Unfair...

Hi. Hutch Announcement on per SMS charges on 14'th Feb - Local SMS: 25p, National SMS: Rs 1, International SMS: Rs 5. This is for your information.



This is the text message that I received from Hutch a few days ago. And I consider it absolutely unfair that the company charges money for sending an SMS on Valentines day. And not only on Feb 14'th, I was charged money for sending greetings on Christmas, New Year, and Pongal.

In prepaid plans, every subscriber is entitled to sending 100 free local messages per day. I usually exhaust my daily limit before 6 in the evening. But thousands of subscribers don't send even a single message on normal days. They use up their limit only on festival days when they send SMS greetings to relatives and friends. Hutch, Airtel and Aircel are now charging messages on festival days on the pretext that their networks are getting congested due to the large volume of messages. This is true but a lame excuse nonetheless. Instead of upgrading their networks, companies are resorting to underhand tactics to earn extra money. The free SMS facility that they so proudly advertise on their brochures and advertisements has no meaning if they introduce hidden charges like these. Why doesn't TRAI (Telephone regulatory Authority of India) do anything about this?

Cellphone companies made a killing in the early days when call rates were 16 rupees per minute for outgoing and 8 rupees for incoming. Now they should decrease their rates because of the ever growing base of subscribers. India is the fastest growing telephony market in the world. The huge number of new subscribers every month justifies rock bottom call charges. The cell companies should realise this and refrain from unethical practises.

Ultra trouble.....

The 33'rd National games started in Guwahati yesterday amidst threats of boycott by the terrorist organization ULFA. The boycott call was withdrawn by ULFA after a plea by the chief minister and other assamese sportspersons.


The ULFA massacred more than 70 Hindi speaking people (mostly Biharis) in the state, and the chief minister is virtually begging the terrorist organization to desist from disrupting the National games. Isn't that pathetic?

The ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom) demands a separate sovereign state of Asom. It claims that the migrant labourers who come from Bihar in search of work take the jobs of the Assamese youth. This was the reason that they mercilessly butchered 70 people and warned others to go back home. It has got away with this heinous crime. There has been no concrete action by the Assam government against the rebels. This is mainly because the ULFA tacitly supported the election of Prafulla Mahanta.


The Indian government has allocated 89000 crore as the defense budget for 2006-07. So why keep the army idle? If we can beat Pakistan in a war, why can't we terminate a bunch of rebels hiding in forests? Why has there still not been a coordinated army-air force operation that could not only destroy ULFA but also other terrorist organizations and splinter groups in the Northeast?

There are two main reason for groups like ULFA to thrive in the Northeast. One is the extrinsic reason. These groups receive logistic and financial support from rogue organizations like the ISI. Also because of their Maoist communist ideology, they are helped by the Chinese. The other and the more important reason is intrinsic. The people of the Northeast do not feel sufficiently Indian for them to reject the ULFA agenda out rightly. And that is our fault, not theirs.

Our main failure has been in not being able to integrate the Northeast in the social fabric. The region still remains as if it is cut-off from the rest of India. The people in the Northeast look different and speak different languages which is one of the main reasons for their virtual sequestration.

Terrorism thrives in regions of suffering. Where people are discontent and tired of struggling for even basic needs. Look all over the world - Chechenya, Kosovo, Ethiopia, Palestine. In all these regions, there has not been enough economic development to ensure jobs for everyone and protection of their fundamental rights. When people are discontent, they begin to look for alternative forms of governance.

To prevent the Northeast situation from getting worse, the centre should ensure more jobs and prosperity in the region. It should encourage the population to start learning Hindi. Maybe a couple of IIT's and IIM's would do the region a lot of good. And once the law and order situation is stabilised, laws like AFPSA can be removed and the Northeast will return to normalcy.

Sidney Sheldon is dead.

One of the world's most published authors, 'Sidney Sheldon' died yesterday at the age of 89. He not only wrote novels, but was also a producer, a scriptwriter, a poet. He wrote for television, theatre and movies. I never liked his books very much, it was like water compared with the wine other writers wrote. His books were like a bollywood masala movie without much literary value. The only Sidney Sheldon book I found worth reading was "If tomorrow comes". Friends told me that his "Tell me your dreams" was worth a read, but I never got the opportunity to read it.

But he was a difficult writer to ignore. If a street survey would be taken, I am sure more people would state Sidney Sheldon as their favorite writer than any other author. The reason being, that his books were easy to read. There were no difficult words, no complicated style of storytelling, an amazingly lucid style of writing, and most of all, lots of sex. Most of his novels had female protagonists. Maybe he understood the female mind better than the male mind.

Sidney Sheldon will be a difficult writer to replace. May his soul rest in peace.