News Economy Satire and Me

The Indian Political League = Indian Premier League

2009-04-29T12:31:00.000+05:30

This summer has been a harvest for the media in India. Cricket and Politics dominated the front pages.
Political League seems to be riding on a high tide with the UPA Daredevils and NDA Super Kings fighting it out despite the Royal Challenge by Royal Third Front Challengers. In this year’s political league, a phenomenal change is that, players are exchanged or bought by other franchisees. A inform player this year, Jayalalithaa from Tamil Nadu is bought by Royal Third Front Challengers. UPA Dare Devils’ key players like Sharad Pawar is in the verge of getting sold to Royal Challengers. However Pawar seems to be comfortable with the current team. The team’s captain, Sonia Gnadhi is expecting to come back to power by winning the series. NDA Super Kings boasts of a good captain, L K Advani who is in form playing well in Gujarat( with a good partnership with Narendra Modi who made a century) and Madhya Pradesh. He is also supposed to of good physical fitness. But NDA Super Kings has sold off its Orissa spin bowler Naveen Patnaik. Naveen Patnaik was bought by Royal Challengers later for a fair amount of money in the form of a CPIM seat. Royal Challengers adopts multiple captaincy formula, which its coach Prakash Karat suggested. However another player in the team, Mayawati did not like the option at first but adopted it later.
The controversial moment in the IPL (Indian Political League) was when the captains of Super Kings LK Advani slapped Daredevils batsman Manmohan Singh to show he was strong enough to lead a team. Manmohan who broke into tears in front of camera, hit him with some stuff which led to the interference of match referee named Media.

The game of this election Twenty20 is rocking the floor all around India. The game has got more sponsors than the last Indian Political League which was held in 2004. This year’s IPL is also showcasing the emergence of young cricketers like Rahul Gandhi and Varun Gandhi, but anyway, the IPL remain as a game for the seniors like Advani and Sonia Gandhi who are also hitting sixes and cracking the fire.

Media during the time of Rcession

2009-03-25T10:29:00.004+05:30

Its hard time for the international media these days. A 150 year old newspaper has shut down its publication in US. The newspaper which is held prestigious by Americans, The New York Times has mortgaged its blazing building for cash. The NDTV, most respected English newschannel in India has incurred a loss of Rs 125 Crore. Whats all this signalling?? Yes, the recession too has affected the media and media is in a deep crisis.

It was when I approached the office of Malayala Manorama, here in Cochin when I came to know that media is almost crippled of recession. Thomas Ravi, the General Manager( Circulation), in Malayala Manorama said, the paper need to cut almost 30 crores to keep its employees aboard. He said Manorama has not come to a position of laying off its employees till then. But its the case with newspapers like the Times of India.

Its the newspaper's huge dependance in advertisements, that is making it recession-prone. Moreover the newspaper is not gaining much revenue through digital edition,also which is available free of cost.When recession struck the corporates, it freezed its promotions which was a blow to media. Media, in order to stay alive, started laying off its staffs, which came to be seen as a hardline approach worked out by media groups.

But Western media houses, were awaiting this kind of crisis. Media crisis posed some symptoms very early itself. By the time it had posed an astronomical problem, the media giants could have checked it then itself, by catering to the needs of the changing world. But still there is a chance of survival. The online newspaper- trend is getting more prominent, these days. So newspapers can cash in on that, by making it paid for viewing e-paper. But, it will take some time to ease the current recession situation. For the sake of profit, we cannot sacrifice a tradition of "reading newspaper". For that, the newspaper need to reduce its price through overall cost cutting measures.

Mukund P Unny

mukundparakkat@gmail.com

Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs

2009-03-10T17:04:00.003+05:30

Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.

The rapid acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The chemical change is placing "unprecedented" pressure on marine lifesuch as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.

The study, by scientists at Bristol University, will be presented at aspecial three-day summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen, which opens today. The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and to shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.

The Bristol scientists cannot talk about their unpublished results until they are announced later today. But a summary of the findings seen by the Guardian predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells.

It says: "We find the future rate of surface ocean acidification and environmental pressure on marine calcifiers very likely unprecedented in the past 65 million years." The scientists add that the situation in the deep sea is of even "greater concern".

The scientists compared the current acidification rate with a giant prehistoric release of greenhouse gas, which geologists know caused widespread extinction of deep water species.

The summary reads: "Because the rates of acidification between past and future are comparable, and [because] there was widespread extinction of benthic organisms [lowest living], one must conclude that a similar level of extinction is more likely than not in the future."

Concern about ocean acidification from carbon pollution has grown in recent years, but the issue receives much less attention than global warming — also caused by human carbon emissions.

The Bristol study is one of the first to predict the consequences of acid waters by looking at past events. It says future deep sea acidification must be limited to 0.2 pH units to avoid the worst effects. The pH of surface waters, where the CO₂ is absorbed from the atmosphere, has fallen by about 0.1 units since the industrial revolution, though it will take longer for the acid to reach deeper water.

Ocean acidification is one of the key topics at the Copenhagen summit, with a series of presentations scheduled to examine the impacts.

Ken Caldeira, an expert on ocean acidification at the Carnegie Institution in California, will tell the conference that the next few decades could produce "profound" changes in the oceans. He will say: "The choice to continue emitting carbon dioxide means that we will be an agent of biological change of a force and magnitude exceeded only by the causes of the great mass extinction events. If we do not cut carbon dioxide emissions deeply and soon, the consequences of ocean acidification will stand out against the broad reaches of geologic time. Those consequences will remain embedded in the geologic record as testimony from a civilisation that had the wisdom to develop high technology, but did not develop the wisdom to use it wisely."

Other experts will report that acidification is already affecting marine life in the Arctic and Antarctic. They will also discuss a bizarre finding that acid waters carry sound more efficiently, so the ocean will be a much noisier place in future.

The conference comes ahead of a year of high-level political discussionson climate change, which culminate in international negotiations in Copenhagen in December, where officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who organised this week's event, has described it as "a deliberate attempt to influence policy". She said many scientists were concerned that politicians have not grasped the seriousness of the situation, despite increasingly gloomy predictions.

This week's meeting will publish an update to the 2007 report of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A number of studies published since the IPCC report was prepared show that carbon emissions are rising faster than expected and that existing greenhouse gas targets may not be enough to prevent catastrophic temperature rise.

It will also assess whether projected sea level rises have been underestimated, and if there is still a realistic chance that average global temperature rise can be limited to 2C.

Newspapers: an industry in crisis

2009-02-14T20:29:00.000+05:30

"Newspapers are dead but it will take a while for the body to cool down."

It's unofficially official: news print is dead. Behind closed doors, web editors are united in their predictions of doom.

These particular closed doors were at Cambridge-MIT Institute's digital technologies project last Friday, where the big guns of British and US media were discussing the future of online news.

All the editors and publishers were speaking under the Chatham House Rule, which means their quotes can't be attributed. But the consensus was clear: newspapers are dying and dragging their news sites down with them.

In the US, newspaper sales have stayed at the same level for 20 years - even though the population has increased by 25 per cent. Web audiences have boomed but newspaper sites have struggled to keep up.

So why are they falling behind? Doesn't the internet present an enormous opportunity for the future of the newspaper industry? An inexpensive, global publishing platform with unprecedented potential for multimedia publishing and customisation?

The real handicap, one delegate confessed, is starting with a traditional newspaper model and trying to adapt it for the web. The most successful websites - most notably Google - started from scratch and developed innovative, technologically-sophisticated products for the unique demands of the web environment.

Wrapping the cast iron model of a 200-year-old newspaper around the amorphous chaos of the internet is seemingly impossible. And although the online industry is now more than 10 years old, the pace of change has simply been too rapid for newspapers.

Newspaper websites face enormous challenges from citizen journalism, rapid changes in online trends and technologies, fragmented audiences and lack of revenue sources. On top of that they often have to lock horns with management teams that are unwilling or unable to understand the internet environment.

The resistance to change 'borders on pathological', according to one news rep. The news industry is in 'profound denial' about the crisis. Another admitted the industry is completely out of touch with consumer expectations of online news.

To make things worse, the industry's executives still don't understand what the web is for: "So it doesn't make money, and it's not a back up for the newspaper?"

Short term, the plan for newspaper websites seems to be to enjoy the boom in online advertising for as long as it lasts. Experimenting with new print formats - a strong trend among UK newspapers - is an attempt to wring as much value for as long as possible from the print edition. And exploiting the blogging wave could also help by providing a low-cost source of information - if news sites can embrace the phenomenon before it starts to erode their businesses.

"No other media was ever so well suited to our business of journalism."

"That's why I think it has been so successful over the past 10 years and will be in the next 10 years."

UK publisher on internet news

Editors predict that by 2015, most site traffic will be generated by syndicated news content rather than random surfers. To remain competitive, sites will have to provide versatile news for a wide variety of platforms. Web users will continue to filter news content through their own beliefs and prejudices, customising their news package using favourite sites and sources.

But while newspaper sites are chained to antiquated publishing models they will struggle to innovate and will not be able to thrive online.

One web editor described the website as a life raft for the newspaper - a powerful metaphor for the state of online news.

Newspaper sites could drown quietly and sink without trace. But they might be washed up on a desert island and survive by being adventurous and innovative - an exciting prospect for the next era of news publishing.

The meltdown: whose crisis is it, anyway?

2009-02-14T13:22:00.000+05:30

Many find it amusing that it took officials 11 months to declare a “recession” in the United States. Yet, it took more than 20 years to recognise worse. When does a crisis become “A Crisis?” First came ‘the boom’ — exploding debt, crazy credit, insane speculation, a finance sector gone berserk even as manufacturing declined. Then the doom — as multiple bubbles burst. Massive job losses, a credit crunch, a huge breakdown. These are some features of the ‘Crisis’ that has struck the U.S. since September.

But some of those problems, certainly ruin of industry and job losses, have plagued other, poorer nations for close to two decades now. Some even saw doom without a boom. When imposed on those societies we didn’t call these problems a crisis. We called them “reforms.” Or the painful fallout of necessary “adjustment.” When they come home to roost in Wall Street, we call it a crisis. Simply put, a crisis becomes a crisis when it hits the suits. Even within those nations on which it was imposed, the poor and hungry were devastated years before the well-off found crisis on their menu. Indeed, the predicament faced by poor people translated into the “success stories” of those elites.

Remember The Crisis that struck India in 1991? The then Finance Minister, a Dr. M. Singh, told us that our balance of payments problem and shrinking forex reserves were truly a crisis. These, he said, called for reforms on a war footing. Oddly, 400 million human beings going to bed hungry every night was never thought of as a crisis. Certainly not one to be dealt with on a war footing.

Within India, rural despair and breakdown meant little. Crisis is when the Sensex tanks. It took over a decade of intense misery before a Prime Minister figured out there were problems in the countryside. Which he then tried tackling with makeshift “relief packages” thinly spread out across hundreds of millions of people. (Even the much-needed NREGA only happened due to arm-twisting allies.) But much larger “stimulus” packages, aimed mostly at the narrow corporate world, happen in a jiffy. And Finance Ministers are quick to descend on Dalal Street within hours of a hiccup on the Sensex. They do so, as the media tenderly put it, “to soothe the market’s nerves.” Recall the short eight-day session of Parliament in 2004? It followed the historic elections of that year. The then Finance Minister was absent on the first day of that session. He was consoling the distraught millionaires of Dalal Street. The delicate sentiment of the Market had been wounded by the democratic sentiments of the Indian voter.

Even today, debate on the ‘crisis’ in the U.S. centres around how to help the banks and other financial bodies back on their feet. And that with few preconditions or questions asked. Forays into the most painful part of it — the staggering job losses — are infrequent. These are often mentioned in news items, and now form the rationale for the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act. But it is still very hard to push through the modest measures to help those crushed by the crisis — despite popular support for it. In any case, the jobs crisis never gets the priority that Wall Street’s does.

Since the meltdown began in September, the U.S. economy has seen the loss, on average, of around 17,000 jobs a day. Move the baseline to November 1 and job losses have averaged more than 19,000 a day. And the trend is getting worse. Close to 2.6 million jobs have been lost since just September. Over 1.7 million of those have vanished over the last three months. January saw the loss, on average, of more than 800 jobs every hour.

‘Understated’

Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan White House, notes that even these numbers “are likely understated.” Writing in Counterpunch.org, Mr. Roberts sums up the message of those who use un-massaged job loss data: If we revert to the methodology used in the U.S. in 1980 — before the government started fiddling definitions of joblessness — the U.S. unemployment rate would be not 7.2 per cent but 17.5 per cent.

In India, too, job losses are now finding some mention. When covered in the media, it’s mostly about jobs in the IT sector. Or those lost in related fields in the organised sector. While these are not small, only a handful of reports look at the awful hit taken, for instance, by migrant labourers. Millions of these are people who left their villages seeking work when there was no other option. They found it in construction, in laying roads and other poorly paid work. And, keeping afloat in oppressive conditions, many still managed to send something back to their families. Now, as one of them told us: “There is nothing to send back to the village and nothing to go back to the village for.” And what about all those small farmers who moved towards growing cash crops for export markets that have collapsed? And do we get to ask questions of the policy experts who brought it all to this point?

Somewhere in there persists a fond and smug belief that our innate cleverness has saved India from all those bad things out there. “What slowdown?” crowed one daily, pointing to the sums spent at IPL’s “auctions.” If our barons could spend millions of dollars acquiring a clutch of foreign cricketers, it reasoned, things couldn’t be so bad. Never mind that some of the franchisees may have laid off lots of workers, and slashed the salaries of many others. Spending three million dollars on just a couple of players is worth seeing in that context, but it won’t be. Some sections of the media celebrating the IPL’s success as proof of the economy’s vibrancy are themselves laying off many journalists and other workers.

But our elite believe that CEOs lead or should lead a charmed life. Remember their outrage when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — otherwise a darling of the corporate media — made a few bleats of protest about CEO salaries getting, er, a wee bit too large? That other media icon, Dr. Narayana Murthy of Infosys was not spared either when he called for some restraint in CEO feeding frenzy. “Pay peanuts, get monkeys” spat one contemptuous editorial. (Never mind that such publications have paid gold and got gorillas.) Now there is coverage, without much comment, of the bumbling efforts at curbing CEO pay in the U.S.

Corporate kleptocracy

Meanwhile, U.S. banks and CEOs continue to educate us on the culture of corporate kleptocracy. Take Citigroup, which hogged $45 billion of public money at the bailout trough. Soon after, it sought to spend $50 million on a corporate jet — a move that had to be squelched at the level of the Treasury Secretary. The now disgraced CEO of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, spent $1.22 million on redecorating his office in early 2008. That is, even as he prepared to cut thousands of jobs. The amount included purchase of an antique “commode on legs.” Heavy symbolism there, given the company was by then halfway down the tube with massive losses. Less than a week after the U.S. government committed $85 billion in bailout money to AIG, the insurance company’s executives whizzed off to a luxury resort where rooms could cost over $1000 a night. Blowout followed bailout. Wells Fargo ($25 billion in bailout money) laid on a trip to Las Vegas for its star execs.

Top bosses of New York financial firms paid themselves bonuses worth $18 billion in 2008. The kleptocrats clearly believe that the crisis — one that has their personal stamp on it — is for others. They themselves flourish by divine right. And the bailouts seem to confirm that. The very gangs that spurred the meltdown are rewarded with huge amounts of taxpayer money so that they can go back to doing the same things they were doing before.

Meanwhile tens of millions of human beings across the world stand to lose their jobs. Many will descend into distress and chaos. The already hungry will have it much worse. Whose crisis is it, anyway?

Burgeoning bourgeoisie

2009-02-14T12:41:00.001+05:30

For the first time in history more than half the world is middle-class—thanks to rapid growth in emerging countries. John Parker (interviewed here) reports

Financial Times

THE crowd surges back and forth, hands above heads, mobile-phone cameras snapping one of Brazil’s best-known samba bands. It could be almost anywhere in Latin America’s largest city on a Saturday night. But this is Paraisopolis, one of São Paulo’s notorious crime-infested favelas (slums). Casas Bahia, the country’s largest retailer, is celebrating the opening there of its first ever store in a favela (pictured above). It is selling television sets and refrigerators in a place that, at first glance, has no running water or electricity.

Among the shacks, though, rise three-storey brick structures with satellite dishes on their tin roofs. In the new shop, Brazilians without bank accounts—plumbers, salesmen, maids—flock to buy on instalment credit. In a country with no credit histories, the system is cumbersome: the staff interview customers about their qualifications and get them to sign stacks of promissory notes, like post-dated cheques, before allowing them to take their purchases home. But it works, more or less. According to Maria, a cleaner, “Everything I have comes from Casas Bahia. Things are very expensive but the means of payment are better for people like us, without any money.” This is the emerging markets’ new middle class out shopping.

Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, one of Brazil’s most distinguished economists, describes members of the middle class as “people who are not resigned to a life of poverty, who are prepared to make sacrifices to create a better life for themselves but who have not started with life’s material problems solved because they have material assets to make their lives easy.” That covers a broad range of ambitions, as two other examples will show.

Back in 1992 Lu Jian was a dissatisfied mid-level bureaucrat at China’s department of transport and communications who became surplus to requirements. Taking advantage of government measures that encouraged such officials to go into business, he went off for a stint at China’s first commodity-futures trading company. Soon afterwards he found himself designing the country’s first ski resort, near the northern city of Harbin. Now, as chairman of the Nanshan Ski Village, in the desert hills near Beijing, he presides over the capital’s main winter-sports recreation ground.

This season 3m Chinese will take up a sport that was unavailable in the country only 15 years ago. China has around 300 ski runs, including some in the subtropical south where skiing is done indoors. Even in freezing Nanshan, snow is manufactured from wells deep underground. “When the Chinese first got rich,” says Mr Lu, “they wanted to go to Thailand and South Korea. Now they want to go skiing.” Every weekend the resort is packed with IT executives, bankers and media glitterati. This is the emerging markets’ new middle class at play.

In December 2008, a week after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, thousands of young, English-speaking professionals gathered in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad. They were demanding a new security law and a ban on criminals holding parliamentary seats, as well as urging people to vote. India’s professional classes have long been considered indifferent to politics and less inclined to vote than the poor. Yet suddenly social-networking sites were full of memorials to the victims and proposals for further action: vote, don’t vote, withhold taxes, join a new party. “Those laid-back, lethargic, indolent middle classes—they’ve been galvanised,” says a former advertising executive.” This is the emerging markets’ middle class engaged in politics.

So much to do

“We expect a lot from the middle classes,” say Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, of the Poverty Action Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following the historical examples of Britain and America, they are expected to be the dominant force in establishing or consolidating democracy. As a group, they are meant to be the backbone of the market economy. And now the world looks to them to save it from depression. With the global economy facing the biggest slump since the 1930s, the World Bank says that “a new engine of private demand growth will be needed, and we see a likely candidate in the still largely untapped consumption potential of the rapidly expanding middle classes in the large emerging-market countries.”

This special report will assess these expectations. It will argue that many of them are broadly justified; that there is indeed something special about the contribution the middle classes make to economic development that goes beyond providing a market for Western consumer goods. The middle classes can, and sometimes do, play an important role in creating and sustaining democracy, though on their own they are not sufficient to create it, nor do they make it inevitable. On balance, the report is optimistic about the prospects of countries where the middle classes are growing. But they are not a homogeneous group, so their impact varies. A middle class that has grown largely to tend to the state will behave differently from one that is based on the private sector.

The one-third rule

But who, as a patrician British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, once loftily asked, are these middle classes? Their members are neither rich nor poor but somewhere in-between. In countries long divided between lord and peasant, that has large consequences. “Middle-class” describes an income category but also a set of attitudes. In the words of Shashi Tharoor, an Indian commentator, it is a category “more sociological than logical”.

An essential characteristic is the possession of a reasonable amount of discretionary income. Middle-class people do not live from hand to mouth, job to job, season to season, as the poor do. Diana Farrell, who is now a member of America’s National Economic Council but until recently worked for McKinsey, a consultancy that has spent a lot of time studying the middle classes, reckons they begin at roughly the point where people have a third of their income left for discretionary spending after providing for basic food and shelter. This allows them not just to buy things like fridges or cars but to improve their health care or plan for their children’s education.

Usually, an income of that size requires regular, formal employment, with a salary and some benefits, that is, a steady job—another key middle-class characteristic. The income needed to have a third of it left over after meeting basic needs also varies from place to place. In China, for example, $3,000 a year may be enough in Chongqing or Chengdu, big cities in the west, but not in Beijing or Shanghai. So defining the middle class in absolute terms is hard (see article).

In practice, emerging markets may be said to have two middle classes. One consists of those who are middle class by any standard—ie, with an income between the average Brazilian and Italian. This group has the makings of a global class whose members have as much in common with each other as with the poor in their own countries. It is growing fast, but still makes up only a tenth of the developing world. You could call it the global middle class.

The other, more numerous, group consists of those who are middle-class by the standards of the developing world but not the rich one. Some time in the past year or two, for the first time in history, they became a majority of the developing world’s population: their share of the total rose from one-third in 1990 to 49% in 2005. Call it the developing middle class.

Using a somewhat different definition—those earning $10-100 a day, including in rich countries—an Indian economist, Surjit Bhalla, also found that the middle class’s share of the whole world’s population rose from one-third to over half (57%) between 1990 and 2006. He argues that this is the third middle-class surge since 1800. The first occurred in the 19th century with the creation of the first mass middle class in western Europe (see chart 1). The second, mainly in Western countries, occurred during the baby boom (1950-1980). The current, third one is happening almost entirely in emerging countries. According to Mr Bhalla’s calculations, the number of middle-class people in Asia has overtaken the number in the West for the first time since 1700 (see chart 2).

In many emerging markets the middle class does not grow incrementally, in line with, say, economic growth. It surges. Chart 3 below shows why. The vertical line represents an income of $10 a day, which is where Mr Bhalla considers the middle class to start. In 1980 there was hardly anyone beyond that line. The lop-sided bell shape represents the distribution of income in a country (in this case, China) with a tail of poor people on the left, a longer tail of rich ones on the right and a bulge of people on average incomes in the middle.

As the economy grows, the bell moves to the right and as it meets the threshold, a great whoosh of people cross into the middle class. In reality, growth may be even faster because the shape of the bell has been changing. According to new research by Martin Ravallion, the director of the World Bank’s development research group, income distribution in developing countries started to shift between 1990 and 2005. The bulge in the middle of the range got bigger, making the bell taller, so the middle class is growing even faster.

At a certain stage it starts to boom. That stage was reached in China some time between 1990 and 2005, during which period the middle-class share of the population soared from 15% to 62%. It is just being reached in India now. In 2005, says the reputable National Council for Applied Economic Research, the middle-class share of the population was only about 5%. By 2015, it forecasts, it will have risen to 20%; by 2025, to over 40%.

Sweet spot

Homi Kharas, of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, argues that the point at which the poor start entering the middle class in their millions is the “sweet spot of growth”. It is the moment when poor countries can get the maximum benefit from their cheap labour through international trade, before they price themselves out of world markets for cheap goods or are able to compete with rich countries in making high-value ones. It is also almost always a period of fast urbanisation, when formerly underemployed farmers abandon what Marx called “the idiocy of rural life” for the cities to work in manufacturing, boosting their productivity many times over. Eventually this results in a lessening of income inequalities because the new middle class sits somewhere between the rich elite and the rural poor.

The surge across the poverty line is a period of accelerating growth both for the new middle class and for the country it inhabits. That should continue for a couple of decades. By most estimates, the global middle class will more than double in number between now and 2030. This will have profound social consequences, as happened in previous middle-class surges.

Close to the creation of the world’s first mass middle class in early 19th-century England, Thomas Malthus (the political economist who scared the world with his forecasts of overpopulation and food shortages) wrote that “it is probable that extreme poverty or too great riches may be alike unfavourable [to furthering the progress of mankind]. The middle regions of society seem to be best suited to intellectual improvement.”

Marx, who admired Malthus, was equally astonished by the emergence of the middle class. As he wrote in the “Communist Manifesto”:

Historically it has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations…It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothic cathedrals…The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country…All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life-and-death question for all civilised nations…In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes…National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation.

Is it recession-proof?

2009-02-14T12:37:00.001+05:30

Nothing can entirely escape the economic downturn. But leading sports come close

AFP

GLOOMY days, these, for English cricket. On February 7th the England Test (international) side was skittled out for 51 runs, its third-lowest total in 132 years and 880 matches, as it slid to ignominious defeat against the West Indies, one of the lowest-ranked Test sides in the world.

England may be useless, but they’re not worthless. The previous day, some of the players were auctioned—that’s right, by a man with a gavel—for the second season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), a six-week tournament of short matches (lasting around three-and-a-half hours each) which begins in April. The services of England’s two great crowd-pleasers, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen (pictured above), fetched $1.55m apiece. A third member of the team scooped $275,000. For cricketers, these are huge sums—and the top price has gone up since last year.

There is little hint of global recession there. You might conclude the same from other sports, even in shrinking economies. The average price of television-advertising slots during this month’s Super Bowl, American football’s ultimate prize, was even higher than in 2008. And on February 6th the Premier League, the top tier of English football, said it had sold domestic live broadcasting rights for three seasons from August 2010 for nearly £1.8 billion ($2.6 billion), 5% more than the existing deal. Deloitte, a consulting firm, paints a broadly positive picture of European football in a report this week (seearticle).

Sport is not immune to economic woe. As Deloitte notes, the shirts of Premier League teams offer a brief history of the credit crunch: Newcastle United’s sponsor is Northern Rock, a nationalised bank; Manchester United sport the initials of American International Group, an insurance company now owned by the American government; and West Ham went logoless for three months after XL, a travel company, went bust. On February 4th the Detroit Pistons, an American basketball team, failed to sell out a home game for the first time in five seasons. And although NBC, the Super Bowl’s broadcaster, increased average advertising revenues, says Jason Maltby of Mindshare, a marketing and media consultancy, it struggled with the last few slots.

Yet leading sports are, by and large, standing up to recession better than most. They have two big advantages. It helps, first, to be able to sell broadcasters and sponsors what they crave in a world of myriad channels: lots of dedicated viewers. This advantage may even rise in a downturn. As recession grips, fans may decide that season tickets are too great a luxury, but they will cling on to their television subscriptions.

The other advantage is timing, which is just as important in the business of sport as it is on the field of play. Long-term broadcasting contracts help to lay a good base of revenue and some sports are in the early days of such deals. The IPL, for instance, started out with a ten-year, $1 billion agreement. In America the National Basketball Association is in the first season of eight-year contracts worth $7.5 billion.

With a sought-after event, it is possible to plan ahead—beyond, with luck, today’s troubles. The International Olympic Committee is already negotiating for the 2014 winter and 2016 summer games. So far it has struck separate deals for Italy and Turkey, rather than sell all European rights to the European Broadcasting Union as in the past, and has done rather better from them.

Not all sporting activities can rise above today’s troubles. Away from the top table of sport, times look harder. Stefan Szymanski, an economist at Cass Business School in London, notes that sport is like any other industry: “All recessions are about consolidation,” he says. The IPL is “pretty much recession-proof”; English county cricket looks much less robust. Of course there are winners and losers.

Even at the top, not all is rosy. Mr Maltby detects “cracks” in sponsorship as well as advertising. For example, cars in the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, or NASCAR, are no longer festooned with logos over every square inch. Some NASCAR teams have merged and selling the right to be a sport’s official beer, say, may get harder.

This is not a good time to be looking for a sponsor to name a new stadium or for a lender to finance it. But the world of sport can console itself. In hard times people need escapism more than ever, it seems. They like heroes to watch and cheer. And still they are willing to pay.

Melting of an Ice berg

2009-02-10T19:40:00.002+05:30

It is the first time in the history of mankind that world is facing a financial earth quake of this magnitude. Even though the roots of this crisis have been in the developed world, its branches have spread all over the globe. When the world leaders play blame game, it’s the common man who is suffering

The Credit crunch has affected the base of global banking system. Credit crunch has led its way to the slow down of the whole of the economic frame work. The venomous thorns of the crisis have affected India also, even when the Prime Minister and other officials said “no”. Exports have reduced, production has backtracked and growth suddenly slipped to nowhere.

Factors that led to the Greatest Depression (of this century) are many. Failed policies of the developed nations, and the corrector, WTO, and the failed policy of capitalism, pursued by the developed nations and the lateness with which leaders reacted to crisis are all the reasons which can be told without doubt.

Indian Governments policy shift from socialism to crony capitalism of United States has been a major reason of recession in India. In India, it is paradoxical that the recession has happened when the centre is ruled 3 major economists- Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluvalia.They are continuing the privatisation of our banking and insurance system.

The only way to get rid of this global imbroglio is to regulate the market system. Inflation must be curbed. Stimulus package of 20000 crore announced by the Union Government seems to be not enough which is letting leaves of more than one lakh crore . We need to wait until any formidable is being taken to see a reverse in this trend in our developmental map.

Mukund P Unny

+919446521741

mukundparakkat@gmail.com

How to Save Your Newspaper

2009-02-08T11:14:00.004+05:30

This story has been modified from its original version

During the past few months, the crisis in journalism has reached meltdown proportions. It is now possible to contemplate a time when some major cities will no longer have a newspaper and when magazines and network-news operations will employ no more than a handful of reporters.

There is, however, a striking and somewhat odd fact about this crisis. Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content, as well as that of newsmagazines and other producers of traditional journalism, is more popular than ever — even (in fact, especially) among young people.

The problem is that fewer of these consumers are paying. Instead, news organizations are merrily giving away their news. According to a Pew Research Center study, a tipping point occurred last year: more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines. Who can blame them? Even an old print junkie like me has quit subscribing to the New YorkTimes, because if it doesn't see fit to charge for its content, I'd feel like a fool paying for it.

This is not a business model that makes sense. Perhaps it appeared to when Web advertising was booming and every half-sentient publisher could pretend to be among the clan who "got it" by chanting the mantra that the ad-supported Web was "the future." But when Web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, free felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings. (See who got the world into this financial mess.)

Newspapers and magazines traditionally have had three revenue sources: newsstand sales, subscriptions and advertising. The new business model relies only on the last of these. That makes for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong. When it weakens — as countless publishers have seen happen as a result of the recession — the stool can't possibly stand.

See pictures of the recession of 1958.

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

Henry Luce, a co-founder of TIME, disdained the notion of giveaway publications that relied solely on ad revenue. He called that formula "morally abhorrent" and also "economically self-defeating." That was because he believed that good journalism required that a publication's primary duty be to its readers, not to its advertisers. In an advertising-only revenue model, the incentive is perverse. It is also self-defeating, because eventually you will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not feel directly dependent on them for your revenue. When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, Dr. Johnson said, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. Journalism's fortnight is upon us, and I suspect that 2009 will be remembered as the year news organizations realized that further rounds of cost-cutting would not stave off the hangman. (See the top 10 magazine covers of 2008.)

One option for survival being tried by some publications, such as the Christian Science Monitor and the Detroit Free Press, is to eliminate or drastically cut their print editions and focus on their free websites. Others may try to ride out the long winter, hope that their competitors die and pray that they will grab a large enough share of advertising to make a profitable go of it as free sites. That's fine. We need a variety of competing strategies.

These approaches, however, still make a publication completely beholden to its advertisers. So I am hoping that this year will see the dawn of a bold, old idea that will provide yet another option that some news organizations might choose: getting paid by users for the services they provide and the journalism they produce.

This notion of charging for content is an old idea not simply because newspapers and magazines have been doing it for more than four centuries. It's also something they used to do at the dawn of the online era, in the early 1990s. Back then there were a passel of online service companies, such as Prodigy, CompuServe, Delphi and AOL. They used to charge users for the minutes people spent online, and it was naturally in their interest to keep the users online for as long as possible. As a result, good content was valued. When I was in charge of TIME's nascent online-media department back then, every year or so we would play off AOL and CompuServe; one year the bidding for our magazine and bulletin boards reached $1 million.

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

See pictures of TIME's Wall Street covers.

Then along came tools that made it easier for publications and users to venture onto the open Internet rather than remain in the walled gardens created by the online services. I remember talking to Louis Rossetto, then the editor of Wired, about ways to put our magazines directly online, and we decided that the best strategy was to use the hypertext markup language and transfer protocols that defined the World Wide Web. Wired and TIME made the plunge the same week in 1994, and within a year most other publications had done so as well. We invented things like banner ads that brought in a rising tide of revenue, but the upshot was that we abandoned getting paid for content. (See the 50 best websites of 2008.)

One of history's ironies is that hypertext — an embedded Web link that refers you to another page or site — had been invented by Ted Nelson in the early 1960s with the goal of enabling micropayments for content. He wanted to make sure that the people who created good stuff got rewarded for it. In his vision, all links on a page would facilitate the accrual of small, automatic payments for whatever content was accessed. Instead, the Web got caught up in the ethos that information wants to be free. Others smarter than we were had avoided that trap. For example, when Bill Gates noticed in 1976 that hobbyists were freely sharing Altair BASIC, a code he and his colleagues had written, he sent an open letter to members of the Homebrew Computer Club telling them to stop. "One thing you do is prevent good software from being written," he railed. "Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?"

The easy Internet ad dollars of the late 1990s enticed newspapers and magazines to put all of their content, plus a whole lot of blogs and whistles, onto their websites for free. But the bulk of the ad dollars has ended up flowing to groups that did not actually create much content but instead piggybacked on it: search engines, portals and some aggregators.

Another group that benefits from free journalism is Internet service providers. They get to charge customers $20 to $30 a month for access to the Web's trove of free content and services. As a result, it is not in their interest to facilitate easy ways for media creators to charge for their content. Thus we have a world in which phone companies have accustomed kids to paying up to 20 cents when they send a text message but it seems technologically and psychologically impossible to get people to pay 10 cents for a magazine, newspaper or newscast.

Currently a few newspapers, most notably the Wall Street Journal, charge for their online editions by requiring a monthly subscription. When Rupert Murdoch acquired the Journal, he ruminated publicly about dropping the fee. But Murdoch is, above all, a smart businessman. He took a look at the economics and decided it was lunacy to forgo the revenue — and that was even before the online ad market began contracting. Now his move looks really smart. Paid subscriptions for the Journal's website were up more than 7% in a very gloomy 2008. Plus, he spooked the New York Times into dropping its own halfhearted attempts to get subscription revenue, which were based on the (I think flawed) premise that it should charge for the paper's punditry rather than for its great reporting. (Author's note: After publication the New York Times vehemently denied that their thinking was influenced by outside considerations; I accept their explanation.)

See the worst business deals of 2008.

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

But I don't think that subscriptions will solve everything — nor should they be the only way to charge for content. A person who wants one day's edition of a newspaper or is enticed by a link to an interesting article is rarely going to go through the cost and hassle of signing up for a subscription under today's clunky payment systems. The key to attracting online revenue, I think, is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment. We need something like digital coins or an E-ZPass digital wallet — a one-click system with a really simple interface that will permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge. (See the 50 best inventions of 2008.)

Admittedly, the Internet is littered with failed micropayment companies. If you remember Flooz, Beenz, CyberCash, Bitpass, Peppercoin and DigiCash, it's probably because you lost money investing in them. Many tracts and blog entries have been written about how the concept can't work because of bad tech or mental transaction costs.

But things have changed. "With newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not just to the companies that own them, but also to the news itself," wrote the savvy New York Times columnist David Carr last month in a column endorsing the idea of paid content. This creates a necessity that ought to be the mother of invention. In addition, our two most creative digital innovators have shown that a pay-per-drink model can work when it's made easy enough: Steve Jobs got music consumers (of all people) comfortable with the concept of paying 99 cents for a tune instead of Napsterizing an entire industry, and Jeff Bezos with his Kindle showed that consumers would buy electronic versions of books, magazines and newspapers if purchases could be done simply. (See Apple's 10 best business moves.)

What Internet payment options are there today? PayPal is the most famous, but it has transaction costs too high for impulse buys of less than a dollar. The denizens of Facebook are embracing systems like Spare Change, which allows them to charge their PayPal accounts or credit cards to get digital currency they can spend in small amounts. Similar services include Bee-Tokens and Tipjoy. Twitter users have Twitpay, which is a micropayment service for the micromessaging set. Gamers have their own digital currencies that can be used for impulse buys during online role-playing games. And real-world commuters are used to gizmos like E-ZPass, which deducts automatically from their prepaid account as they glide through a highway tollbooth.

Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.

The system could be used for all forms of media: magazines and blogs, games and apps, TV newscasts and amateur videos, porn pictures and policy monographs, the reports of citizen journalists, recipes of great cooks and songs of garage bands. This would not only offer a lifeline to traditional media outlets but also nourish citizen journalists and bloggers. They have vastly enriched our realms of information and ideas, but most can't make much money at it. As a result, they tend to do it for the ego kick or as a civic contribution. A micropayment system would allow regular folks, the types who have to worry about feeding their families, to supplement their income by doing citizen journalism that is of value to their community.

When I used to go fishing in the bayous of Louisiana as a boy, my friend Thomas would sometimes steal ice from those machines outside gas stations. He had the theory that ice should be free. We didn't reflect much on who would make the ice if it were free, but fortunately we grew out of that phase. Likewise, those who believe that all content should be free should reflect on who will open bureaus in Baghdad or be able to fly off as freelancers to report in Rwanda under such a system.

I say this not because I am "evil," which is the description my daughter slings at those who want to charge for their Web content, music or apps. Instead, I say this because my daughter is very creative, and when she gets older, I want her to get paid for producing really neat stuff rather than come to me for money or decide that it makes more sense to be an investment banker.

I say this, too, because I love journalism. I think it is valuable and should be valued by its consumers. Charging for content forces discipline on journalists: they must produce things that people actually value. I suspect we will find that this necessity is actually liberating. The need to be valued by readers — serving them first and foremost rather than relying solely on advertising revenue — will allow the media once again to set their compass true to what journalism should always be about.

Isaacson, a former managing editor of TIME, is president and CEO of the Aspen Institute and author, most recently, of Einstein: His Life and Universe.

OBAMA'S VICTORY SPEECH- HE IS INDEED SUPERB

2009-01-28T20:32:00.001+05:30

FULL TEXT:
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: 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.

Its 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 very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

Its the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Its the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of 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.

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

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and hes fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nations 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 that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nations next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy thats coming with us to the White House. And while shes no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what youve sacrificed to get it done.

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

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didnt 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 five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generations apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; 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 this Earth. This is your victory.

I know you didnt do this just to win an election and I know you didnt 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 their children fall asleep and wonder how theyll make the mortgage, or pay their doctors bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even 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.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who wont agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government cant 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 join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not 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 cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and 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, its 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 us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us 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, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values 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, 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 our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if Americas beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our 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.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have 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 thats on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. Shes 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 couldnt vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that shes seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we cant, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when womens 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 and a new sense of common purpose. 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.

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.

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.

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 doubt, and those who tell us that we cant, 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.

Renewing America

2009-01-16T19:31:00.003+05:30

Jan 15th 2009
From The Economist print edition

George Bush has left a dismal legacy, but Barack Obama can do much to repair the damage

CORBIS

SHORTLY after midday on January 20th, Barack Obama will sit for the first time at the desk where the buck stops. The American presidency is always the world’s hardest and most consequential job, but it seems particularly so this month. A global recession of a severity not seen for perhaps 80 years; a new war in the Middle East and old ones in Africa; missions very far from accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan; a prickly Russia and a rising China. These international challenges must jostle for the president’s attention alongside noisy domestic concerns like rocketing unemployment, the desperate need for a better health-care system, exploding deficits and failing cities. The burdens, surely, are too many for one man to bear.

Yet neither America nor the world seems to see it that way. A crowd of 2m or more is making its way to Washington, DC, to witness the inauguration of Mr Obama. Billions more will watch it on television. All will do so in a spirit that has been missing for a while—one of optimism. This is not just because a presidency knocked sideways by the events of September 11th 2001, is ending. Next week’s inauguration also bears witness to America’s awesome power of self-renewal. Because he is young, handsome and intelligent, and also because as the child of a Kansan and a Kenyan he reconciles in his own person one of the world’s most hateful divisions, Mr Obama carries with him the hopes of the planet.

Too much so, for sure. But what might the world realistically hope for from Mr Obama’s presidency? Many would argue, after the disaster that surrounded George Bush’s Iraq adventure, that to rebuild its foreign relationships America must become a more modest giant, more obviously constrained by international law and more committed to working even-handedly for peace in the Middle East and elsewhere. In some ways, that is surely right. Less of Mr Bush’s Manichaean arrogance would be welcome.

With us, not withdrawn

This does not mean that America should become more isolationist. Most of the world’s biggest problems still cry out for its leadership; and an America that withdraws to heal its domestic wounds will not serve the world well. No one seriously imagines that peace can come to the Middle East without America. Neither Russia, nor China, nor the EU has any appetite to lead efforts to confront nuclear proliferation by Iran or North Korea. Sometimes, as with Kosovo in the 1990s, America needs to act even when the UN hesitates. Above all, America must lead efforts to grapple with the global recession, through its dominant position at the IMF, its vital role in resisting the siren call of protectionism and the stimulative effect of the vast government outlays Mr Obama is planning. Yet a president who understands, as Mr Bush did not, that America is not the uncontested hyperpower of the 1990s—one who values “soft power” more than the hard version—will be a change for the better. An America led by such a man will listen more carefully to and work more closely with allies and rivals, will strive harder to respect the laws it has signed up to and might enter into new commitments, for instance to tackle climate change.

A renewal of America’s respect for constitution and law would be welcome at home as well as abroad. George the Second disdained the rules of governance established by his forefathers. He wiretapped citizens without authority, secretly permitted the use of torture and dismissed prosecutors on political grounds. Mr Obama seems determined not to follow his example. He has appointed a liberal outsider to run the CIA and a noted academic to head his office of legal counsel. America’s, said one of its founders, should be “a government of laws and not of men”. Under Mr Bush and Dick Cheney, it often seemed the opposite.

But it is the domestic economy which will consume most of Mr Obama’s time. And here American renewal must take two opposite forms. In some ways, the times cry out for more active government: for stronger regulation of banks and near-banks, for much more short-term government spending to counteract the contraction elsewhere in the economy, and for the establishment of a basic health-care system for everyone. But Mr Obama also needs a plan to shrink other aspects of government over the longer term. Without reform of expensive entitlements, the federal government faces bankruptcy. Cutting entitlements at the same time as buying hundreds of billions of dollars-worth of bad loans from Wall Street is difficult politics, to say the least. But at least Mr Obama has acknowledged that he will have to do it. A more equitable health system coupled with a path towards budget reform would, on their own, make Mr Obama’s presidency a remarkable one. And at least he has the votes in Congress to make it happen.

What chance success?

Mr Bush (see article) had a simplistic tendency to see the world through ideological and partisan spectacles. He hung on to bad advisers for longer than he should have; he divided the world too often into good and evil; and he plotted to establish a Republican hegemony although he had sold himself to the electorate as bipartisan. In economic matters, he was too prone to sacrifice the long-term good for short-term gain. He seemed curiously incurious about vital details, such as the conduct of the war in Iraq.

Mr Obama seems to be different. By offering the most prized cabinet job to his rival, Hillary Clinton, and by keeping on Robert Gates, the defence secretary, who has done a good job, Mr Obama has shown a determination not to surround himself with cronies. He has put together a team which has impressed almost everyone with its calibre and its centrism. He has been tough already, dispatching blunderers and being prepared to admit to mistakes. He has repeatedly warned Americans that he will have to do unpleasant things.

The next four, or eight, years may be a disappointment, a triumphant renewal or something in between. Mr Obama is inexperienced, and right now the world looks especially forbidding. But he is a respectful and thoughtful man, and that is a good start.

Stumble or fall?

2009-01-09T20:35:00.002+05:30

Jan 8th 2009 | HONG KONG
From The Economist print edition

Will the global financial crisis halt the rise of emerging economies?

Illustration by S. Kambayashi

NOBODY talks about “decoupling” any more. Instead, emerging economies are sinking alongside developed ones. In 2008 emerging stockmarkets fell by more than those in the rich world, and financial woes forced countries such as Hungary, Latvia and Pakistan to go cap in hand to the IMF. Taiwan’s exports have plunged by 42% over the past year, and South Korea’s by 17%; even China’s have shrunk. Singapore’s GDP fell by an annualised 12.5% in the fourth quarter of 2008, its biggest drop on record. Is this the end of the emerging-market boom?

Over the five years to 2007, emerging economies grew by an annual average of more than 7%. But in the past three months their total output may have fallen slightly, according to JPMorgan, as the fall in exports was exacerbated by a sudden drying up in trade finance. For 2008 as a whole, average growth in emerging economies was still above 6%, but recent private-sector forecasts suggest that this could slip to less than 4% this year. That is grim compared with the recent past, though still robust set against an expected 2% decline in the GDP of the G7 countries.

Short-term pain is only to be expected. But some economists argue that emerging markets’ longer-term prospects have been badly hurt by the global financial crisis. From Brazil to China, they claim, the boom was driven largely by exports to American consumers, easy access to cheap capital and high commodity prices. All three props have now collapsed. In particular, as America’s housing bust causes households to save more, they will import less over the coming years. This could reduce emerging economies’ future growth rates.

Yet emerging economies’ reliance on America is often exaggerated. The surge in their total exports as a share of GDP since 2000 might, on the face of it, suggest that their boom was powered by rich-world demand. But their dependence on exports to developed countries has barely budged, at just under 20% of GDP (see chart 1). Most of the growth in exports has been within the developing world.

For sure, emerging economies will not return to their exceptional growth rates in 2007 (no bad thing either, since many of them were overheating). But it is equally wrong to assume that they cannot recover until America rebounds. There are good reasons to believe that emerging markets’ share of world growth will continue to climb (see chart 2).

Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered, argues that most emerging economies are not plagued by America’s deep structural problems, such as an overhang of debt, which could cramp growth for several years. Although 2009 will be a painful year for poorer countries, those with high savings and modest debt could recover fairly quickly. On many measures, such as government and external balances, emerging economies look much sounder than the big rich ones.

Unfortunately, aggregate numbers conceal many horrors, most notably in eastern Europe. Countries such as Hungary, Estonia, Latvia and Turkey have huge current-account deficits and foreign debts. Between 2000 and 2008, the ratio of foreign debt to GDP dropped from 37% to 20% in Latin America and from 28% to 17% in emerging Asia, but jumped from 45% to 51% in central and eastern Europe.

As foreign capital dried up, GDP fell by 4.6% in Latvia and by 3.5% in Estonia in the year to the third quarter of 2008. Capital Economics, a research consultancy, expects another 5% drop this year. Hungary’s economy is expected to contract in 2009. Turkey may also be heading for trouble. Its debt-service payments due in 2009 amount to 80% of its foreign reserves, the highest ratio of any big emerging economy.

Russia has run current-account surpluses for many years, yet it has also been badly hit by an outflow of capital and a credit freeze. Banks and companies are finding it hard to roll over their foreign debt. Official reserves have fallen by $160 billion, or 25%, since August. As a result of lower oil prices, Russia is likely to run its first current-account and budget deficits in a decade, and its economy may well contract in 2009.

Asia’s export-led economies have been hurt by the collapse in global demand. Output is already falling in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, current-account surpluses and modest domestic debts mean that most of the region is much less exposed to the credit crunch than eastern Europe is. Asia has two other advantages. First, as a large net importer of raw materials it will benefit from the plunge in commodity prices, unlike Latin America. And second, with the exception of India, Asian countries have low public-debt-to-GDP ratios, giving them more room for fiscal stimulus than other emerging economies. Such policies take time to work, but after a nasty 2009, Asia is well placed to be the first region in the world to recover.

China is crucial to Asia’s fortunes. Many economists expect GDP growth to slow to around 7% in 2009, down from almost 12% in 2007 and its slowest rate for almost two decades. Thousands of factories have closed in southern China, triggering concerns that rising unemployment will cause social unrest. This prompted the government to unveil a large fiscal stimulus in late 2008, which should help to boost growth in the second half of this year. With debts of only 18% of GDP, the government has plenty more room to boost spending. And if China has to rely more on domestic demand, this will help to steer it onto a more sustainable path.

A comparison of China with India in any case shows that exports are not the main thing that determines how vulnerable economies are to the global crisis. India’s exports as a share of GDP are much smaller than China’s, so one might expect it to be holding up better. But a big chunk of Indian investment—the main driver of recent growth—has been financed by overseas borrowing or new equity issuance. Both have dried up. The government’s huge budget deficit also limits its room for fiscal easing. On January 2nd India announced its second monetary and fiscal stimulus package within a month, but the extra spending is tiny. Standard Chartered thinks that GDP growth will dip to 5% in 2009, well below its recent 9% pace.

Latin America’s prospects lie somewhere between those of Asia and emerging Europe. Weak commodity prices could push the region into running a large current-account deficit, just as private-capital inflows decline sharply. Latin America also has less scope for fiscal stimulus than Asia, because many governments (including Argentina and Brazil) used the windfall from higher commodity prices to boost spending rather than cut debt. Goldman Sachs forecasts that Brazil will grow by only 1.5% in 2009, whereas Mexico’s GDP could fall by 0.5% because of its stronger trade links with America. The bank reckons that both should recover fairly quickly. Argentina is another matter. Credit-default-swap spreads on its government debt have surged to horrifying levels, signalling that investors see a high risk of default.

During the past five years virtually all emerging economies boomed. Now their fortunes will diverge much more. The most important factor determining how they cope with the recession in the rich world will be whether they are high savers, able to stimulate their own economies, or big borrowers. If international investors continue to shun risk and rich-world governments swamp markets with their own borrowing, it will be hard for emerging-market governments to issue bonds and for banks and firms to roll over debts. Some developing countries will therefore remain sluggish for longer than others.

Overall, however, their long-term prospects remain good, thanks to structural reforms and better macroeconomic policies over the past decade. In December the World Bank forecast that GDP per head in poorer countries would rise at an annual pace of 4.6% during 2010–15, similar to that during the past decade, and more than twice as fast as in the 1990s. That word “decoupling” may yet get dusted off again.

Pummelling the Palestinians

2009-01-08T20:04:00.003+05:30

Dec 30th 2008 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

If the Israeli onslaught on the Islamists of Hamas silences them for a while, it could alter the odds in Israel’s coming general election

Reuters

“BY THE time we’re finished,” Israel’s deputy chief of staff, General Dan Harel, told a group of mayors from towns close to the Gaza Strip on December 29th, “there won’t be a Hamas building left standing in Gaza.” They could well believe him. In four days of bombing that began with a massive, sudden raid on December 27th, Israeli jets, unmanned drones and helicopters killed some 350 Palestinians, smashing offices belonging to Hamas, the Islamist movement that has run the strip since booting out its secular Fatah rivals a year-and-a-half ago, as well as police stations, ministry buildings, Gaza’s Islamic university, refugee camps and workshops. In a raid by 40 aircraft on December 28th, dozens of arms-smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt were destroyed.

The onslaught is meant to stop Hamas firing rockets at Israel. But the general predicted that “the worst is still ahead”. UN agencies said between 50 and 90 of 300-plus killed in the first three days were non-combatants. If tanks and artillery enter the fray, civilian deaths may mount faster. In the past year, before the latest onslaught, 420-plus Gazans had been killed in Israeli raids, at least a fifth civilian, according to B’Tselem, an Israeli human-rights lobby.

In the first four days of “Operation Cast Lead”, four Israelis (including one soldier) were killed by Palestinian rockets, bringing the total number of Israeli civilian deaths at Hamas’s hands in 2008 to five. Three of the victims were struck down in the towns of Netivot, 12km (seven miles) east of Gaza, Ashkelon, 11km up the coast, and Ashdod, a port, 30km north of the strip. Villages even farther away were hit.

Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, said the operation had been planned for months, long before a shaky six-month ceasefire with Hamas ran out on December 19th. Intelligence sources identified scores of Hamas targets in the densely populated territory, where 1.5m Palestinians, more than half of them refugees or their descendants, have been hemmed into the sandy coastal strip some 40km long.

Stopping or drastically reducing Palestinian rocket fire will be the political touchstone of this military campaign, as it was in the month-long war between Israel and Hizbullah, Lebanon’s well-armed Shia movement, in the summer of 2006. At that time, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, who is to step down after an election on February 10th, had hoped that air raids would silence the missile launchers. Three weeks later, with a third of Israel virtually at a standstill because Hizbullah’s missiles are far more lethal than Hamas’s mostly home-made projectiles, a massive Israeli ground force was finally sent in but got bogged down against Hizbullah’s dogged fighters. An eventual ceasefire left Hizbullah claiming victory and Israel’s generals and politicians locked in recrimination.

“After Lebanon,” says Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the foreign affairs and defence committee of Israel’s parliament, “everyone understands that rocket fire can’t be silenced by air power alone.” But everyone understands, too, that Hamas, completely outgunned from the air, seeks to lure Israeli ground troops into the heavily built-up Gaza Strip to engage them with street-fighting guerrillas. Hamas, too, has been preparing long and hard for this showdown.

As in all its wars, Israel feels it is fighting against the clock. Its diplomats say they sensed an initial surge of approval, albeit muted, from many world capitals and even among moderate Arab governments. George Bush’s administration has been plainly in Israel’s corner. But the high death toll and the prospect of a lot more killing if the operation is “broadened and deepened”, to use Mr Barak’s words, could spur European governments to pay more heed to protests mounting in the Arab world.

Israel says it intends its armed incursions, if they come, to be brief and not to drag it into a renewed occupation of the strip. If the Hamas regime collapses under the onslaught, so much the better, though there is no certainty that the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, forcibly ousted from Gaza by Hamas in June 2007 but still in charge in the Palestinians’ bigger West Bank, would be able to return to power.

If Hamas does stop firing rockets, Mr Barak’s standing could rise fast. Mr Olmert is formally still in charge until a new government is formed after the election. But the Gaza operation is widely seen as Mr Barak’s. He and his Labour party have been trailing well behind the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and her Kadima party and Binyamin Netanyahu and his hard-right opposition Likud party. In desperation, before the onslaught, Mr Barak had mounted a campaign on billboards and on the internet, declaring himself “not nice”, “not cuddly” and “not trendy”. If Hamas’s rockets are silenced, albeit for a while, Israel’s voters may warm to those harsh qualities.

Volvo Ocean Race Stopover in Kochi- An Overview

2008-12-29T11:43:00.000+05:30

Last week saw the much-awaited event in Kochi- Volvo Ocean race stop over.
Neither the terrorist siege nor the pirate threat could cast a shadows on the mega event. The event marked Kochi in the maps of international ocean tourism map. The Volvo Ocean Race started its journey from Aliconte in Spain and had stopped over at Cape Town, South Africa. Kochi is its second stopover. The Race covers over 39000 nautical miles covering 4 continents and 11 countries.

The Race Village was inaugurated by Hon’ble Minister for Labour PK Gurudasan. On his inaugural speech he said that the Stopover would contribute towards the tourism and investment growth in the state. He said the state is proud to host such an event of international recognition. The two acre Race Village included the various commercial stalls, exhibition pavilions and housing facilities for the race members, officials, and media persons. The organizers had arranged various programmes for the public including cultural feast by renowned artists. The Chandrayaan stall of ISRO(Indian Space Research Organisation) was the center of attraction.

The power paragliding event by world champion Mathieu Rounet also unfurled at the Race Village before hundreds of spectators. In the Snake Race held at the Mattanchery Channel ,Puma Sreeganesh chundan of Tiruvarpu Boat Club captained by James Kutty won the first place. Southern Air Command conducted sky-diving and air display. Kochi-Kavaratti offshore race was also an event of attraction.

By inaugurating the closing ceremony , Union Minister for Tourism, Ambika Soni told that the Kochi has proved to the world that terror threats would not affect the country’s travel and tourism industry . The public shook hands with the sailors and took their pictures as they moved to the boat one by one. It was estimated that almost 50000 people thronged to the Race Village during weekdays and for sure the number would be much more during the weekends to see the cultural programmes and exhibits.

"Fair Media necessary in a democratic nation"

2008-12-29T11:41:00.001+05:30

The media must be fair and accurate as the chunk of the population relies on it for news. Media plays a significant role in our society today. It is imperative, as it shapes an individual’s opinion, said X, noted freelance journalist and media person from Britain.

Talking at an interactive session with the Bhavans, Girinagar students, in connection with Volvo Ocean Race stopover here on Tuesday, he said that a journalist might not be writing a happy story always. He will have to overcome various adversities. As a journalist, you need to find good stories, which should be satisfying for the reader. A journalist will have to write from both sides of the story. He should have right mentality and thinking capacity to cater to the ideas of all types of readers.

For a question, an acclaimed Radio Journalist from Britain, Y said that radio journalism is thrilling if you have the right ideas on the issue. A radio journalist should have right skill in the language in which you are reporting.
He said ocean race reporting was sensational in the manner in which the race was carried on.

To the Journalism aspirants

As some tips to the journalism aspirants, X said, a journalist should never say no, to whatever job he has been asked to do. Every single person you meet is important. Each one has a story to tell. Behind every single door, there is a story. A journalist should have good contacts. You should collect phone numbers from each person you meet. It is not a regular job. Answering a question, he said journalism is a rewarding job if one does not go behind fake stories. He sparked laughter among the students when he said a journalist need to have good shoes as 90 percent of the job is time wasting and waiting.

Ocean Race Experience
When asked about Volvo Ocean Race experience, Y said that the sport is adventurous and exciting. He said the sport is not the sport of millionaires but the sport of ordinary people with extraordinary talents. The sailors had to move through many difficult moments, as there were no good food and toilets. They also had to go through rough weather and ocean conditions.

Mukund P Unny
+919446521741

Baracking the Glory- President Obama

2008-11-09T20:08:00.007+05:30

Last week saw the emergence of a genius in world stage. He wasnt just an ordinary Senator. He wasnt just a lawman. He wasnt just apoltician. Moreover he wasnt just an ordinary man .He was much more than that. He was an extra ordinary person and an excellent orator. It is not simply his speech that is compared to Martin Luther King's, their dreams and .Martin Luther King had a dream where "the sons of slaves and and the sons of slave-ownres are to sit around a table of brother-hood". On this occasion we realise this dream. " Through the darkest of hours and through the toughest of times" we leap forward. Yielding all these supports, we can say that Change has come to America.

Obama's political journey has been quite impressive. His college days in Harvard Law School were stepping stones for glory. H

is skill

in the English language , in writing and in speaking was the greatest talent, after, his knoledge in law and political science. His speech in Democratic National Convention was the breakthrough in his career. It was after that speech that people in political arena started noticing him as a future leader.

Obama had been widely ,in his , campaign accused of his Marxist connection. It is much more dangerous to be called as a Marxist in America, much more than being called as Terrorist. That much is the Conservatist wave over there. His policies , ofcource has some socialist element, but he has managed to emerge out all those charges.

He has promised tax-cut for working class which has been a boon for the common people. He has a vibrant and most impeccable economic policy.He is anti-war and plans to combat poverty.

The most gigantic task which rests on Obama is to fight one of the worst economic crisis of the century . What everyone look forward is whether Obama can be Franklin D Roosevelt II who managed Great Depression of 1930s. Obama has also a task to uphold Climate imbroglio. He will have reform the pollution rules in his country(as his country is the largest contributor of climate change) and lead all other countries in this regard.

Barack Obama has showed his skill in campaigning and has been a huge croud-puller. Now , the task which lies before him is to rightly lead the nation in the lines of law& order and bring back the nation into the growth trajectory. Let God bless him and United States of America to build the nation block by block , brick by brick and bring laurels to the nation

Mukund P Unny

mukundparakkat@gmail.com

+919446521741

Transformation of Onam

2008-09-26T20:11:00.005+05:30

Onam is traditionally a festival of colours , flowers, prosperity, happiness and above all a festival of mind blowing Ona Sadya. But now a days, its basic credibility is questioned. People in olden times get together for Onam, lay Pookkalam, (floral carpet), out of flowers freshly plucked from the backyard. Flowers are bought from market by paying a huge sums in todays Onam. Vegetables no longer, are cultivated in Kerala. It should come from Tamil Nadu to fill a Malayali's stomach. Just like every festival in Kerala, during Onam too, huge amounts of liqour is consumed in Kerala. This Onam , Malayalees drank up liqour worth 110 crores. This estimate is excluding the sale of fake and local liqour. Today, hardly any Malayali get-together for Onam shunning TV programmes. Commercialisation of Onam is also a matter of concern. Multinational brands consumerise Onam with various products and offers. Thus there is a serious change that has happened to the festival of Onam that can , in future , take its toll on the socio-economic scenario of Kerala. We must,by all means, curb the unfavourable infiltration of such factors into the life and economy of Kerala. People must fight against such hornets' nest.

Mukund P Unny
26/9/08

Media during the time of Recession

2008-08-25T16:41:00.005+05:30

Mukund P Unny

mukundparakkat@gmail.com

My main hobby

2008-07-30T16:54:00.007+05:30

This was the article which came in New Indian Express dated 25 May 2007.

Wondered??.....

This is my hobby. I collect newspapers. I have with me over 180 newspapers from round the world

This photo shows the The Times of South Africa newspaper which I have in my collection .
These are newspapers from France and Germany. I keep all my newspapers in this box.
I have in my collection newspapers all over from India and from other countries like Germany, France, US, Mauritius, Japan, China, Bhutan, South Africa, Austrslis, New Zealand, Italy, Singapore, etc
These newspapers are from New Zealand and Singapore.

My
NEWSPAPER COLLECTION

ENGLISH (India)

1. Andaman Herald
2. Deccan Herald
3. Hindustan Times
4. Mid Day
5. Vijay Times
6. Tehelka
7. Today
8. The Indian Express
9. The Sunday Tribune
10. Eastern Mirror
11. The Times of India
12. The New Indian Express
13. The Asian Age
14. The Telegraph
15. Deccan Chronicle
16. The Hindu
17. Nagar Life
18. The Pioneer
19. Mumbai Mirror
20. The Statesman
21. Nagaland Post
22. DNA
23. The Light of Andamans
24. Aspect(Andamans)
25. The Daily Telegrams(Andamans)
26. DQ Week
27. The Hitavada
28. People’s Democracy ( Weekly)

ENGLISH (Overseas)

29. International Herald Tribune (Paris)
30. The Sunday Times (Singapore)
31. Home & Garden (San Francisco Chronicle, US)
32. The Sun (New York)
33. This Day (South Africa)
34. Union Tribune (The San Diego, US)
35. California (Los Angeles Times,US)
36. South China Morning Post (China)
37. Khaleej Times (UAE)
38. Gulf News (UAE)
39. USA Today
40. San Jose Mercury News (USA)
41. The Straits Times
42. The Asian Wall Street Journal (Hong Kong)
43. The Moscow Times
44. The Daily Yomiyuri
45. The Japan Times
46. Emirates Today
47. Kuensal( Bhutaneese)
48. 7 Days ( UAE )
49. Arab News
50. New Zealand Herald
51. Yemen Observer
52. Ethiopian Herald
53. The Times( South Africa)
54. The Times Of Zambia

BUSINESS (Indian)

55. The Economic Times
56. Business Standard
57. Business Line
58. The Financial Express
59. Business Deepika
60. Mint

BUSINESS (Overseas)

61. The Business Times (Singapore)
62. China Business
63. The Edge ( Singapore )

JOBS ( India)

64. Assignments Abroad Times
65. Foreign Jobs

MALAYALAM

66. Malayala Manorama
67. Mathrubhumi
68. Deshabhimani
69. Mangalam
70. Chandrika
71. Punyabhumi
72. Janmabhumi
73. Kerala Kaumudi
74. Cochin Nadam
75. Navina Bhumi
76. Thaniniram
77. Thrissivapperoor Express
78. Vyathiyanam
79. Nattupathram
80. Keraleeyam
81. Telegraph
82. News India
83. Thuranna Kathu
84. Crime Story
85. Madhyamam
86. Varthamanam
87. Rashtra Deepika
88. Deepika
89. Tetco Times
90. Veekshanam
91. Thejas
92. Siraj
93. The Kerala Mid Day Times
94. Kerala Kaumudi Flash
95. Malayalam News ( Saudi Arabia )

OTHER languages ( India )

HINDI

96. Hindi Milap
97. Hindustan
98. Tarun Bharat
99. Punjab Kesari
100. Divy Himachal
101. Swatantra Vaartha
102. Rashtreeya Sahara
103. Rajasthan Pathrika
104. Sanmarg
105. Parabhat Khabar
106. Nav Bharat Times
107. Sahara Samay
108. Aaj ka aanand

MARATHI

109. Maharashtra Times
110. Kesari
111. Pudoro
112. Saamna Prabhat
113. Sakal
114. Pulize Times
115. Lokmath
116. Loksatha

TAMIL

117. Dina Sudar
118. Dina Malar
119. Dinakaran
120. Kalaikkatir
121. Dina Thanthi
122. Dina mani

URDU

123. The Siasat Daily
124. The Munsif Daily
125. The Inquilab

KANNADA

126. Praja Vani
127. Samyukta Karnataka
128. Udaya Vani
129. Sanjay Vani
130. Vijay Karnataka
131. Kannada Prabha

BENGALI

132. Anand Bazar Patrika
133. Dainik Sambad
134. Bartaman Patrika
135. Aaj Kaal
136. Sangbad Pratidin

TELUGU

137. Andhra Jyoti
138. Ee Nadu
139. Andhra Prabha
140. Vaartha
141. Vishaal Andhra
142. Andhra Bhoomi
143. Swarna Andhra

ASSAMESE

144. Pratidin Assam
145. Sunchari

ORIYA

146. Samaaja

GUJRATHI

147. Gujarat Samachar

PUNJABI
148. Ajit Jalandhar

OTHER LANGUAGES ( OVERSEAS )

ITALIAN

149. la repubblica
150. IL MATTINO
151. CORRIERE DELLA SERA
152. CORRIERE DEL MEZZOGIORNO

RUSSIAN

153. Unknown
154. “
155. “
156. “
157. “
158. “
159. “ Total=6 Russian Newspapers

FRENCH

160. Ouest france
161. Suddeutsche Zeitung
162. La Tribune
163. Le Figaro
164. Le Monde
165. Courrier International
166. La Echos

MAURITIUS

167. I’ express dimanche
168. I’express
169. le mauricien
170. Le Defi

BHUTAN

171. Kuensal
172. Tibetan Freedom
173. Bhutan Observer

ARABIC
174. Al Eqtisadiah (KSA)
175. Al Riyadh (KSA)
176. Al Qabas ( Kuwait)

GERMAN
177. Die ziet
178. Frankfurter Rundschau
179. Frankfurter Allgemeine
180. Handelsblatt

The Day When Kochi was in tight security

2008-07-29T21:52:00.007+05:30

July 27,I was coming from Palakkad after enjoying my weekend. I boarded Bangalore -Ernakulam Inter City Express from Palakkad. It was the day after Ahmedabad blasts shook whole country. I knew that there would be security and checking at Ernakulam Railway station. However, I saw things different. I saw security much powerful than I expected. I thought there would only be some Policemen guarding outside Station. I saw City Police Commissioner at the station talking to many Policemen, which were being shot by many newschannel's camerapersons. I walked past them. Then I heard someone telling while talking to someone other about bombs. I thought they might be talking about had and Bangalore blasts. I reached main road, South Junction bust stop. I got a bus. I saw City unusually quite. There were Police at Manorama, Kadavantra, and Vytilla and at Petta. I reached home. My cousin and my aunt were biting nails. It was then I knew that there was a bomb scare in Kochi. What a situation to be in unknowingly.

Democracy's misfortune

2008-07-25T22:13:00.001+05:30

July 22, 2008 was day when the people glued to their TV sets. It was a day when the fate of our country and its future were to be decided. The day before, showcased hot word-fight between Advani and Manmohan which was moderated by Somnath . In addition, the speech of Advani was the one, which impressed me very much. Even though I oppose his ideology, it was the first day I liked him, for the speech he delivered. “UPA Govt. is a patient in ICU. And everyone is asking whether he will survive or not". The day passed by making a statement that the day after was the day of the year. The all-crucial day came, the one, which decided the future of UPA govt. Parliament continued to be a host for crucial debates .By 4 o clock in the evening some 3 MPs of BJPs came with allegation that they were bribed to vote for UPA on trust vote. They came with wads of 1000 Rupees notes. Chaos, which erupted, (which is common with Parliament and all democratic institution of our country) made Parliament adjourn until 06.30 PM. House came back with Manmohan delivering his speech (which he did not complete due to continuing chaos). Then it was time for Vote. MPs casted their votes. After half an hour, result came UPA WON TRUST VOTE.Even though UPA won on technical terms, it failed on moral grounds. It clearly showed that money is even more powerful than democracy in this country. Bags of money of INDIA INC. have won over people of this country.Yes, we bow before you. We the common people of this country are nothing before the thickness of the 1000 Rupees notes. The PEOPLE (which are supposed to be the strongest word in the world) became very much like a Rupee coin for Mukesh Ambani.

My Favourite Teachers

2008-07-21T09:46:00.001+05:30

The teachers who won me good marks in 10th Board Exams

Sudha Teacher , Sunitha(class teacher), Sanskrit teacher( i forgot her name), Latha Teacher, Sandhya Teacher, Rajini Teacher, Jayanthi Teacher, Vanaja Teacher,

Favourite PT sirs

Sreejith Sir and Mansoor Sir

My all time friends

2008-07-21T09:34:00.002+05:30

Prashant and Sumit blasting it out

These are my friends..closer to me , Shibu and Vishnu.. we three have had many comical moments together.

My counterparts in numerous skits, and Mimicry competions.

This is Vaisakh, popularly called as Mappan, has talent in Painting

They are busy writing Slam Books, my classmates.Rohit, Syamaprasad, Arun , Nowell clearly seen

Memorable for a lifetime

I am Mukund P Unny

2008-07-20T19:42:00.000+05:30

This is the first day I am on to a blog. I would like to express my views and opinions on various issues ,from my very basic school life to my opinions on various issues of politics, economy,geography, and history of Kerala and India (eventhough I am no one to comment upon all these stuffs).
Since ,I as a blogger is in embryo stage , I dont really know to manage a blog.

This blog can be seen as my open personel diary.

Seeking Comments

With Regards

Mukund P Unny