Cricket team for sale…

The high profile cricket has been sold to some leading star walts like Ambani, Mallya some actors like SRK, priety zinta…

The amounts invovled are quite staggering – some stupid US$ 119!!!

Even at the  lowly rate the US dollor is trading this is a few crores!! Imagine what would happen to this legal – white money ( Remember the money is coming from top industrialists and actors) next?

Guess is BCCI will fill up its coffers and in an yet undisclosed scam, these monies would be sifoned off by sharad and gang. Otherwise prey tell me where all the money has gone that has come BCCI’s way all these days? Dont tell me you spent it on charity please.

Even if the great people instead of sponsoring this stupid match, donated it to some NGO’s active in rural india or even setup infrastructure to handle medical emergencies, schools – that is meaningfull expenditure but this is waste of resources.

Citing the global village, only the indian army is next up for sale er sponsorship. Today SRK has stated that he would like Ganguly to be the captain. Continuing the same logic, the army would wage a war on USA just because a radical sponsored the same!!

As a last parting shot, can BCCI atleast enmark some funds for upgrading the Indian games like hockey, kabbadi et all?

Governor and the Speed governor

The lorry lobby has been going ballastic against the governments order to implement speed governor in all transport and commercial vehicals aka control less demons. They have sucessfully held the governor – Rameshwar takhur to accept that it will be implemented only for new vehicles 2 days back.

They are back with bang in news and have given the next ultimatum. If the governor does not remove the order for new vehicles, they are back to strike from march 31st midnight.

The argument goes like this – ‘we had approached the High court regarding speed governors and is yet to be decided by HC so, it has to be in abyence till a decision comes’. Who can ignore a statutory body like HC?

But dear lorry wallahs, you have not hade the same heart when the ruling came from Supreme court stating all transport vehicles should have this control? It was the ultimate directive under which you ignored citing reasons which amounts to contempt of court?

You guys make the best folks for becoming politicians!!!

After multiple deaths in road accidents due to rashly driven, unmaintained and over exhausted transport vehicles, the SC gave the directive to all states. Kerala was the first to implement and back track. Karnataka has followed suite.

The major points against this ruling is the cost of a speed governor ( like helmet fellows making money, these traders are also into the same money making business) and bad roads.

Another few days when coolies will go without work and food ; common man will go without petrol, vegetables, medicine while the lorry owners relax!!

Tragedy – A true story

Even though would prefer to share lighter moments of life, some times – true brutal reality shakes me up. Here is a true encounter with reality that happened 3 days ago.

Vadiraj was a cheerfull bubbly kid, the youngest son in the family of father, mother, elder brother, and a doting grandmother. He used to come and play with my junior quite regularly and had been diagonised with child hood asthma.

Only his father earnes a  salary to support to the entire family as a bank cashier and some amount of ignorance as in any normal house hold regarding  lifestyle  diseases like asthma,BP or diabetes  was true to this household too.

Suddenly one day last july his asthma increased and was admitted to hospital. We were shell shocked except me who was allways telling their parents to give him quick relief medicine ( inhalers from the english medicine stable) but the parents constantly took him to an ayurvedic pundit. He stayed in the hospital ventilator for near 1 month after which he was discharged as father had alrady run loans worth 1.8 lakhs in treatment and he came back in an Ambulance with an oxygen cylinder!

We all breathed a sigh of relief as he had escaped death, as asthma kills a person in less than 2 minutes or precisely lack of medical facility can kill in 90 seconds for a boy of 10 years.

We visited him as he was our opposite house neighbour and we do not differentiate much between him or my own junior and advised them to take him to the specialist in manipal hospital.  The parents took him after much cajoling ( One visit consultation charges are 500 Rs) and the consultant reviewed his case and said that he is suffering from not just asthma but COPD ( Compulsive obstructive pulmonary disease) which would require at least 2 operations to get his lungs back in shape as he was quite young.

The parents were aghast at the costs invovled and unilaterally decided to get back to their ayurvedic medicines. It was a torture for me to personally see the kid wheezing and suffering to take a single breath.

Suddenly day before yesterday he again had a bad asthma attack and was admitted. Doctors put him on ventilator ( artificial breathing apparatus). My spouse called me yesterday noon and said “Vadhi – expired!”.

It was a shock as the doctors described that due to excessive pressure on the lungs, the windpipe ruptured and he breathed his last.

I just could not see the inconsolable parents

In India we have thousands of these kinds of deaths where technology, treatement everything is available only out of reach of 80% of the people. If only these were in the available band to those parents, a life could have been saved

Alas, in democracy the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer,

After some time the poor all die only the rich live

Thank You – IRDA

Even though the new year gift of SEBI got popular limelight regarding abolishing of loads, the media has totally forgotten the other gift given by the Insurance Regulatory Authority of India ( IRDA) as a directive to its investors.

There has been opinions poles apart on the the SEBI while investors like me felt happy, some people did think that the order was bad and Government should NOT interfere in market plays.

If one goes back and tries to understand how our developing markets have reacted to securities industry it has been full of harshads, ketans etc. Based on those findings, these regulatory bodies have been set up so that the private congloumarates dont fool the general investors.

But definetly the SEBI and IRDA has recieved complaints by truck loads before which they took up this twin actions!!! Anybody is free to challange their decisions and SEBI/IRDA has enough proof of the misdeeds of its industry leaders aka agents.

IRDA has made it mandatory from this year that every ULIP or unit linked insurance plan should give a fact sheet detailing how much charges, the company would deduct before investing to generate income for the insruced investor.

The investor has to sign on that document and a copy of that should be kept with the investor.

In otherwords, the industry tries to and has sucessfully cut anywhere from 17% to 70% in cases as different fees without much knowledge of the investor!!! The poor investor only got to know about the cheating after a couple of years.

When 90% of the industry experts have one sentence of advice to offer – “Never mix insurance with investment”, the agents lure investors about future safety and intentionally forget to tell about loads.

Compare and contrast this 17% to 70% in the initial 3 years in a mutual fund, where a charge of 2.25% is the norm!!!

Definetly the AMC’s touting these ULIP’s will come up with other methods of cutting their pie but investor beware and continue to complain to the regulators.

The bottom line is quite evident You can fool some people some time; but not all people all time.

Living till 800! Whew..

Yes, thats what the latest technological break through is…

Scientists have reported that they have identified a single strain in yeast cell genes which are very similar to human genes and with some alteration, the yeast can live as long as 800 years with no side effects!!!!

This news made my head go into a tail spin.

Who would like to live so long?

Thoughts of sonia, mayawathi, Gowdara gang etc danced before my eyes – i pinched myself assuming this was my worst nightmare, no its true. Hope the scientists dont get into this discovery..please God no.

What do you folks think?

Laugh it out … 22

Ramashastry and subba shastry were the only 2 priests of the village. They officiated in all cermonies of the village from birth to death.

In the recent ramanavami celebrations, the harikathe dasa quoted the scriptures and said ‘those who give a cow in alm, would not suffer at the hands of yama’s world’. Villagers thought and mulled about it but the guitly concience of many got provoked.

Immideatly many villagers started giving a cow as alm to subbashastry who was junior to ramashastry. Seeing subbu getting rich by cows on daily basis, he approached him and told “subbu – dont you know what the scriptures say about taking a cow as alm? You will be hanged upside down in naraka from only one thread of the cows tail”. Subbu exclaimed “is it so?”. A beaming ramashastry went his way for having corrected an erring junior.

Next day there was a big board in front of subbashastries house which proclaimed “Cows will be taken as alms – get rid of all your sins”.

Seeing this, ramashastry in seething anger rushed into his house and shouted at him – “Subba shastry – did I not warn you about the compexities of accepting cows as alm?”

Subbu smiled and meekly said “Yes sir i did understand”.

Then what is this board telling me – can you explain?

Subbu scratched his big head, joshling his tummy so that the last days vada could sit happily in his tummy replied. ” Sir, if i take a single cow, its one thread of that cow – if I take a bunch say 50 or 100, those threads togather would become a good rope and there would be no harm to me right?”

Rama shastry returned aghast home, decided to leave the village for good!

Thank You SEBI

SEBI came up quitely with a wonderfull new year gift to us.

This news came up as article in many newspapers but people are not sure how important it is.

SEBI has been mulling over the issue of abolishing entry loads into mutual funds from very long and finaly in a simple statment told the mutual fund industry to stop collecting the extra money from investors who directly approach the mutual fund house.

Traditionally a distributor/agent would provided educated advice to investors and this extra money ( normally 2.25%) would be partially handed over to that agent/distributor as commission for their service ( Not the entire 2.25% as the AMC tend to claim but right from 0.5% to 1.5% on case basis).

What India is witnessing right now is quite the opposite. The agents are in 8 out of 10 cases, misselling the ill informed investor into new funds where the get hefty commissions (SEBI allows loads upto 6%) on new fund offers ignoring the advice portion.

In a view to curb this malaice, SEBI thinks banning the commission for people who can take educated judgement would definetly in the short run give the agent a run for his business but overall a healthy sign to AMC as their assets under management would grow, investors wealth would grow and only the lazy agent/distributor would be pulled up to serve the industry better.

Three cheers to SEBI.

Laugh it out … 21

The kids were talking after just lunch time and bragging about the feats of their pappas. Tinkuoo said “My father is great, he can walk 2 kms in 6 minutes flat – he is ex army’.

Rajoo said “My father is much great, he can shoot an arrow, run and catch it with his hands, he is a trained archer”

Shankar grinned sheepishely and said “my father is the greatest of all, he leaves office at 5.30pm and reaches home at 5pm and works for Government of India”.