir in their write-ups, since it does not belong individually to them. However, imagine the hue and cry if their personal property and family is held hostage by the terrorists. They will sing a different tune.
The blame lies with New Delhi. For the past 60 years, instead of consolidating the Union, leaders encouraged divisiveness on the basis of religion and caste for sheer vote bank politics. Instead of unifying its citizenry with good governance and increasing their stakes through prosperity, so that they may serve the cause of the nation with honor, it has treated its citizens with unprecedented shabbiness.
The result: groups of citizens have risen against the state, mostly for lack of economic progress and denial of justice. Such disgruntled groups are being taken advantage of by the external forces inimical to India.
There can never be unity in diversity. Unity requires a fair amount of uniformity in laws throughout the Union.
That New Delhi is its own worst enemy became obvious when it permitted the creation of a pure Islamic State on its borders. This nation-state contradicts every democratic and multi-cultural value dear to India. Therefore, if New Delhi has not slept a wink since the creation of Pakistan, it has no one except itself to blame!
Islamabad, besides the wars it imposed on New Delhi, extended its so-called Islamic purity to the Kashmir Valley by instigating the locals to carry out ethnic cleansing of the minority communities.
Hence, first we created a state with inbuilt characteristic of fundamentalism and extreme philosophy contrary to our professed beliefs; then the monster in it started ethnic cleansing in the Valley; and engineered demographic changes through Bangladesh in West Bengal, Assam and the Northeast.
Saudi Arabia and other Islamic oil-rich countries pitched in with the petro-dollars in support, all in the cause of the illusion called Ummah and the establishment of the Caliphate.
The Indian leadership, for its personal vote-bank gains, helped these inimical forces by invoking the Illegal Migrants (determination by Tribunals) or IMDT Act in Assam, which was subsequently shot down by the Supreme Court. The damage was done, as the Union's overburdened security forces grapple with 15 million illegal Bangladesh infiltrators creating mayhem on Indian soil.
Islamabad, Dhaka, and now Kathmandu, spurred on by Beijing, have united with the singular agenda: to unhook the Valley and the Northeast from the Indian Union.
In addition, they are instigating the Maoists, who control almost 40 n per cent of the Union's territory, to set up a parallel government, and ultimately, like the Maoists in Nepal, win the elections in pockets of their influence, and impose a regressive authoritarian governments in tune with their own regime.
And yet, New Delhi, instead of consolidating and unifying the Union , continues to divide its citizenry in religious or caste denominations.
Over the past 60 years, New Delhi's muddle-headed policies actually encouraged separatism. Instead of ensuring diffusion of secular pan-Indian culture and the integration of the society by encouraging Indians from all over to buy and develop land and industry in the Valley and the Northeast, it imposed restrictions on such settlements.
Meanwhile, Pakistan and Bangladesh exported their fundamentalist population to these areas to change the demographic hues in their favour. The ugly separatist face of the agitation in the Valley today is the consequence of the dereliction of the fundamental duty by the Union.
The trend needs to be reversed forcibly by integrating the Valley firmly into the Indian mainstream by creating a secular mix of population through industrialisation.
Many conveniently propose the myth that a stable Pakistan is in India's favour. This is a false proposition. The truth is that Pakistan is bad news for the Indian Union since 1947–stable or otherwise.
Islamabad has enjoyed brief periods of political stability since the birth of Pakistan. But even during these interludes, it continued to export terrorism, fake currency and narcotics to India. It continued its attempts to change the demography along our borders, and cultivated sleeper cells and armed groups inside our territory to create an uprising at an appropriate time.
Also, it aligned with Beijing and other powers, in a mutually beneficial scheme, to tie-down and ultimately cause a territorial split of the Union.
With Pakistan on the brink of collapse due to massive internal as well as international contradictions, it is matter of time before it ceases to exist.
Multiple benefits will accrue to the Union of India on such demise.
If Indian national interests are defined with clarity and prioritised, the foremost threat to the Union (and for centuries before its birth) has consistently and continuously materialised on the western periphery.
To defend this key threat to the Union, New Delhi should extend its influence through export of both soft and hard power towards Central Asia, from where invasions have been mounted over centuries. The cessation of Pakistan as a state facilitates furtherance of this pivotal national objective.
The self-destructive path that Islamabad chose will either splinter the state into many parts or it will wither away—a case of natural progression to its logical conclusion. In either case Baluchistan will achieve independence.
For New Delhi this opens a window of opportunity to ensure that the Gwadar port does not fall into the hands of the Chinese. In this, there is synergy between the political objectives of the Americans and the Indians. Our existing goodwill in Baluchistan requires intelligent leveraging.
Sindh and most of the non-Punjabi areas of Pakistan will be our new friends.
Pakistan's breakup will be a major setback to the Jihad Factory, which functions with the help of its army and the ISI. This in turn will ease pressures on India and the international community.
With China's one arm, i.e. Pakistan disabled, its expansionist plans will receive a severe jolt. Beijing continues to pose another primary threat to New Delhi. Even as we continue to engage with it as constructively as possible, we must strive to remove the proxy.
At the same time, it is prudent to extend moral support to the people of Tibet to sink Chinese expansionism in the morass of insurgency. For a change, let us do to them what they do to us.
With Pakistan gone, the chances of Central Asia getting infected with the Jihadi fervour will recede. Afghanistan will gain fair amount of stability. India's access to Central Asian energy routes will open up.
With disintegration of ISI's inimical activities of infiltration and pushing of fake currency into India, from Nepal and Bangladesh will cease. Within the Union social harmony will improve enormously. Export of Islamic fundamentalism, with its 360-degree sweep from Islamabad, will vanish. Even a country like Thailand will heave a sigh of relief.
Above all, the gathering threat from a united group of authoritarian regimes along our 14,000 km borders, orchestrated and synchronised by Pakistan, will dissolve.
At the height of the recent disturbances in the Valley, when a general asked me for a suggestion to resolve the issue, I said: " Remove Pakistan. The threat will disappear permanently. " Today the collapse of Pakistan as a state is almost certain. All the King's men cannot save it from itself.
Looking ahead, New Delhi should formulate an appropriate strategy for 'post-Pakistan scenario' to secure India's interests in Central Asia.
It is intriguing, therefore, to hear New Delhi mouthing the falsehood that stable Pakistan is in India's favour. Perpetuation of such illogic for vote-bank politics is harming the consolidation and integration of the Union.
Short-sighted politicians as usual are overlooking the national interest for the short-term personal gains of a few votes. Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary ThreatAdapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat
Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult; in it's fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components. Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious rights.. When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious rights, some of the other components tend to creep in as well. Here's how it works. As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in: United States-- Muslim 0.6% At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytise from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in: Denmark -- Muslim 2% From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims. They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in: France-- Muslim 8% At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law. The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world. When Muslims approach 10% of the population, they tend to increase lawlessness as a means of complaint about their conditions. In Paris , we are already seeing car-burning's. Any non-Muslim action offends Islam, and results in uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam , with opposition to Mohammed cartoons and films about Islam. Such tensions are seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections, in: Guyana-- Muslim 10% After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burning's of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues such as in: Ethiopia-- Muslim 32.8% At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in: Bosnia-- Muslim 40% From 60%, nations experience unfettered persecution of non-believers of all other religions (including non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels, such as in: Albania-- Muslim 70% After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even some genocide as these nations drive out the infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as has been experienced and in some ways is on-going in: Bangladesh-- Muslim 83% 100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' --the Islamic House of Peace. Here there's supposed to be peace, because everybody is a Muslim, the Madrasses are the only schools, and the Koran is the only word, such as in: Afghanistan-- Muslim 100% Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in these 100% states the most radical Muslims intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for a variety of reasons. 'Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe the tribe against the world, and all of us against the infidel. Leon Uris, 'The Haj' It is important to understand that in some countries, with well under 100% Muslim populations, such as France, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law. The national police do not even enter these ghettos. There are no national courts nor schools nor non-Muslim religious facilities. In such situations, Muslims do not integrate into the community at large. The children attend madrasses. They learn only the Koran. To even associate with an infidel is a crime punishable with death. Therefore in some areas of certain nations, Muslim Imams and extremists exercise more power than the national average would indicate. Today's 1.5 billion Muslims make up 22% of the world's population. But their birth rates dwarf the birth rates of Christians, Hindus, Buddists, and Jews, and all other believers. Muslims will exceed 50% of the world's population by the end of this century. Hindutva and radical Islam: Where the twain do meet by Arun ShouriePosted online: Friday, December 28, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST
Your Hindutva is no different from Islamic fundamentalism’ — a fashionable statement these days, one that immediately establishes the person’s secular credentials. It is, of course, false, as we shall see in a moment. But there is a grain of potential truth in it — something that does not put Hinduism at par with Islam, but one that should, instead, serve as a warning to all who keep pushing Hindus around. That grain is the fact that every tradition has in it, every set of scriptures has in it enough to justify extreme, even violent reaction. From the very same Gita from which Gandhiji derived non-violence and satyagraha, Lokmanya Tilak constructed the case for ferocious response, not excluding violence. From the very same Gita from which Gandhiji derived his ‘true law’, shatham pratyapi satyam, ‘Truth even to the wicked’, the Lokmanya derived his famous maxim, shatham prati shaathyam, ‘Wickedness to the wicked.’
In the great work, Gita Rahasya, that he wrote in the Mandalay prison, the Lokmanya invokes Sri Samartha, ‘Meet boldness with boldness; impertinence by impertinence must be met; villainy by villainy must be met.’ Large-heartedness towards those who are grasping? Forgiveness towards those who are cruel? ‘Even Prahlada, that highest of devotees of the Blessed Lord,’ the Lokmanya recalls, has said, ‘Therefore, my friend, wise men have everywhere mentioned exceptions to the principle of forgiveness.’ True, the ordinary rule is that one must not cause harm to others by doing such actions as, if done to oneself, would be harmful.
But, the Mahabharata, Tilak says, ‘has made it clear that this rule should not be followed in a society, where there do not exist persons who follow the other religious principle, namely, others should not cause harm to us, which is the corollary from this first principle.’ The counsel of ‘equability’ of the Gita, he says, is bound up with two individuals; that is, it implies reciprocity. ‘Therefore, just as the principle of non-violence is not violated by killing an evil-doer, so also the principle of self-identification [of seeing the same, Eternal Self in all] or of non-enmity, which is observed by saints, is in no way affected by giving condign punishment to evil-doers.’ Does the Supreme Being not Himself declare that He takes incarnations from time to time to protect dharma and destroy evil-doers? Indeed, the one who hesitates to take the retaliatory action that is necessary assists the evil to do their work. ‘And the summary of the entire teaching of the Gita is
that: even the most horrible warfare which may be carried on in these circumstances, with an equable frame of mind, is righteous and meritorious.’ Tilak invokes the advice of Bhisma, and then of Yudhisthira, ‘Religion and morality consist in behaving towards others in the same way as they behave towards us; one must behave deceitfully towards deceitful persons, and in a saintly way towards saintly persons.’ Of course, act in a saintly way in the first instance, the Lokmanya counsels. Try to dissuade the evil-doer through persuasion. ‘But if the evilness of the evil-doers is not circumvented by such saintly actions, or, if the counsel of peacefulness and propriety is not acceptable to such evil-doers, then according to the principle kantakenaiva kantakam (that is, “take out a thorn by a thorn”), it becomes necessary to take out by a needle, that is by an iron thorn, if not by an ordinary thorn, that thorn which will not come out with poultices, because under any circumstances, punishing evil-doers in the interests of general welfare, as was done by the Blessed Lord, is the first duty of saints from the point of view
of Ethics.’ And the responsibility for the suffering that is caused thereby does not lie with the person who puts the evil out; it lies with the evil-doers. The Lord Himself says, Tilak recalls, ‘I give to them reward in the same manner and to the same extent that they worship Me.’ ‘In the same way,’ he says, ‘no one calls the Judge, who directs the execution of a criminal, the enemy of the criminal...’ Could the variance between two interpretations be greater than is the case between the Lokmanya’s Gita Rahasya and Gandhiji’s Anashakti Yoga? Yet both constructions are by great and devout Hindus. Are ordinary Hindus nailed to Gandhiji’s rendering? After all, at the end of the Gita, Arjuna does not go off to sit at one of our non-violent dharnas. He goes into blood-soaked battle.
The comforting mistake
The mistake is to assume that the sterner stance is something that has been fomented by this individual or that —in the case of Hindutva, by, say, Veer Savarkar — or by one organisation, say the RSS or the VHP. That is just a comforting mistake — the inference is that once that individual is calumnised, once that organisation is neutralised, ‘the problem’ will be over. Large numbers do not gravitate to this interpretation rather than that merely because an individual or an organisation has advanced it — after all, the interpretations that are available on the shelf far outnumber even the scriptures. They gravitate to the harsher rendering because events convince them that it alone will save them.
It is this tectonic shift in the Hindu mind, a shift that has been going on for 200 years, which is being underestimated. The thousand years of domination and savage oppression by rulers of other religions; domination and oppression which were exercised in the name of and for the glory of and for establishing the sway of those religions, evinced a variety of responses from the Hindus. Armed resistance for centuries... When at last such resistance became totally impossible, the revival of bhakti by the great poets... When public performance even of bhakti became perilous, sullen withdrawal, preserving the tradition by oneself, almost in secrecy: I remember being told in South Goa how families sustained their devotion by painting images of our gods and goddesses inside the tin trunks in which sheets and clothing were kept. The example of individuals: recall how the utter simplicity and manifest aura of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa negated the efforts of the missionaries, how his
devotion to the image of the Goddess at Dakshineshwar restored respectability to the idolatry that the missionaries and others were traducing... The magnetism of Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi... Gandhiji’s incontestable greatness and the fact that it was so evidently rooted in his devotion to our religion... Each of these stemmed much. But over the last 200 years the feeling has also swelled that, invaluable as these responses have been, they have not been enough. They did not prevent the country from being taken over. They did not shield the people from the cruelty of alien rulers. They did not prevent the conversion of millions. They did not prevent the tradition from being calumnised and being thrown on the defensive. They did not in the end save the country from being partitioned — from being partitioned in the name of religion... There is a real vice here. The three great religions that originated in Palestine and Saudi Arabia — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have been exclusivist — each has insisted that it alone is true — and aggressive. The Indic religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism — have been inclusive, they have been indulgent of the claims of others. But how may the latter sort survive when it is confronted by one that aims at power, acquires it, and then uses it to enlarge its dominion? How is the Indic sort to survive when the other uses the sword as well as other resources — organised missionaries, money, the state — to proselytise and to convert? Nor is this question facing just the Hindus in India today. It is facing the adherents of Indic traditions wherever they are: look at the Hindus in Indonesia and Malaysia; look at the Buddhists in Tibet, now in Thailand too. It is because of this vice, and the realisation born from what had already come to pass that Swami
Vivekananda, for instance, while asking the Hindus to retain their Hindu soul, exhorted them to acquire an ‘Islamic body’. Instigating factors
We can be certain that his counsel will prevail, our secularists notwithstanding,
• The more aggressively the other religions proselytise — look at the fervour with which today the Tablighi Jamaat goes about conversion; look at the organised way in which the missionaries ‘harvest’ our souls; • The more they use money to increase the harvest — whether it is Saudi money or that of Rome and the American churches; • The more any of them uses violence to enlarge its sway; • The more any of them allies itself with and uses the state — whether that of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan — for aggrandisement. Nor is what others do from outside the only determinant. From within India, three factors in particular will make the acquiring of that Islamic body all the more certain: • The more biased ‘secularist’ discourse is; • The more political parties use non-Hindus — Muslims, for instance — as vote banks and the more that non-Hindu group comes to act as one — ‘strategic voting’ and all; • The more the state of India bends to these exclusivist, aggressive traditions. It has almost become routine to slight Hindu sentiments — our smart-set do not even notice the slights they administer. Recall the jibe of decades: ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. When, because of those very socialist policies that their kind had swallowed and imposed on the country, our growth was held down to 3-4 per cent, it was dubbed — with much glee — as ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. Today, we are growing at 9 per cent. And, if you are to believe the nonsense in Sachar’s report, the minorities are not growing at all. So, who is responsible for this higher rate of growth? The Hindus! How come no one calls this higher rate of growth ‘the Hindu rate of growth’? Simple: dubbing the low rate as the Hindu one established you to be secular; not acknowledging the higher one as the Hindu rate establishes you to be secular! Or M.F. Husain. He is a kindly man, and a prodigiously productive artist. There is no warrant at all for disrupting all his exhibitions. I am on the point of sensibilities. His depictions of Hindu goddesses have been in the news: he has painted them in less than skimpy attire. I particularly remember one in which Sita is riding Hanuman’s stiffened tail — of course, she is scarcely clad, but that is the least of it: you need no imagination at all to see what she is rubbing up against that stiffened tail. Well, in the case of an artist, that is just inspiration, say the secularists. OK. The question that arises then is: How come in the seventy-five years Husain has been painting, he has not once felt inspired, not once, to paint the face of the Prophet? It doesn’t have to be in the style in which he has painted the Hindu goddesses. Why not the most beautiful, the most radiant and luminous face that he can imagine? How come he has never felt inspired to paint women revered
in Islam, or in his own family, in the same style as the one that propelled his inspiration in regard to Hindu goddesses? ‘In painting the goddesses, he was just honouring them,’ a secular intellectual remarked at a discussion the other day. ‘It was his way of honouring them.’ Fine. It is indeed the case that one of the best ways we can honour someone is to put the one skill we have at the service of the person or deity. But how come that Husain never but never thought of honouring the Prophet by using the same priceless skill, that one ‘talent which is death to hide’?
‘Has Mr Shourie ever visited Khajuraho?,’ a member of the audience asked, the implication being that, as Hindu sculptors had depicted personages naked, what was wrong with Husain depicting the goddesses in the same style. Fine again. But surely, it is no one’s case that the ‘Khajuraho style’ must be confined to Hindu icons. Why has the artist, so skilled in deploying the Khajuraho motifs, never used them for icons of Islam? The reason why an artist desists from depicting the Prophet’s face is none of these convoluted disquisitions on style. The reason is simplicity itself: he knows he will be thrashed, and his hands smashed. Exactly the same holds for politics. How come no one objects when for years a Muslim politician keeps publishing maps of constituencies in which Muslims as Muslims can determine the outcome, and exhorting them to do so? When, not just an individual politician but entire political parties — from the Congress to the Left parties — stir Muslims up as a vote bank. When Muslims start behaving like a vote bank, you can be certain that someone will get the idea that Hindus too should be welded into a vote bank, and eventually they will get welded into one. Why is stoking Muslims ‘secular’ and stoking Hindus ‘communal’? And yet perverted discourse, even the stratagems of political parties, are but preparation: they prepare the ground for capitulation by the state to groups that are aggressive. And in this the real lunacy is about to be launched, and, with that, the real reaction Dharmo Rakshati Rakshata If you protect Dharma, Dharma will in turn protect you How the companies are named?ABN AMRO- In the 1960s, the Nederlandse Handelmaatschappij (Dutch Trading Society; 1824) and the Twentsche Bank merged to form the Algemene Bank Nederland ( ABN; General Bank of the Netherlands) . In 1966, the Amsterdamsche Bank and the Rotterdamsche Bank merged to form the Amro Bank. In 1991, ABN and Amro Bank merged to form ABN AMRO. Accenture- Accent on the Future. Greater-than 'accent' over the logo's t points forward towards the future. The name Accenture was proposed by a company employee in Norwayas part of a internal name finding process (BrandStorming) . Prior to January 1, 2001 the company was called Andersen Consulting. Adidas- from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler. Adobe- came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke . AltaVista- Spanish for "high view". Amazon.com - Founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company to Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online bookstore as opposed to the then prevalent bookstores. (Alternative: It is said that Jeff Bezos named his book store Amazon simply to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo at the time. Yahoo listed entries alphabetically, and thus Amazon would always appear above its competitors in the relevant categories it was listed in.) AMD- Advanced Micro Devices. Apache- The name was chosen from respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache (Indé), well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and their inexhaustible endurance. Secondarily, and more popularly (though incorrectly) accepted, it's considered a cute name that stuck: its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'a patchy' server â€" thus the name Apache. Apple- for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computer if his colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 p.m. Apple's Macintosh is named after a popular variety of apple sold in the US. Apple also wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by the other computer companies at the time had names like IBM, NEC, DEC, ADPAC, Cincom, Dylakor, Input, Integral Systems, SAP, PSDI, Syncsort and Tesseract. The new company sought to reverse the entrenched view of computers in order to get people to use them at home. They looked for a name that was unlike the names of traditional computer companies, a name that also supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different. Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle's Apple Corps to use the name 'Apple' and paid a one-time royalty of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name 'Macintosh', known now as just 'Mac'. AT&T- American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation officially changed its name to AT&T in the 1990s. Bauknecht- Founded as an electrotechnical workshop in 1919 by Gottlob Bauknecht . BBC- Stands for British Broadcasting Corporation. BenQ - Bringing ENjoyment and Quality to life Blaupunkt- Blaupunkt (Blue dot) was founded in 1923 under the name Ideal. Their core business was the manufacturing of headphones. If the headphones came through quality tests, the company would give the headphones a blue dot. The headphones quickly became known as the blue dots or blaue Punkte. The quality symbol would become a trademark, and the trademark would become the company name in 1938. BMW- abbreviation of Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Factories) Borealis - The Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis, is the celestial phenomenon that features bursts of light in colourful patterns dancing across the night skies of the north. Borealis, inspired from the shining brilliance of the Northern Lights, was formed in 1994 out of the merger between two northern oil companies, Norway's Statoil and Finland's Neste. BP - formerly British Petroleum, now "BP" (The slogan "Beyond Petroleum" has incorrectly been taken to refer to the company's new name following its rebranding effort in 2000). BRAC- abbreviation for Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, world's largest NGO (non governmental organization) . It works in development programs around the world. Bridgestone- named after founder Shojiro Ishibashi. The surname Ishibashi (??) means "stone bridge", i.e. "bridge of stone". Bull- Compagnie des machines Bull was founded in Paristo exploit the patents for punched card machines taken out by a Norwegian engineer, Fredrik Rosing Bull. Cadillac- Cadillac was named after the 18th century French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe , sieur de Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan. Cadillac is a small town in the South of France. Canon- Originally (1933) Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory the new name (1935) derived from the name of the company's first camera, the Kwannon, in turn named after the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy. CGI- from the first letter of Information Management Consultant in french (Conseiller en Gestion et Informatique) . Cisco- short for San Francisco . It has also been suggested that it was "CIS-co" -- Computer Information Services was the department at StanfordUniversityt hat the founders worked in. COBRA- Computadores Brasileiros, "Brazilian Computers", electronics and services company, was the first state-owned designer and producer of computers in the 1970s, later acquired by the Banco do Brasil. Coca-Cola- Coca-Cola's name is derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' for the name to look better. Colgate-Palmolive- formed from a merger of soap manufacturers Colgate & Company and Palmolive-Peet. Peet was dropped in 1953. Colgate was named after William Colgate, an English immigrant, who set up a starch, soap and candle business in New York Cityin 1806. Palmolive was named for the two oils (Palm and Olive) used in its manufacture. Compaq- from "comp" for computer, and "pack" to denote a small integral object; or: Compatibility And Quality; or: from the company's first product, the very compact Compaq Portable. Comsat - an American digital telecommunications and satellite company, founded during the President Kennedy era to develop the technology. Contraction of Communications Satellites. Daewoo- the company founder Kim Woo Chong called it Daewoo which means "Great Universe" in Korean. Dell- named after its founder, Michael Dell. The company changed its name from Dell Computer in 2003. DHL- the company was founded by Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom , and Robert Lynn , whose last initials form the company's moniker. eBay- Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group. " EchoBay" didn't refer to the town in Nevada, the nature area close to Lake Mead, or any real place. "It just sounded cool," Omidyar reportedly said. When he tried to register EchoBay.com, though, he found that Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, had gotten it first. So, Omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com. Epson - Epson Seiko Corporation, the Japanese printer and peripheral manufacturer, was named from "Son of Electronic Printer" Fanta- was originally invented by Max Keith in Germanyin 1940 when World War II made it difficult to get the Coca-Cola syrup to Nazi Germany. Fanta was originally made from byproducts of cheese and jam production. The name comes from the German word for imagination (Fantasie or Phantasie), because the inventors thought that imagination was needed to taste oranges from the strange mix. Fazer - named after its founder, Karl Fazer. Fiat- acronym of Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Italian Factory of Cars of Turin). Fuji- from the highest Japanese mountain Mount Fuji. Google- the name is an intentional misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online. Haier- Chinese ? "sea" and ? (a transliteration character; also means "you" in Literary Chinese) HP- Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett. Hitachi- old place name, literally "sunrise" Honda- from the name of its founder, Soichiro Honda Honeywell- from the name of Mark Honeywell founder of Honeywell Heating Specialty Co. It later merged with Minneapolis Heat Regulator Company and was finally called Honeywell Inc. in 1963. Hotmail- Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "HTML" - the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing. (If you click on Hotmail's 'mail' tab, you will still find "HoTMaiL" in the URL.) HSBC- The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Hyundai- connotes the sense of "the present age" or "modernity" in Korean. IBM- named by Tom Watson, an ex-employee of National Cash Register. To one-up them in all respects, he called his company International Business Machines. ICL- abbreviation for International Computers Ltd, once the UK's largest computer company, but now a service arm of Fujitsu, of Japan. IKON - copier company name derived from I Know One Name. Intel- Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore initially incorporated their company as N M Electronics. Someone suggested Moore Noyce Electronics but it sounded too close to "more noise" -- not a good choice for an electronics company! Later, Integrated Electronics was proposed but it had been taken by somebody else. Then, using initial syllables from INTegrated ELectronics, Noyce and Moore came up with Intel. To avoid potential conflicts with other companies of similar names, Intel purchased the name rights for $15,000 from a company called Intelco. (Source: Intel 15 Years Corporate Anniversary Brochure) Interland - a web hosting provider formally known as Micron Computer, Inc. which was named either after InternetLandor the combination of the largest acqusition it performed, Interliant with the word Land. Kawasaki- from the name of its founder, Shozo Kawasaki Kodak - Both the Kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder George Eastman . The letter "K" was a favourite with Eastman; he felt it a strong and incisive letter. He tried out various combinations of words starting and ending with "K". He saw three advantages in the name. It had the merits of a trademark word, would not be mis-pronounced and the name did not resemble anything in the art. There is a misconception that the name was chosen because of its similarity to the sound produced by the shutter of the camera. Konica- it was earlier known as Konishiroku Kogaku. Konishiroku in turn is the short for Konishiya Rokubeiten which was the first name of the company established by Rokusaburo Sugiura in the 1850s. Korg - Formed from the surnames of the founders, Tsutomu Katoh and Tadashi Osanai, combined with the letters "rg" from the word organ. LG - combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar. (In Mexicopublicists explained the name change to the public as an abbreviation to LÃnea Goldstar Spanish for Goldstar Line) L'Oréal- In 1907, Eugène Schueller, a young French chemist, developed an innovative hair-color formula. He called his improved hair dye Auréole. Lotus Software - Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Lucent Technologies - a spin-off from AT&T, it was named Lucent (meaning "luminous" or "glowing with light") because "light as a metaphor for visionary thinking reflected the company's operating and guiding business philosophy," according to the Landor Associates staff who chose the name. Source: Design Management Journal 8:1 (Winter 1997). Lycos- from Lycosidae, the family of wolf spiders. Mazda Motor- from the company's first president, Jujiro Matsuda . In Japanese, no syllables are ever stressed and some inner syllables are virtually skipped. Thus, Matsuda is pronounced "Matsda". To make the name fly better outside of Japan, the spelling was changed to Mazda. McDonald's- from the name of the brothers Dick McDonald and Mac McDonald, who founded the first McDonald 's restaurant in 1940. Mercedes- This is the first name of the daughter of Emil Jellinek, who worked for the early Daimler company around 1900. MGM- Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer was formed by the merger of three picture houses Metro Picture Corporation, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Goldwyn Picture Corporation in turn was named after the last names of Samuel Goldfish and Edgar and Archibald Selwyn. Micron - computer memory producer named after the microscopic parts of its products. The official name was Micron Computer, Inc. Since, the company has become Interland, a web hosting provider, after selling/spinning off its RAM division and closing down its computer division, licensing the name. The company is now headquartered in Atlanta. Microsoft- coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on. midPhase- the post-dotcom era gave using the .com in a companies official name untrendy. A new dotcom company may be named traditionally, in midPhase's case it was named midPhase Services, Inc., the midPhase stands for Middle Phase, or middle of the road. Mitsubishi - The name Mitsubishi (??) has two parts: mitsu means three and hishi (changing to bishi in the middle of the word) means water chestnut, and from here rhombus, which is reflected in the company's logo. Motorola - Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company (at the time, Galvin Manufacturing Company) started manufacturing radios for cars. Many audio equipment makers of the era used the " ola" ending for their products, most famously the "Victrola" phonograph made by the Victor Talking Machine Company. The name was meant to convey the idea of "sound" and "motion". The name became so recognized that the company later adopted it as the company name. Mozilla Foundation - from the name of the web-browser that preceded Netscape Navigator. When Marc Andreesen , founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was internally named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) by Jamie Zawinski. MRF- Madras Rubber Factory, founded by K M Mammen Mappillai in 1946. He started with a toy balloon-manufacturi ng unit at Tiruvottiyur, Chennai (then called Madras). In 1952, he began manufacturing tread-rubber, and in 1961, tyres. Nero - Nero Burning ROM named after Nero burning Rome. Netscape- named by first marketing employee Greg Sands, in a panic when the Universityof Illinoisthreatened to sue the new company for its original name, Mosaic. Netscape then paid Landor $50,000 to design a logo. Nike - named for the Greek goddess of victory. Nikon - the original name was Nippon Kogaku, meaning "Japanese Optical". Nissan- the company was earlier known by the name Nippon Sangyo which means "Japanese industry". Nokia- started as a wood-pulp mill, the company expanded into producing rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia. The company later adopted the city's name. Nortel - The Nortel Networks name came from Nortel (Northern Telecom) and Bay Networks. The company was originally spun off from the Bell Telephone Company of Canada Ltd in 1895 as Northern Electric and Manufacturing, and traded as Northern Electric from 1914 to 1976. Novartis- after the Latin expression "novae artes" which means something like "new skills". Oracle - Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or some such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL database language from IBM. The project eventually was terminated but they decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they changed the name of the company, Relational Technology Inc, to the name of the product. Pepsi - Pepsi derives its name from (treatment of) dyspepsia, an intestinal ailment. Philips - Royal Philips Electronics was founded in 1891, by brothers Gerard (the engineer) and Anton (the entrepreneur) Philips . Qantas- From its original name, Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services. Red Hat- Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. People would turn to him to solve their problems, and he was referred to as 'that guy in the red hat'. He lost the cap and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone. Reebok- another spelling of rhebok (Pelea capreolus), an African antelope. SAAB- founded in 1937 in Swedenas "Svenska Aeroplan aktiebolaget" (Swedish Aeroplane Company) abbreviated SAAB. Samsonite- Samsonite was launched as a brand in 1941, receiving its name from the Biblical character Samson, renowned for his strength. Samsung- meaning three stars in Korean. Sanyo- The Japanese translation is disputed, although the Chinese name is "??" (literally, "Three Oceans") SAP- "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formerly "SystemAnalyse und Programmentwicklung" (German for "System analysis and program development"), formed by 4 ex- IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Application s/Projects' group of IBM. SEGA - "Service Games of Japan" (SeGa) Founded by Marty Bromley (an American) to import pinball games to Japanfor use on American military bases. Sharp - Japanese consumer electronics company named from its first product, an ever-sharp pencil. Shell - Royal Dutch Shell was established in 1907, when the Royal Netherlands Petrol Society Plc. and the Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd. merged. The Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd. had been established at the end of the 19th century, by commercial firm Samuel & Co (founded in 1830). Samuel & Co were already successfully importing Japanese shells when they set up an oil company, so the oil company was named after the shells Samuel & Co were importing. Siemens - founded in 1847 by Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske: the company was originally called Telegraphen- Bau-Anstalt von Siemens & Halske. Sprint- from its parent company, Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal Communications. Back in the day, pipelines and railroad tracks were the cheapest place to lay communications lines, as the right-of-way was already leased or owned. Sun Microsystems - its founders designed their first workstation in their dorm at StanfordUniversity, and chose the name Stanford University Network for their product, hoping to sell it to the college. They didn't. Suzuki - from the name of its founder, Michio Suzuki Tesco - Founder Jack Cohen, who from 1919 sold groceries in the markets of the London East End, acquired a large shipment of tea from T. E. Stockwell and made new labels by using the first three letters of the supplier's name and the first two letters of his surname forming the word "TESCO". Toshiba- was founded by the merger of consumer goods company Tokyo Denki (Tokyo Electric Co) and electrical firm Shibaura Seisaku-sho (Shibaura Engineering Works). Toyota- from the founder's name Sakichi Toyoda. Initially called Toyeda, it was changed after a contest for a better-sounding name. The new name was written in katakana with eight strokes, a number that is considered lucky in Japan. Unisys - made-up name for the company that resulted from the combination of two old mainframe computer companies, Burroughs and Sperry [Sperry Univac/Sperry Rand]. It "united" two incompatible ranges. Unisys was briefly the world's second-largest computer company, after IBM. Verizon- A portmanteau of veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon. Vodafone- is a multinational mobile phone operator with headquarters in the United Kingdom. Its name is made up of VOice, DAta, TeleFONE. Vodafone made the UK's first mobile call at a few minutes past midnight on the 1 January 1985. Volvo- From the Latin word "volvo", which means "I roll". It was originally a name for a ball bearing being developed by SKF. Xerox - The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry' (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry. Yahoo! - a "backronym" for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang selected the name because they jokingly considered themselves yahoos HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAYWISH ALL INDIANS HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!  Swami Vivekanand in ChicagoWith the advancement in technology we are blessed to hear this 100 year old speech by our great Saint Swami Vivekanand in Chicago in his own voice in Wolrd Religion Conference This is simply amazing http://www.udeps.com/Vivekananda.html And more about Swami Vivekananda is on the site:-- http://www.vedanta.org/rko/vivekananda/sv_quotes.html Save Energy with GoogleFor those who are trying to be more at one with > saving energy consumption, you might be interested > in this?!! > > When your screen is white, be it an empty word page, > or the Google page, your computer power requirement > is 74 watts, and when its black it reduces to 59 > watts. > > Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy > saving that would be achieved if Google had a black > screen, taking in account the huge number of page > views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watt > hours per year could be saved. > > In a response to this article Google created a black > version of its search engine, called Blackle, with > the exact same functions as the white version, but > with a lower energy consumption, check it out: > > http://www.blackle. com/ > > If you can bear the black screen, it might be > worthwhile using this for searching instead of > Google and setting it as your home page on iternet > explorer. Beyond the edge. (A Report from Pakistan)Beyond the edge.
by Masood Hasan.
(The writer is a Lahore-based columnist and a well-known journalist , his contact email address is masood_news@hotmail.com)
THE NEWS INTERNATIONAL (Pakistani Newspaper)
DECEMBER 14, 2003
The sight of Indian actress Urmilla on the rooftops of the old city of Lahore is a sight for sore eyes any time of the day. This week
another 270 delegates from India among which are Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi, are expected to cross over into Pakistan. As both countries take a series of steps, gingerly to start with, there is just that little light at the end of the dark and endless tunnel that has held us "prisoners of our own device" - as The Eagles put it in the famous number Hotel California. Will these measures lead to peace is a question for which even Tauqir Zia has no answers. All we can do is hope, pray and contribute in whatever way we can to normalise relations and bury the many hatchets that we have brandished for the last half-century.
Travelling last week on the Wazirabad-Sambrial road towards Sialkot, the potholes and bumps on that narrow ribbon strip road began to revive memories of long forgotten journeys made on that same road. I could have, after a few violent and rib-shaking miles, sworn these holes and craters were the same when one was in Kindergarten. Nothing seemed to have changed except that the dust was thicker, the pollution dismal and the people in numbers too large to comprehend. Perhaps in most of India the situation is not very much different and our much-touted smirking observations that India has huge problems might have given us years of self-induced smugness, but things across the divide are changing at a speed that baffles the mind. Some years ago, an Indian said to a Pakistani, "It is true we are both in the gutter. The difference is, we are looking at the stars. You are looking at the gutter." Many of us associate India's new progress with its IT revolution and it is partly true. Indian companies
Only Rs 1,000 crore - Indian rupees I might add. This firm sells data-storage products to seven of the world's top 10 CD-R producers. There is another unknown. Tandon Electronics. Its hardware exports are Rs 4,000 crore.
There is more depressing data, all of it quite true and impartial.
15 of the world's major automobile makers are obtaining components from Indian companies. This business fetched India $375 million last year and in 2003 the number will be $1.5 billion. In half a decade, they will reach $15 billion. Hero Honda with 17 lakh motorcycles a year is now the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. The prestigious UK automaker, Rover is marketing 1 lakh Indica cars made by Tata in Europe, under, wait a minute, its own name.
Bharat Forge has the world's largest single-location forging facility. It produces 1.2 lakh tonnes per annum and its clients include Honda, Toyota and Volvo among others.
Asian Paints now owns 22 production facilities over 5 continents and is the market leader in 11 of these countries. Hindustan Inks has the world's largest single stream fully integrated ink plant of 1-lakh tones per annum capacity and 100% owned subsidiaries in USA and Austria. EsselPropack is the world's largest laminated tube manufacturer with presence in 11 countries and a global marketing share of 25% already. Ford has just presented its Gold World Excellence Award to India's Cooper Tyres.
Other industries are winning equally prestigious awards all the time.While on cars, Aston Martin has contracted prototyping its latest luxury sports car to an Indian-based designer and is set to produce thecheapest Aston Martin ever. Suzuki, which makes Maruti in India has decided to make India its manufacturing, export and research hub outside Japan. Hyundai India is set to become the global small car hub for the Korean giant and will produce 25,000 Santros to start with. By 2010 it is set to supply half a million cars to Hyundai Korea. HMI and Ford.
India are leaping ahead, posting astonishing results in the global markets from Brazil to China.
The Indian pharmaceutical industry is blazing ahead too. At $6.5 billion and growing at 8-10% annually, it is the 4th largest pharmaceutical industry in the world. Its exports are over $2 billion. India is among the top five bulk drug makers and at home, the local industry has edged out the MNCs whose share of 75% in the market is down to 35%. Trade of medicinal plants has crossed Rs 4,000 crore already. As for technology, India is among the three countries that have built supercomputers on their own. The other two are USA and Japan. Not a bad club to be in, is it?
India is among six countries that launch satellites and do so even for Germany and Belgium. India's INSAT is among the world's largest domestic satellite communication systems.
Here are more depressing facts. India is one of the world's largest diamond cutting and polishing centres. About 9 out of 10 stones sold anywhere in the world, pass through India. With China, India's arch enemy, trade has grown by 104% in the past year and in the first 5 months of 2003, India has amassed a surplus in trade close to half a million dollars. In the recession-hit West, Indian exports are up by 19% this year and the country's foreign exchange reserves stand at an all-time high of $82 (Now over 100) billion. India is dishing out aid to 11 countries, pre-paying their debt and loaned IMF $300 million!!
And since we think banning fashion shows is the way ahead, it might be interesting to know that Wal-Mart sources $1 billion worth of goods from India - half its apparel, GAP about $600 million and Hilfiger $100 million.
These success stories are not propaganda and haven't happened overnight or by good fortune. The Indians have the same bureaucracy and many of the politicians simply play politics, the infrastructure creaks andpoverty abounds, corruption flourishes and there are huge pockets of inefficiency and walls that block meaningful progress. Sure, it has an army that is not bursting with power-grabbing and subjugating its people every few years, but India's success can no longer be denied and the gap between us and them grows wider by, if I may use my childhood idiom,leaps and bounds. What makes them tick?
The answers are not simple and require great space and analysis by minds far superior to that of a weekly hack, but Cost and Brains are two factors. Add to that, a determination to rise above what faces you everyday, a vision of the stars as the man said. India provides IT services at one-tenth the price. No wonder more and more companies are basing their operations in India. An Indian MBA costs $5,000. An American MBA $120,000. Development of an automobile in the US costs $1 billion. In India, less than half. A cataract operation costs $1500 in the US. In India, $12. Bypass in the US anywhere up to Rs 6 lakhs. In India, it is Rs 40,000.
Over 70 MNCs have set up R&D facilities in India in the past five years. 100 of the Fortune 500 are now present in India vs 33 in China. Intel's Indian staff strength has gone up from 10 to 1,000 in four years. GE with a $60 million invested in India employs 1,600 researchers, while it has only 100 in China. With better systems comes efficiency. The turnaround time in Indian ports is down to 4 days from 10 and its telecom infrastructure in 1999 provided a bandwidth of 155 Mbps. Today, it is 75,000 times more and with fibre optic networks in 300 cities, it will change the face of business. Mobile phones are growing by about 1.5 million a month. Long distance rates are down by two-thirds in five years and by 80% for data transmission. The facts go on and on.
So what are the answers? They lie in the way we look at things, our discourse, our vision, our ability to look ahead and our desire to genuinely put our country on the right road. The people of the subcontinent are naturally talented and bright. When will we unleash the great potential of our people that lies dormant, crushed by the forces of evil that stop our progress for their personal agendas? Tahanसारा अंधारच प्यावा
अशी लागावी तहान,
एका साध्या सत्यासाठी
देता यावे पंचप्राण ।।
व्हावे एव्हढे लहान सारी मने कळों यावी,
असा लागावा जिव्हाळा
पाषाणाची फुले व्हावी ।। फक्त मोठी असो छाती
सारे दुःख मापायला
गळो लाज गळो खंत
काही नको झाकायला ।। राहो बनून आभाळ
माझा शेवटला श्वास
मना मनात उरो
फक्त प्रेमाचा सुवास ।। - म. म. देशपांडे. Apple Computers Steve Job's Commencement Speech at StanfordThank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example. Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference. My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle. My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish. Thank you all, very much श्री ना पेंड्से यांचे निधन
श्री ना आज बापू तुमच्या करता रडतोय ! देणा-याने देत जावेदेणा-याने देत जावे घेणा-याने घेत जावे हिरव्या पिवळ्या माळावरुनी सह्याद्रीच्या कड्यावरुनी छातीसाठी ढाल घ्यावी वेयापिशा ढगाकडून वेडेपिसे आकार घ्यावे रक्तामधल्या प्रश्नासाठी प्रुथ्वीकडून होकार घ्यावे उसळलेल्या दर्याकडून पिसाळलेली आयाळ घ्यावी भरलेल्या भिमेकडून तुकोबाची माळ घ्यावी देणा-याने देत जावे घेणा-याने घेत जावे घेता घेता एक दिवस देणा-याचे हत घ्यावे -विंदा करंदीकर A Passage from Three Men in the Boat by Jerome K. Jerome"You know we are on a wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without." George comes out really quite sensible at times. You'd be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber. How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with - oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! - the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it! It is lumber, man - all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness - no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots. Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing. You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life's sunshine - time to listen to the AEolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around us - time to - आली रे आली,होळी आली..आली रे आली,होळी आली.. Talking about Income tax threshold limit raised
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