As my blog is India centric and i see a lot of bloggers including me writing local languages using devnagri in English script, i get kinda saddened. Frankly i cant blame these folks because trying to type say in Hindi or Marathi for that matter is extremely time consuming and irritating and a sheer torture, because the keyboard placements are a mystery to most humble souls. But Priyank, the net गुरु, showed me the way of the the master blogger and communicator who uses multiple languages to effectively communicate with all audience.

For the desi blogger , i recommend BARAHA . Baraha is a word processing application for creating documents in Indian languages. It is developed with an intention to provide a free software to enable and encourage Indians use their native languages on the computers. Baraha can be effectively used for creating documents, sending emails and publishing web pages. Baraha 7.0 supports Kannada, Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Gurumukhi, Bengali, and Oriya scripts.

For most people the IME is just a fine tool and the whole application need not be downloaded. And best of all you type just like u type out normal stuff so no searching for the र or प or whatever character u want.

By that i mean if u want to say  मेरा नाम रामू  है . u type ‘mera nam Ramoo hai.’ THATS IT

So folks go ahead and use it, and rest assured ull simply love it.

Ankur recently posted on the movie Letters from Iwo Jima, so continuing with the WW2 theme i recommend the Pianist. I accidentally caught this movie on Zee Cinema and was riveted to the screen. This is an award WW2 survival movie directed by Roman Polanski, starring Adrien Brody. It is an adaptation of the autobiography of Jewish-Polish musician / pianist Władysław Szpilman.

In addition to the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Oscars for Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also awarded seven French Césars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Brody (who became the only American actor to win one).

I found this movie a lot more interesting than the higher rated but drab WW2 documentary Schindler’s List.

You can find the Synopses and the storyline here. Imdb rating: 8.5

(ill rate it when i see the whole movie i missed a few parts )

Zee Cinema is showing nice movies these days , and i think, on Sundays at 3.00pm or 1500hrs they are showing Ingmar Bergman’s movies too. Watch them if u are into serious art cinema and if u can survive them ( that, from from most reviews i have read).

Two other World War 2 movies id recommend Vita è bella, La or Life Is Beautiful..9/10 and Untergang, Der 9/10 (2004) or The Downfall with fantastic acting by Bruno Ganz.

Unforgettable Rita Hayworth in Gilda, a BnW classic…

I hate the Romantic movies , especially the bollywood variety like the recent one by Kajol and her hubby..

But Gilda is different, its beautiful, its elegant, its classic, a bit dark and overall a movie u don’t miss.

U can find the synopses and more details here .. Rating 8/10

Cyclone Nargis in Burma has left a trail of destruction and a massive death toll.

Some 95% of the homes in the city of Bogalay in the Irrawaddy delta were destroyed and most of its 190,000 residents are now homeless. The Junta govt has declared the city of Rangoon and five central and southern states, Yangon, Ayeyawaddy, Bago, Mon and Karen disaster areas.

The toll: 10000 22000+people 80000? dead and 40000+ missing , is indeed massive and Shocking. Almost all of the deaths occurred in the Irrawaddy river delta region, where more were killed by the tidal wave than the cyclone itself, Minister for Relief and Resettlement Maung Maung Swe told reporters in Rangoon. “The wave was up to 12ft (3.5m) high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages,” he said. “They did not have anywhere to flee.”

Guess what was the primary reason for so much destruction ? Govt Apathy and Neglect ?

Yes and NO! it is mainly due to the DESTRUCTION OF MANGROVES ….source BBC

Mangroves at Revas

Many people think that mangroves are a few dwarf weedy plants along the shoreline but mangroves are much more than that. It is a whole ecosystem acting as a buffer between land and sea. Mangroves are extensions of tropical and sub-tropical forests into the sea.Growing in the intertidal areas and estuary mouths between land and sea, mangroves provide critical habitat for a diverse marine and terrestrial flora and fauna. Healthy mangrove forests are key to healthy marine ecology.

Try the Godrej’s Mangrove site for some quality info on mangroves.

The very recent Asian Tsunami has shown us the importance of mangroves to the local ecology. In Sri lanka, two people died in the settlement with dense mangrove and scrub forest, up to 6,000 people lost their lives in a nearby village without similar vegetation.

Coastal developments had resulted in mangroves, which act as a natural defence against storms, being lost at an alarming pace. The Main Culprits are Encroachment, Real Estate, Garbage dumping, Aquaculture and Prawn Fisheries.

Bangladesh has to a limited extent realized the perils of destroying the mangroves, but will others ?

Click on the photo for an enlarged shot of the Sunder bans (Image courtsy NASA)

At home in Mumbai there was a Cloudburst and there was much talked about aftereffect .. the flooding of the Mithi river and the Milan Subway by the media.

But have the Municipal Council and the State Govt (Pretty much all parties) learnt lessons from this ? or has political compulsion scored once more ? Read this damning article, Why Mumbai choked by Mr C Prabhu on the politics of it all. His theory is stark and very real. Mumbai is being strangulated.

The Central Govt or the Supreme Court (which was quite protective of the Delhi Ridge) aren’t helping either.

There is a blog that monitors Mangrove destruction called Mumbai mangroves and things are not looking good, just recently when i went to BKC i saw a motor able kacha road made in between mangroves in place of a a small kacha foot trail - right opposite NSE building. Soon i expect the mangroves to vanish there and slums take their place once sufficient debris has been dumped by the trucks.

Little has changed and the Mah DFgovt (whose minister was once jailed for contravening Supreme a court order on saw mill ban in forest areas) is just about to bail out all those people living in private forest areas corrupt officials in govt dept that in collusion with the politicians and builders built complexes in Pvt Forests under No development area.

The Rains are coming and with the kind of temperature swings and severe summer we are facing, god knows what we have in store… This city is slowly dying .. God save this city !

Related posts : Plans to rid Mumbai of slums by 2015, Government officials used slum development funds to fatten their perks!, On Mumbai citys decline.

One of the most well known scene from Hindi cinema

from the Kundan Shah movie, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro

First it was Your job got Banglored…. Now its Your Food got eaten by the Indians, whats next?

I thought our politicians were idiots but hey, the American politicians are one up on our bunch of jokers.

Of late, it has become a fashion to blame India, while conveniently forgetting so many other factors for the world food commodity price rise..

What are the American politicians really up to ? Now he is a person who cant say Nuclear right, has in his hands, the largest arsenal, a person who has openly been ridiculed on you tube and is proud of being .. how shall i put it - plain dumb?

First of all the American economy survives on foreign debt, and because it is the its dollar that has substituted the Gold Standard as a reserve currency, that the Americans have been spending more than what they can earn for the better part of the last decade.

Why do they forget

1. That the American Population which is Smaller than the Indian Middle class, still consumes more resources including Food* , Oil for their SUV and Humvee, than the same Indian middle class or the entire Indian Population per capita, they so conveniently blame.

* Total food grain consumption — wheat, rice, and all coarse grains like rye, barley etc — by each person in the US is over five times that of an Indian, according to figures released by the US Department of Agriculture for 2007. TOI

2. That they fought a war in Iraq knowing fully well the effect of such an event on world oil prices. Did Halliburton matter more than the well being of common American ?

3. How much the value of the dollar has fallen and how it affects inflation and commodity prices including Oil, Gold and Food .

4. How have the Fed and the Treasury Sec have allowed the dollar to stay weak causing Oil based inflation leading to higher food and oil prices to protect the dirty underbelly of wall street and debt insurance firms from going bust ?

5. That the big nations have been subsidizing their big farms and dairys with massive subsides, eg. EU subsidy bill is a whopping $41 billion, keeping prices of food and edibles low, leading to poor investment in agriculture in developing countries (i also partially blame local politicians for their short term vision and ad-hoc measures) Worse what about the droughts and the El Niño effect?

6. What about the Bio movement and the shift to natural fertilizer from chemical fertilizer ? What about the shift to biofuels (Petrol/Gas substitutes) like Ethanol based on corn and molasses and the subsidy the bush govt offers big Us farmers, leading to corn shortage and increasing cost of tortia chips in Mexico.

7. What about China, its Olympics style Consumption and its burgeoning middle class ? Do they not affect consumption ?

8. Lastly, Its they who fund and take support from Evangelical Christian Right wing groups that are anti choice or birth control leading to a huge population growth in poor christian countries like the Philippines.

The lslamic countries are no different, they seek every opportunity to take their citizens into the stone age take some of our neighbors for example.

So isn’t it high time that the Developed world focussed more on conservation than consumption?

In hindsight, after more reading and introspecting, i am loosing trust in the TOI network, as a balanced newspaper as this was a post based on their article.

Though this was a passing comment on the general food price rise, at an interactive session on economy in Missouri, the timing and way it was presented add to it an over zealously yellow coverage by the local press has resulted in a virtual Bush bashing mela here.

All in all WP has a good page on the ongoing crises at the state some responsible African people are in is simply heartbreaking .

and the copy by the overacting Shahrukh !

and lastly Suda has a post on another copy of the copy of Chennai dhoni.. so go have a look

Beijing Olympics

The Olympic Torch has completed its caged worldwide rally and finally reached China. The Chinese in their traditional marshal fervor have given it a humongous state welcome …and by that i mean it has to be a highly choreographed and state controlled gala event…

Never mind what the World thinks they just don’t know or dont care …

The Chinese want to showcase it as a Grand event and they will leave no stone unturned. But it looks like their most grandiose plan of sending the olympic flame to the Everest summit has hit Rough weather and even the Gods are not merciful to the Chinese Govt.

No wonder providing information on the torch’s ascent is no longer part of China’s media plans. They have a solution ready .. their tried and tested tool Censorship.

The BBC’s Jonah Fisher, reports

It now seems that they only want us to report the victorious summit moment. We may never know if there were failed attempts, or indeed if someone hurt themselves trying for the top. The only fact we possess is that the flame is somewhere in the area.

Looks like the Nature gods are extracting sweet revenge

In medical news a man has just grown back a severed finger..

Looks like we are much closer to some reptilian species than we thought.

Blue-ray may be the Hi-def future media but it isn’t selling enough….

DVD is “good enough” for most consumers. And that the picture offered by a Blu-ray Disc and accompanying player doesn’t appear so overwhelmingly better than a standard DVD and an upconverting player that many consumers can’t justify the dramatically increased cost. read on

I stand vindicated, and DVD is still the most popular home entertainment medium to watch movies.

Read Will Consumers accept Blue-ray?

DVD not Blu-Ray is still the most popular home entertainment medium

The Fm Mr PC is desperate to curb inflation and is targeting each and every component that has flared up in the WPI basket, as best as he can manage to .

The Monetary Policy Statement of RBI Gov. Y V Reddy is out and the RBI has hiked CRR by 25 bps; while the Repo, reverse repo rates have been left intact.

Will this really help curb inflation in the short term or even the long term ?

That too, when the rupee is still pegged to the Dollar in a tight range between 39 and 40. Whatever Reddy does Bernanke is sure to undo, with his expected 25 bps rate cut tonite. The Fed is in a major dilemma and so is the RBI cause these measures are ad-hoc and will produce little results as the private banks may contemplate increase in PLR or harden lending rates.

Read Ila Patnaik, Unmade in America

The flow of dollars to India is showing no sign of decreasing as shown by Rbi Forex reserves figures, so is the eagerness of the RBI to hold the Rupee peg as shown by the above chart. The rupee is still pegged to the Dollar in a tight range between 39 and 40.

The growth of commodities as an asset class is unprecedented, as investors world over have lost faith in the stock markets and the bond insurers. Gold is a traditional inflation hedge and it is also close to its all time highs. Speculation in Oil is rife these days, as old timer Dan Dicker comments .

Oil is now at 120$ a barrel and OPEC President Chakib Khelil does not rule out oil prices reaching $200 a barrel, even though supply is adequate, because the market is driven by the dollar’s slide, He added: “The prices are high due to the fact of the recession in the United States and the economic crisis which has touched several countries, a situation which has an effect on the devaluation of the dollar, and therefore each time the dollar falls one percent, the price of the barrel rises by $4, and of course vice versa,” he was quoted as saying in brief remarks to journalists on Sunday. read Yahoo news.

I dont know what will happen of our Poor oil marketing and producing companies in that event , as the communists wont allow an oil price hike…As it is the Finance ministry is haggling over issuing last yrs oil bonds to psus like Ongc, Ioc etc

The Fiscal policy of the Govt is in Shambles and SAA is estimating the overall (central+state ) fiscal deficit at 10% of gdp, and as oil price goes up, the current account deficit balloons as we import 3/4 of our energy needs.

India’s balance of payments turned to a deficit of $2.5 billion in the quarter through December, from a surplus of $18 billion in the previous quarter, Bloomberg data show.

The central bank, battling inflation near a 3 1/2-year high, may be reluctant to let currency gains to temper prices as the nation’s balance of payments is widening, said Rajeev Malik, a senior economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Singapore. The currency “appears poised to weaken further against the dollar in the near term.” read bloomberg.

This would surely mean more inflation and higher rates in the medium term, as even the pds procurement and fresh crops arrival into the markets would do little to stem the price rise problem.

The question is will the US change policy stance and move from their current weak dollar policy to the Strong Dollar policy and what point, oil and inflation will force them to rethink current strategy ?

The solution for India however lies in letting the Rupee float freely and appreciate to reasonable levels, just like Sing$ and the Ringit. No wonder Ajay says It’s the currency, stupid.