Author: madan

Sometimes its good to be in IT! :)

Little would this poor junior officer have thought that the good deed he was doing by sending a DVD with information to the auditors is going to have an impact on the government, the entire country and 25Million people! WOW!

I do feel very sorry for this poor soul. Imagine the pressure. The police, intelligence sources and every possible force in england is looking for 2 discs that contain the personal, bank and social security details of 25 million people. WOW! this is the biggest loss that has happened in England, and speaking from the point of security – its any hackers / identity thief’s ideal goal. 2 CDs – 25Million details. WOW!

Thast the way – that working in IT can have significant impact on small actions. Even something as small as burning 2 CDs. I must wish everyone luck here!

Brown apologises for records loss

Gordon Brown

Mr Brown said the government was working to prevent fraud

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he “profoundly regrets” the loss of 25 million child benefit records.

He told MPs he apologised for the “inconvenience” caused and said the government was working to prevent the data being used for fraud.

But Conservative leader David Cameron said the government had “failed in its first duty to protect the public”.

The child benefit data on the missing discs includes names, ages, bank and address details.

‘Mistakes’

During a heated prime minister’s questions session, Mr Brown said: “I profoundly regret and apologise for the inconvenience and worries that have been caused to millions of families who receive child benefits.


“When mistakes happen in enforcing procedures, we have a duty to do everything we can to protect the public.”

But Mr Cameron said: “They will be angry that the government has failed in its first duty to protect the public.”

He added: “What people want from their prime minister on a day like this is to show some broad shoulders, be the big man and accept some responsibility.”

Earlier, the Tories questioned whether Alistair Darling was “up to the job” of chancellor.

Mr Darling said he “deeply regretted” what had happened, but stressed there was no evidence of misuse of the data.


Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Darling said his confidence had been “shaken” by what he described as a “catastrophic” incident.

”There’s no doubt in my mind there have been very, very serious breaches here.

“People are entitled to trust the government to look after information that is given to it – for child benefit or any other purposes – and that did not happen here,” said the chancellor.

He said the information, which was on two CDs, should “should never, ever have left the building in which it was stored”.

Mr Darling denied the problem was related to the merger of the Revenue and Customs departments and staff cuts, as claimed by staff members in e-mails to the BBC.

‘Difficult’

He also hit back at claims his own position as chancellor was in doubt amid continuing difficulties with Northern Rock, which has seen its share price plunge a further 15%.

“I am not going to start running away from things when things get difficult,” he told Today.


Referring to the data loss crisis, he said: “It is difficult, unwelcome in every respect, but I am determined to see it through”.

Earlier, Mr Darling said banks were monitoring all 7.25 million bank accounts whose details were on the discs, which contained the personal details of all child benefit recipients in the UK.

People are being urged by both the chancellor and banks to keep a close eye on their accounts “for unusual activity”.

Mr Darling said that anyone who lost money as a result of any misuse of the data would be covered for losses under the banking code.


On Tuesday the chancellor told MPs how the entire child benefit database was sent by a junior official from HMRC in Washington, Tyne and Wear, to the audit office in London through courier TNT on 18 October.

The chancellor said the official had broken the rules by downloading the data to disc and sending it by unrecorded delivery.

But he reassured those affected that police had no reason to believe the discs had found their way into the wrong hands, nor did they have any evidence of it being used for “fraudulent purposes or criminal activity.”

Buck questions

Bosses at the Revenue were not told about what had happened until 8 November and Mr Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown learned about the situation on 10 November.

The chancellor said he had delayed an emergency statement to the Commons because banks and building societies had asked for time to prepare and make sure security procedures were in place.


The officials involved waited before informing their superiors in the hope that the discs would be found.

The Metropolitan Police is leading the search, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which oversees the HMRC, is investigating the security breach.

A TNT spokesman said that because the discs had not been sent as recorded it was not possible to verify if they had ever been posted. He added that the company would not be responsible for any losses incurred.

Liberal Democrat Acting Leader Vince Cable asked: “Where does the buck stop in this government?”

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7104945.stm

After school – keeps crime down?

A recent news article about the after-school program that teaches school kids football, and now gives them a change in their lifestyles – is quite touching, given the circumstances in todays news.

There are many after-school programs – that essentially work to keep the kids busy – and give them something to look forward to – either to learn music, or to study. Giving them a medium to express themselves- artistically or otherwise, does in turn reduce crime rates. Essentially since kids are off the streets.

Chennai: A group of young footballers from the slums of Chennai are gearing up to play football with the Manchester United team. The children from the slums of Vyasarpadi in Chennai- an area known for its extreme poverty and high crime rates – now have a chance to meet their football idols from the Manchester United team and train under them. The training schedule has been made possible due to the efforts of a local football enthusiast and the NGO CRY. A chance to meet their idols has the youngsters excited. When asked about his idol Dhileepan, one of the youngsters, says, “Ronaldo.” Another youngster A Raj says Cristiano Ronaldo is his idol. The young players are practicing for the finals of the Manchester United League selections to be held from November 24-27. If selected, four of them will fly to Manchester to get trained by their heroes. And they owe this to Umapathi, an Income Tax department employee, who was also born in the slums. He is teaching the young protégés the power of dreams through football. After training them for free for the last 10 years he says he can see the difference. “The crime rate has gone down in Vyasarpadi. These kids now realise they have a chance to make it big. So they don’t go loitering around and stealing. They play football instead,” Umapathi, the football coach, says

And this is what a little hope can do to a human being. “We’re all going to school now because in London they speak only English. So to be able to communicate, we need to know the language,” one of the youngster Ramkumar, says. “We used to loiter around earlier chewing tobacco and playing with marbles. Now we come to train. We have hope now,” Hridayaraj adds. And even all of them can’t make it to Manchester the journey so far has surely been dream-like.

about Low Cost carriers

The general misconception of LCC are that they are “cheap”. The low cost carriers, were essentially on the costing front, that established themselves on different cost structures. Howver, we are a society that equate Low cost to cheap. And that is just that. The jostling and the pushing that I experienced from the passenger end was somewhat absymal, and the seating space on the airline was incorrigable. I would call them the “flying chicken coups”. They push in as many people as possible, and make sure that your “comfort” levels are in the negative.
Now, the new issue, giving them copies of one credit card, is rather ridiculous, as if you are booking a flight ticket for a person from another city, you need to scan the card, sign it, and then rescan the letter and send it to them. Why? is flying a sin?

I might not fly by the LCCs again, but they do are making flights affordable.

The planes also are scary- Every time i have traveled there seems to be some new noise coming thru. Wonder when they will be servicing their planes?

10 types of programmers- which one are you?

a very interesting blog on techrepublic. All due credit to the author. I found it quite hillarious and.. well… true! 🙂 (View PDF of document here)

Programmers enjoy a reputation for being peculiar people. In fact, even within the development community, there are certain programmer archetypes that other programmers find strange. Here are 10 types of programmers you are likely to run across. Can you think of any more?


#1: Gandalf

This programmer type looks like a short-list candidate to play Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. He (or even she!) has a beard halfway to his knees, a goofy looking hat, and may wear a cape or a cloak in the winter. Luckily for the team, this person is just as adept at working magic as Gandalf. Unluckily for the team, they will need to endure hours of stories from Gandalf about how he or she to walk uphill both ways in the snow to drop off the punch cards at the computer room. The Gandalf type is your heaviest hitter, but you try to leave them in the rear and call them up only in times of desperation.

#2: The Martyr

In any other profession, The Martyr is simply a “workaholic.” But in the development field, The Martyr goes beyond that and into another dimension. Workaholics at least go home to shower and sleep. The Martyr takes pride in sleeping at the desk amidst empty pizza boxes. The problem is, no one ever asked The Martyr to work like this. And he or she tries to guilt-trip the rest of the team with phrases like, “Yeah, go home and enjoy dinner. I’ll finish up the next three week’s worth of code tonight.”

#3: Fanboy

Watch out for Fanboy. If he or she corners you, you’re in for a three-hour lecture about the superiority of Dragonball Z compared to Gundam Wing, or why the Playstation 3 is better than the XB 360. Fanboy’s workspace is filled with posters, action figures, and other knick-knacks related to some obsession, most likely imported from Japan. Not only are Fanboys obnoxious to deal with, they often put so much time into the obsession (both in and out of the office) that they have no clue when it comes to doing what they were hired to do.

#4: Vince Neil

This 40-something is a throwback to 1984 in all of the wrong ways. Sporting big hair, ripped stonewashed jeans, and a bandana here or there, Vince sits in the office humming Bon Jovi and Def Leppard tunes throughout the workday. This would not be so bad if “Pour Some Sugar on Me” was not so darned infectious.

Vince is generally a fun person to work with, and actually has a ton of experience, but just never grew up. But Vince becomes a hassle when he or she tries living the rock ‘n roll lifestyle to go with the hair and hi-tops. It’s fairly hard to work with someone who carries a hangover to work every day.

#5: The Ninja

The Ninja is your team’s MVP, and no one knows it. Like the legendary assassins, you do not know that The Ninja is even in the building or working, but you discover the evidence in the morning. You fire up the source control system and see that at 4 AM, The Ninja checked in code that addresses the problem you planned to spend all week working on, and you did not even know that The Ninja was aware of the project! See, while you were in Yet Another Meeting, The Ninja was working.

Ninjas are so stealthy, you might not even know their name, but you know that every project they’re on seems to go much more smoothly. Tread carefully, though. The Ninja is a lone warrior; don’t try to force him or her to work with rank and file.

#6: The Theoretician

The Theoretician knows everything there is to know about programming. He or she can spend four hours lecturing about the history of an obscure programming language or providing a proof of how the code you wrote is less than perfectly optimal and may take an extra three nanoseconds to run. The problem is, The Theoretician does not know a thing about software development. When The Theoretician writes code, it is so “elegant” that mere mortals cannot make sense of it. His or her favorite technique is recursion, and every block of code is tweaked to the max, at the expense of timelines and readability.

The Theoretician is also easily distracted. A simple task that should take an hour takes Theoreticians three months, since they decide that the existing tools are not sufficient and they must build new tools to build new libraries to build a whole new system that meets their high standards. The Theoretician can be turned into one of your best players, if you can get him or her to play within the boundaries of the project itself and stop spending time working on The Ultimate Sorting Algorithm.

#7: The Code Cowboy

The Code Cowboy is a force of nature that cannot be stopped. He or she is almost always a great programmer and can do work two or three times faster than anyone else. The problem is, at least half of that speed comes by cutting corners. The Code Cowboy feels that checking code into source control takes too long, storing configuration data outside of the code itself takes too long, communicating with anyone else takes too long… you get the idea.

The Code Cowboy’s code is a spaghetti code mess, because he or she was working so quickly that the needed refactoring never happened. Chances are, seven pages’ worth of core functionality looks like the “don’t do this” example of a programming textbook, but it magically works. The Code Cowboy definitely does not play well with others. And if you put two Code Cowboys on the same project, it is guaranteed to fail, as they trample on each other’s changes and shoot each other in the foot.

Put a Code Cowboy on a project where hitting the deadline is more important than doing it right, and the code will be done just before deadline every time. The Code Cowboy is really just a loud, boisterous version of The Ninja. While The Ninja executes with surgical precision, The Code Cowboy is a raging bull and will gore anything that gets in the way.

#8: The Paratrooper

You know those movies where a sole commando is air-dropped deep behind enemy lines and comes out with the secret battle plans? That person in a software development shop is The Paratrooper. The Paratrooper is the last resort programmer you send in to save a dying project. Paratroopers lack the patience to work on a long-term assignment, but their best asset is an uncanny ability to learn an unfamiliar codebase and work within it. Other programmers might take weeks or months to learn enough about a project to effectively work on it; The Paratrooper takes hours or days. Paratroopers might not learn enough to work on the core of the code, but the lack of ramp-up time means that they can succeed where an entire team might fail.

#9: Mediocre Man

“Good enough” is the best you will ever get from Mediocre Man. Don’t let the name fool you; there are female varieties of Mediocre Man too. And he or she always takes longer to produce worse code than anyone else on the team. “Slow and steady barely finishes the race” could describe Mediocre Man’s projects. But Mediocre Man is always just “good enough” to remain employed.

When you interview this type, they can tell you a lot about the projects they’ve been involved with but not much about their actual involvement. Filtering out the Mediocre Man type is fairly easy: Ask for actual details of the work they’ve done, and they suddenly get a case of amnesia. Let them into your organization, though, and it might take years to get rid of them.

#10: The Evangelist

No matter what kind of environment you have, The Evangelist insists that it can be improved by throwing away all of your tools and processes and replacing them with something else. The Evangelist is actually the opposite of The Theoretician. The Evangelist is outspoken, knows an awful lot about software development, but performs very little actual programming.

The Evangelist is secretly a project manager or department manager at heart but lacks the knowledge or experience to make the jump. So until The Evangelist is able to get into a purely managerial role, everyone else needs to put up with his or her attempts to revolutionize the workplace.

History repeats itself

A rather interesting article on IHT, the parallel between the french revolution of the 18th century and the current state of the world.

Much as George W. Bush’s presidency was ineluctably shaped by Sept. 11, 2001, so the outbreak of the French Revolution was symbolized by the events of one fateful day, July 14, 1789. And though 18th-century France may seem impossibly distant to contemporary Americans, future historians examining Bush’s presidency within the longer sweep of political and intellectual history may find the French Revolution useful in understanding his curious brand of 21st-century conservatism.

Soon after the storming of the Bastille, pro-Revolutionary elements came together to form an association that would become known as the Jacobin Club, an umbrella group of politicians, journalists and citizens dedicated to advancing the principles of the Revolution.

The Jacobins shared a defining ideological feature. They divided the world between pro- and anti-Revolutionaries – the defenders of liberty versus its enemies. The French Revolution, as they understood it, was the great event that would determine whether liberty was to prevail on the planet or whether the world would fall back into tyranny and despotism.

The stakes could not be higher, and on these matters there could be no nuance or hesitation. One was either for the Revolution or for tyranny.

By 1792, France was confronting the hostility of neighboring countries, debating how to react. The Jacobins were divided. On one side stood the journalist and political leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, who argued for war.

Brissot understood the war as preventive – “une guerre offensive,” he called it – to defeat the despotic powers of Europe before they could organize their counter-Revolutionary strike. It would not be a war of conquest, as Brissot saw it, but a war “between liberty and tyranny.”

Pro-war Jacobins believed theirs was a mission not for a single nation or even for a single continent. It was, in Brissot’s words, “a crusade for universal liberty.”

Brissot’s opponents were skeptical. “No one likes armed missionaries,” declared Robespierre, with words as apt then as they remain today. Not long after the invasion of Austria, the military tide turned quickly against France.

The United States, France’s “sister republic,” refused to enter the war on France’s side. It was an infuriating show of ingratitude, as the French saw it, coming from a fledgling nation they had magnanimously saved from foreign occupation in a previous war.

Confronted by a monarchical Europe united in opposition to revolutionary France – old Europe, they might have called it – the Jacobins rooted out domestic political dissent. It was the beginning of the period that would become infamous as the Terror.

Among the Jacobins’ greatest triumphs was their ability to appropriate the rhetoric of patriotism – Le Patriote Français was the title of Brissot’s newspaper – and to promote their political program through a tightly coordinated network of newspapers, political hacks, pamphleteers and political clubs.

Even the Jacobins’ dress distinguished “true patriots”: those who wore badges of patriotism like the liberty cap on their heads, or the cocarde tricolore (a red, white and blue rosette) on their hats or even on their lapels.

Insisting that their partisan views were identical to the national will, believing that only they could save France from apocalyptic destruction, Jacobins could not conceive of legitimate dissent. Political opponents were treasonous, stabbing France and the Revolution in the back.

To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government’s police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 – “domicilary visits,” they were called – were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, “when the homeland is in danger.”

Robespierre – now firmly committed to the most militant brand of Jacobinism – condemned the “treacherous insinuations” cast by those who questioned “the excessive severity of measures prescribed by the public interest.” He warned his political opponents, “This severity is alarming only for the conspirators, only for the enemies of liberty.” Such measures, then as now, were undertaken to protect the nation – indeed, to protect liberty itself.

If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty.” Saint-Just’s pithy phrase (like Bush’s variant, “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself”) could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.

On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.

Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term “terrorist” has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hated freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to “Islamofascism.”

A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur.

a long drive.

Working for a software company in chennai, does sometimes entitle you to a long and arduous bus journey to and from offices. Sometime, it can be equated to cattle… you arrive in office and you will see all busses coming, dropping employees off and leaving.. so they swarm… colorful clothes filling hallways through the campus.

Well, once in a while you want to break out of that mould- and you decide to drive to office.

last night, my wife tells me that she has a meeting at 9Am, which is INSANITY. Considering her office is about 55 Km from home. So, in order to get there at that time, i would have to drop her at the railway station by about 640. Which was insane. So I said, why not i drop you???
Little did I think- she said “ok!”

anyways, i decided to give my good’ol lancer a run on the highway. We left home at 640, and started driving. Being this early, we managed to beat all the office/college/usual traffic and covered the 55kms in about 1 hr.

It was an awesome drive, wind blowing, crusing at 100, bliss… wish I could just drive on and on. We reached her office and I had to then drive over to mine, which is on the other side of town, another 50+kms. This route is however not on the highway but through a reserved forest region.

I guess, one of the most relaxing drives, is when you can see the road, not a soul and forests on both sides, and you know you are in the city.

It was bliss, RadioCity was cranking some nice rock numbers, put the windows down, and was cruising…untill i reached the “IT Highway”
to put the frustration in a nut shell, it took me over an hour to complete a 11km stretch. In which I think i banged the undeside of my car, went through about hub-cap deep water, got frustrated because of STUPID drivers and basically threw a wet blanket over the state of mind I was in.

Made me want to think, why are people so impatient? there was kilometer long pileup of traffic, and some jackass decides that he can go, and goes… blocking the traffic even more. And if there is an empty stretch, vehicles will go.

To complicate things, the IT highway is under construction, so various parts are either filled with gravel (to increase height) or with gravel dust, to add a foundation. Junta tries driving and vehicles are getting stuck,. Busses, trucks, sumos, bikes…everyone, but they still keep coming. Each thinkgin that they can get out of it better than the previous person.

The best picture- there is a big mess of traffic stuck in this mud and a tractor(HMT type) driver is laughing and driving slowly.. put put put puput puput puput put… I could feel his joy – like the tortoise in the race between the hare.

I finally rolled into office at 920, after completing nearly 120 kms. but it was fun.

Diaspora Dilemma- Taking credit!

Many a times, I wonder, what is it that makes people adapt? to surroundings, to people and most importantly to situations? The whole – bandwagon concept- jumping on when the wagon gets going, is nice, but how much can the bandwagon actually take? the latest of the series- and something that has always intrigued me- our “IndianNess”. What makes us Indian, is it our culture, our heritage, is it our skin color or the way we think?

OR – is it simply what the society makes us out to be?

Bobby Jindal’s win as the governor or Louisiana has a very large part of the country jumping for joy. but the question is why? Is he Indian? well, I dont know him personally, but from spending 40 years there, I think not. The again, it comes back to the question, what is indian?
He’s been born there- so tat makes him an american citizen. His parents “immigrated” there 40 years ago – that in effect is a statement that says that they wanted out of this country, hence the move. Now that he is the good ol’ gov’ – the people are extatic. I wonder if the poles, or brazillians or even mexicans jump around. Did they – when Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was appointed? I dont think so.

That’s the way we have been. As a nation, we are unique in terms of our appearances and mannerisms. I guess we might be the only society that prides our roots even after we immigrate to a new culture. Or, I might just be fantasizing.

We are a great society. And thats one thing that I am proud of. I know, that below all the bickering and squwabling, we as a society are eons ahead of our time.

India in the future?

In a recent interview with Lee Kuan Yew – the much respected Minister Mentor of Singapore, he had a very interesting point to make about India:

Lee: They are a different mix, never mind their political structures. They are not one people. You can make a speech in Delhi; [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh can speak in Hindi and 30, 40 percent of the country can understand him. He makes a speech in English and maybe 30 percent of the elite understand him.

In China, when a leader speaks, 90 percent will understand him. They all speak one language, they are one people. In India, they have got 32 official languages and in fact, 300-plus different languages. You look at Europe, 25 languages, 27 countries, how do you? The European Parliament? Had we not moved into one language here in Singapore, we would not have been able to govern this country.

It is our nemisis. Our greatest strength appears to be waning and has not become our Achilles heel. But why? Do we blame politicians? I personally believe they are the ones to blame. Stoking the “outsider” flame in order to gather votes- evidence in Karnataka, Maharashtra and many more states.

The IT boom and the resilient economy has thrust two very important aspects about our country into the light. Our inherent technical and economic prowess, as well as the widening rift between the have’s and have-nots.

The in equal spread of wealth is not helping the country as the so called “middle class” is now moving forward with a renewed purchasing power, and the so called “sub-prime” are working harder but seeing no results. But the question is: Are they?

They might be: the standard of living is still going up, with the cost of credit coming down [strictly in the urban scenario], affordability is going up. However, just as they are able to afford a new white good, others are able to afford something bigger. The race to get a better and bigger object is leaving those in the sidelines and watching.

Our greatest asset was and is our diversity. We are a proud nation of languages, communities and cultures; however, that is our greatest disadvantage. Our official language is … Hindi yes – but why is it that no signboard in Tamilnadu was allowed to be in Hindi? The whole anti-hindi drive continued and spread to various parts of Kerala and Karnataka as well. For what? Are we proud of our heritage as a nation or as states?

Kuan Lee’s statement hit the nail on the head- when Manmohan Singh speaks in Hindi – very few understand. We need to work together as a country, to bringing up the country. Not as a state or a SEZ in a city.

India in the future?

In a recent interview with Lee Kuan Yew – the much respected Minister Mentor of Singapore, he had a very interesting point to make about India:

Lee: They are a different mix, never mind their political structures. They are not one people. You can make a speech in Delhi; [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh can speak in Hindi and 30, 40 percent of the country can understand him. He makes a speech in English and maybe 30 percent of the elite understand him.

In China, when a leader speaks, 90 percent will understand him. They all speak one language, they are one people. In India, they have got 32 official languages and in fact, 300-plus different languages. You look at Europe, 25 languages, 27 countries, how do you? The European Parliament? Had we not moved into one language here in Singapore, we would not have been able to govern this country.

It is our nemisis. Our greatest strength appears to be waning and has not become our Achilles heel. But why? Do we blame politicians? I personally believe they are the ones to blame. Stoking the “outsider” flame in order to gather votes- evidence in Karnataka, Maharashtra and many more states.

The IT boom and the resilient economy has thrust two very important aspects about our country into the light. Our inherent technical and economic prowess, as well as the widening rift between the have’s and have-nots.

The in equal spread of wealth is not helping the country as the so called “middle class” is now moving forward with a renewed purchasing power, and the so called “sub-prime” are working harder but seeing no results. But the question is: Are they?

They might be: the standard of living is still going up, with the cost of credit coming down [strictly in the urban scenario], affordability is going up. However, just as they are able to afford a new white good, others are able to afford something bigger. The race to get a better and bigger object is leaving those in the sidelines and watching.

Our greatest asset was and is our diversity. We are a proud nation of languages, communities and cultures; however, that is our greatest disadvantage. Our official language is … Hindi yes – but why is it that no signboard in Tamilnadu was allowed to be in Hindi? The whole anti-hindi drive continued and spread to various parts of Kerala and Karnataka as well. For what? Are we proud of our heritage as a nation or as states?

Kuan Lee’s statement hit the nail on the head- when Manmohan Singh speaks in Hindi – very few understand. We need to work together as a country, to bringing up the country. Not as a state or a SEZ in a city.

India Reports? or

So what do you do when you need to fill up ColumCentimeters. Advertise.

find the two snapshots one of CNNIBN a leading indian news website and a foreign website in IHT..
Pretty interesting are the quality of documents, articles and reports on IHT that CNNIBNs site is pale in comparison.

The question is – why do such sites exist? what news do i get? that a college student got thrown off the 4th floor? or that South Korean and North Korean leaders are meeting for the first time. Also, its the first time that a minister has driven down from Seoul to Pyongyang. Pretty interesting. He got off the border, walked across the yellow line which says peace and then drove for 3 hours. But none of this is on CNNIBN, instead, they have stupid pictures of some actress saying that she trust some other actor.

Gwad!