Rumi Nations

Every Monday morning, there's a universal outpouring of groans — that it's MONDAY again! It's as if everybody's mom-in-law AGAIN was about to come to visit them on Monday. This deafening noise is heard in specific parts of the world. It comes from the office-going class of people. In India, the young generation of IT and other professionals make this noise through all available means such as Facebook and Twitter. I suppose it's the same in the developed world where people have been caught up in this vicious cycle for a generation or more now. I don't know about rural America or rural Europe, but in rural India, villagers don't start groaning on Monday mornings. There's hardly any difference between Mondays or other days of the week. Their life-cycle is not a weekly one. Conversely, there's invariably an exuberant outpouring of joy come Friday. It starts in the morning itself and rises to a crescendo by the afternoon by when the youngsters i...

In any modern nation that has a taxation system, the poor don't pay taxes. In India, more than 90 percent do not pay taxes. But that makes sense. The poor in India do not use as much of the infrastructure. The poor in India do not use airports. The poor in America do not use private planes. One should be taxed at a rate commensurate with one's level of income. This is obvious and does not need debating. When the super rich have to pay taxes at a lower rate as Warren Buffett has reiterated so often, it's clearly unfair. Millionaires need to be taxed at a higher but fair rate. A 90 percent rate of income tax is clearly unfair. But a 30 percent or 35 percent rate of tax seems fair enough. Those in the 10 million to 50 million bracket can correspondingly be charged at a higher rate than the mere single-digit millionaires. Those in the 50 million to 100 million bracket need to pay even higher taxes. The tax rate can increase by 5 percentage points for every tax bracket. The ot...

Truly strange bedfellows! One would never have guessed that there could be a link between the two but apparently there can! Here's the proof: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/magazine/11cryonics-t.html?hpw Well, I guess every couple has to tackle the issue in their own way. I want the folks who want to preserve themselves to be allowed to do so if they have got the money and want to do so. Perhaps, some of the 'geniuses' of the present age might be preserved in such a way ... Just a thought ... how about preserving the brain of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Wolfgang Ketterle ...

What a smorgasboard of news items ... One has to marvel at the way politicians like Lalu and Mulayam survive in spite of umpteen scams. One can add to the list of course. I mentioned these two in the context of something that has been said by the BJP chief which these two 'gentlemen' found 'insulting.' What a joke — I am least bothered. But, the audacity of the shamelessness of politicians and the short tenure of the memory of the public is mind boggling. Well, strange to see Jairam Ramesh suddenly taking a liking to the Chinese and getting into a mess. Even the United States is wary of China ... so, it might be better to take a cautious approach with the dragon so that we are not caught with our pants down. Strange stuff, of course. A very strange nation — China. What does it do to a nation to have been defeated in war like China was by Japan. So much suffering. The Japanese have done such horrific stuff like experimenting on live humans, etc. — basically, not much dif...

With all the uproar over MA Jinnah in recent days, here's my two cents worth. Chetan Bhagat made a point that the young generation of today doesn't care about who Jinnah is. For better or for worse, I think that's correct. The younger generation would be hard put to write one paragraph if asked to about who Jinnah was. Now, it's a different matter altogether whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. The young generation is busy playing with cell phones and texting and watching cricket and Bollywood movies — I am talking about the young generation in India, of course. The young generation would likely be ignorant about all history, not only about what Jinnah's role was. I love to ask this question to a gathering of youngsters (if the date happens to be August 15): why is India's Independence Day celebrated on August 15 and not on some other day out of all the 365 days of the year? Expectedly, no one knows the answer to that and indeed, nobody cares. The ot...

A recent article by the ever-articulate and engaging Tom Friedman got me thinking about this ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/opinion/24friedman.html Friedman says that once America gets cured of its addiction to oil, price of oil will go down forcing the regime in Iran to reform. There's excellent/impeccable economic reasoning behind this — attested to by historical events as mentioned by Friedman. However, I am wondering whether people of Iran will welcome a drop in oil prices leading to a lower national income and lower standards of living for themselves. Would Americans be willing to compromise on their standards of living for a different reason — climate change. Would Americans forego many of the amenities that they have become used to for the sake of aiding the environment. One random example that comes to mind is this: would Americans be willing to go back to an earlier era of hanging their clothes out to dry on a clothes line — something one has seen in old Hollywood m...