Right now I am on cloud 9, just now got to know that I have cleared my back exams of 2nd year 2nd semester which I could not write during regular examination as I had some health problems, Finally with Allah's grace I could clear that exams as it was very important for me to clear this exams to attend the campus placements
A small task completed, now its turn for the uphill task (campus placements), Bring it on!
A unique mixture of entertainment with information
Friday 1 August 2014
My feeling as of now
Indians in the line of fire
The killing of two Indian security guards by a Taliban suicide bomber during a recent attack on the Kabul airport, coupled with the successful evacuation from the line of fire of 40 nurses from Kerala, who were employed at a hospital in Tikrit in Iraq, highlights the growing entrapment of Indians in war zones abroad. Anxiety continues to mount regarding the fate of 39 young men from Punjab who were taken captive near Mosul, following clashes between Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadis and Iraqi security forces. In both cases Indians have become inadvertent victims of major geopolitical conflicts that are being fought under the cover of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) coupled with the doctrine of “regime change”. In the case of Afghanistan, the guards, both from Kerala, were employed by the private security firm DynCorp International, highlighting how Indians had been channelled into the controversial policy adopted by the United States to outsource military duties to “security contractors,” not all of whom are above board. The security firm Blackwater Security Consulting, now called Constellis Holdings, was caught in a firestorm after its employees shot and killed 17 civilians in Iraq. The situation may only turn grimmer, as the U.S. speeds up its troops withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The killings in Kabul of Ponnappan V. Kuttappan and Parambat Ravindran, also puts the spotlight on the underlying causes that push Indians into conflict zones. Horrific tales of innocent workers being duped by a nexus of unscrupulous agents and traffickers into high-risk combat areas are common. Yet, many migrate with foreknowledge of the dangers that might lie ahead. Relatively high salaries continue to be an attraction for people from the developing world, for a security guard in a U.S.-based security firm in Afghanistan can earn a monthly income equal to Rs. 1 lakh, far more than salaries that obtain at home. In Tikrit, most of the nurses seemed unwilling to return, till such time that the dangers to their lives became overwhelming. Despite the odds, the government is obliged to prevent the migration at least of those who are unknowingly transported into war zones, where they are virtually held in bondage because the fighting surrounding them restricts their movement. Indian embassies and consulates, in cooperation with the immigration authorities of host countries, must build a data bank on the entry and exit of Indian nationals, while also maintaining an early-warning oversight on the type of contracts that these individuals may enter into. In the long run, only sound employment and better working conditions at home can stem the flow of Indians into hazardous zones of conflict in faraway lands.
latest scandal in a rotten banking culture
Most of us discovered that CDOs, CDSs and Libor rates were dangerous things before we knew what they were. These weapons of mass financial destruction blinded with science in 2008. There was a sense that the bankers had been up to no good, but through such baffling means that it was tricky to pinpoint the villains.
The sharpest economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz , immediately grasped that all the complex derivatives were flimsy cover for old-fashioned skullduggery: leaching customers with rip-off fees, concealing dangerous debts, and shunting losses on to other people. In the last two or three years, the connections between high finance and low morals have become plainer. Money-laundering , systematic mis-selling andfraudulent manipulation of “market” rates for personal gain: just name the misdeed, and the big high street banks have been up to their necks. Few revelations can still shock, although one of the many fines that Lloyds was ordered to pay on Monday did leave the jaw dropping – a £7.8m penalty for rigging an interest rate which bore on the fees the Bank of England charged for one of its bailouts. Lloyds, that is, was taking with the one hand, while also taking with the other.
This was a conspiracy against the public, even as it rescued the bank. Mark Carney’s denunciation of “unlawful” behaviour pulled no punches. The Canadian governor of an institution whose officials used to remark that “the Bank is a bank”, and regard promoting the City as their job, is an outsider to Britain, and it showed. His words represented a modest moment of reckoning. A mood of simmering rage against the elite grips the country, and it owes much to a sense that the oligarchs who impoverished everyone else have got away with it. Americans complain that only one serious, senior banker , Kareem Serageldin, was jailed for the crisis; Britain has not even managed that.
So it was refreshing to see Mr Carney point the finger, and hear him hint at criminal charges. The drip-drip confirmation of how dreadful banks have been, however, is suggestive of problems going well beyond any individual crimes. We have now muddled through seven straight years of crisis without having had the fundamental discussion about what it is that we want banks to do. Yes, there is the basic piggy-bank function, to which the Vickers report offered a solution of sorts before the government watered it down. But the real task of finance ought to be to marry thrift and productivity for the general good, by identifying and investing in those enterprises that can make best use of funds.
Few think our banks do that. Only last week, both the business secretary, Vince Cable, and the chief economist at Threadneedle Street, Andy Haldane, highlighted concerns about the scarcity and the impatience of capital in those fields that can do most for growth. These anxieties trace back to what has gone awry in the banks. After all, with 22 Lloyds employees directly implicated in the latest scandal, there has been systematic moral failure. Banks preoccupied with making a fast and dishonourable buck are not going to do the business.
Through the boom and into the bust, the bankers were brilliant at wriggling round regulation. What is needed, therefore, is not just stronger regulation, but real culture change. Thinktank ResPublica yesterday proposed forcing bankers to take the equivalent of a Hippocratic oath, but further changes in personnel will surely ultimately be required to reset the industry’s mores.
For years, super-size pay-packets have been justified by the need to “retain talent”. Even at newly nationalised banks, top bosses clung to bonuses on the basis that we might otherwise end up with the sort of plodding bureaucrat who used to run the finances for the Yorkshire water board. As scandal follows scandal, we might want to think again about how much worse the man from the water board would be. At least he probably wouldn’t have been caught with his hand in the till.
Tests of aptitude and attitude
For the second successive year, a large number of civil services aspirants are up in arms against the Civil Service Aptitude Test introduced by the Union Public Service Commission in the preliminary stage of the selection process. CSAT seeks to test a range of abilities and skills — including in terms of comprehension, interpersonal-communication, logical reasoning, decision-making and problem-solving and English language — all at Class X level proficiency. To argue that a screening test that involves questions from that level gives an unfair advantage to any one section appears surprising. It is also being argued that the pattern of testing puts those with a Hindi language background in a position of disadvantage — when in fact candidates are at liberty to take the test in either English or Hindi. In truth, when Hindi is allowed as a medium for the main examination, regional languages such as Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati are what face a disadvantage, because unless one has done the first degree and has written an examination in the language concerned, one cannot take the main examination in that language. Another argument is that CSAT favours students from science, management and engineering backgrounds to the detriment of those from the humanities, given the stress on logical reasoning skills. This does not stand to reason either. Any debate that puts forth language bias arguments and issues of equity and egalitarianism to downplay the need for a minimum level of basic skills, cannot but be flawed. Indisputably, administrators have to be able to fulfil requirements that make for a logical approach to day-to-day issues. By coming out on to the streets, are the protesters suggesting that they lack these essential life-skills, rather than show a willingness to take any test as a challenge of prowess and attitude?
The preliminary examination for 2014 is scheduled for August 24. Scrapping the test at this stage will prove disruptive for a substantial section of aspirants who have prepared for the annual cycle of testing in the current pattern, introduced in 2011. Introducing a new pattern without giving them a reasonable length of time to adjust to changes, will violate the principles of natural justice. However, complaints that the translation from English into Hindi of questions is done using a software in an automated process, which leaves ambiguities, need to be addressed immediately. A government-appointed committee that is looking into the demands for changes, should first be allowed to complete its task, and any reforms factored in over time. The UPSC needs to be seen as a fair arbiter that offers a level playing field to candidates across the country.
South Africa Fights the Poachers
South Africa’s rhinoceroses — 70 percent of the world’s rhinos — are approaching a tipping point as rapacious gangs of poachers feed a global black market in the horns. In the next two to four years, conservationists say, more rhinos will likely be destroyed by poachers than are born, with the price of rhino horn booming in Asia because of foolish notions that it is a healing agent.
Frantic plans are under consideration in South Africa to relocate significant numbers of rhinos out of the largest and most victimized preserve, Kruger National Park, to sanctuaries as far away as Australia. But the threatened extinction of this magnificent creature obviously cries out for stronger international countermeasures, particularly from such countries as China and Vietnam where demand has driven up the price of rhino horn to rival that of gold.
The government of South Africa has tried a serious crackdown on poachers, with one recently sentenced to 77 years in prison and dozens of others arrested this year. But the armed gangs use night-vision goggles and silent tranquilizer guns to continue the slaughter, with the rate this year running at a clip that could surpass the 1,004 rhinos killed last year — and far beyond the six poached in 2000 before the craze for rhino horn took off.
Rhino herds at the vast Kruger preserve, a mainstay of South Africa’s lucrative tourism industry, are estimated to total up to 12,000. With 700 guards assigned to protection and regularly engaging in nighttime gun battles with poachers, the scene in the park has been compared to a virtual war zone in which close to two rhinos are destroyed every day. Officials have considered extreme measures such as poisoning rhinos’ horns. They even debate the possible legalization of poaching to drive the market price down.
Meanwhile, the government has been puzzling over what to do with an 18-ton stockpile of rhino horn accumulated in the course of this struggle. (Several nations have recently destroyed stockpiles of illegally harvested elephant tusks, sending the message that there is no future in poached ivory.) This is one of the bizarre side-effects of a growing ecological disaster that reaches far beyond South Africa to the world at large.
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