Praveen’s Magic Quill

I seem to be having a knack of falling and getting hurt just before the final hurdle! I wonder whether I have been jinxed… Just a few weeks before my 12^th Standard Board Exam Practicals, I fell off the ladder and severely fractured my left elbow. It healed only 80%, that too only after more than 3 months which included 2 complex operations to put the bits and pieces of my elbow together using a metal plate and no less than 12 bolts! Thankfully, my right hand was alright and I gave my best to both practical and theory exams.

Yesterday, barely a month away from my final semester exam, I fell again, this time tripped by a sharp stone poking out from the so-called road inside my college campus while running, fell down to the same kind of stony ground and skidded to a halt nearly ten feet from the place I actually fell! At the end, I managed to bruise eight spots in my hands and knees , the outer layer of the skin neatly got worn off, broke the glass of the watch (thankfully nothing seems to be wrong with the mobile as of now, symptoms maybe known only later). The doctor says that it will take nearly a week for them to heal! Damn!

I wonder why these stuffs happen to me just before major occasions!

On the leap day, Feb 29, 2008, our Finance Minister P. Chidambaram presented Indian Union Budget 2008. The budget has received mixed reactions. Many applauded him for presenting a well balanced budget and as always expected, the opposition parties started crying that it is a populist budget, aimed at winning votes. Catch the Highlights of the entire budget here.

I am not an expert at this, but I can see that the FM has done a good job of balancing the economy keeping in mind both the slowing growth rate and the upcoming elections. He has laid strong emphasis on social sector, agriculture, and infrastructure. He has tried to spread the fruits of economic reforms to the neglected parts of the country.

When I read The Hindu yesterday, Four Proposals caught my eyes:

1. The first thing that is going to impact us (to-be-fresher-soon) is the Income Tax. I am quite pleased that the threshold limit of Income Tax exemption has been increased by around Rs.40, 000, thus giving us a relief of around Rs.4, 000.

Applicable Tax Rates:

(i) For males below 65 years:

(ii) For females below 65 years:

So, this is gonna boost our yearly savings a bit. For example, if someone is gonna earn 2.5Lakhs per annum, after deducting certain basket of allowances and calculating tax from the taxable income, the resultant figures will be of the order of less than Rs.4000 per annum! And you have taken up LIC or if you are paying medical insurance premium for your parents, you may well be totally exempted from paying any tax! Thus, I guess that this budget is one of the best ever seen by individual taxpayers!

2. The second proposal is the one that seems to have captured the attention of every single journalist and politician in the country! The Massive waiver of loans obtained by farmers! The PSU and Regional Rural Banks have been asked to offer debt waiver on all agricultural loans disbursed upto March 2007 and due until the end of December 2007. The total value of relief to be offered to farmers is estimated at Rs.60, 000 Crore!

I have noted that a huge number of people (including my friend Prashanth) seem to laud this proposal as the best! Don’t you think 60,000 crores is a bit too much! Yes, I accept that a reasonable waiver of loans was the need of the hour taking into account the innumerous farmer suicides, but 60,000 Crores??? Gosh, that’s far away from being reasonable. The Big question is “Who is gonna bear the entire amount???” Will this affect the public sector banks by having to write off the debt? Moreover, won’t this become a habit in the future? Won’t the farmers begin to expect such a loan waiver every 5 years (That is every Election Year Budget)?

I personally feel that they should have given a loan waiver of half the amount, and should have spent the remaining in scientific research and other methodologies to find ways to prevent recurrences of drought and various other reasons responsible for the suicides. At the moment, it’s a bit of a deserving victory for the 40 million Indian Farmers, but for my above asked questions, I guess, time will have to answer.

3. The budget has also been a big Hurray for the Indian automobile sector and customers alike. Cars and two-wheelers are expected to become cheaper with excise cuts on both. Some of the highlights of the 2008 Budget pertaining to the auto-industry are:

a. Excise duty on small cars reduced from 16% to 12% (has been earlier reduced from 24%)

b. Excise duty on hybrid cars reduced from 24% to 14%

c. Excise duty on electric cars reduced to 0%

d. Excise duty on two wheelers & three-wheelers reduced from 16% to 12%

e. Excise duty on buses and their chassis reduced from 16% to 12%

Incentives through excise rate cut on Hybrid & Electric car will help to promote these environment friendly vehicles. Also, most small car and bike manufacturers have already reduced prices including Tata, Maruti and Hyundai. Now this means that small cars would now be more affordable. So, you can expect more traffic on your way to college/office! And when the Tata Nano comes out (which will be cheaper due to the excise cut) you can imagine how crazy the city traffic would get!

4. Excise Duty on packaged software is being increased from 8% to 12%. This means that games and softwares will be more expensive and thereby giving a boost to the already wonderfully-thriving-piracy. It appears that the service tax on customized software is being increased to bring it on par with IT services, and consequently, tax on packaged software is being increased to bring it on par with customized software. Now, I feel that this is likely to slowdown the IT usage in the domestic sector.

Leave your comments about my view and your views about the budget!

Hardly ever, a day goes by when I don’t wish that there was an extra hour or two everyday so that I can make ‘watching a movie’ or ‘reading books’ as part of my daily routine. When I realized today was a leap day, my heart, well, ‘leapt’ with joy. An entire 24 hours was extra just for me to do anything I please! But then it dawned upon me, that it’s a Friday today, and it’s gonna be just like any other day. Gotta attend classes! For a few minutes, I was indignant over the injustice of having a leap day. Then logic and common sense kicked in. Leap Day doesn’t actually mean more time, it’s just another day at the office for all of us!

So why do we have leap years then? Some say that the dudes at the early centuries who designed our calendars didn’t want to complicate things by adding 5 hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds every December 31^st and so they rounded off the amount of time it takes for our planet to revolve around that big ball of fire to 365 days, when in reality it takes closer to 365-1/4. Instead they decided to take that extra quarter day and store them somewhere in the faraway lands for 3 consecutive years and release them all at the 4^th year, precisely at the end of February!

But still, those astronomers weren’t satisfied. There was a still a bit of error pending. So, they decided upon a couple of rules to decide whether a year is a leap year or not:

1. Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year.

2. But every year divisible by 100 is NOT a leap year unless it is also divisible by 400.

This means that year 1800, 1900, 2100 etc. are NOT leap years. And so, Mr. Morarji Desai, the former Prime Minister of India who was born on Feb 29^th 1896 happened to celebrate his next birthday only on Feb 29th 1904, EIGHT years later! What a pity! Yes, it’s said that luck chases Leaplings (People born on Feb 29th) and it was true in the case of the Hon’ble Minister…

I think enough trivia for now! Officially, it’s a leap day today! So treasure it and use the day well! Because, the next lucky day as this is still 4 years away!!!

Happy Leap Day!!!

Hello Friends!

This is my very First Post in this blog. I had hit upon the idea of starting a blog a year back, but somehow I dint get to materialize it. A fortnight ago, I saw a half hour NEWS bit by a popular channel magnifying the pros of being a part of blogosphere. Coincidentally, when I had gone to Marc’s house the next day to get a few CDs, he offered me a subdomain to keep a blog. Finally I took my decision to start and run a blog and asked Marc to create one for me. The processing was over yesterday, and Volia, Here is my New Blog!!!

Currently, I don’t have specific plans for the blog. I might just use it as a General Purpose blog wherein I post absolutely anything from A to Z - whatever I feel like. But, first of all, I guess I will need to learn the basics of blogging and will have to explore the numerous options available with WordPress… I may require quite a bit of help from you all, my fellow friends (both bloggers and readers), at the initial stages of my Blogging Experience to understand various aspects of blogging.

Thats it for now, do keep checking out my blog, add me to your BlogRoll and dont forget to leave your precious comments and suggestions! I will try and keep updating the blog as often as I can, so, see you again soon!