Inflation

What exactly is inflation?
Inflation is one of the several indexes used to judge a country's economy. Inflation provides or indicates how weak a country's economy is.

Why is it necessary?
Just as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is used to indicate the progress of a country's economy, the inflation index is used to show the weakness or instability of a country's economy.

What is the current situation?
At the end of the week preceding the publication of this post, inflation in India is around 11.9% which is a huge figure. For an ideal growth-oriented economy, the GDP is above 7-8% and inflation is around 3-4%. SO, what does this 11.89 % indicate? It pretty much means that the country's economy is unstable at present. There are several reasons for the rise in inflation, most of which are not in the hands of the Indian government. The reasons include rise in crude oil prices, crash of global markets, etc.

11.89% is the highest in 13 years according to various sources. Last time it happened was in 1995-96 during which India was in a position of political turmoil with 3 Prime Ministers in 6 months (Deve Gowda, IK Gujral and AB Vajpayee). The inflation was around 20% (the highest in the history of Independent India) during the dark days of Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi (1975-77). These incidents show that inflation also depends on the political stability of a country. And in such cases, it is possible for the government to control the rising inflation.

What are the effects of inflation?
Inflation leads to the increase of prices of the essential commodities like vegetables, grains, cement, books, etc because of which the middle class people are heavily affected. Rich class people can afford the increased prices and the people below the poverty line stop buying the higher-cost commodities and adjust with the lower cost ones. But the middle-class people cannot stop buying the goods (their pride wont allow them to). So, they are forced to dish out more money from their pockets.

What can the government do?
More often than not, the governments have few choices left. The only major thing any government can do is to give subsidies, decrease the price of the commodities and pay for the losses to the traders. It is generally the case where some traders take this as an opportunity and divert the available goods to black markets and create a pseudo shortage because of which the prices shoot up. The government should also make sure that this doesn't happen.

Instant Messenger Survival Guide

Not sure what all these acronyms stand for – and feel stupid asking? Here’s some you may have seen .. and a few you probably haven’t.

AFAIC as far as I am concerned
AISI as I see it
AOL assholes on line
ASAP as soon as possible
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B4 before
BCNU be seeing you
BFD big fucking deal
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BT byte this
BTW by the way
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L8R later
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LTIP laugh till I puke
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OBTW oh by the way
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RML read my lips
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SH shit happens
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TIC tongue in cheek
TISEC tongue in someone else’s cheek
VI village idiot
YGBK you gotta be kidding

Federer loses final, wins many hearts !

The scoreboard read 6-4 6-4 in favor of Nadal and many of the Federer fans have lost hope. But when The King won 4th set tie-break 10-8, I thought I would witness the greatest comeback in tennis history. But the rain and darkness played a spoilsport and Nadal won the final set 9-7. Following gives my views about the epic final.

My dear Wimbledon organizers, you are doing a great job indeed. Make the courts slower and slower and the balls heavier and heavier by the year. Kill the art of serve and volley. Who the fuck cares anyway? After all even base liners should be given equal or rather more priority as it is difficult for them to adjust to grass just 2 weeks after French Open.

Eliminate 90 min Serve-Volley classics and welcome 3 hr snoozefests. The longer the matches are aired, the more money you receive. All this can be utilized to improve home-grown British talent. So, kudos for the greatest brains. I wish Agassi was playing now and Federer in Sampras era. That way I could have watched two of the greatest players playing their best on grass. But alas, life is unfair. I dont deserve that. Rabbits have more chances of winning Wimbledon these days.

Give tennis raquets to Tyson Gay, Justin Gatlin, Asafa Powell and they will give Nadal a run for his money.

Stick the traditions up your arse. FFS, the top two players in men's tennis are playing in the final of one of the biggest sporting events with history weighing heavily on both sides and asking them to play in semi-darkness is ridiculous. I thought the organizers of the Caribbean Cricket World Cup 2008 are worse. Sorry fellas, you take the cake.

How many titles you may ever win, I'd still say Fuck you Nadal. The beastly bulls should be confined to the red dust of Roland Garros. Wimbledon is a place for class players like Boris Becker, Pete Sampras, Patrick Rafter, Goran Ivanisevic and Roger Federer (the greatest of them all) and the fiery baseliners who slug it out for each point are not welcome here. I admire your humility and like you as a person off-the-court but do not expect respect from me as a Wimbledon Champion.

*Rant Over*

My dear Federer, do not lose heart. You just don't deserve this. You should have played in one of the eras of Borg, Becker or Sampras. You will still be the Greatest tennis player of all time for the tennis connoisseurs. You are the guy with the best 'WOW' quotient. Amazing and exquisite shots flowing smooth like silk.

The scoreboard shows that HRH Federer lost by the end of the day, but what it doesn't show is the number of hearts that cried for him. And you can be sure that mine of one of those.