Polls push growth

The much-hyped growth witnessed in rural India despite the economic slowdown that affected urban India — impacted by the global financial crisis, is really the result of “a political business cycle engineered by the functioning of a democracy”.
The government, in an election year tends to spend more in rural areas that are their vote banks than they do in the first three years of the government. In a research paper, God, Government and Growth, the Noble group has shown how the government’s support price for various crops jumped to as much as 94 per cent in one case, and in the case of the national rural employment guarantee scheme (NREGS), the 2009 budgeted amount of Rs 14,400 crore more than doubled to Rs 30,000 crore. This is a way of transferring money to rural India, which helps increase its purchasing power. In this context, the rural sector is unlikely to be a runaway growth story in the forseeable future, says the report. Mr Dipankar Mitra, analyst at Noble, says, “The government’s heightened activism in rural India recently through a debt waiver of $14 billion write-off and the $6 billion being spent annually on the NREGS is prone to the election cycle.”

He says this expenditure “may not wane” but the next government that comes could go slow on the programme, after the first year.

The present government, that came into power in 2004 increased rural spending from Rs 18,200 crore in 2005 to Rs 42,400 crore in the 2009 Budget and revised this figure by nearly 60 per cent to Rs 67,200 crore.

The minimum support price (MSP) is another handy tool to transfer funds to rural India.The MSP price for paddy jumped 32 per cent in 2009 from 11 per cent in 2008 and that of sesamum from one per cent to 74 per cent and nigreseed from 2 per cent to 94 per cent.

Stiff challenge for Kings

Kings XI Punjab face Royal Challengers Bangalore in a critical encounter here on Friday. While Kings XI have been at the wrong end of the Duckworth-Lewis method twice in the Indian Premier League 2009 so far, Royal Challengers Bangalore’s fortunes have slid badly after a fine start against the defending champions Rajasthan Royals. Things have not fallen in place for the Punjab team, who are languishing at the bottom of the table after losing first two encounters.
Although they are yet to open their account, they undoubtedly possess a powerful batting order, led by the stylish Yuvraj Singh.

The Kings XI skipper, who scored a brisk 28-ball 38 in last match against Kolkata Knight Riders, will also count on Sri Lanka skipper Kumar Sangakkara and country-mate Mahela Jayawardena for some timely contributions. “We have played well in both the games, especially in the batting department,” Yuvraj said.

“We just need to sort out our bowling. It has been just two games and we were in the same position last year, so hopefully we can go and pick things up,” added the skipper of Kings XI Punjab. Irfan Pathan who is chipping in well with his pinch-hitting skills needs to come to the party with Protean paceman Yusuf Abdullah to pressurise the RCB batsmen. Royal Challengers Bangalore started their journey in style by comprehensively beating defending champions Rajasthan Royals by 75 runs, but since then are suffering from lack of consistency.

Skipper Kevin Pietersen will surely draw on his experience to recapture the form they showed in the first match. Besides Pietersen, the onus of building the innings will also be on star South Africa all-rounder Jacques Kallis and Rahul Dravid, whose 48-ball 66 laid the cornerstone of Bangalore’s win against the Rajasthan Royals.
Pietersen has called on his batsmen to deliver. “We started really well (beating defending champion Rajasthan Royals) but we didn’t play too well in the last two matches. I think if we can sort our batting in the first six overs, things would be quite okay,” said the RCB skipper.

With the team management adamant on continuing with Robin Uthappa behind the stumps instead of South African Mark Boucher, the Karnataka opener also has to play his bit as opening batsman to lay the foundation for a fighting total or to chase a stiff target for his side.

Their bowling department did well in the first match skittling out Shane Warne-led team for a paltry 58, thanks to Anil Kumble’s five-for, but appeared sluggish against the Chennai Super Kings and Deccan Chargers since then.

Satyam got Rs 2k cr in Jan-March

Satyam Computers has had receivables worth Rs 2,000 Crore in the January-March period from new and existing clients, its chairman, Mr Kiran Karnik said.

“We have had Rs 2,000 Crore collections from new work and some of the existing clients over the three months (January-March) ... some clients left but we have got some new work,” he said. He said the rate of receivables per month was about $140-150 mn. The company had raised a loan Rs 685 Crore to meet some of its working capital needs.

Funniest comment on Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the best game I ever played, both Single Player and Multi-Player. But there are few newbies who know what gaming is all about and make some funny comments about weapon. They are just game spoilers. Here is the funniest comment taken from http://blur.in/blog/blog_dsc.asp?bid=22&index=3&nextpage=1#comments1. Videep Vijay Kumar said, "Heh heh didn't know that there was something called an 'official n00b'. I guess we'll also have to ban the grenade launcher attachment and sniper rifles as well in that case. We'll do a poll before the next tournament.. and if there are more n00bs than 'pro players', I guess they'll have it their way ;).". This was comment made in response to "P90 is an OFFICIAL noob's gun according to international standards." According to him sniper rifle is noob gun, what a unique thought. I don't know whether its unique or ..... Second thing is, he mentioned they will call a vote whether to remove noob weapons or not. Obviously, in any case, whatsoever, noobs will be higher than pro-players. I wonder why they call a vote against noob things where noobs are more than pro-players who will vote to include noob things. It should be organiser's decision whether to conduct a tournament in a nooby way or in a professional way. I guess this guy(or the gaming lounge where he used to play itself) is the game spoiler. Kindly comment what you think of this guy.