Summary Post of the past fortnight

Here are the six posts I wrote during the last two weeks. But before I go on, I need to mention the award I recieved from Destination Infinity called Premio Dardos (award on awards page). This award is about “acknowledging the values that a blogger shows in his/her effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary and personal values every day” and a way of “showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web”.  Thanks DI for the acknowledgment and I in turn need to give this award to other bloggers. The problem is that as usual I have a hard time choosing whom to give it to (the reason I have avoided distributing the few I got earlier!) But blog etiquette demands that I do pass on the award so I am holding my breath with this one! I’ve decided not to give this award to more than three people, because the list gets too long. I am sure the award will come the way of all those who deserve it and more, and in fact there are quite a few who have already received it! I have chosen three who I feel have in the last month or so, have written some meaningful and thought-provoking posts. The bloggers are Amit of Mashed Musings, Shefaly for her work blog and Vikram for his academic view of India.

Now here is the summary of posts of the last two weeks:-

Chandni Chowk to China – Movie review Even if we expect a no-brainer, this movie is a disappointment. A mindless movie can carry itself along if it is tumultuous enough and funny enough but CC2C isn’t. This is a slapstick comedy, but the jokes are stale. Worse, many scenes seem to stretch on endlessly and one wishes the director would get on with it. After the interval he does get on with it…but take away the fight scenes and the movie is nothing. While watching CT2C, I got this awful sense of déjà vu… about a hundred movies of the past seemed to fuse together…

Top ten myths about Pakistan unraveled Plenty of Pakistani as well as Indian commentators have written about the “Ten myths about Pakistan” (in the Indian media) by Mohammed Hanif, Pakistani author of ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’. Expectedly most Pakistani commentators felt that Hanif was mostly right (going by the comments on the posts) and most Indians felt that these 10 myths were not credible…

How stupid are the terrorists! A lot has been written about the failure of the Indian security agencies before and during the Mumbai terror attacks, but well, the terrorists made plenty of stupid mistakes as well, mistakes which cost them dearly. The Mumbai terror attacks did bring in some sort of sick admiration for the LeT initially, but I doubt whether LeT supporters and admirers are still gloating. Here’s where the terrorists bungled up…

The culpability of Satyam’s auditors There must be others in top management who were in cahoots with Raju because how could they not have asked questions about the  fact that reserves and surplus of Rs 2,517 crore (March 2004) had almost tripled (Rs7221 crore) in just four years? The company’s balance sheet has to be signed by the company’s chief financial officer, and the  independent directors are also supposed to ask questions…and what about the auditors who are the final stamp of authority? It is difficult to believe that proper accounting and auditing procedures were followed by the auditing firm Pricewaterhouse…The ICAI has made it mandatory on auditors to verify bank certificates…

A new bill that could help some criminals One is not sure whether this new bill is a measure to prevent overcrowding of prisons or to give the police more time to concentrate on serious offences, perhaps terrorism? If that sounds sarcastic, it was meant to be.  The new bill, which will become law if the President approves, will make it difficult for the police to arrest anyone who commits an offence for which the maximum sentence is seven years. But hold on, it’s not as if the police cannot arrest the suspect at all…it just means that a “notice” will have to be served to the offender, a notice which makes it imperative on the offender to “cooperate” with the investigation! If this isn’t funny enough, hear this…

Corruption is the greatest stumbling block to infrastructure development in India India has not improved it’s image where corruption is concerned, not if one goes by the recent survey by Transparency International. This year India fared worse than last year…There is also a state-wise survey for India. Indian states have been ranked on a scale of Alarmingly Corrupt, Very Highly Corrupt, Highly Corrupt to Moderately Corrupt…However no state in India is free from corruption and here’s a small list of projects all over the country which are riddled with corruption…