The Sachar report: A flawed number game
By Nitish Sengupta

The Sachar Committee Report, an often-quoted 404-page document, is disappointing, both in its method of analysis and in the way it has collected and presented some dubious statistics. A fundamental fact that has been ignored is that almost 95 per cent of elite Muslims in India, who largely depended on jobs, went over to Pakistan after Partition. Those who stayed back in India were, by and large, the rural community, the self-employed and the service providers. A great majority of them, under the influence of powerful mullahs, kept away from modern education and, in consequence, modern jobs and professions. Thus, the figures for Muslim percentage in government jobs practically started from a zero base. This point should have been mentioned in the report’s overall analysis. Its omission is a serious statistical error.

Then again, the Committee conveniently ignored the fact that the social and economic position of a community does not necessarily depend on the jobs that its members hold in the government or the organised sector. If that had been the case, I am afraid the position of Parsees, to take one example, would be extremely backward. The Sachar Committee’s Report completely ignored that there is a much larger number of self-employed people, tradesmen and service providers among the Muslims who do not seek government jobs.

Another area where it has gone completely wrong is in creating an impression that India’s entire educational and economic system has gone out of its way to exclude Muslims. Whereas, in actual fact, we have all gone out of our way to give placement to them wherever they merit selection. There are indeed, some very serious errors, on the statistical front.

Prof A.R. Hashim has pointed out that in looking at the position of Hindus in general, the Sachar Committee first excluded the Scheduled Castes and Dalits from the general Hindu community and then compared them with the Muslim community. The Committee also pointed out that the position of the Scheduled Castes and Dalits is little or no different from that of the Muslim community. To exclude such a big chunk from the Hindu community and thereafter compare the residual Hindu community with the Muslims is a serious oversight.

Another Muslim scholar, Prof Imtiaz Hussain, also trashed the report on the ground that it ignored the status of Muslims in terms of jobs held in all the South Indian states and others like Gujarat and West Bengal. He pointed out that in all the southern states the Muslims are much better off than what the Sachar Report has made them to be. He questioned the statistics presented by the Sachar Committee in relation to the Census data which shows that the Muslims are better off in several states.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, chief minister of West Bengal, has pointed out that the report ignores the Muslim peasantry who benefited from the state’s land reforms programme. Insofar as the organised private sector is concerned, one point which has escaped the Committee’s attention is that many of our business organisations are still dominated by the caste system. Consequently, a company dominated by banias generally looks out for banias. In that process too Muslims and minorities suffer as much as people belonging to other Hindu castes. This need not necessarily be an anti-Muslim bias.

Clearly, Justice Sachar simply chose to ignore available evidence to make out that the Muslim community is not doing any better than the other communities. He should have taken into account examples like Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, the richest corporate Indian, Habil Khorakiwala of Wockhardt, the Cipla group, or for that matter, people like Habib Rahman, chairman ITC Hotels, Israt Hussain, a top associate of Ratan Tata, and many others. He should also have objectively made a community-wise analysis of the employees of such successful enterprises as Azim Premji’s Wipro. Is merit their main criterion for recruitment? Does this amount to discrimination and anti-Muslim bias? Or do successful Muslim industrialists reserve jobs for fellow Muslims irrespective of their merit?

I also wish the Sachar Committee had taken into account the brass manufacturers and traders of Moradabad, the glass workers of Ferozabad, the textile operators of Bhiwandi, the carpet makers of Kashmir and the Zari workers of Varanasi. Sadly, these people do not find any mention in the Sachar Report which chose to concentrate only on certain levels of government jobs and worked out the position of Muslims only on that account.

That is not all. The Committee has not taken into account the overwhelming eminent position occupied by Muslims in Bollywood, including the fact that almost 50 per cent of top actors and actresses are Muslims, if not more. Does that smack of discrimination?

It remains a mystery as to why the government did not think it appropriate to assign this work to the National Minorities Commission or even to its own department of minority affairs and, instead, chose to appoint a separate committee. Equally mysterious is the fact that without choosing to discuss this matter in the country’s sovereign Parliament or allowing an informal debate, the government has announced that it has accepted all the recommendations of the Sachar Committee.

Neither the government nor the Indian nation at large deserves the accusation by the Sachar Committee that they have been anti-Muslim all along. Indian Muslims occupy a pride of place in our democracy, and Gujarat (2002) and Babri Masjid (1992) are exceptions, not the rule.

Taken all together, one has to come to the sad conclusion that the Committee has erred both in its analysis and its conclusions. Mr Justice Rajinder Sachar has been a very respected friend for many years. But I am afraid, in this report he has side stepped from the position of a judge and taken on the rule of a lawyer who was assigned a certain brief and went on to collect evidence which suited that brief.

n Dr Nitish Sengupta, an academic and an author, is a former Member of Parliament and a former secretary to the Government of India

US financial flight ended with a thud
By Thomas L. Friedman

I have a friend who reminds me that if you jump off the top of an 80-storey building, for 79 storeys you can actually think you’re flying. It’s the sudden stop at the end that always gets you.

When I think of the financial-services boom, bubble and bust that America has just gone through, I often think about that image. We thought we were flying. Well, we just met the sudden stop at the end. The laws of gravity, it turns out, still apply. You cannot tell tens of thousands of people that they can have the American dream - a home, for no money down and nothing to pay for two years - without that eventually catching up to you. The Puritan ethic of hard work and saving still matters. I just hate the idea that such an ethic is more alive today in China than in US.

Our financial bubble, like all bubbles, has many complex strands feeding into it but at heart, it is really very simple. We got away from the basics - from the fundamentals of prudent lending and borrowing, where the lender and borrower maintain some kind of personal responsibility for, and personal interest in, whether the person receiving the money can actually pay it back. Instead, we fell into what some people call YBG and IBG lending: “you’ll be gone and I’ll be gone” before the bill comes due. Yes, this bubble is about us - not all of us, many Americans were way too poor to play. But it is about enough of us to say it is about America. And we will not get out of this without going back to some basics, which is why I find myself re-reading a valuable book that I wrote about once before, called, How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything in Business (and in Life). Its author, Dov Seidman, is the CEO of LRN, which helps companies build ethical corporate cultures.

Seidman basically argues that in our hyperconnected and transparent world, how you do things matters more than ever, because so many more people can now see how you do things, be affected by how you do things and tell others how you do things on the Internet anytime, for no cost and without restraint.

“In a connected world,” Seidman said to me, “countries, governments and companies also have character, and their character - how they do what they do, how they keep promises, how they make decisions, how things really happen inside, how they connect and collaborate, how they engender trust, how they relate to their customers, to the environment and to the communities in which they operate - is now their fate.”

We got away from these hows. We became more connected than ever in recent years, but the connections were actually very loose. That is, we went away from a world in which, if you wanted a mortgage to buy a home, you needed to show real income and a credit record into a world where a banker could sell you a mortgage and make gobs of money upfront and then offload your mortgage to a bundler who put a whole bunch together, chopped them into bonds and sold some to banks as far afield as Iceland.

The bank writing the mortgage got away from how because it was just passing you along to a bundler. And the investment bank bundling these mortgages got away from how because it didn’t know you, but it knew it was lucrative to bundle your mortgage with others. And the credit-rating agency got away from “how” because there was just so much money to be made in giving good ratings to these bonds, why delve too deeply? And the bank in Iceland got away from how because, everyone else was buying the stuff and returns were great so why not? “UBS bank’s motto is: ‘You and us.’ But the world we created was actually ‘You and nobody’ - nobody was really connected in value terms,” said Seidman. “Parts of Wall Street got disconnected from investing in human endeavour - helping business to scale and take up new ideas.” Instead, they started to just engineer money from money. “So some of the smartest CEO’s did not know what some of their smartest people were doing.”

Charles Mackay wrote a classic history of financial crises called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, first published in London in 1841. “Money… has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

And so it must be with us. We need to get back to collaborating the old-fashioned way. That is, people making decisions based on business judgment, experience, prudence, clarity of communications and thinking about how - not just how much.

Speed-dating civilisations, courtesy the new Russia
By S. Nihal Singh

The world is conscious of the Davos gatherings, but less familiar is the annual event, Dialogue of Civilisations. Meeting in the salubrious Greek island of Rhodes, it is the other Davos, a Russian-sponsored one to boot, but one encompassing much of the world, including Israel and the United States. Unlike last year, Iranians and Saudi Arabians did not come, but the diversity of representation, numbering in the hundreds, was impressive and the meeting split into panels to wrestle with the issues of the day.

The eminence grise of the conference was V.I. Yakunin, whose co-chairman is India’s Jagdish Kapur. It was, however, the former who laid down the law and when an Israeli launched into an attack on Iran at the concluding session last Sunday, he was administered a slap on the wrist. The conference, he said, was not one of States, but one representing civilisations, and people could not be held responsible for their government’s declarations. But there was plenty of Bush-bashing in the panels, on religion for one, and otherwise. Damir Mukhetdinov, rector of the Islamic Institue of Nizhny Novgorod in Russia, raised the question of the Archbishop of the Orthodox Church of Georgia blessing Georgia in the fighting in South Ossetia.

A Chinese of the Beijing Pedagogical Institute, Baichun Zhang, raised the awkward point of not being an atheist but in the process of “evolving” as a religious man. And the Chinese people, he declared in the presence of uncomfortable Orthodox clerics, could live without God. He held his ground despite protestations of the clergy, one of whose members said that the Chinese civilisation was based on religion. Confucius was sceptical of religion, Mr Zhang maintained.

The setting was enlivened by the splendid robes and flowing beards of the Orthodox clergy, who actively participated in the discussions. Predictably, it was the Vicar Bishop of the Serbian Patriarchate, Reverend Anastasiy, who was harshest in his criticism of the US’ policies towards Yugoslavia and Kosovo. But the American participants were given full play and spoke passionately about their humanitarian projects. Bishop Gregory Holley of the American New Life Foundation was eloquent in how his organisation set about saving people around the world and their souls.

The Russian agenda of the conference was not hidden. For one thing, the Russian World projected its mission to spread Russian culture around the world and connect with the diaspora. The latter task is particularly interesting because Russians who left their country at the advent of Communism were viewed as traitors, unlike now when they are welcomed with open arms. In fact, the motto of Russian World is taken from the famous dissident poetess Anna Akmatova. The point is that it is a new Russia taking its strides in the world after burying Communism and the humiliating years of chaos in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union.

The size of the Russian diaspora is amazing. There are four million in the US, half-a-million in New York City alone. Russian World recognises that Russians abroad have contradictory feelings to their motherland; some are not sympathetic to it. But their love for Russian culture is unconditional, the culture that is untainted by the Communist past. Its spokesman says that the Russian World is not nostalgic about the past; rather, it is all about the future.

Russia has come to the realisation that an attribute of being a great power in today’s world requires not merely economic and military power but also international networking, based on a variety of foundations which include interacting with their counterparts in different parts of the world. It is, perhaps, symptomatic of the Russian attempt at multi-polarity that China was given two days of round table discussions on its past, present and future. India was adequately represented and Europe was very prominent.

An impressive catch of the conference was the presence of the former Georgian foreign minister, Salome Zurabishvili, now the leader of the Way of Georgia Party in opposition to President Mikheil Saakashvili. Inevitably, the Russian-Georgian clashes came into play as did the question of Kosovo. Despite Mr Yakunin’s pleading, national viewpoints could not be obliterated although there were voices of reason seeking a way out of dogmatic positions. The nation state is very much alive.

What then is the value of jamborees such as the Dialogue of Civilisations? There are several. From the Russian point of view - one shared by several other countries - it provides the alternative view to the US-centric and US-led worldview. After all, the Russians are pleading for a multilateral view of the world and see legitimacy in their efforts to show the better side of Russia’s rich cultural heritage. Second, the annual event, the sixth in a row, provides a useful setting for an intellectual discussion of contentious problems such as those of Palestine; it was interesting to hear an Israeli political philosopher, Israel Shamir, talk about the virtues of one State of Israel comprising Jews and Palestinians. An Israeli Palestinian was, however, more predictable in his approach. Jerusalem, he said, “is bleeding”.

Perhaps, the major outcome of the conference was consensus on the present world economic crisis, best summed up by the Austrian chancellor, Gusenbauer. The era of neoliberalism is fading. Confrontational strategies through military means will not work in future. The world has to solve iconological problems together. These ideas are not revolutionary in themselves but the fact that representatives of the North and South and the East and West could agree on the truth of these principles was no mean feat.

There were iconoclasts. Rostislav Rybakkov, of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Science, said there was little point in a dialogue between religions if every religion believed that its God was superior to the Gods of others. He believed in the validity of the Indian concept of “unity in diversity”. And what future can a country have, a Lebanese asked, if religion was essential to a citizen’s identity, as it was in his troubled nation.

These skirmishes aside, a pervasive sense among the conference was that there was something rotten in the state of the world. The post-World War II international economic and financial institutions had become outdated and needed change and expansion to bring in countries like India and China.

No dramatic formulae were presented to chart a course for the future, but the conferees left with the feeling that change was in the air as was the end of the era of American economic supremacy. Perhaps, the participants were as wary as Americans are about the shape of things to come.

My conscience is also my God, I always listen to it
By Samir Soni

In a temple, I fail to understand how people connect with God in the presence of thousands of people. Attaining unity with God is a private affair. After travelling a lot in search of God, I experienced Him within me. And I often meet Him when I am sitting alone or watching the sea. My father has taught me that hard work and being good to all are the ultimate ways to find God. Unfortunately, people today are fighting in the name of God.

To me religion is like a finger that points towards heavenly glory. Religion can be a good way to connect with the divine, but it wreaks havoc when people start believing that their way is the only way to reach Him.

Whenever I am unsure of things, I keep chanting “Help me God” till I fall asleep and it works perfectly for me. I feel rejuvenated when I wake up.

Whenever we are in trouble, it is God’s way of testing us. He puts us in an ocean knowing that we can’t swim. And just when we are about to drown, He pulls us back. But then, He repeats the same till we learn to swim. He strengthens us so that we can solve problems. Over the years, my God has taken the shape of my conscience. I listen to my conscience and don’t do what it doesn’t permit to.

(As told to Fozia Yasin)
- Samir Soni is an actor

My Nobel campaign
By Maureen Dowd

I’m not sending Paul Krugman Champagne.

He won the Nobel prize in economics this week, and while I’m sure that’s delightful for him, it has raised the bar to an impossible height for his fellow columnists at the Times. We used to strive for Pulitzers, or simply regional awards, or even just try to top each other on the paper’s most emailed list.

Now we’re supposed to compete for Nobels?

It’s a total disaster. Any minute, Krugman might swagger into the office wearing that big old 24-karat-gold-plated medal around his neck like a World Wrestling championship belt, talking about how beautiful Sweden is.

So I must aim higher. Much higher.

A Nobel in economics is out. I didn’t take economics in college because all the classes started at 8 am. Physics, chemistry and medicine are out. Literature? They’ve given up giving it to Americans. So it’s going to have to be the Nobel Peace Prize.

I tried to think of a horrible war going on that needed my mediation skills. And then it hit me: The conservative donnybrook over Sarah Palin, the peppery debate raging about whether she is an embarrassment who should fade away or an impudent but promising wine picked before its time. Republicans have been slugging it out over whether Palin is dragging John McCain down or whether his campaign is mishandling her. The governor’s favourability rating is now 32 per cent, according to the new Times/CBS News poll, plummeting 8 points from earlier this month, and her unfavourable rating soared 9 percentage points to 41 per cent.

On Tuesday, Matthew Dowd, the former Bush strategist who offered a famous apologia for helping get W. re-elected, offered a scorching assessment of Palin’s not being ready, saying that McCain “knows that in his gut. And when this race is over, that is something he will have to live with… He put somebody unqualified on that ballot, and he put the country at risk”.

Christopher Hitchens endorsed Barack Obama on Slate calling Palin’s conduct “a national disgrace” and writing: “Given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party’s right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama’s position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses”.

Christopher Buckley endorsed Obama on the Daily Beast, writing of McCain’s embrace of Palin: “What on earth can he have been thinking?” (The endorsement led to Buckley’s resigning from the National Review, founded by his father.)

On The Colbert Report on Monday, the conservative columnist Kathleen Parker stuck by her assertion, which she said caused the base to treat her like a traitor, that Palin should have bowed out. She said she’d gotten some secret emails from Republicans in the White House agreeing with her. William Kristol, a Palin fan who thinks she has been horribly managed, wrote in the Times that McCain should fire his campaign for malpractice. David Brooks, speaking at an Atlantic Magazine event, called Palin “a fatal cancer to the Republican Party,” bemoaning the fact that she did not fit in with the late William Buckley’s desire to have a party that celebrated ideas and learning.

I started my campaign to win a Nobel prize by trying to make peace between the two conservatives at odds on our Op-Ed page. I called Kristol and asked him if he thought Palin could grow into the next Reagan, reminding him that he was outnumbered by conservatives recoiling from her. “Conservative eggheads are my friends,” he said, “but politically they’re a contrarian indicator. If they’re down on Palin, things are looking up for her. With all due respect for my fellow eggheads, they are underestimating the importance of a natural political gift or star quality. It matters a lot”.

He suggested that she has a shrewdness and toughness - “like Andrew Jackson” - beyond what you get with a Yale law degree or Harvard business degree. “That may be hard for my conservative intellectual friends to grasp,” he said. I didn’t seem to be soothing the waters. I called Brooks, who conceded: “Her political delivery skills are incredible”. So you agree with Kristol that she might be a star in the party? Could Palin be the nominee in 2012?

“The short answer is no,” Brooks said. “She has reinforced the worst of talk-radio culture. The party will need a leader to strike out in a new direction, a fiscally conservative President more like a high-tech Teddy Roosevelt. Someone with gravitas”.

So much for brokering a peace accord. I’ll have to leave the eggheads boiling.

 

Deccan Chronicle

FM sops to hike liquidity
 

New Delhi, Oct. 15: The finance minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, on Wednesday announced more measures to ease the tight liquidity situation. These include, immediate package of Rs 25,000 crore to banks under farm waiver scheme and increase cap on foreign investment in corporate bonds.ῠ These steps came after a high-powered meeting chaired by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on Tuesday, which discussed measures further required to be taken in view of the global financial crisis.

“Under the agricultural debt waiver and debt relief scheme, the government had agreed to provide a sum of Rs 25,000 crore as the first installment to the commercial banks, RRBs and cooperative credit institutions . It is felt that this money should be provided immediately,” said Mr Chidambaram.ῠ He said that on the request of the government, the RBI has agreed to provide this amount to the lending institutions immediately. The money made available to the commercial banks is Rs 7,500 crore and to the Nabard Rs 17,500 crore. There will be no requirement of providing collateral, said the finance minister.

Mr Chidambaram said that while Indian banks were well capitalised, they would be given access to funds to raise their capital adequacy ratio up to 12 per cent.ῠ “Our banks are well capitalised. Their CRARs are well above the basel norm of eight per cent and the RBI stipulated norm of nine per cent. No bank has a capital adequacy of less than 10 per cent,” said the finance minister.

He said that the details of the capitalisation scheme are being worked out. Mr Chidambaram said that the limit of FII investment in corporate bonds will be raised from $3 billion to $6 billion. “The Sebi has informed me that it will address any requests for relaxation in the proportion of investment in equity and debt required to be maintained by an FII under current regulations,” he said.

Mr Chidambaram said that after the Reserve Bank of India, the government is also issuing an advisory to public sector banks impressing upon them the need to ensure easy drawdown against sanctioned limits and continued active parti-cipation in the inter-bank call money market.

Sensex tanks 674 pts
 

Mumbai, Oct. 15: Weak global cues saw the market open down 250 points and the Sensex plunge further after the L&T results were out. They were below street expectations and raised fe-ars that the corporate res-ults which are yet to come would be on similar lines.ῠ Short selling in the L&T stock saw the stock loose Rs 110. “The stock was ruling around Rs 950 and a few seconds before the announcement of the results the stock went to Rs 942. There was heavy shorting in the stock and several other stocks like Reliance Infra and RCom,” said Mr Alok Agarwal, head, research, K.R. Choksey Securities.

No merger for Goyal, Mallya
 

Hyderabad, Oct. 15: The Jet Airways chairman, Mr Naresh Goyal and the Kingfisher Airlines chairman, Mr Vijay Mallya, on Wednesday ruled out merger of India’s top two private airlines.ῠ The two airlines account for about 60 per cent of the market share.

“There is no equity swap. Our understanding is for purely commercial all-iance,” Dr Mallya said. Speaking to the media, Mr Goyal said that the alliance is not a marriage of convenience and the consolidation in the aviation industry is inevitable.

He said, “It (alliance) had happened in the US and the Europe and it has happened for the first time in India.” He said that the rationalisation of routes, capacity and costs are essential for survival and that market share was not the answer to profitability.ῠ “There are instances where fighting for market share made the companies go bankrupt in the US,” he added.

Mr Goyal said that the break-even point for the aviation sector is at 90 per cent capacity utilisation, while the companies are operating between 60-70 per cent. “On top of this, international airlines are dumping capacity in India, lowering their prices knowing we cannot match the competition…. therefore we have to work together,” he said. On the lay-off of 850 Jet Airways’ employees, Mr Goyal said those employees were on probation and the company has just not extended the probation.

He said even Air-India can join the alliance, if wants. Later in the day, the Union civil aviation minister, Mr Praful Patel, said the government does not have any details of the deal. “In absence of such details, we cannot comment on it,” he added.ῠ However, he said the government will not have any problem, if the alliance is within the rules and regulations of the aviation ministry.

Crude falls to $76 bbl
 

London, Oct. 15: Oil prices fell on Wednesday to their lowest in 13 months, dragged down by expectations that economic weakness will cut further into demand for crude.ῠ The US crude was down $3.76 a barrel at $74.87 by 11:04 am EDT. It touched a session low of $74.62, its lowest since September last year. London Brent crude was $4.03 down at $70.50 a barrel. Stock markets also fell sharply and the dollar weakened against the yen as global recession fears returned to centrestage after governments around the world pledged trillions of dollars for bank bailouts.

A weak performance from the US retailers provided evidence of the slowdown. The retailers suffered their biggest monthly drop in sales in more than three years in September. Recession in the world’s top consumer the US and other key markets could further dam-pen oil demand.ῠῠ

Lodha’s son to claim Birla assets
 

HARSH VARDHAN Lodha would soon move Calcutta High Court seeking conversion of his father’s proceedings for the over Rs 5,000-crore M.P. Birla group assets, for which late Rajendra Singh Lodha had filed a probate application vide a will by Ms Priyamvada Birla. “Harsh Lodha will apply in the high court for conversion of Mr R.S. Lodha’s proceedings after it reopens following puja vacation,” said Mr Lodha’s counsel, Mr Debanjan Mondal. The Birlas and Rajendra Singh Lodha had been fighting a bitter legal battle over the M.P. Birla group assets with the probate petition pending in the high court.

Tatas to pay Rs 900/sq mt to Gujarat

THE GUJARAT government on Wednesday decided to charge Rs 900 per square meter from Tatas for the 1,100 acre land given for Nano Car Project in Sanand, officials sources said. The state cabinet meeting chaired by the chief minister, Mr Narendra Modi, took this decision on the basis of recommendation of state-level land valuation committee of the Gujarat government. Tata Group will have to pay Rs 400.65 crore for the 1,100 acres of the land at the rate of Rs 900 per square metre.

Tata Motors develops LPG trucks

COUNTRY’S BIGGEST truckmaker Tata Motors on Wednesday said its Korean commercial vehicle subsidiary has developed the prototype of the 4.5 tonne LPG truck in association with the Korean government. “The vehicle was developed by Tata Daewoo in association with the ministries of commerce, industry and energy, Korea Energy Management Corporation and a consortium of 12 organisations,” Tata Motors said in a statement. The first Korean LPG medium commercial vehicle would be of 4.5 tonne payload and would conform to EURO V emission norms, it added. The truck is powered with a Liquid Phase Injection engine.

No tax for RNOR
 
By Kamal Rathi

Q. I was a non-resident In-dian for the last ten financial years (1998-99 to 2007-2008) and stayed in India for only 370 days in that period. Further, I stayed for only 307 days in India during last seven financial years. Consider-ing this, can I avail benefit of Resident Not Ordinar-ily Resident (RNOR) status for three fiscal years?

Can I claim the benefit of tax free (as available to an NRI) interest for three financial year on my investments such as NRE deposits and FCNR deposits in view of my RNOR status. Kindly tell me, if such benefits are for two or three years, if I fulfil both the conditions.

I have to inform my banks to treat me as an RNOR and also treat my deposits as the same.

Do I have to file income tax return as Resident Not Ordinarily Resident (RNOR) showing interest income and claim rebate or filing tax return is not necessary?

Dwarkanath Narayan, Mysore, Via E-mail.

A. According to Section 6(6) of the Income Tax Act, a person is said to be “not ordinarily resident” in India in any previous year if such person is an individual who has been a non-resident in India in nine out of the ten previous years preceding that year, or has during the seven previous years preceding that year been in India for a period of, or periods amounting in all to, seven hundred and twenty nine days or less.

On the above facts, you will not be liable to tax on the income from investments outside India for two financial years 2008-09 and 2009-10, since you will be able to fulfil at least one condition laid down under Section 6(6), namely being a non resident for nine years during the ten years preceding the relevant financial year.

According to Section 139(1), an individual should furnish a return of income in the prescribed form, if his total income during the previous year exceeded the maximum amount which is not chargeable to income tax.

Hence, if your total income exceeds the threshold limit, you need to file income tax return. You will be entitled to claim the admissible deductions permissible under the provisions of Income Tax Act.

(Kamal Rathi is a chartered accountant, representing Rathi & Malani, a Hyderabad-based accounting firm. Readers can mail their queries on income-tax tokamalrathi.ca@gmail.com)

Honda eyes small car biz
 

Kolkata, Oct. 15: The Indian small car market will see yet another player entering the domain with the Japanese car manufacturer Honda designing a car for domestic consumption, the automobile maker said on Wednesday.  “We are designing a small car which will be launched a few years down the line,”said Mr Jnaneswar Sen vice-president (marketing) Honda Siel Cars India, the Indian subsidiary of the Japanese company said here. The car would be placed in the B, B+ segment, Mr Sen said.

The company would launch a premium hatchback model by 2009 summer. The model has been named ‘Jazz’ and would have a engine capacity of 1200 cc, he said.  Launching the new Honda City, Mr Sen said that the company’s second production base was coming up at Rajashthan and would be ready by the end of 2009.  The company would make an investment of Rs 1,000 crore at its Rajashthan plant. The initial capacity would be 60,000 units per annum, which would be expanded up to two lakh units per annum.  Last year, the company sold 62,000 units across all its models.

Quality’s name of game
 

Bengaluru, Oct. 15: While the old slogan of ‘come to us for cost and stay with us for quality’ still holds good for the Indian IT/ITES sector, it has marched way ahead and today plays a distinct role in enhancing the customers’ business outcome. This is accomplished by increasing the customer’s revenue, collections or market share and delivering a great customer experience. The question is, how important is the role of the ‘quality’ in the business of delivering customer delight? While the question seems like a no-brainer, the answer is somewhat startling, as this correspondent discovered, at the fourth edition of the two-day, Nasscom Quality Summit, 2008 which opened in the city on Wednesday.

Says Arjun Singh, CEO (BFSI), WNS Global Services P Ltd: “While it is clear to most people the world over, that by adopting Six Sigma, corporations can save zillions of dollars by allowing for better product development, quicker time-to-market, improved processes and delivering customer delight, the stark reality in the Indian context is that companies in the BPO space score a measly three out of ten when it comes to adopting the power of Six Sigma. The problem lies in the fact that business leaders seldom buy into the Six Sigma strategy, even when it is obvious that it has the power to transform the way businesses are done.” Six Sigma is a business management strategy that uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, which seeks to identify and remove the causes of defects and errors in business processes.

While most organisations continually implement quality practices, they are faced with practical challenges along the way. “One major issue I have to contend with is the fact that the quality team in my company are mere matrix collectors and do not concern themselves with the nuances of delivering product quality. What is actually required is for them to interpret the matrices and for this they need domain expertise. This is rarely the case, as most experts consider the quality function unglamorous,” said Rajiv Mody, chairman, Sasken. Quality is an absolutely strategic function, even in times of a financial meltdown or a storm in a business cycle, because it ultimately reflects in the value delivered to the customer. Even as most companies consider ‘process quality’ an absolute hygiene factor on which ‘product quality’ is built, there is a dire need for quality to be incorporated at every stage in the product development lifecycle.

“Companies create different departments to handle different functions. But quality as a function cannot be the responsibility of one department alone,” said N Chandrasekaran, COO & executive director, TCS.

Bobby Mitra, MD, Texas Instruments, agrees. “If quality is relegated to one department then checks tend to become sloppy. Quality needs to be a part of every deliverable because there is no God at the end to check it for all defects, which get introduced into the product at every level.”

Belt-tightening ahead for IT
 

New York, Oct.15: On Wall Street, the prices of shares in technology companies have been bouncing around even more than most other industry sectors. Tech stocks were battered on Tuesday, driving down the overall market.

The picture is mixed and uncertain. But based on the early readings before quarterly earnings begin in earnest soon. IBM, surrounded by rumours of weakness, announced its third-quarter results in advance last week, beating analysts’ estimates. Oracle, too, says it is holding up fine. But SAP, the enterprise software maker, and Rackable Systems, which supplies server computers to big Web companies and many smaller businesses, recently lowered guidance for the quarter.

Gartner this week presented its information technology spending projections for 2009, and it sees the souring economy taking a toll. Its worst-case projection (incr-easingly likely, it seems) places worldwide growth in technology spending at 2.3 per cent for 2009, down from 5.8 per cent previously. Stronger Asian markets like China are propping up the overall numbers. In North America, Gartner sees spending growth at half a per cent in 2009, down from 5.3 per cent previously.

In an interview, Peter Sondergaard, Gartner’s senior vice president for global research, explained that information technology was now so integral a part of business operations that spending was no longer going to be much higher or lower than the broad economy. “This isn’t like the 2000 to 2002 period, when much of the world lost confidence in IT,” he said.

Horizons will shorten, and projects that can wait likely will. “CIOs have to learn to think like CFOs,” he explained, using the common shorthand for chief information officers and chief financial officers. At a conference this week, Mr. Sondergaard offered a “top 10″ list for squeezing more out of tight budget dollars. In the spirit of the new austerity, we’ll just give you the top five (the bottom five don’t add much):

1. Reduce headcount and freeze hiring.
2. Curtail data center expansions and “virtualise” servers, putting more software loads on fewer machines. 3. Renegotiate with technology and services suppliers.
4. Consolidate functions and systems to achieve greater economies of scale.
5. Outsource commodity services.

It’s enough to warm any CFO’s heart.

Diagnose biz gains traction
 

Bengaluru, Oct. 15: On a computer monitor in his office in the high-tech hub of Bengaluru, Indian radiologist Arjun Kalyanpur examines a scan of the skull of a six-year-old boy who fell off his bicycle. A few minutes later, thousands of miles away, doctors at a hospital in Philadelphia prepare the boy for surgery after receiving an urgent email from Kalyanpur diagnosing a subdural hemorrhage in the child’s brain.

It’s the middle of the night in the United States, but it’s daytime in Bangalore and Kalyanpur and his team of 35 radiologists are reading hundreds of scans sent by hospitals across the United States during the night shift. “ERs in the U.S. find it difficult to staff at night. There’s a radiologist shortage in the U.S. as well,” Kalyanpur said.

Bangalore, the outsourcing capital of the world, is becoming a global center for telemedicine thanks to a pool of Western educated doctors, extensive outsourcing infrastructure, lower costs and a convenient time zone to diagnose medical conditions during the U.S. night. Teleradiologists in India read X-rays, CT scans, magnetic resonance imaging and other medical images of patients in the United States, Singapore and a host of other countries around the world.

It’s ideal for hospitals facing ballooning costs and a shortage of radiologists. And it’s not just teleradiology, experts say just about every area of medicine that does not require direct patient interaction could be outsourced in the future. This could include scans of pathology samples, ECGs, EEGs and other diagnostic systems used to determine a preliminary diagnosis.

“Telemedicine is on the rise,” said Avinash Vashistha, the CEO of Tholon Inc, a private equity advisory firm, who has written a book about outsourcing. “Once it acquires critical mass in 2 to 3 years, we expect the thrust to come from insurance companies as they recognise the cost benefits and lower premiums for the plans that have components of telemedicine.” There are some concerns, though, that it might lead to dangerous misdiagnosis and even those in the industry admit that regulation hasn’t caught up with technology when it comes to medical malpractice, ethics and legal liability.

Liability, privacy and malpractice issues pose challenges as this new industry expands without a supporting international regulatory framework as well as an ethical code of conduct. “In the end the challenge really is when you’re doing something for the U.S. and something happens, who’s liable for it?,” said Vashistha. The business is lucrative and already there are 10 or more teleradiology firms in India as well as several in the United States, some of which are listed companies.

Deccan Chronicle

Comedy keeps irony alive in US
 
US elections 2008: By Sarah Strickland

The British have long asserted that Americans have no sense of irony. Something about their can-do, earnest “have a nice day” approach and flag-waving, church-going lifestyle gives the impression that they simply don’t get it.ῠ That and speaking in sentences that go up at the end? After living here a year, albeit in the Democratic Republic of Washington D.C., I can hereby confirm that irony is alive and kicking in the USA. Perhaps not in everyday life, but in razor-sharp, inventive and agonisingly funny form on its satirical TV news shows. With interest in the current election at fever pitch, record numbers are flocking to three shows in particular.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report, both on the cable channel Comedy Central, have seen huge increases in their viewing figures, while NBC’s Saturday Night Live is enjoying its highest ratings in 14 years. For SNL, Sarah Palin has been a God-send.ῠ One of its former stars, comedian Tina Fey, happened to be the spitting image of the Republican vice-presidential candidate and agreed to return to the show to play her. Appearing first alongside SNL’s Hillary Clinton, she responded to talk of foreign diplomacy with a perky “And I can see Russia from my house!” More than five million people have gone online to watch Ms Fey’s impression of Ms Palin’s cringe-making CBS interview with Katie Couric.

“I had 15 to 20 false alarms in New York where I thought I saw Osama bin Laden driving’ a taxi,” she confides with a wink. What was so clever, and damaging, about the parody was that much of it was almost verbatim.ῠ Ms Palin’s answers were so hilariously incoherent, the script-writers didn’t need to embellish that much. Until, with a folksy gosh-darnit, Fey delivers the killer punch line.

“Katie, I’d like to use one of my lifelines,” she chirps, stumped by a question on foreign policy. “I’d like to phone a friend”.ῠ With the real Palin withheld from the media for so long, the alternative version filled the gap - something that may have damaged her reputation for good.

“What political satire does is fix the political persona in peoples’ minds,” said Alan Schroeder, associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, Boston.ῠ “The comedic version that gets established is very hard to counteract.” He puts the flourishing of satirical comedy down to the Bush administration.

“Things got so surreal over the last eight year that journalism was not providing the same check and balance to government any more,” he said.ῠ He recalls Steven Colbert, in his manic right-wing TV pundit persona, mercilessly lampooning George Bush at the annual Whitehouse Correspondent’s Association dinner in 2006.

“It was illuminating, being in a room full of journalists whose job it was to provide that sceptical eye - and he was the one who got the job done. Comedians have always been the ones who have had license to speak truth to power. In a time when dissent is not looked on favourably, comedy is one of the few outlets for acceptable political dissent.” Someone who has more or less escaped the satire is Mr Barack Obama - perhaps because he is African-American or maybe because he simply isn’t funny. “Maybe that’s what we need after eight years of Bush,” says Mr Schroeder. “But there’s a price to pay in entertainment value.”

The writer, a British journalist based in Washington, will file a weekly feature on the US presidential election for this newspaper

Russian lawyer ill, poisoning suspected
 

Moscow, Oct. 15: A prominent Russian human rights lawyer says she and her children are ill after a suspicious substance was found in their car in France. The incident has kept Ms Karinna Moskalenko away from preliminary hearings Wednesday at a Moscow court in the trial of four men in connection with the 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Ms Moskalenko is a lawyer for Politkovskaya’s family and for imprisoned former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.ῠ She also represents Russians pressing claims against the government at the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.ῠ Ms Moskalenko told a Russian radio station that her husband found a large amount of a mercury-like liquid in the car they use in Strasbourg. Rights groups have voiced concern about what they called an apparent poisoning. The situation has taken a grave turn and the authorities are looking into the matter.

Attacks backfire on McCain: Poll
 

New York, Oct. 15: The McCain campaign’s recent angry tone and sharply personal attacks on Senator Barack Obama appear to have backfired and tarnished Senator John McCain more than their intended target, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll has found.

After several weeks in which the McCain campaign unleashed a series of strong political attacks on Mr Obama, trying to tie him to a former 1960s radical, among other things, the poll found that more voters see Mr McCain as waging a negative campaign than Mr Obama. Six in 10 voters surveyed said that Mr McCain had spent more time attacking Mr Obama than explaining what he would do as President; by about the same number, voters said Mr Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking.

Over all, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 per cent of those determined to be probable voters said they would vote for Mr Obama and 39 per cent said they would vote for Mr McCain. The findings come as the race enters its final weeks, with two candidates scheduled to hold their last debate on Wednesday.

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US economy in recession: Fed chief
 

New York, Oct. 15: The US economy “appears to be in a recession,” the head of the San Francisco branch of the Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, said on Wednesday. “The recent flow of economic data suggests that the economy was weaker than expected in the third quarter, probably showing essentially no growth at all,” said Janet Yellen in an address in Palo Alto, California.

“Growth in the fourth quarter appears to be weaker yet, with an outright contraction quite likely,” she said. “Indeed, the US economy appears to be in a recession.” Ms Yellen spoke just hours after official data showed the budget deficit tripled in size in the 2007-08 accounting year to $ 455 billion, or 3.2 per cent of gross domestic product.

Her remarks also followed a dramatic period that saw the US government, for the first time since the Great Depression, partially nationalise major banks in its latest move to restore confidence to badly shaken financial markets. Economic downturns are a double blow for government budgets because they reduce tax revenue for governments and increase the need for social security spending in the form of unemployment benefits.

Recession is broadly defined in the United States as more than two quarters of decline in real GDP. “By now, virtually every major sector of the economy has been hit by the financial shock,” Ms Yellen told the Silicon Valley chapter of Financial Executives International. “Employment has now declined for nine months in a row, and personal income, in inflation-adjusted terms, is virtually unchanged since April. Household wealth is substantially lower as house prices have continued to slide and the stock market
has declined sharply.”

Bruni sways Prez to halt extradition
 

London, Oct. 15: Carla Bruni, the glamorous wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, has sparked an outcry after influencing the French President to stop the extradition of a terrorist to Italy. A French court approved the extradition to Italy and an order to this effect was signed by the French Prime Minister. However, France’s First Lady visited Marina Petrella, a wanted Red Brigades terrorist who killed a police chief, and assured her that “you will not be extradited”.

“I have a message from my husband - you will not be extradited,” Ms Carla was quoted as telling Petrella by the Mail online. The former supermodel was asked by her sister Valeria to block an Italian request to have convicted murderer Petrella, who is lodged a Paris hospital, sent back to Rome after more than 15 years on the run in France. The move to halt the extradition has kicked up a row, with Italian officials saying Franco-Italian relations had been “severely damaged”.

Government circles in Rome are amazed that Ms Carla was involved in the row as the Bruni family had fled Italy in the early 1970s over terrorism fears. “It has amazed everyone considering that they are Italian citizens who left Italy because their father, an industrialist, feared they were possible kidnap targets by the Red Brigades,” an official at the ministry of justice in Rome said. Italian legislator Luigi Lusi said: “It will severely shake relations between the two countries.”

Russian arms for Venezuela
 

Moscow, Oct. 15: Russia plans to sell Venezuela armoured personnel carriers and multiple rocket launchers, the Russian arms export agency said on Wednesday. “We are preparing to deliver a large number of BMP-3 armoured personnel carriers” and multiple rocket launchers, Igor Sevastyanov, deputy director of Rosoboronexport, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

Venezuela has already bought 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, 50 helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles from Russia in contracts worth a total of 4.4 billion dollars signed between 2005 and 2007, officials said. During a visit by the Venezuelan President, Mr Hugo Chavez, to Moscow last month, Russia announced it was giving Venezuela a one-billion-dollar credit to buy Russian weapons and the two countries discussed nuclear energy cooperation.

They are also planning joint naval exercises in the Caribbean in November. Two Russian Tupolev-162 strategic bombers - each capable of carrying 12 cruise missiles armed with single 200-megaton nuclear warheads - carried out exercises in Venezuela last month. US military chiefs have said they are concerned about the military build-up in Venezuela and the US State Department has said it will be watching the Russian-Venezuelan naval exercises “very closely.”

Russia has announced that a small naval flotilla led by the nuclear battlecruiser Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) had paid a call at the Libyan port of Tripoli.ῠ The ships were to conduct exercises at unspecified locations in the Mediterrannean Sea before heading toward Venezuela for joint exercises in November, officials said.

China beans contaminated
 

Tokyo, Oct. 15: Japan on Wednesday ordered retailers to pull frozen green beans imported from China off the shelves after a woman fell ill eating them, the health ministry said. The woman felt numb in her mouth on Sunday after eating a dish using frozen green beans from China which she had bought at a Tokyo supermarket, a health ministry official said.

She went to hospital and was released with no apparent health problems after an overnight check, the official said.ῠ The health ministry instructed retailers and importers nationwide to suspend sales of the beans from the Chinese supplier “until the cause of the incident becomes clear,” the official said.

The Tokyo metropolitan government conducted tests on Tuesday and found that the beans had 34,500 times the pesticide residue level permitted by the Japanese government. The importer, Tokyo-based Nichirei Foods, said it procured the beans from a company called Yantai Beihai Foodstuff in eastern Shandong province. “We conducted an inspection on a sample of the beans before importing them but did not detect pesticides,” a Nichirei Foods spokesperson said.

It is the latest scare in Japan about Chinese-made food products. Ten people suffered pesticide poisoning in December and January, and thousands of others reported feeling sick after eating frozen dumplings imported from China.ῠ Meanwhile, China ordered all milk products more than a month old pulled from store shelves for emergency testing as another child in Hong Kong developed kidney stones after eating melamine-contaminated products and a Thai company recalled packaged cookies.

China’s move was the largest blanket withdrawal since infant formula laced with the industrial chemical killed infants and sickened tens of thousands of children. All milk powder and liquid milk produced before September 14 must be tested by manufacturers nationwide, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported

Cool, smileys, lol is language of terrorists
 

London, Oct. 15: A London court has been hearing how two suspected terrorists messaged each other on the internet, employing the chatty and informal language of teenagers while planning deadly attacks on targets in London and Glasgow. The prosecution told Woolwich Crown Court Kafeel Ahmed, an Indian PhD student in Britain, and Iraqi-born doctor Bilal Abdulla had discussed via internet messaging how they would “start experiments sometime soon” months before the June 2007 attacks.

A laptop seized by police contained a conversation in which Ahmed told the Abdulla: “Bro, inshallah [God willing], I think we are gonna start experiments sometime soon,” the jury heard. Abdulla replied “Oh cool” to Ahmed’s message, before adding a smiley face symbol.

During the conversation, in February 2007, Ahmed continued: “Lol [laugh out loud]. Probably in a week or so we will have a meeting,” the jury was told. Abdulla is being tried with another alleged accomplice for attempts to blow up two bomb-laden cars in central London on June 29 and a bid to attack the main terminal of Glasgow airport with a burning Jeep a day later.

Both attacks failed but Ahmed, who drove the Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport, died of burn injuries later. Earlier, the court was told that the terrorist who led the “mission” had left a will addressed to Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden that he planned to kill in revenge for “injustices” against Muslims by the British and US soldiers.

The draft will written by Abdulla was found on a badly-burnt laptop in the remains of a Jeep Cherokee that ploughed into the Airport’s main terminal last year.ῠ The laptop also contained videos of attacks on allied forces in Iraq, coffins of US soldiers and clips of speeches by Bin Laden.

The prosecutor said Abdulla wrote the document because he expected to die alongside the Jeep’s driver Kafeel Ahmedῠ Abdulla, set up the suicide attack after attempts to detonate car bombs in London the previous day failed, the Woolwich Crown Court was told.

Indian mass inspired me: Adiga
 

London, Oct. 15: Indian-born Aravind Adiga was remarkably composed when the chairman of the jury Michael Portillo announced his name as the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008 after 10 pm at Guildhall in London on Tuesday. Explaining that his jetlag was responsible for “vision of composure,” the 33-year-old Adiga said his work as a journalist and his experience of life in North India had inspired him to write The White Tiger. His book was an “attempt to capture the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India - the voice of the colossal underclass.”

Travelling along the Ganga, he said, inspired him to think in a new way. Adiga said he realised the dark humour of these people. It is “very similar to that of black Americans and people living in Jewish ghettos in Europe.” “This voice had not been captured,” he added, “and I wanted to do so without sentimentality or portraying them as mirthless humourless weaklings as they are usually.”

Explaining how he created the main protagonist of the book, Balram Halwai, Adiga said he met a group of rickshaw-pullers during an assignment in Gaya, Bihar. “One of them was called Balram and another one was a Halwai, who went on to tell me his life story. The guy called Balram had a lot of anger inside him and said to me that he didn’t understand why he was wasting time talking to me when I would return home and promptly forget him,” Adiga added. However, he never forgot this man and used him to fashion his protagonist.

“The White Tiger at its heart is a story about a man’s quest for freedom, set in a social and political context. This is about a man trying to understand self, without any help from his background, without any help from his family, being put in an entirely new world. He mulls on how to get out of the trap,” he explained.

Adiga zeroed in on tiger as a metaphor to explain the character of Balram. He chanced upon a white tiger during a visit to Delhi Zoo and promptly decided to use the rare animal to explain the journey of a uneducated villager to city where he became a driver and then an entrepreneur.

Adiga, who was born in Chennai, did his schooling in India and Australia. He has an Australian passport. He went on to get degrees in English literature from Columbia and Oxford Universities. He dropped out from his doctoral studies at Princeton University to become a journalist.

Explaining the reason for becoming a journalist despite the fact that he always wanted to become a novelist since childhood, Adiga said, ” It was always my aim to travel, both geographically and culturally and socially within India. To get to meet new kinds of people and becoming a journalist allowed me to do that. I always wanted to just write fiction, but I wanted to write fiction about someone very unlike me. Being a journalist was part of that endeavour.” Adiga said that living in Sydney has helped him grow up.

Internet use is good for brain
 
London, Oct. 15: Internet use benefits the brains of middle aged and older people as it stimulates the brain’s decision-making and reasoning centres, according to a study by the US scientists. The team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that searching the Internet stimulates parts of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning, BBC News reported. The study found that Internet use might even help resist age-related physiological changes in the brain such as shrinkage of cells, which reduces its performance. The study results have been encouraging.ῠῠ

It’s splitsville for Madonna
 

London, Oct. 15: Speculation that pop singer Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie plan to divorce grew on Wednesday after a report in a British newspaper said the couple would announce the split “imminently.”
When asked about the report in the Sun tabloid, Barbara Charone, Madonna’s London-based publicist, replied, “No comment.”

Madonna and British filmmaker Ritchie have denied previous reports that they planned to end their eight-year marriage. The Sun quoted a “highly-placed source” as saying Madonna, 50, and Ritchie, 40, “just couldn’t live together any more” and could “not bear the pretence of being happily married.

Rumours that the London-based couple planned to split have been circulating for months, fuelled by reports in the summer that the singer had lined up Fiona Shackleton, a lawyer who acted for former Beatle Paul McCartney in his divorce. Madonna is in the middle of her Sticky & Sweet world tour. Ritchie has seen hisῠ career recover from a series of critical duds and he is now making major Hollywood blockbuster Sherlock Holmes.ῠῠ

UK Indian cooks next to corpse
 

London, Oct. 15: An Indian origin restaurateur in Britain has been banned from the food business for life after he was caught making kebabs even as a dead body lay in the same room. Jaswinder Singh of Pappu Sweet Centre and Catering in Wolverhampton did not stop cooking although one of his workers died and his body lay on a sofa in the kitchen.

A local court refused to give Singh any kind of reprieve after finding that he had a multitude of health violations listed against him in the past. Singh had been in business since 1996. Singh was caught cooking next to the dead worker in August by a police officer investigating the employee’s sudden death. The constable was so disgusted, he immediately closed the premises, The Telegraph has said.

The list of violations includes staff smoking and spitting on the floor, rodent infestation with a dead rat found under a pan in the kitchen, refrigerators running at more than 20 degree Celsius, mouldy food and filthy conditions. Singh, unrepresented in court and speaking through an interpreter, admitted to some of the charges of unhygienic conditions, but pleaded with the judge to be given “one last chance” to improve.
But the judge refused to relent and adhered to his decision. This is extremely serious as the initial findings included dead vermin, rotting food and rather all the unpleasant details of the findings in August.ῠ
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Words can reveal human nature
 

Oct. 15: Dr James W. Pennebaker’s interest in word counting began more than 20 years ago, when he did several studies suggesting that people who talked about traumatic experiences tended to be physically healthier than those who kept such experiences secret.  He wondered how much could be learned by looking at every single word people used - even the tiny ones. This led Dr Pennebaker, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, down a winding path that has taken him from Beatles lyrics (John Lennon’s songs have more “negative emotion” words than Paul McCartney’s) all the way to terrorist communications.

By counting the different kinds of words a person says, he is breaking new linguistic ground and leading a resurgent interest in text analysis. Take Dr Pennebaker’s recent study of Al Qaeda communications - videotapes, interviews, letters.  At the request of the FBI, he tallied the number of words in various categories - pronouns, articles and adjectives, among others. He found, for example, that Osama bin Laden’s use of first-person pronouns (I, me, my, mine) remained fairly constant over several years.

By contrast, his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, used such words more and more often.  “This dramatic increase suggests greater insecurity, feelings of threat, and perhaps a shift in his relationship with bin Laden,” Dr Pennebaker wrote in his report, which was published in The Content Analysis Reader.

Deccan Chronicle