VISHY IS WORLD CHAMPION AGAIN

Viswanathan Anand beat Vladimir Kramnik of Russia 6.5-4.5 with a game to spare in the 12-game World Championship match being held at Bonn, Germany. Anand drew the 11th game, playing with white pieces, to retain the title.

Anand first won the World Chess title in 2000 in 128-player knockout format. Last year, in 2007, he won the title in eight-player double round-robin format. Now Anand has regained the title in the traditional matchplay format, where one play against a player (the challenger or reigning champion) in a series of games.

First two games were drawn. Anand won the third game playing with black pieces. Fourth game was also a draw. Anand again won with black pieces in game five. Anand stretched his lead to 3 points in the sixth game by winning it. Next three games were drawn. Anand with his good defensive play managed to escape from the jaws of defeat in game 8 and 9. Kramnik managed to win the tenth game and kept the championship match alive. Then rest is history!

I feel he is nursing one unsatisfied desire deep in his heart i.e. to beat Garry Kasparov convincingly. I hope Kasparov comes out of the retirement strongly and Anand manages to beat him. In my view he is the best sportsperson India has ever produced. He is consistently at the top for a long time. No Indian sportsperson has managed to do that. His field of sport may not be exciting to watch but he is the only Indian to be a true World Champion for a long time. He is BHARATRATNA!Kudos to Anand!

CONGRATULATIONS TO VIJENDER!

Vijender Kumar won India the third medal at Beijing Olympics. He won a bronze medal in 75 kg Middle Weight boxing category today. He was assured a medal by qualifying for the semi-finals. But unfortunately he went down to Cuban boxer Emilio Correa in the semi-final bout. He is the first boxer to get a medal for India in the Olympics. Congrats to Vijender! This is India's best ever medal haul at the Olympics with 1 gold and 2 bronze medals. Previous best was 1 gold and 1 bronze at 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

CONGRATULATIONS TO SUSHIL KUMAR!

Sushil Kumar has won India the second medal at Beijing Olympics. He won a bronze medal in Men's 66 Kg Freestyle wrestling on Wednesday. He got bye in the first round. He lost his next round bout to eventual finalist. The repechage round provided him the opportunity to win the bronze medal. Congrats to Sushil Kumar!

CONGRATS ABHINAV!

Congratulations to Abhinav Bindra for winning gold medal at Beijing Olympics! He becomes the first Indian to win an individual gold at the Olympics. He got gold for winning 10 metres Air Rifle event today.
Abhinav Bindra's Blog

RICH GETS RICHER POOR GETS POORER

It is not just the dialogue uttered by SUPERSTAR Rajnikanth in his forthcoming film “SIVAJI-THE BOSS” but to an extent it is the state of our country. One group is arguing that Indian economy is booming. The other group argues that rich is getting richer and poor is getting poorer. Then, which is true?

10–15 years back, middle class family struggled to run their family. Now they have excess money, which they don’t know how to spend. Consumerism was rare 15 years back but now it is on rage. The rise of these middle class families is due to their education, boom in IT sector and globalization.15 years back our society had many lower middle class families but now most of them have become upper middle class. In that regard our economy is booming. It is the scenario in metros and some two-tier cities only.

What about villages and smaller towns? What about slums in cities? Most of the people in these areas are not well educated and not in IT related field. Most of them are in agricultural and its related activities. Most of the marginal farmers are facing huge losses. And most of them are over dependent on agriculture and not looking for alternative avenue. Policy of SEZ, skyrocketing of real estate prices and price rise of essential goods (which all are results of globalization) are really affecting poor people.

There is a need for optimizing the growth in agriculture. Implementing PURA (Providing Urban facilities in Rural Areas) in large scale is also very important. As our honorable President Abdul Kalam often suggests we need more entrepreneurs especially from villages and smaller towns. But what happening now is monopoly by large business houses and multi-nationals. I am not against individual growth but small and medium entrepreneurs should not get affected.

Because of globalization only we have got so many facilities and development. As of now we are only consumers. But we should market not the market. We should grow as producers. If we can achieve that than policy of globalization is indeed a success otherwise not.