Parvati Omanakuttan's narrow miss

I am not a follower of the beauty pageants, but chanced upon the Ms World 2008 finals telecast on Zee Cafe on Saturday night. Kept watching it because of the Mallu connection - Parvati Omanakuttan.

She did very well to reach the top 5 and for me she was the winner too. But, she was unfortunate to miss it very narrowly to the girl from Russia. But, I thought she did better than the Russian babe in the final questions.

Was quite disappointed to watch her returning with only the first runner up position when she fully deserved the big crown. Anyways, good job from a girl from Kerala-Mumbai.

Poetic justice awaits Kerala CM

The communist government in Kerala is about to complete exactly the half of its scheduled tenure, but Chief Minister Achyuthanandan has landed himself in trouble, yet again.

The never-ending saga of the Munnar land issue is all set to snowball in to a bigger political issue in the coming days and most probably, this time, it would end only with the resignation of Achyuthanandan.

His detractors within his own party are plotting a better organized and orchestrated effort this time and it looks like the final battle for Achyuthanandan. The coming days would very well decide the fate of the political career of this veteran leader from the land of backwaters .

It is payback time for Achyuthanandan. I personally lost all the respect from this leader from the land of backwaters the moment he insulted the family of late major Sandeep Unnikrishnan.

The sheer thought of coming face to face with the family of a real life martyr might have taken the wits out of the leader, who claims to have fought the British underground. While blurting out those expletives, unthinkable from a leader of his status, Achyuthanandan forgot the simple fact that his own party has thrived on hundreds of martyrs.

He had been reckless (we often misunderstood it as he being brave) throughout his career. And, looking at the way he handled issues in the last couple of weeks, it looks like he is beyond redemption.

Let's have a CEO to run India...

I am very late with my posts on this subject of the Mumbai attacks. I was flabbergasted with the verbal diarrhea that followed and I am sure, it was the same for you too.

But, it was infectious and here I am posting just another.

What I really liked was the anti-government sentiments that followed the tragedy. People have now lost their patience. I had always wanted something different.

So, I am only surprised that, we, the common man, waited so long. The home minister, the chief minister, the defense minister, the prime minister, the finance minister, all have long lost their credibility for the simple fact that, they are incapable of protecting the lives of the people - let's forget their long-proved inability to protect our financial security. They haven’t been able to protect the most important thing - lives of the people.

I just want to suggest one idea. Instead of these aged and inefficient politicians, let's have a corporate method of ruling.

Let's have a CEO instead of prime minister. Let's have a chief financial officer instead of finance minister. Let's have a chairman of the board instead of the president. Let's have executive vice presidents ruling our states. Let the common man be the shareholder of the country. Let this corporate machinery be answerable to the common man in every manner.

Let's have boardroom battles, let's have deadlines, let's have commitments. Let's be clinical in the way our country is run.

Let's make the country profitable, not a carnage of inefficiency.

Let's get into the business as fast as we can. Let's try to save the remaining lives.

Kudos to news channels!

On that weird Wednesday, I was visiting my folks down Kannur in Kerala. I did not even bother to switch on television as my 3-months-old daughter was drawing all my attention.

So, obviously, I was unaware of all the human tragedy that had been unfolding in Mumbai on that night. Next day, I was staring at the newspaper headlines which screamed, "Mumbai attacked". I felt numb.

As I did not have a cable television connection, I was not able to catch the live events. The shock and awe those events created did not fully get conveyed to me until I reached back in Bangalore and methodically went through the archived news on websites, photos and some Youtube videos.

I received forwarded mails bashing news channels for telecasting the events live. The argument was, it would have helped terrorists to prepare counter strategies.

Let’s spare our news channels at least here, I feel, though I am not at all a fan of them. In any country, the same would have happened. I don't think terrorists were also watching those news channels for advance information while fighting Indian commandos in Taj!

Instead I admire those reporters for their guts. They were gutsy for a change. They risked their lives.