From the monthly archives:

October 2006

Illusion and Dream

by Trina Talukdar on October 26, 2006

I was presented with a “Thakumar Jhuli” on my 7th birthday. (For those of you who do not know what that is, go to Wikipedia…no, actually…if you are shameless enough to not know what “Thakumar Jhuli” is, then go kill yourself.) There were the regular “Lal Kamal ar Nil Kamal” stories. But the one story that intrigued me the most was one that is somewhat like the “Pandora’s Box” story.

It’s basically about how God puts all the emotions in this box and gives them to these children and tells them never to open the box. But being little curious (beastly) children, they obviously open the box and all the emotions- happiness, guilt, mirth, kindness, fly away. The children get scared when they see all of the emotions flying away and quickly close the box, but by then everything has flown away…only “hope” remained.

I used to keep arguing with my aunt that this was not true. There still was happiness when I went to the zoo and kindness when I gave stale chapatis to the street dog. She would tell me that even when I was in the zoo I would kept hoping that I would come again, and when I gave chapatis to the dog I would hope that he would like me. I would pout stubbornly at being defeated in the debate.

How many years has it been since? A decade? More…

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Tata-Corus DealThe Tatas are going to take over world’s 8th largest steelmaker in the biggest ever deal made by Corporate India.

  • Deal valued at about $8 billion
  • Corus 5 times bigger than Tata
  • India’s biggest multi billion-dollar overseas corporate deal
  • Deal to lift Tata from 65th to 5th in the global rankings
  • The Tata-Corus combo is set to be the worlds 5th largest steel producer.

An alliance of this measure is just what the doctor ordered for both the companies. The steel industry needs consolidation, more so after the $38 billion Arcelor-Mittal deal earlier this year. Steelmakers across the world are now finding they need global alliances to remain competitive.

India Inc. seems to be on a global shopping free. This year only, Tata Tea bought a stake in the U.S. water manufacturer Glaceau for $677 million, and Tata Coffee acquired Eight O’Clock Coffee of the U.S. for $220 million. During the first half of 2006, Indian companies have closed on some 76 global takeovers worth $5.2 billion.

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Poor Man’s Banker Gets Nobel for Peace

October 21, 2006

Muhammad Yunus, renowned Bangladeshi economist, has won the Nobel peace prize this year. He has won the award jointly with Grameen Bank, his own creation.
He is the fourth Bengali to receive the Nobel Prize – preceded by Rabindranath Tagore (1913), Mother Teresa (1979) who lived and worked in Kolkata and Amartya Sen (1998).
As an economics [...]

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