Trinidad & Tobago's 1st Woman PM -Kamla Persad of Indian Origin

• Trinidad and Tobago’s People’s Partnership leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has been nominated the first woman Prime Minister of the country after her coalition led by her won a thrashing majority and ended the ruling party’s 43 years in power.




• Outgoing Prime Minister Patrick Manning conceded defeat after being in power since 2002.




• For the first time since independence in August 1962, a coalition of four other parties joined to meet head-on the ruling People’s National Movement which has been in power for 43 years.




• The five parties are Ms. Persad-Bissessar’s United National Congress, Congress of the People (COP), the National Joint Action Committee, Tobago Organisation of Peoples, and the Movement for Social Change.




• These parties came under the banner of the “People’s Partnership”, with each party maintaining its own symbol on the ballot paper.




• Her spectacular rise started on January 24 last year when she successfully challenged her mentor, Basdeo Panday, for the leadership of the United National Congress which he had founded 20 years ago.




• Ms. Persad-Bissessar was a topper in law school and she did her MBA and diploma in education from the University of the West Indies.




• She was the first woman attorney general and also served as minister of legal affairs as well as minister of education




• Her forefather was amongst the 148,000 Indian labourers who were brought here between 1845 and 1917 to work on the sugar and cocoa plantations. The Indian diaspora comprises 44 per cent of the population of 1.3 million people.

[Contributed By Aman Maggu]

UPA-II, How has the govt been performing? A review

UPA’s second term in office has been rather turbulent ever since their re-election in May 2009. UPA-II has been criticized on the grounds that it lacks direction and a clear policy framework. Despite the fact that the Congress party won a clear majority in the elections last year, it is not assured of a trouble free tenure for the remaining four years since it is dependant on the likes of Mayawati and Mulayam Singh to keep it in power.

Unlike UPA-I, which was a government with a pro-poor stance -Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act as its flagship program, UPA-II is pursuing policies that essentially woo-the middle and upper middle classes. The government has initiated direct taxes cuts besides giving tax breaks to the rich, while leaving the poor to cope with 18% food inflation. Instead of giving heed to social & health sectors, the government has been keen on public-pvt partnerships in education, facilitating the entry of foreign universities, cuts in subsidies etc. UPA-II has to realize that high growth alone is not the solution to lessen social inequality. There needs to be a way to reduce inequalities without hampering growth.

Now what UPA-II needs is inclusive policy implementation and it needs to make efforts to regain the respect it had earned in its first tenure, or else the road ahead is shaky.

Here is an analysis of the Highs and Lows of the UPA-II Govt.

HIGHS

-Women Power: The Women’s Reservation Bill was passed which ensured 33% reservation for women in Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies

-Education: 4 bills introduced in parliament to speed up the educational reforms including the historic Right to Education Bill (RTE)

-NAC: Reconstituted the National Advisory Council

-Assembly Elections: Won 3 assembly elections-Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh

-Growth: It’s now certain that 2009-10 will see at least 7.2% growth. The year after it is likely to touch 8.5%. Even if the figures for IIP have dipped a bit they remain comfortably in double digits.

-Reduction in Fiscal Deficit likely: With the 3G spectrum auction revenues more than 60,000 crore, the fiscal deficit reduction target not unattainable.

-In Control: Defeated the motions against budgetary proposals brought by a consolidated opposition including the left parties

LOWS

-Food Security: Failed to get the National Security Act passed

-Inflation: Failed to control the prices of essential commodities

-Sharm el-Sheikh Controversy: PM was accused of “surrendering” to Pakistan by reversing its stance of delinking terror with the composite dialogue process in the joint statement issued after the bilateral meeting in Sharm-el Sheikh, Egypt

-IPL/Shashi Tharoor: Shashi Tharoor, who had caused embarrassment to his party with remarks, was forced to quit the post of minister after being accused of misusing his office for the Kochi IPL team.

NCP leader & agriculture minister Sharad Pawar & civil aviation minister were also under scrutiny in the IPL controversy.

-3G/A Raja: A.Raja has been accused of corruption in the auction of 2G(2^nd Generation) and 3G spectrum

-Telangana: The announcement to create a separate Telangana state has landed the govt. in a political mess

-Shaky relationship with allies: Allies and friendly parties with the UPA have differed publicly several times on key issues this year

-Escalating Red Threat: The Naxal violence claimed 1,125 lives in 2009-10, the activities of Maoists extended to across 223 districts in 20 states

[With factual inputs from HT and Mint]

Our New Chief Justice- MR. S. H. KAPADIA

Sarosh Homi Kapadia, becoming Chief Justice of India on 12th May, 2010, belonged to a genteel lower middle-class Parsi family from the Khetwadi-Girgaum region of Bombay. His father was a clerk in a defence establishment, his mother a homemaker. There was enough to eat, but barely. Kapadia completed his BA and LLB and immediately began working. Higher education would have been a luxury.

He acknowledged his humble beginnings in a letter he wrote to Justice V R Krishna Iyer recently. “I come from a poor family. I started my career as a class IV employee and the only asset I possess is integrity...” he said. He joined Gagrat & Co, a law firm as a clerk and later, went to work for firebrand and highly respected labour lawyer Feroze Damania. Soon after, the family moved to Andheri. There, in the neighbouring building lived a young girl, Shahnaz, with whom Kapadia fell in love. She became Mrs Kapadia. They were to have two sons.

The young Sarosh may not have been rich but what he did possess was ambition and determination to become a judge. He became counsel for the income tax department in 1974, aged 27. He represented the Maharashtra government and several public sector undertakings (PSUs) until he was appointed a high court judge. As a judge of the Bombay High Court, he decided matters ranging from environmental to banking, M&As, industrial disputes, tax and so on, but developed a reputation for his expertise on commercial and tax law.

The best thing that ever happened to him was the stock scam of 1999 involving broker Ketan Parekh. He was appointed judge of the special court established under the Trial of Offences Relating to Transaction in Securities Act in 1999. He played an important role in the proceedings of the Joint Parliamentary Committee constituted to investigate the stock scam.

On August 5, 2003, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court and in December of that year, he was elevated to the Supreme Court, thus serving only a very short tenure as chief justice of a high court.

In the Supreme Court, Kapadia delivered some landmark judgements which included a decision relating to succession of property in April 30, 2005 in which he ruled out the possibility of conducting the DNA test.

He was part of the three-member Bench that decided income tax case of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad. The verdict went in favour of Prasad but Justice Kapadia gave a dissenting judgement saying the income tax department should have filed an appeal against the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) order.

Now, the biggest professional challenge for the man who has spent his entire life working towards becoming a judge is to decide who should scrutinise the Chief Justice of India and whether he should come under the purview of the Right to Information Act. This has far-reaching implications for both law and justice.

Kapadia is conscious that he has to uphold both equity and fairness. On the issue of honour killings, he has said justice by khaps (local communities) is a social not a legal matter. On the other hand, throughout his life, he has ruled in favour of tribals and the dispossessed.

India’s legal establishment is weighed down by work, and central issues like police reform have temporarily taken a back seat. Crusading judges have their drawbacks, but Kapadia has the advantage of being utterly focussed. Hopefully, the legal system will benefit from this.

Source- Business Standard

Few bits about MR. David Cameron-the youngest PM of Britain

 (Conservative leader David Cameron and wife Samantha Cameron, another Sarkozy-Bruni in the making) 

“The fact that we are both democracies makes a huge difference in our relationship”- 

Commenting on India

• On 11 May 2010, following the resignation of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and on his recommendation, Queen Elizabeth II invited Cameron to form a government.
• At age 43, Cameron became the youngest British Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool, who was appointed in 1812. In his first address outside 10 Downing Street, he announced his intention to form a coalition government, the first since the Second World War, with the Liberal Democrats.
• Cameron outlined how he intended to "put aside party differences and work hard for the common good and for the national interest. "Thus as one of his first moves Cameron appointed Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democratic leader, as Deputy Prime Minister on 11 May 2010.
• Between them, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats control 363 seats in the House of Commons, with a majority of 76 seats. 

• He was elected leader of the Conservative Party in December 2005, and has been a Member of Parliament for the Witney constituency since 2001. Before he became an MP, he was a Special Adviser  to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and then to the Home Secretary.
• He took a break to work in media for seven years, then stood for election in 2001 on an agenda of tax-cutting. (During the election, he also wrote a column for the Guardian.) As a new MP, he took several controversial positions, such as coming out in favor of the "harm reduction" drug policy. He became a member of the shadow cabinet (an alternative cabinet to the party in power) in 2003, and two years later became head of the party.

Shared By- Vishal Suri

Returns on ULIPs are too good to be true- Why investing in them is not a Good Choice

What will an investor think when he pays Rs. 1 lakh one time, and promised to get upto 30% returns per year after 3 years. And when this kind of offer comes from most reputed insurance service provider like LIC, its just an icing on the cake. Recently, I saw a huge rush of people grabbing a limited time offer by LIC, the LIC Wealth Plus scheme. Just every other person I knew was buying one. It was a Unit Linked Insurance Plan (ULIP) which means a portion of your investment goes towards stock market and rest towards insurance. So, people thought they would get double benefits, getting good returns from the bullish markets and insurance cover as well. But all is not as rosy as told by the agents.


I will not get into all the details about the scheme but highlight few major points to explain my point that ULIPs are worst of the investment options, when you compare them with combination of mutual funds and term insurance plans and all the hype created around it is just to get lucrative commissions by the agents. In India, insurance is all about mis-selling rather than buying. Lets talk about LIC Wealth Plus. Highest Net Asset Value(NAV) in 7 years. Like if you invest Rs100, in 1st year, the value in the stock market of the shares bought by that money will be, lets say Rs110, next year Rs120, next year Rs 115 and so on. So you get the highest value, which may be at whichever time during 7 years. Insurance cover of 5 times the premium paid per year for 3 years, etc. It is sold as a win-win situation by the agents.

BUT, what they 'forgot' to tell you is that the commission to the agents and other charges can go upto 40% of the premium paid in the first year, and 15-20% in the subsequent years as no limit set by IRDA. So what actually gets invested in the markets is very less amount, so high returns on that amount(which also is not guaranteed) makes overall returns too low or even negative at the time of maturity. In mutual funds, the charges are fixed by SEBI(around 1.5% or so plus Rs200-700) so money actually invested in the markets is much higher than ULIPs.


Now, the insurance part of the ULIP. The cover is generally only 5-8 times of the premium paid. So, invest Rs 50000 per year in ULIP and get insurance cover of Rs 3 lakh. But, in 10 years life insurance plans the cover is normally Rs 10-12lakh for the same premium.

So if you compare ULIP with Mutual fund+ term life insurance, ULIPs are a total disaster mainly because of exorbitant commission and charges deducted by the companies ranging from 20-60% in the first year and 10-40% in subsequent years. So it takes 4-5 years MINIMUM to break-even on the investment made, let alone any profits, in case of a very good stock market. So chances are high that you get negative or minimal returns on the investment in ULIPs rather than the huge returns promised by the agents.

So beware of the advice of your agent and be aware of the (no)benefits of ULIPs before investing in them next time and help your parents too. Because their money is your money, after all :)


Written By- Rahul Bansal

A detailed step by step explanation given here.

The Financial Crisis of Greece Would Not Sound All Greek To U, If U Read This Article..

The recent economic crisis in Greece has taken the entire European Union by a storm. The Greek economy was one of the fastest growing economies in the Euro zone from the turn of the millennium till 2007. The ruckus began in 2008 when two of the country’s largest industries-shipping & tourism were both terribly affected by the slump with revenues falling 15% in 2009.

The Root Cause

The main cause for the crisis was increase in govt. deficits and debt levels to an exorbitant amount. In 2010, the Greek govt. deficit was anticipated to be 13.6% which is one of the highest in the world in relation to the GDP. The Greek govt. bond market is heavily reliant on foreign investors, estimates suggesting 70% of the Greek bonds are held externally. Standard & Poor’s {a credit rating agency [CRA]-which rates public and private sector on the basis of their credit worthiness} downgraded Greek debt rating to “junk status” on 27^th April, 2010. [This means that according to S&P, the govt. is mostly likely to default on the payment of debt]. Following the downgrading by other CRA’s like Flitch, Moody’s, the Greek govt. yields rose drastically in 2010. {Yield is the rate of return the investor gets on a bond.....to compensate the investor for the increase in risk that he takes when he invests in a Greek govt. bond (which is likely to default according to credit rating agencies), the return on bonds i.e. the yield increased}.

Austerity Measures and Protests from the Public

The govt. had taken a round of austerity measures like the Economic Protection Bill which included public sector pay cuts, pension reductions, new taxes on company profits, and increase in value added taxes amongst others. On 23 April 2010, the Greek government requested that the EU/IMF bailout package be activated. In response to a new round of cost cutting actions taken by the government a nation wide strike was called for May 5. The estimated 100,000 protestors marched through Athens and accused the govt. of being “thieves”. Demonstrators broke windows, threw petrol bombs, rocks, bottles at the police, burnt cars on fire across the city.

Limitations of Greece and Effect of Crisis on other Countries

Without a bailout agreement, there was a possibility that Greece would have been forced to default on some of its debt. Due to the fact that Greece is part of EU, it cannot print its own currency. This limitation prevents it from doing away with a portion of obligations or stimulating its economy with monetary policy.

There is a possibility that Greek crisis will cause investors to lose faith in investors in other Euro zone countries like Portugal, Spain & Ireland all of whom have debt and deficit issues.

Controversies

There have also been many controversies surrounding the whole issue that took place. The Credit Rating Agencies have been under fire for a tendency to act conservatively. In Greece, the market responded to the crisis much before the downgrade of Govt. bonds was declared by CRA’s. The role of Goldman Sachs is under severe scrutiny, because it was discovered that the govt. of Greece paid the bank millions of dollars in fees 2001 (along with other banks) for arranging transactions that hid the level of borrowing. This enabled the govt. to spend beyond what they actually could by effectively hiding it from EU overseers.

The Trillion Dollar Rescue Package

On 9^th May, 2010, Europe’s Finance Ministers approved almost a trillion dollars for crisis aimed at ensuring financial stability all across Europe. Stocks worldwide surged as fear of Greek debt crisis subsided. The Euro made its biggest gain in 18 months. Commodity price also rose after the following announcement.

However the package is conditional on all the countries doing fiscal adjustment & structural reform. An immediate revival of economic fortunes cannot be expected.

Our National Anthem Writer- RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Born: May 7, 1861

Died: August 7, 1941

 On 7th May, 2010, it was the 150th Birth Anniversary of third Father of the Nation(after Jawahar Lal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, some even consider Ambedkar also as a father, but its one's personal opinion)

                                                                  

A Glimpse 

• He was the ninth son of Debendranath and Sarada Devi.

• Rabindranath Tagore was an icon of Indian culture. He was a poet, philosopher, musician, writer, and educationist. Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became Nobel laureate when he won Nobel Prize for his collection of poems, Gitanjali, in 1913. 

• He was popularly called as Gurudev and his songs were popularly known as Rabindrasangeet. Two songs from his Rabindrasangit canon are now the national anthems of India and Bangladesh: the Jana Gana Mana and the Amar Shonar Bangla.

• In 1915 he was awarded knighthood by the British King George V. In 1919, following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Tagore renounced his knighthood.

• 1n 1921, Rabindranath Tagore established Viswabharati University. He gave all his money from Nobel Prize and royalty money from his books to this University.

• Tagore was not only a creative genius, he was quite knowledgeable of Western culture, especially Western poetry and science too. Tagore had a good grasp of modern - post-Newtonian – physics and was well able to hold his own in a debate with Einstein in 1930 on the newly emerging principles of quantum mechanics and chaos. His meetings and tape recorded conversations with his contemporaries such Albert Einstein and H.G. Wells, epitomize his brilliance.,

• In 1940 Oxford University arranged a special ceremony in Santiniketan and awarded Rabindranath Tagore with Doctorate Of Literature. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore passed away on August 7, 1941 in his ancestral home in Calcutta.

If you have some interesting facts about him, please feel free to share it with us.

Shared By- Vishal Suri

Sports Federations' Heads Strongly Oppose Centre's Order to limit their tenure: They are really shameless:)

First lets give you a glimpse:-
BJP leader VK Malhotra is heading the Archery Association of India for more than 30 years, while Akali Dal leader Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa's term as the Cycling Federation of India head is into its 14th year. Congress leader Captain Satish K Sharma heads the Aero Club for more than two decades, while businessman B S Adityan has been at the top of the Volleyball Federation of India for 12 years. Suresh Kalmadi has been at IOA's helm since 1996. 
No doubt Kalmadi has done some serious work by getting CWG for India. But his is a rarest of rare deeds, not seen much in other federations.

Suresh Kalmadi needs to avoid limelight now and concentrate on the Commonwealth games.

In a breakthrough order by the Ministry of sport in India, the terms of the administrators of these associations have been limited to a maximum of 12 years. In response to the orders approved by the Minister of Sport M.S. Gill, IOA chief Suresh Kalmadi has called the orders ”unconstitutional” and “draconian”. Kalmadi has been continuously in controversy for quiet a time, whether its the bad functioning of Indian Olympic Association or the delay in getting ready the various projects for CWG.

His only saving grace has been that the order seems to be at the wrong time as the Commonwealth Games, for which Kalmadi and other Sports Federation Administrators are responsible, are only 150 days away. An all-out battle between the Sports Ministry and the IOA at this point of time will only prove to be disastrous for sport in India.

However, it is a fact that there is little transparency in the system and federations headed by these politicos. Apart from Praful Patel’s AIFF that, seemingly, has made advances in the realm of Indian Football; all others have failed to even make a mark. The National Rifle Association of India headed by Digvijay Singh – has been under constant attack under the light of Abhinav Bindra’s criticism of the Association. Suresh Kalmadi himself, supported Bindra’s criticism of the treatment that is doled out to the players by the association. The website of NRAI not unlike most other sports federations is a stub. It does not match the standards of transparency and otherwise, set by their colleagues at AIFF.

Federations like the TTFI (Table Tennis Federation of India), AAI (Archery Association of India) headed by Ajay Singh Chautala and V.K. Malhotra respectively, have little to show for. Their games and their associations are lying paralyzed in anonymity. They themselves have busy schedules in their political setup. Their efforts, if any, are reflected in the medals won by hard working sportsmen, who inspite of facing such seclusion have done well enough at the international stage.The AITA (All India Tennis Association) headed by Mr. Yashwant Sinha, since the year 2000, that is a decade now, is in tatters. On the name of development in the game, they could come up only with a structure inspired from the IPL, called the Indian Tennis League. This was supposed to go off in 2008 but is still in the cold bag. Now the AITA is planning to revive the idea. The website of the AITA incessantly shows the “page not found” sign when explored.

The big question to be asked is why should these administrators be retained even after twelve fruitless years? A time of twelve years is long enough to revolutionize the whole system and big enough to start from scratch and build a mega structure. These sports federations have failed at providing the most basic of needs to players and have done nothing to popularize their respective sports.

These Sports Federations have their jobs cut out for now. They have to put up a good show at the Commonwealth in Delhi, both as hosts and participants. Because they have a sword hanging above their heads. But for now, keep the focus on the CWG only, please.