A Clean Sweep

What is so far known as the year of hope for the economic downturn, the year 2009 also turned out to be the ray of hope for the females. So far it has been the golden year for girls as they negated the general belief of boys being superior to them. Whether it was CBSE examination, getting into administrative services or acquiring a seat in parliament; Girls outperformed Boys.

While Girls outshined boys acquiring higher pass percentage than boys in the CBSE XII examination, they did better even among high scorers. More number of girls scored above 90% than boys. Eventually, the toppers were also mostly girls. Not to forget this year’s Civil services result where Girls were again on a topping spree. The first three toppers were all girls and out of the top 25, 18 were girls. This time the parliament will also accommodate highest number of women MP’s elected for 15th Lok Sabha i.e. 61, highest since independence. Acquiring the highest position in the apex of management was also easy going for women like Chanda Kochhar and Shikha Sharma being appointed as MD & CEO for ICICI Bank and Axis Bank respectively.

These results definitely wipe the illusion prevalent in the Indian society about the girls being weak or inferior. We see that urban girls are now offered an open lifestyle and stand tall with the boys. However, in my opinion, the need of the hour is to provide support to rural females. It is high time that we must not just exaggerate the achievement but take it differently to perceive more optimizing results in the future.

IPL 2:The epilogue

The exuberant wait of 59 days did come to an end with an out of the blue successor of the DLF IPL trophy for the year 2009. Deccan Chargers tangled the last year IPL winner’s list upside down and emerged as the new owner of the enamoring trophy. However, another contender for the trophy was the Royal Challengers who also entered finals dramatically. Highly charged Deccan players stood firm against the Royal  Challenger’s challenge and finally Kingfisher army threw in the towel. After the match, the whole stadium sank in a celebration mode. Performances by renowned artists like Akon, Katrina Kaif, Shilpa Shetty turned on the spectators and finally with the prize distribution ceremony the ebullient drama came to an end. Mathew Hayden(CSK) was honored with the Orange Cap for highest runs in the series and R.P.Singh with the Purple Cap for being the most successful bowler of the tournament.

People gonna miss the IPL season2 the most.. ooppsss… not the most.. Specifically, Cheer-girls wins the majority in this case..:)

A Crunch Bite

The year 2008 turned out to be a notable year of the global history. One of the most popular and horrendous word of this year was introduced to people, thanks to the most strongest (now dwindling) economy of the world. From striver to far-famed business tycoons, mostly being unaware of the word 'recession’, now held responsible this downturn for sluggish business. For some it also emerged as a justification for salary cuts, demotion or pink slips.

Marked by sudden outburst, the housing bubble in the US was held responsible for the downturn, the roots of which lie back in 1993. The bubble which started forming with booming share market and sub-prime lending, led to the hornet's nest. Sub-prime lending refers to distributing loans to sub-prime borrowers which are considered to have a bad credit report and possess risk in repaying loans. However, these sub-prime borrowers (includes people as wells as financial institutions) were offered loans on account of purchasing property, the rates of which were roaring heights (from 2000-2005, increased about 125%) as large number of people invested in real estate after earning from share market. Hence it was conceived that such borrowers would easily repay loans (with a higher interest amount to bank) after a considerable gain. The idea was of notion that it'd benefit both- the borrowers as well as the lenders. However, abrupt downfall in the real estate prices (by 20%) in the year 2007 made the situation perplexed for both. It was then the bubble burst and made the situation adverse leading to bankruptcy and bailout of some of the biggest financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Washington Mutual.

An image explaining all the events.. courtesy: http://www.wikipedia.org/

The worst bulged with US stock market loosing points and it did hit the Asian and other global markets. Oil Prices rose unexceptionally high and inflation was accelerated to reach heights. The worst wasn’t over yet. The prey to such a crash was none other than employees who faced salary cuts and lately were given pink slips. Countries started taking stringent actions to overcome the situation. Reserves of many nations ejected support in form of bail-out packages. The defensive strategy of many countries effected the globalization all over the world leading to a sharp fall in GDP of developing countries.

However, the New Year, 2009, did come with some hope as the stock markets gained momentum on a positive note. The oil prices are now reduced to double digits (at a normal level) and inflation is nearly inconsiderable. Growth rate for Q1 of the new fiscal year remained ahead of the Q4 (2008).As for India, the market hitting upper circuit twice with 17.34% gain from previous close(highest gain ever, globally) did show some signs of growing confidence in investors. But whether this green signal is on political grounds or technical know-how of the people is still dubious.

Recession did symbolize panic all over and was on the hook but consequently it did guide us intangibly to be stringent in our policies, be effective while following guidelines and possess prognostication to some extent :)