Today I came across an excellent 6-page article on India by a US magazine called Newsweek. Its a long read but is worth reading. Here is the lin to the entire article:- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11571348/site/newsweek/ Here are some of the quotes fro the articles:-
"What will India look like politically in 25 years?" we know the answer: like it does today—a democracy, probably with a coalition government. Democracy makes for populism, pandering and delays. But it also makes for long-term stability. In 1960 India had a higher per capita GDP than China; today it is less than half of China's. That year it had the same per capita GDP as South Korea; today South Korea's is 13 times larger. Democracy in India too often means not the will of the majority but the will of organized minorities This is perhaps the central paradox of India today. Its society is open, eager, confident and ready to take on the world. But its state—its ruling class—is far more hesitant, cautious and suspicious of the changed realities around it.
And here is a quote on Indian Communist:-
It is ironic, for example, that India's Communist Party does not campaign for growth to lift the very poor but rather works to maintain the relatively privileged conditions of unionized workers

Very recently, at the last semester of my IITKGP life, after getting a job @nVidia bangalore, my lifestyle has taken a slight turn. I have added few new hobbies to my list. It includes Jogging, watching english movies and reading novels. I will devote yet another post on movies part, rather let me devote this post on my new hobby of reading novel. I am very very choosy while selecting the novel to read. To me reading novel/a good book is a process of enriching yourself, a way to understand the world, to have diverse outlook, to improve ones communication skill, to add new dimesions to your life. Thats why I a very much choosy while reading a new book. I usually prefers highly acclaimed, highly rated books and I relies on friends, wikipedia and orkuts to get information of good books. Very recently I came across an Orkut community named Only Good Books. The best thread of this community is on the best book read. This post will be concise list of the best books of that thread. So without blabbering more let me start listing the bests books that will hopefully be usefull for poor soul like me
  • Count of monte cristo - Dumas
  • The little prince by Antoine de Exupery
  • War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
  • Siddharta by hesse
  • Ulysses
  • Great Expectations
  • V. S. Naipul - A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River
  • Love in the time of cholera - Marquez
  • The Old Man n The Sea
  • A Painted House
  • Of Human bondage
  • A Painted House
  • Neuromancer- William Gibson
  • Pride and prejudice
  • Gone with the wind
  • 100 yeard of solitude-by marquez.
  • catcher in the rhye - JD Salinger
  • forrest gump
  • Ayn Rand - Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged
  • Da Vinci Code
  • Lord of the Flies
  • Shawshank Redemption
  • Brothers Karamazov - Dostoievsky
  • Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by Pirsig
  • Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  • paulo coelho - The Alchemist
  • Erich Segal - Doctors, Love story, the class
  • cathch-22
  • The namesake
  • The Diary of young girl- Anne Frank
  • To kill a Mockingbird
  • Jonathan Livingston Seagull
  • The idiot (Dostoevsky)
  • Lust for life (Stone)
  • The picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
  • 1984, Animal Farm
  • Surely u r joking Mr.Feynman
  • A Suitable Boy- Vikram Seth
  • Swami and Friends - R K Narayanan
  • The God of small things - Arundhati Roy
  • Lord Of The Rings.
  • Harry Potter
  • Godfather

Thumbshack.com is a worth-praising web2.0 app, a new site for making and sharing presentations on the web. Roughly a web2.0 counterpart of PowerPoint of M$. There is no need of installing anything in the harddrive of the user. Presentations can be made on the browser itself. See the site for more information and a live demo of the quality of presentation that can be created using this webapp.

Here are some beautifull aerial pictures of Mexico city. [Courtesy:: http://homepage.mac.com/helipilot/PhotoAlbum31.html]. These are real pictures taken from helicoptor. For viewing all pictures have a look at the above site.

Here are some very beautifull pictures of china. [Courtesy :: Impact Lab] Here are some selected pictures of the full collection. For viewing all pictures have a look at the above site.

Now everyone can get a Yahoo "Dot" Email address like that of gmail. For example now you can have a email address like hello.hi@yahoo.com. If you have a yahoo non-dot email adress then you can create a secondary email-id for the same account. Mail forwarded to both your primary and secondary email adress will come to the same inbox. You can sign in to all yahoo service with both yahoo ids. Here is the link for Yahoo mail beta announcement. So go here to get one !