Amir and Deepika Playing Badminton

I know this is stale. But, given your busy lives I think you might not have checked this out.



Aamir does take things seriously. See the way he is moving in the court and that too against likes of Prakash Padukone and Aparna Popat. Got this news from Aaamir's blog which I was visiting after a long long time (given my busy life as well).

Got really bad news about Aamir and Kiran loosing their child. Despite of all the money and medical advice they were unable to prevent the miscarriage. Incidents like these do make you believe in the presence of some supreme power who has a script ready for all of us. On that note, well, it's the beginning of Ganesh Chaturthi as well as the holy month of Ramzaan today. For the next one month Hyderabad will be abuzz with festivities.

God bless Aamir and his family and hope they come out of their grief soon. And god bless you all. Hope no grief could ever touch you.

The GAS War Intensifies..

The GAS war has intensified as Government has set up a panel to discuss the issue. With each new advertisement, ADAG is digging deeper into their allegations and some of these are serious allegations like Corruption, Hoarding, Profiteering, Creating Artificial Scarcity etc. The point is that had ADAG not believed into the evidence that they have, they might not have spitted the venom out in the press. Clearly, they want a public debate more than a judicial debate.



This advertisement blitzkrieg by ADAG has raised eyebrows across the political and corporate circle. But now the debate has turned towards petty issues like whether the supreme court will take cognizance of this or whether the judiciary will completely ignore this and hear the case based on the pure facts and evidences brought in the court? I don't think anybody is discussing the more potent issue of corruption.

The media is debating the morality of this campaign. I think that the main purpose of this ad is to elicit a response from the two parties. Government and RIL. Ministry has to come out clear and RIL too have to take a stand.

We have so many reference points to decide about the price of the gas. Petroleum ministry has approved a price of 4.20$ for reasons unknown. DGH has earlier said that the cost of production is only 1.28$ per unit. That gives RIL a neat 300% margin. (--What's the problem with that? Indian gas is no more cheap boy! And also we are in habit of selling the national assets cheap. Did you forget the 2G auction? More on that here)

ADAG claims that the capex was inflated which would obviously inflate the cost of production. This inflated capex will result in loss of revenue for the govt. (--Are you talking about inflation? well who is worried about that? )

DGH or Director General of Hydrocarbons claims that their figure were validated by a third party Source Here . ADAG claims that this third property has conflict of interest with RIL Source here. Back to square one.

NTPC first decided to take RIL into court for the gas supply agreement that they signed some time back. Later they backtracked and it seems that a group of senior employees are content with the new prices decided by petroleum ministry. What's the reason? "Upar se order hai bhai".

Well, the debate has started and will continue till 1st of September when the apex court will decide on the fate of the shareholders of the two group. But till then, I think enough water will go down under the bridge. Just brace for RIL not to start offensive against ADAG group companies like ADLABS, RNRL and Reliance Communication.

Want some mirch masala on this issue? It's here.

IT IS ALL ABOUT GAS..

The 'Gas war' has started. The younger brother has sounded the war cry and has drawn the first blood with a blitzkrieg ad campaign which left the corporate circles abuzz with gas all around.

Corporate India woke up after a long weekend with this news piece on the front page of leading national dailies. Media was buzzing with discussions centered around this ad campaign. Rumors are that the spend is in millions of dollars which means, that there are more questions on this.

So it's sure that this 'War for Gas' will continue for sometime. We will see some counter ads because everybody knows that the Anil Ambani Group is also not the 'Sadhu' one. RIL also might be having some tricks up their sleeves. Anyways, it's hardly a coincidence that the person who was behind the 10 questions a day campaign against Rajiv Gandhi (Bofors Deal) might be the brain behind this Ad campaign as well. And that is Ram Jethmalani. I tried to do a search on his famous 10 questions but was not able to get anything as Indian Express Archives are available from 1997 only and the incident happened in 1989.

The stakes are high, the daggers are out, brethren is vouching for blood and gas and well, media will do all the 'gassing around' for the next few days. This will be an interesting 'war of gas'.

Top 60 Engineering Colleges in India..

There are so many university and college rankings available these days that nobody bothers about them anymore. What’s in the ranking dear? You will always have one to justify your decision. What’s more? You can have a customized ranking tailored made for your institute if you buy the right ad package.

Anyways, it’s more like 18 years since the first wave of privatization hit the country but still you will find IIT’s and IIM’s, Xaviers, LSR, Loyola, Presidency topping the chart. Partly, because they are senior citizens of the education industry respected by one and all. And partly because having these big names on the list adds to its authenticity. So, it’s better to have them there for the first few slots and then cleverly capture the “first best available slot”. I think soon we will have packages marketed like this -

A - If you spend this much then we might think of giving you fifth position?

B – But how? We have six institutes already who should figure in the list to make it look authentic?

A – Oh like that! Then we will give you the seventh position. We also have a package for ranking your competitors. If you are willing to spend this much then we can lower their ranks as well.

Anyways, the economics of ranking is something which does not come under right to information or you would have case studies on that.

Anyways, I stumbled on this piece of article in my favorite online news paper which aroused my curiosity. The authors have tried to rank all the institutes based on a common parameter. What makes this ranking different is that the data is available in public domain and is purely objective. Though it’s the only parameter chosen but still is in a better position to tell the tale about the state of engineering institutes in India.

And if you are wondering why suddenly out of blue I am posting this article on my blog. Then well, I went to the engineering school listed at 23rd position. Good to see that they have got the name and the place right.

More on the ranking here

The report can be read/downloaded from here.