“So how much money should I take out?” asked Husband, who is always a little impractical about these matters. “10,000?” We were discussing the budget for Darling Daughter’s birthday. DD or Princess was turning four and had demanded a “pink laptop” as her birthday present. We didn’t quite know how much that would cost but Husband estimated 10,000 bucks would do the trick– for present and party. “Make that 5,” snapped I. “These are recessionary times and people’s pays have been cut.”  That’s how it turned out to be a budget birthday party for Princess this year instead of a do at the neighbourhood McDonald’s or such or even at Eatopia at the India Habitat Centre that has a popular birthday party venue for kids with month-long waiting lists.But with the new found frugality in our home, we decided to make it a more personal celebration. All of Princess’ close friends were invited; the adults list firmly trimmed as we decided to strictly serve no alcohol and no fancy non veg food.

The first step was the gift: Instead of a pink laptop, Princess was talked into believing that a red bicycle was a much more attractive option. Since she’s still that age where she can be influenced by wily adults, she agreed without too much of a fuss, on the condition that the cycle have a small basket attached in front and that we buy her a helmet with it! Very wise but I wondered where she had seen that. Not on our Indian roads surely. Finally, I figured that she may have been inspired by Phoebe in the Friends rerun we keep watching at home as a stress buster. My heart sank a little bit—Phoebe is my least favourite character and I hope Princess doesn’t grow up to be a mad cap like her, which, I suppose would be ok if she managed to earn a fat pay cheque every month and not sit outside restaurants singing “Smelly Cat…”

Any way, we got the bike (with the basket, minus the helmet) spending Rs 3,000 in the process. Now, I only had Rs 2,000 in the kitty. Cake was next on the agenda: I could choose to be a loving suburban mom and bake it myself, spending money on expensive return gifts later, or cheat a little, go above budget but save myself a lot of hassle. Besides kids are so competitive these days, Princess would never forgive me a less than good-looking, cartoon-character-shaped cake.

So in the evening, I opened a bottle of cool Soave, took a big gulp and placed a call to Slice of Italy to order a Barbie Doll cake. With delivery, it came to, roughly, no, precisely , Rs 948. Which meant that there was very little money now left to do anything else. Luckily, streamers and balloons don’t cost the earth and I decided to do homemade pizzas (Rs 20X4 for the bases from the local store, around Rs 50 for a Fun Food readymade pizza sauce and similar sum for Amul mozzarella), fry potato smilies  and toss my special homemade Indian-Chinese noodles.

Entertainment: The most integral part of a kiddie party. Screaming, fighting, jumping kids creating a mess in your flat can be nightmarish guests. The trick is to keep them occupied; “have structured activities for a short duration for them,” suggested the parenting tome that I most often refer to.

The restaurant that I frequent for Sunday brunches—and I go there because of the following—has an awesome concept for working parents like us who would like to catch up on quality time together without Prince or Princess squealing for attention: They have a glass wall separating the dining area from an activity area for kids. So while you sip your mojitos and attack your tempuras, the kids are entertained by bright young girls who engage them in kite painting or T shirt decorating or such. The kids have their own menu and plastic crockery and cutlery to eat with so that you are not all the time stressed about whether there will be a broken glass (or several) added to your bill. I am telling you all this because I had long decided to use this “kids entertainment agency”, or whatever they call themselves, for Princess’ birthday party. But obviously, that would have meant exceeding the budget substantially.

In stepped Smart Colleague. Smart Colleague sits next to me at work, mimics all the un-smart people, is crazy about her dog, makes greeting cards in her spare time, and is a kind soul overall. She is also incredibly patient with kids (and oops spoilt adults!) and just the part for an efficient event manager. On D-Day, she arrived with heavy bags full of mitti ke bowls from a local potters market, painted smart black, glittery stuff with double sided tape at the back, markers, paints, glitter and such, chart paper with an elephant drawn (pin the tail), potatoes cut in star shapes (block printing) and so forth. Needless to say, the party was a hit. Smart Colleague has now found an alternate calling as an event manager—our neighbours have invited her for their own daughter’s birthday.

And Princess has gained considerable popularity in the neighbourhood as a thrower of interesting parties for 4-years-old.

Ps. Doting grandparents bought the laptop. I still don’t know the price.

When Sudhir Venkatesh, professor of sociology at Columbia University, wrote about the life of Chicago drug lords in Gang Leader for a Day, media everywhere lauded his courage at daring to chronicle a positively gritty side of American street life. Well, if Venkatesh was courageous, Roberto Saviano can only be called crazy.

We know how The Godfather came to symbolize a certain method to Italian crime — an almost corporate aloofness. Continuing in that spirit, Italian journalist Roberto Saviano decided to write about the Camorra (a play on Gomorrah, with all its attendant notions of hell). The resultant book is called Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System. To the uninitiated, the Camorra is one of Naples’ most dangerous mafia setups, running the region of Campania like a personal fief. Street crime is rife, even as drug lords move around in swish Mercedeses.

In terms of its economy, Campania is an image of prosperity. Saviano elaborates how the lucrative drug trade has led many former down-and-out crime syndicates to regroup. Not permanently, mind you. Internecine conflicts force members to change loyalties with laughable frequency, and it’s a wonder the “system”, as it is called, works at all. Saviano’s indictment of the violent machismo of the mafia is striking. His portrait of widows who take over syndicates and come to lord over islands of ill-gotten wealth is spot-on.

So powerful is the Camorra in the region that in the mid-1990s, the mafia appropriated the city’s garbage disposal. As was expected, heavy metals, chemicals and personal waste were mixed together, and left to rot on the streets. This led to a precipitous decline in the health of the local populace. The situation continues, thanks to the complicity of local officials with the Camorra.

The most blatant condemnation in the book, then, falls not on the mafia but on the politicians, who operate hand-in-glove with the syndicates and oversee their protection. In some ways, Saviano explains, the cycle is a vicious one, with a new entrant to government merely a pawn in the hands of an unbreakable chain that connects crime with politics.

A literary sensation in Italy, Gomorrah has become the bane of Saviano’s life. Since the book’s publication in 2006, its author has lived under constant police protection—threats to his life are routine. In writing a book that harshly criticizes a way of life that’s ostensibly glamorous for its crime and monies, Saviano has taken an uncalculated risk indeed.

“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.” — Oscar Wilde

I’m no political analyst. And I surely do not know which party will eventually come to power. However, regardless of the coalition that comes to power in this deeply-divided Lok Sabha elections, it just takes just one look at the manifestos of the current major political parties and a bit of listening to the incantations of local MPs, to wonder whether things will really improve for the masses.

Consider this. Besides the macro-economic policy announcements in the manifestos, there are hardly any concrete suggestions for local upliftment. Governments come and go and yet the paani (water), bijli (electricity) and sadak (roads) issues remain unsolved over the years.

Having shifted from Mumbai city, I now stay in Mayur Vihar, East Delhi. I was told that Delhi is much better than Mumbai — more spacious with gardens and cleaner roads. Yet, when I go for my morning walks, there’s hardly a stretch of land without an open garbage dump. The garbage generally spills on to the road, and people have to skillfully avoid landing into bits and pieces of it while simultaneously avoiding a speeding bike or car. Then there’s the odour, which spreads for at least 25 metres radius. How long can one hold one’s breath that long? Phew.

Thankfully, the pollution level is lower than Mumbai (where I stayed the major part of life). The roads are another menace. Somehow, they always appear to have a bulge in the middle and taper at the sides (in most parts of India). Potholes, thanks to the metro barricades and construction work, make life more miserable. Moroever, the dust can make a simple walk traumatic. What do your guard? Your nose with a handkerchief, your feet with extra pads, or head with a helmet so that no stray piece of brick falls on your head from a metro site?

When I come home, I see the water filter, and I wonder why I bought it? Am I not paying enough taxes that the government should not provide me with safe and clean drinking water? On my foreign trips, my friends sarcastically remind me that drinking water directly from the tap is perfectly acceptable. The list is endless.

I’ve often heard the argument that we get the government we deserve since many of us don’t take the trouble to vote for good governments. I don’t believe this is the whole truth. It’s hard to believe that voting in this country, despite the efforts of a vigilant Election Commission, is 100 per cent fair.

An urbanite and agnostic like me, for instance, still does not understand why religion should become a plank for votes or why minorties should form a clan to fight for their rights. Obviously, minorities may be feeling cheated and hence are raising a hue and cry. Ramadoss feels, for instance that LTTE chief Prabhakaran is not a terrorist. And there are sections of people who believe that Naxalities were forced to become what they are today since our country’s leaders did not address the issues on time.

And I still can’t undertand why political parties in states should be allowed to publicly make statements that they will not allow outsiders to work and stay in the city. Aren’t these unconstitutional statements? Shouldn’t the courts and police take suo moto action? Why should such people be allowed to get away scot-free?

I know there are no simple answers. One has to understand castes, sub-castes, multitude of religions, languages, et al to understand the Indian political scenario. There’s nothing in black and white here. Again, I’m no expert here. However, my humble opinion as a tax-paying citizen of India is that I have a moral right to be heard on this subject. Simultaneously, I do believe that instead of ranting here, I perhaps should take a shot at becoming a politician. I do have quite a few concrete ideas on making this country a better place. Moreover, politics is no longer a bad word I guess — especially after 26/11. After years of self-denial I finally agree with Aristotle that I’m a political animal. Indeed! So watch this space.

Ever had that itch to alter Google results that the search engine throws up (after you have secretly checked your name on Google for the nth time). Dont’ fret as you are not a lone case. There are millions out there who would love to remove or edit information about themselves from the Google indexes. And Google has read your mind, once again.

As the push toward individual search engine optimisation (SEO) intensifies, so does the penchant to “Google” someone.

To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we’ve begun to show Google profile results at the bottom of US name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. We’ve also added links so it’s easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn. (Source)

Of course, for the new service to actually work for people, they need to sign up for an account with Google and the more information a person shares, the more likely they are to show up on the first page when a person searches for their name. To sign up for the service, Google tells users to simply search for “me.” Google’s Joe Kraus acknowledged that the company has seen an increased demand in the search engine optimisation of individual’s names in search engine results and thinks this is the beginning of the solution. Of course, it is.

How? Simply put, Google Profiles looks to establish singular online identities of users, even linking their various online accounts (say blogs, Google reader, Youtube etc) and offer a singular source for information. This also opens up a plethora of choices for third-party developers to build interesting things on top of these profiles.

But there’s another side to this argument too. Do we really want everything available in one-click access on Google? This includes our place of residence (seen on google maps), the blogs we wrote bitching about someone on Blogger, or interests and hobbies (as registered on various social sites) or even pictures & phone numbers (again from some website online). Of course, you can choose to give none and keep a black profile too.

So, what’s the bright idea that Google is selling here? It’s like you can now control what information should flow to make your profile look good (in case it comes up during search) but this will mean that you give Google a little more access to your life’s data. So I guess, then it’s not so good as there’s already more than necessary information out there.

Now that five years of the UPA are over, what has it achieved? In terms of growth, we’re now worse off, though it’s unfair to blame the government for this since both the rise and fall were very largely driven by global developments, as well as our own business cycle. In terms of deficits, of course, it’s a sad story that can’t be blamed on global developments since the current cycle of fiscal profligacy began before global crisis started affecting us. But this blog is about infrastructure, what are the lasting achievements of the UPA on this front?

On the face of it, many. Two spanking new airports ready at Bangalore and Hyderabad, the ones at Delhi and Mumbai are in the middle of getting completed; we have four Ultra Mega Power Projects which have been bid out and which, over a period of time, will get commissioned; several intra-city metro projects along the lines of the one in Delhi are on their way to getting completed; the list goes on.

It can be no one’s case that infrastructure development is an easy task – recall that none of the so-called ‘fast-track’ power projects talked of in the early 1990s came to fruition despite the combined will of the central government behind them. So each one of the projects just cited is an important breakthrough. The problem, however, is that the UPA has not been able to put in place a mechanism that puts development on the automatic track.

Sorry, I need to amend that. The UPA put in place a mechanism for ensuring infrastructure development was on the automatic track, but it was equally quick to rescind it. So, to ensure that, for instance, only the best developers in the world developed infrastructure in India, and to ensure top-notch firms were not eliminated at the technical evaluation stage (which very often happens), it came up with an evaluation sheet which was an objective one – how many airports have you built before, what traffic did these airports have, how many highways have you built etc. (In the Delhi and Mumbai airports, you’d recall, the technical evaluation was rigged so that just two firms qualified – this new method was meant to stop this from continuing.) So what happened to this? In the case of the highways projects, for instance, it was junked. And, thanks to a minister of whom the less said the better, the great progress made during the NDA years has ground to a halt.

Similarly, when the Railways wanted to build some locomotive and coach factories on its own, it took a long battle to get the Railways to agree to get this done through the PPP route – 74 per cent private, and 26 per cent Railways. Initially, the contracts were completely loaded in favour of the private firms; they were then changed, and loaded in favour of the Railways! With great difficulty, and over a year, the contracts were rescued and brought back to being neutral. The bids were called for and, after a stormy Cabinet meeting, the Railways decided to reject the bid and go ahead and make the engines on its own!

A spanking new Electricity Act was brought into place. This promised a telecom-type revolution. Users like you and I would be allowed to buy electricity from whoever we wanted. So, while the electric wires coming into our houses may have been owned by Reliance Infrastructure, we could ask the Tatas to supply us power – so so many suppliers competing for our custom, as in telecom, prices were supposed to fall. What was the result? In the six years or so that the Act has been in place, there hasn’t been even one instance of a consumer being able to buy power from a third party using what’s called ‘open access’. If you’re a power plant with surplus capacity, and want to sell that power to a third party outside the state, the government doesn’t give you permission to do so – to prevent the electricity from going waste, you then sell the electricity to the government utility in the state, and that utility then sells it outside the state, and pockets the profit. Today, peak power shortages are higher than they’ve been in the past.

As for the airports and the new ports that have been privatised, there’s a new problem. They’re very high cost. In the four new airports, new user charges of around Rs 300 or so for domestic flights is what’s charged and it’s around Rs 1,200 for international flights. In the Nhava Sheva port, a study found users were being charged 80 per cent more! In short, the way the contracts were drawn up and implemented, we’ve got into a very high-cost structure which, in the long run, will kill the industry itself. In the airports, like Delhi, thousands of crore of land has been gifted away almost free to the developer – the Delhi airport has been a long-standing scandal and, if you like, I can give you the urls of some pieces I’ve written on it.

As for the regulators who’re supposed to look after the consumers’ interests, most of these bodies have been captured by bureaucrats and, with perhaps no exception, they’ve, by and large, worked to further the interests of private firms whom the government of the day is in favour of. The corruption is a separate story and, if you’re interested, I’d encourage you to pick up a copy of the latest annual BS Books issue – a chapter called Regulatory Roulette has many of the details.

In a nutshell, as the UPA departs, there’s little to show for the work it has done in the infrastructure space. Which is a real pity since this is one area where the Prime Minister’s closest aide Montek Singh Ahluwalia was personally involved in.

“How much longer sir?” my neighbour, who always seemed to have the Midas touch, asked my father. This neighbour, I have always believed, has the knack of sniffing out business opportunities. He and his wife must have half a dozen streams of income.

He was enquiring about the economic slowdown that has seen everyone tightening their purse strings, and has left him holding his head in his hand and wondering how he would be able to pay his Rs 40,000 EMI on a loan he had raised to build his four storeyed building with five flats. He had hoped to rent them out, preferably to vegetarian IT professionals.

He has waited, waited and waited. His query on the slowdown came in utter frustration over the disappointment that few IT professionals were interested in renting his house or none were ready to pay the rent he wanted. “I have custom-built the house for an IT professional” was his argument. It suits them best. I had heard of custom-built office spaces, but this was the first custom-built house for an IT professional.

What about someone else who may be ready to shell out an amount acceptable to him? No sir, he said, “Others cannot understand how to use the electrical fittings I have spent so much on. Many of the fittings are those you find in the US and many of the IT professionals travel abroad and understand their use.”

“I will wait for a month and visit Tirupathi to ask for the lord’s help.”

Now, he is ready for a compromise it seems. Do people from any other industry have such spending power is what he wants to know now. I have been asked to find out who else could afford the rent and of course still are vegetarians.

Being a sports freak has a lot of drawbacks. People tend to take you for granted as far as watching sports is concerned. And the magnitude of it hits you the most when the Indian Premier League (IPL) is on.

It’s assumed that you must be glued to your telly watching each and every ball of “the biggest sporting extravaganza”. So conversations with friends revolve around how weak the bowling attack of Rajasthan Royals is and you are expected to pitch in with your views on it.

Relatives will give - and seek your - expert opinion on what a brilliant innings Sehwag played, when the fact is you were busy watching re-runs of Friends (yes I did that a lot during the first season of IPL).

Personally, cricket in its Maggi noodles avatar is something which I am not too bothered about.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think of myself as a snob as far as cricket watching is concerned. I enjoy the occasional drama and edge of the seat stuff that T20 guarantees.

But give me a two-hour session of test cricket where 40 runs are scored but the players are fighting tooth and nail, over a three-hour slam bang cricket where the idea seems to be who can hit the ball longest out of the ground.

Of course, I can understand why the IPL remains such a huge draw. It’s fast paced, requires very little of your time (as compared to test matches or even ODIs), and most importantly for the paisa vasool audience, it’s all about having fun.

I may be an extremist but for me one of the biggest reasons of watching in any sport is to actually care about a particular team winning or losing. In the IPL, I find that majority of the time that goes out of the window.

‘Fans’ of IPL are content with enjoying the action and are somewhat indifferent towards the end result. It doesn’t matter too much if their team lost the match as long as they were guaranteed some action packed moments, something which is a staple ingredient of most IPL matches.

How can you expect enjoy any sport, where winning or losing is secondary and entertainment is primary. At least, I can’t.

As I said at the beginning of the post, being a sports fanatic has many drawbacks. And one of them is that you end up taking sports a bit more (in fact, a lot more) seriously than the rest. Fun and games are good, but sports is a serious business, at least for hardcore sports buffs. And when indifference creeps in, like in the case of IPL, it sadly fails to cut the ice.

UK’s venerable paper The Guardian on April 15, 2009 updated its website with 9 video footages of policing excesses witnessed on April 1, 2009 during the G-20 protest near Bank of England headquarters. The death of an innocent newsagent Ian Tomlinson during the protest triggered a wave of witnesses coming forward to share their own shot of police using excessive force to manage the crowd.

Tomlinson had died of a heart attack at the protest scene and was first believed to be a victim of a situation no one in particular can be blamed. But days later, after the G-20 leaders had gone back home, a video sent to The Guardian by a New York fund manager shot using his mobile phone camera revealed that Tomlinson was actually pushed around by a cop before he collapsed and died on the street. Independent Police Complaints Commission is looking into this matter.

A couple of days back yet another video emerged that showed another cop actually slapping a lady protester before hitting her with his baton. This smart lady now has a PR manager appointed to manage her interviews with the media. And guess who is this publicist who is helping her – it is Max Clifford who handled late Jade Goody’s public relations!

The irony of this situation is that all these video footages have come from private citizens using their not-so-sophisticated mobile cameras. No official video of the police excess is out in the public domain yet. After all the cops were given cameras and even got a vantage point perched up high pedestal shooting the protest scene. I was there at the G-20 protest (as a journalist of course) and am not imagining these things.

Britain’s penchant for placing cameras in public places is now world famous. On the basis of an outdated statistic (as old as 2002), there are at least 4.2 million CCTV cameras in public places in the UK. This means there is one camera for every 14 people in the UK. The walking tour guides tell that on an average, while you are on the streets of London, you are shot by one of these cameras some 300 times a day!

Yet how the cops near Bank of England during the G-20 protest manage not being shot on one of their own cameras is a miracle in itself. Or weren’t there enough CCTV cameras at the protest venue? That is hard to believe given the protest was happening right outside Bank of England headquarters. Personally I cannot think of a more vulnerable spot in all of the UK, every inch of which needs to be watched.

It was some crash about which I heard today. A friend, I have known since the early ’80s, is in a state of near-shock and, now laughs and cries at the same time, by merely thinking of what’s happened to their investment.

Imagine in investment of yours crashing about 60 per cent in just over an year. She had bought a flat for Rs 75 lakh. It was meant to be an investment. Everything was rosy with the real estate then.

The ‘experts’ in real estate always say “location, location, location” when you consider buying a property. That is precisely what she thought when buying the flat. After-all it was barely 10 or 12 km from the international airport, which is very near to the airport for someone familiar with Bangalore.

About a month or two ago, she tried to find out what’s happened to her investment now that there are frequent news reports about the property market bouncing back. She had missed the opportunity to sell when the market had peaked, she thought. On trying to sell their property. instead of earning a profit, the highest price being quoted was Rs 30 lakh. They had rented out the flat and are now happy with whatever rent they are getting.

That left me wondering what must happened to the ‘investments’ at the other end of the city where there is not even water. The borewells have dried up. Many of them are high-end flats going up to Rs 1 crore or more. Today they got no water and any water they get is supplied on water tankers.

OK, back to my friend. She’s now praying that the hopes of a ‘V’ shaped recovery happens in the property market as many hope will happen with the general economy. But, that could take time in case of the real estate sector.

Summer looms as a critical period for the local markets due to the political uncertainty following the general elections. In May 2004, the market collapsed almost 30 per cent post elections, when Sonia Gandhi was chosen to lead the congress parliamentary party amid fall of the NDA. This time, the general perception is that the “third front” will emerge as king maker. If that happens, it may ensure the end of the pre-election market rally and bring about a new low thereafter.

Technical analysts say that the current bounce back is being seen as a bear market rally that will be very difficult to sustain even otherwise.  Although the recent gains in stock prices brought some cheer with a 30 per cent appreciation in global benchmark indices, the market is still not out of the woods. Corporate earnings for the fourth quarter may be worse than the third quarter and the guidance for 2009-10 by Infosys Technologies also indicates that corporate outlook may not even in 2009-10.

The bear markets prior to 2000 have recorded eight counter-trend rallies in excess of 15 per cent while the most recent 2000-02 bear market saw three counter-trend rallies of 20 per cent. The current bounce is just the third in excess of 20 per cent since May 2008.

Historically, it is to be noted that in the secular bear market in US commencing 1937, a 64 per cent counter-trend rally ensued the following year before the market eventually took out new lows, indicates Deutsche Bank Global Research.

The current counter-trend is in excess of 38 per cent since the benchmark indices, the Sensex and the Nifty, hit multiyear lows on March 9, 2009. It is also worth mentioning that counter-trend in excess of 24 per cent between October 27, 2008 and November 10, 2008 took more than three months for the October 27 low to be breached. If this pattern persists, a retest of the recent low of 8,160 in the Sensex may occur after the election results if the “third front” become king maker.