PSU Divestment is to be undertaken by the Govt in a big way to raise money. There are many angles to this. If any entity is earning from 360 Degrees today, its the Union Govt. The size of the budget has increased manyfold in past few years thanks to the sunshine phase of Indian Economy. The moolah was coming from all directions : Excise, Customs, CVD, Service Tax, Income Tax, Weath Tax, Gift Tax, Fringe Benefit Tax, Perquisite Tax, Professional Tax and what not. Income Tax on salaried individulas has been kept at shamefully high rates. Just imagine earing Rs 100 thru your blood & toil and donating Rs 33 to a beggar or even 22 for that matter. On top of the same, as a salaried person goes about making ends meet for his family, he is made to bear the burden of Excise, Customs, VAT, Serivce Tax etc etc as he pays for the goods and services consumed. One ends up paying 75% of the earnings to the govt machinery. Balance is taken up in school fee etc and one is hardly able to save. There come the banks with their liberal loaning schemes to lure cash strapped people to get into the proverbial debt trap. US was caught up in the trap which finally blew the lid last year.
Govt spending has now been more on itself than the public. All big projects are self funded thru project mgmt - on BOT basis, where again public is made ot pay for using them. What did I pay the Income Tax for? Why am I paying Vehicle Registration Tax which has gone from few hundred Rupees to tohousands of Rupees on ad-valorem basis today, when I have to pay toll every time I take out my vehicle. Look at the mess & chaos created at these toll plazas wasting millions of rupees worth of public time & fuel.
The additional revenues seem to have gone to mind boggling remunerations for MPs and VI Pay Commission for Govt servants. Will the high salaries really lift their mental status forcing them to leave corrupt practices. This is a big question which time only will answer. Till such time India remains at the bottom of Transparency Int'l's chart.
Coming back to PSU divestment. Since due to the economic downturn, revenues are dwindling, Govt finds it difficult to pay for its own functionaries and need cash. How easy to lure gullible public to again buy stock at premium, value of which would soon come down thru the cruel hands of stock market bears. If a Govt itself has decided to fleece its own public, God save the country!

We were apprehensive about food while preparing for our 6 week Europe getaway. But a lot of Indian Restaurants were identified thru web, which gave us a sense of relief. The food however was going to be costly. But we had our finances right thru the allowances and barring a McChicken, Pizza or a Veg Sandwich here and there, ate Indian food on all 45 nights. Days were definitely spent on bread, cheese, Danone yoghurt, veg salads, chicken & ham salami etc.
Why I am narrating the above is the amazing no. of Indian Restaurants in Europe. There's at least one in every city. I travelled to about 15 cities and ate in an Indian Restaurant in each one. Paris had Inde; Berlin had Indische and so on so forth. We ate South Indian food at Brussels, Lucerne and Vienna.
Nuremberg, Interlaken and Amsterdam had full Sikh families serving food thru their own hands. Berlin had mona-Sikhs living as citizens after asylum and running restaurants off Alexanderplatz. There were Bangladeshi expartiates too in one part of Berlin.
Innsbruck, a beautiful small river valley in the Austrian Alps had one Punjabi gentleman running a small food joint, which boasts of having hosted the who' who of Bollywood, the popular spot that it is for many Yash-Raj film songs. Munich has a very Indian "Sher-e-Punjab" restaurant near the Science Museum. Mount Titlis (Engelberg) has a restaurant on the top which serves Indian delicacies on buffet. Vienna also has punjabi families running restaurants in the University area.
Mr. Ashok Sharma is a proud owner of an Indian restaurant on the edge of the old harbour at Marseilles. He was delighted to see us as were all other restaurenteurs we met. Mersailles harbor also had a restaurant run by Pathans where Nawaz Sharif had also eaten. There we did feel the ice, although food was as hot as that in India.
Paris had many restaurants run by an interesting mix of diaspora though. People from POK (pathans) running "Indian Restaurants" serving the tandoori delights on Champs Elysees, Paris. Then there was a complete street full of East Pakistani expatriates speaking bangla and running "Restaurant de Inde" in Saint Sebastian, Paris. Then there was a Mauritian of Indian origin, settled in Paris by the name of Sunil, running an Indian restaurant in Voltaire Republic on Rue Oberkamph in Paris. La Chappelle near Gare du Nord Rly Station has a complete Indian market where you can buy raw food stuff to cook yourself. The supply chain management of Indian spices to sustain the delicacies in all these far flung places on daily basis is amazing as there is no economies of scale.
One common thread at all places was that all restaurenteurs showed visual delight to meet us and offered 4 menu items free to us, as in India, i.e. Water (yes), Salad, Pickle and Papad . Apart from that there were other niceties extended, like an occasional delicacy offered without charging, which was very touching. Just imagine how starved they may be to meet their own people and speak their own mother tongue. Its different on the Continent than America & England, where a large Indian population is available to interact and feel at home.
I am indebted to those intrepid people described above, as they not only provided me the food of my motherland in a far off land, but also gave me the confidence that one could count on someone in an alien land.

A disgusted customer is sure to pour out his/her feelings on referral websites like mouthshut. Its a natural phenomenon, everyone does it. Everyone has the urge to blast an institution whenever one employee disgruntles him/her. No better avenue than a review on mouthshut. So I do take such opinions with a pinch of salt, and thats when a pattern need to be observed from various reviews.
I've even suspected some negative reviews to be planted by competitors. One sure way of knowing this is to see the review posted on the joining date followed by a complete silence. There may be several such reviews planted in different ids but the pattern is the same as above. No wonder they say marketing is war. Is Faisal listening?
I've been a member since 2002 and has seen this dotcom come a long long way. Its become almost like a social networking site from just a "Jago Grahak" site. I never care about orkut et al, and have my quota full here.
One always need someplace where you can boast about your priciest possessions and let people appreciate them. Every purchase has a story associated and narrating it here not only refreshes the memories but preserves it for the posterity too. That's why I say mouthshut is not just a "Jago Grahak" site where one would look only to vent out his/her negative encounters with the salesmen. In fact this site should and does inspire people to record positive things about their possessions to enable others to make better choices. Only negative reviews about a good product will create an ingenuine bias.
Hope the users are educated/prompted to read and analyse the reviews in a better manner.

Its amazing to see our people facing one conflict after another, in one corner after another, over one ideology over another. Yet the basic feature remains the same, i.e. the belligerent youth power harnessed by motivated campaigners with vested interests and the easy availability of arms and ammunitions to these private armies. On one hand the new Kashmir govt declared easing of Paramilitary forces in the valley, on the other Bengal was caught unawares and taken hostage by the maoists. Are we living in peace? Is India a dangerous place to live? Are we sure we will not be bushwhacked the next time we go out or are we even sure we're safe inside our homes. Crime rates are touching the sky. Economy boomed then crashed and then boomed agin still the unemployment & lawlessness never had a sinusoidal curve - only exponential. While we are sending women out to work, their safely is increasingly at stake. Society's values have plunged deep down. Police is a mere symbol of our freedom but are we really free? Or only the law breakers are free?