November 29, 2008

കാലം മാറ്റിയ കോലം....



കാലം എത്ര പെട്ടന്നാണ് എന്നെ മാറ്റിയത് ?



എൻറെയാ നിഷ്കളങ്കമായ ചിരിയും,
എൻറെയാ നിശബ്ദമായ വാക്കുകളും,
എൻറെയാ ഭയമാര്‍ന്ന കണ്ണുകളും,
എൻറെയാ സംശയമാര്‍ന്ന ചോദ്യങ്ങളും.
എല്ലാം ഈ കാലം എത്ര പെട്ടെന്ന് മാറ്റി


പിന്തിരിഞ്ഞു നോക്കുമ്പോള്‍ മാറിയ മാറ്റം
ഓര്‍ത്തെടുക്കാന്‍ പോലും കഴിയാത്ത നിമിഷങ്ങള്‍
കാലമേ നീയെന്നെ എത്രമേല്‍ മാറ്റിയോ?
സുഗന്തം പോലും തിര്‍ച്ചറിയാന്‍ പറ്റാത്തത്ര മാറ്റം
നിറങ്ങള്‍ പോലും തിരിച്ചറിയാന്‍ പറ്റാത്തത്ര മാറ്റം


ഇരുട്ടിനെ പോലും ഭയപ്പെട്ടിരുന്നൊരു നല്ലകാലം
ചുവപ്പ് ചോരയാണെന്ന് ഭയപ്പെട്ടിരുന്നൊരു നല്ലകാലം
പൂവ് സുഗന്ധവും സൌന്ദര്യവും ആണെന്നറിഞ്ഞ നല്ലകാലം
സ്നേഹവും ശാന്തിയും നിറഞ്ഞിരുന്ന നല്ലകാലം
കാലമേ നീയെന്നെ എത്രമേല്‍ മാറ്റിയോ?...


ഒരിക്കലും പൂട്ടുകില്ലെന്നു കരുതിയ വാതിലുകള്‍
ഒരിക്കലും മുറിയുകില്ലെന്നുകരുതിയ ബന്ധങ്ങള്‍
ഒരിക്കലും മറക്കുകില്ലെന്നു കരുതിയ ഓര്‍മ്മകള്‍
ഒരിക്കലും തോല്ക്കുകില്ലെന്നു കരിതിയ തോല്‍വികള്‍
ഒരിക്കലും പിഴക്കില്ലെന്നു കരുതിയ വാക്കുകള്‍
കാലമേ നീയന്നെ എത്രമേല്‍ മാറ്റിയോ

Major Sandeep, We salute you. Jai Hindh

ധീര യോധാവേ നിനക്കു മരണമില്ല........
Being in the forefront of the National Security Guards operations at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan not only waged a valiant battle against the terrorists but also did his best to save his injured colleagues and in the bargain lost his life. He showed the real warrior in him before laying down his life. Thirty-one-year-old Major Sandeep is the only son of retired ISRO officer K. Unnikrishnan, who is settled in Bangalore.

His father told presspersons: “I lost my son in Mumbai on Friday. Though I do not like to call him a martyr, I can proudly say that he has done something for this country.” He was informed of the death of his son by the Deputy Inspector-General of Police (National Security Guards).
According to information reaching the family, “Major Sandeep was leading a team and during the operations two of his colleagues sustained bullet injuries. In a bid to save them Sandeep turned back. The bullets fired by the terrorists pierced him. On November 26, he had called us and said that one of his childhood friends is getting married in the city on December 17. He had planned to attend that marriage,” Mr. Unnikrishnan said.

Major Sandeep was ambitious, talented and a brave soul, said his friends and neighbours. He joined the National Defence Academy and was commissioned in the Bihar 7th Regiment in 1999.
He was drafted to the NSG after his gallantry was recognised,”

He was deputed to the NSG on January 20, 2007 and participated in various operations conducted by the elite force. The gallant officer of the team commander of 51 SAG was deployed to clear Hotel Taj Mahal of extremists on November 27.

He led the team from the front and engaged the terrorists in a fierce gunfight. When one of the NSG commandos was injured in the exchange of fire, he arranged for his evacuation and regardless of personal safety chased the terrorists who, meanwhile, escaped to another floor of the hotel, and while doing so Major Sandeep continuously engaged them. In the encounter that followed, he was seriously injured and succumbed to injuries.

Who could be behind the Mumbai attacks and why?


Militants armed with automatic weapons and grenades attacked luxury hotels, hospitals and a famous tourist cafe in India's commercial capital Mumbai late on Wednesday, killing at least 150 people.

* WHO IS BEHIND THE ATTACKS?
The attacks were claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen in an e-mail to news organisations. Deccan is an area of southern India.
But it is not clear if the claim is genuine, and analysts say the bombings are almost certainly the work of a different group.
The most likely perpetrators, they say, are either the Indian Mujahideen or Lashkar-e-Taiba.
* WHO ARE LASHKAR-E-TAIBA?
Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of the largest Islamic militant groups in South Asia, based in Pakistan and fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. Security analysts say it is a well-funded and highly organised group that sympathises with al Qaeda.
Lashkar-e-Taiba denied being behind the Mumbai attacks and said it condemned them.
The group was blamed for bomb attacks on markets in New Delhi that killed more than 60 people in 2005, as well as an assault on India's parliament in 2001 that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a fourth war.
* WHO ARE THE INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN?
Indian police say the Indian Mujahideen is an offshoot of the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), but that local Muslims appear to have been given training and backing from militant groups in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.
SIMI has been blamed by police for almost every major bomb attack in India, including explosions on commuter trains in Mumbai two years ago that killed 187 people.
Police said the Indian Mujahideen may also include former members of Bangladeshi militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami.
The group first emerged during a wave of bombings in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in November 2007, sending an e-mail to media outlets just before some of the bombs exploded.
They have since claimed responsibility for multiple bomb attacks in Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New Delhi.
* WHO DOES INDIA BLAME?
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the attacks were probably plotted by a group based in a neighbouring country.
But Indian governments often blame neighbouring Pakistan or sometimes Bangladesh for supporting or harbouring militant groups which have launched attacks on Indian soil.
* WHAT CAN BE INFERRED FROM THE ATTACKERS' TACTICS?
The Mumbai attacks were unusual in that they involved coordinated attacks by gunmen on multiple targets, hostages were taken, and foreigners were specifically targeted.
Several analysts say these tactics point to Lashkar-e-Taiba as being involved. The attacks on symbolic targets designed to gather maximum publicity, and the specific targeting, point to a group following al Qaeda ideology and tactics.
The attacks also show a considerable degree of sophistication, another factor pointing to an experienced group like Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The Indian Mujahideen have also surprised police with the sophistication of their attacks, however, although until now these have always been bomb attacks on Indian targets.
In May, the Indian Mujahideen made a specific threat to attack tourist sites in India unless the government stopped supporting the United States in the international arena.
The threat was made in an e-mail claiming responsibility for bomb attacks that killed 63 people in the tourist city of Jaipur. The mail declared "open war against India" and included the serial number of a bicycle used in one of the bombings.
* WHAT CAN BE INFERRED FROM THEIR DEMANDS?
A man speaking Urdu with a Kashmiri accent phoned an Indian TV station, offering talks with the government and accusing the Indian army of killing Muslims in Kashmir. This suggests the attackers are involved with a Kashmiri group like Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The demands of the Indian Mujahideen -- like their targets -- have always tended to be much more domestic. The group issued an e-mail threat in September to attack Mumbai but directed its anger at the Mumbai police anti-terrorist squad, accusing them of harassing Muslims.
"If this is the degree your arrogance has reached, and if you think that by these stunts you can scare us, then let the Indian Mujahideen warn all the people of Mumbai that whatever deadly attacks Mumbaikars will face in future, their responsibility would lie with the Mumbai ATS and their guardians," it said.
തീവ്രവാദം എന്തിന്റെ പേരിലായാലും അത് നമ്മുടെ സമൂഹത്തിനു എതിരായ ഒരു വെല്ലുവിലയാണ്. ഈ മനുഷ്യത്വം ഇല്ലാത്ത വെല്ലുവിളിയെ നമുക്കു ഒറ്റക്കെട്ടായി നിന്നു ചെറുത്തു തോല്പിക്കാം.
ജയ് ഹിന്ദ്‌......

November 15, 2008

India's moon impact probe lands on lunar surface

New Delhi - A moon impact probe launched from India's first lunar spacecraft successfully landed on the lunar surface Friday, an official of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said. The 35-kilogram probe, with the Indian flag painted on its sides, crash-landed at the Shackleton crater near the moon's south pole at 8:31 pm (1501 GMT).

"We have planted the moon probe successfully," ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said at a press briefing. The successful landing makes India the fourth country - after the United States, Russia and Japan - to deploy a moon probe. The moon probe took 25 minutes to reach the lunar surface after being launched from the orbiting Chandrayaan-1. "We have received signals from the moon impact probe," Nair said. The scientists at the ISRO control centre said the moon probe's built-in video imaging system had taken pictures of the lunar surface during its approach and sent them back to the Chandrayaan-1.

The orbiter's name means "moon craft" in Sanskrit. Nair said the ISRO expected to receive data and pictures from the lunar orbiter once it emerges from behind the moon. A spectrometer on the probe is expected to later analyse chemicals and minerals on the moon and send data to the lunar orbiter. Former president APJ Abdul Kalam was also present at the press briefing as ISRO scientists celebrated their achievement. Kalam, one of India's top scientists who has played a key role in developing India's space programme, said it was a moment he would remember. Nair earlier said ISRO plans to send a second spacecraft - Chandrayaan-II - to the moon in 2012, equipped with a lander which will drop a small robot on the lunar surface.

The ISRO is also working on a proposal to send a spacecraft to Mars, he said. Chandrayaan-1, described as the cheapest-ever moon mission, was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre near the southern city of Chennai on October 22 and has successfully completed about 95 per cent of its mission over the past 24 days, according to ISRO officials. The 1,380-kilogram spacecraft, built by the ISRO, was Friday orbiting the moon at a distance of 100 kilometres. In its present orbit the spacecraft takes about two hours to complete one circle of the moon, Satish said. For the next two years, the spacecraft will carry out chemical, mineral and geological mapping of the moon with 11 scientific payloads on board. Five of these payloads were designed by the Indian space agency; three devised and contributed by Germany, Britain and Sweden from the European Space Agency; two from the US space agency; and one from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Two of the payloads - a terrain mapping camera and a radiation dose monitor - have been successfully switched on. The camera has taken pictures of the earth and moon and sent them back to the monitoring centre.

Global economic crisis and its effect on India

2008 - a year that has witnessed the fall of the big players in the investment field-
Bear sterns was taken over by JP Morgan
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nationalized
Lehman Bros became bankrupt.
Merryl Lynch taken over by Bank of America for a meagre $50 bn !
With financial institutions falling prey one after another to the global credit crisis, the bailout packages announced by various governments across the globe are inching towards $2 trn mark — an amount nearly double the size of Indian economy !
The Wall street tremors will have aftershocks the world over, with global markets plummeting to new lows and with liquidity crisis in perspective, the world is facing a severe economic crisis and many are blindly hopeful of a bail-out plan. But …….let me guess what you are thinking…..
Q 1) what in the world is going on right now?
Q 2 ) why does all this matter to me? and how do I, the Indian citizen stand to be affected by this?
THE WHOLE STORY:
The first signs of the sub-prime crisis was evident in the form of Bear Stearns whose 2 hedge funds collapsed in the mid of June 07 . Sadly , help in the form of $ 100 billion in liquidity courtesy Federal Reserve Bank and European Central Bank didn’t do much to solve the prevalent sub-prime crisis as the housing market continued to elevate without increase in interest rates. Then the wall street virtually went on a wild horse ride with one of the prestigious players Lehman brothers posting huge losses and eventually they din’t become lucky as the others as both Bank of America and Barclay’s refused to save the investment giant. The sole cause- Lehman Bros and Bear Sterns had relatively small balance sheets, they were heavily dependent on the mortgage market and were humungously reliant on the repurchase market (use as a short-term financing tool). The final nail in the coffin of the Lehman Brothers was put as it applied for a bankrupt protection on September 15th, which created a violent storm in the world financial system
AIG which was supposedly a basic insurance company also committed the erraneous speciality of investing in derivatives. Now for non- enthusiasts like some people out there, what are DERIVATIVES? Well, more on that later in this post.
IMPACT ON INDIA:
With many of the top IT companies save HCL having half their revenues from financial and banking segments, no doubt they are going to take a harsh beating, with Infosys already losing $2 bn the past week(Sept end) out of an approximate $10 bn lost by Indian IT companies listed on the US market. Banks may suffer as Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch had invested substantially in the formers’s stocks.
Supposedly, some of the PSU banks are also said to be affected even though assurances by the FM P.Chidambaram that none of the former are influenced. Well, that remains to be seen.
Now with traders possibly selling their stocks in India, Indian rupee stands to decline and hence imports will become costlier, one of the many things that stand to be affected, in line with many of the innumerable crisises that our country has still looming at large.
WHAT IS DERIVATIVES ( In Layman’s terms) in this case also know as HEDGING
–>The main use of a derivative is reducing risk for a party.
–>Derivative products derive their existence from actual market indices, hence the name derivatives.
I am not a expert on this, but with a great amount of thanks to my dad( who is pretty good at this stuff), I can put forward a vague idea what this is all about. Now supposing Mr.X enters into a FUTURES CONTRACT with Mr.Y, say he pays a certain amount of money for a certain commodity from Mr.Y in the future(any fixed amount of time in the future) , now as the market can be totally unpredictable with fluctuating interest rates, such an agreement can reduce risks.
BENEFITS:
1. Mr.X now has an assured supply of commodity in the future at the existent market rates at that time.
2. Mr.Y now has an assured price for his commodity in the future from Mr.X
Something like this.
Now there are many forms of derivatives, one which caused the epicentre here in the sub prime crisis being mortgage-backed security (MBS). For more information on MBS, you can easily refer … say wikipedia or the article by Mohit Satyanand in Outlook MONEY was pretty awesome.
Now in the present case , since the housing rates didn’t shoot up, the investment banks couldn’t recover money and the growing housing markets only added to their downfall.. Voila !! this almost does it for a layman’s understanding to the current global economic crisis.