Sushant Kumar

Petrol prices have risen by 5 to 6 rupees. There have been protests, curfews and other forms of agitation against this decision of the UPA government. I know that the oil prices have risen and cost per barrel has simply skyrocketed leaving the working class citizen with no choice, but to pay more. I was in Lucknow, when the price rise was announced and as my mother and sisters were busy shopping I had ample time to think about the price rise and its consequences. As i traveled through the crowded streets of Lucknow, from one shop to another, like a driver, the fuel price rise started to hit me more. I was stuck at a railway crossing, when the look at a subzi wala (vegetable monger) made me realize that prices of vegetables were about to rice.

The rising fuel prices would increase transportation charges and that would first affect the cost of vegetables coming form the farms to the processing units to the local retailer. The cost of this transport would be recovered from the buyer. The rice of price of virtually all groceries will increase (This increase is long term). This will mean that for a common working man, he will have to spend more, and thus will be able to save less in the process. To compensate for the rice in food prices, the self employed people, like doctors, lawyers and the business class will start charging more. Once your medical expenses increase, your savings would further decrease. You will then demand more from your employer. The company thus then spends more on employees, hence increasing the expenditure of the company. The investors are not happy with increase in the expenditure which reduces the stock price of the company. To compensate, the company charges more from its clients. This causes a ripple effect.The inflation cycle has thus begun.

Looking at the chain of events we can possibly identify the root cause of inflation. The rise of the international oil prices has been the event that has lead to this chain. The big question then become that what triggered inflation. Is it the attack on Iraq by America or the natural cause of fossil fuel exhaustion.In the first case, our foreign policy is responsible, and in the latter one, the failure of efforts to use renewable sources of energy. India’s thermal power plants use non-renewable sources of energy. The failure of the science and technology department has lead us to not use the nuclear reactors to fuel and power the nation. This made us go for the nuclear treaty with United States and thus we indirectly supported them. The integration of all these factory lead to a costlier life. The rich people compensated it by raising their prices, The ones who lost were the middle class people (Service class). A broader look shows that the whole country lost. The event which triggered this loss was an ineffective government. The government, which taxed its citizens and could do nothing but indirectly tax them more and more.

I just went to visit the city of nawabs to meet my grandma before getting on with my job. On my way back in the Gomti Express (not so express), the photographer in me just arose and I clicked a few pics.

Twitter or a sort of global chit-chat. I had a twitter account, the way I had accounts on various websites, which I used to explore and then forget. Then I went to the blogcamp where I came across this presentation by Abhishek baxi.

It seems IPL matches have been fixed, somewhere above by the person who wrote destiny and promised each of us some enlightenment in the era of the stale reality television.
This is reality TV at its best. The matches are going to the last over, the last bowl and the last wicket. It seems like the roman era is back with the gladiators from all over the world fighting in an amphitheater and playing for their life. IPL concept is similar to the concept of gladiators fighting till the end. Initially it all seemed like a big moolah riot with the players being bidded, bought and sold much like non-living entities.

Then came the first match and the gladiator no:1(McCullum fired and bludgeoned the old jammy(Rahul Dravid) of the Indian team. Jammy and his team, it seems never recovered from the blow. What followed kept the world glued to their seats with a thrilling and nail biting action on offer. Shane Warne with his bat rode over the victory line in the first of such events. Then came the disaster of captaincy by sehwag and poor bowling by shoaib malik that helped badrinath send the devils from delhi back into the den. That just cost them their place in the semifinals. They repeated a similar mistakes against the mumbai Indians and that time it sehwag again.

As the fire on the cricketing arena was red hot and blazing, the boxing rings were not far away. Sreesanth fell victim to the aggression, anger and foolishness of Harbhajan Singh. This incident raised many fingures at the IPL and its concept.  The fire took some time to be controlled and in the meanwhile it did a lot of damage. Harbhajan lost almost 4 crore rupees and the reputation of both Harbhajan and sreesanth took a beating.

On the corporate arena was the king of good times who was not facing a very good time on the team standings chart. It was not long as the pressure created frictions and the fire got the CEO of royal challengers of bangalore, Charu Sharma, decommissioned. Venky too was on the hit list and before the trigger could be pressed a cool Rahul jammed the gun.

Then was the time of the grandpa of Bengal. oops dada. Not grandpa. Although his fielding didn;t make him any different, he still showed his skill with the bat, saving kolkatta many times. It was not long as  DADA and King  Khan’s differences were out on the front pages.

Finally with the semifinals getting close, the most gelled up teams are here and the rest are out and it will be a treat to see these gladiators entertain us in probably what could be said as the most popular cricket tournament in Indian history.

originally posted at TV Burger