Online Yamuna from Yamunotri to Sangam

Check how Humans killed the Yamuna river which starts from Himalaya to give water and life to humans.
Can we do something to save our Yamuna along where Life of Sri Krishna and the oldest civilization on earth flourished some 5000 years ago.

We say only Delhi is responsible for polluting Yamuna. Just look and analyze from start. I think Uttaranchal and Upper Haryana are equally responsible. Yamuna never enters in Delhi...its no more much earlier at Dak ka Pathar and Taje Wala where water of yamuna is distributed among states.

Now see the Pics:-

One of Yamuna Stream starting at Har Ki doon which is above and north of yamunotri. Before this point there is a Morinda Tal where The Har Ki Doon River is blocked by a big stone piece. This stream is called supin river and merges with rupin river and makes the famous Tons river. Then swarn river and pawar river also merges into Tons river.




At such a early stage of yamuna tributary tons a huge concrete 236 m high Krishna dam is being built.


Yamuna main stream starting at Yamunotri Glacier shown below joining to make one yamuna river



Many streams coming across Dehradoon to merge to Yamuna river



Yamuna River Stopped at Dak ka Pathar Barrage. See most of the water diverted to a canal below



This barrage and bird sanctuary near Ponta Sahib also diverts most of the water to canal below



See the yamuna river with so less water and the canal



The Final Death of Yamuna is at Taje Wala. Can you identify which is the original Yamuna river and whivh is canal? The the left one is canal where is the yamuna water?



See Below a huge polluted Nala Falling into Yamuna near Yamuna Nagar, Haryana. Must be coming from some industrial waste.


Yamuna with very less water enters delhi and face some huge Nalas and Drain right at waziarabad junction. There is no Yamuna After that. It is all waste black sewage water in yamuna.



See at Okhla Barrage, Delhi most of water which is mix or treated and untreated water diverted to Agra Canal below.



Yamuna after delhi near Faridabad, Greater Noida is just a Nala, Drain. There is no sign of a river.



Yamuna Near Vrindavan. See the color of water and many drain falling into it.




See Yamuna near Mathura Refinary. The waste of refinary which may be carrying chemicals also falling into yamuna downstream.



Yamuna near Gokul



Highly Polluted Yamuna at Agra Between red fort and Taj Mahal. See a highly polluted Nala from a leather industry falling into yamuna before Tajmahal.



Sangam of Chambal river and Yamuna river. Can u guess which river is yamuna and which is chambal?



The Maha Sangam at Allahabad of Yamuna below and Ganga above.



Note:- I will keep updating pics and their information as I will get to know more.

Related Article about the Yamuna Rally as published in Down To Earth Magazine

Mars team ponders whether lander sees ice or salt

By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer Mon Jun 16, 7:37 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - Is the white stuff in the Martian soil ice or salt? That's the question bedeviling scientists in the three weeks since the Phoenix lander began digging into Mars' north pole region to study whether the arctic could be habitable.

Shallow trenches excavated by the lander's backhoe-like robotic arm have turned up specks and at times even stripes of mysterious white material mixed in with the clumpy, reddish dirt.

Phoenix merged two previously dug trenches over the weekend into a single pit measuring a little over a foot long and 3 inches deep. The new trench was excavated at the edge of a polygon-shaped pattern in the ground that may have been formed by the seasonal melting of underground ice.

New photos showed the exposed bright substance present only in the top part of the trench, suggesting it's not uniform throughout the excavation site. Phoenix will take images of the trench dubbed "Dodo-Goldilocks" over the next few days to record any changes. If it's ice, scientists expect it to sublimate — or go from solid to gas, bypassing the liquid stage — when exposed to the sun because of the planet's frigid temperatures and low atmospheric pressure.

"We think it's ice. But again, until we can see it disappear ... we're not guaranteed yet," mission scientist Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis said Monday.

Even if it's not ice, the discovery of salt would also be significant because it's normally formed when water evaporates in the soil.

Preliminary results from a bake-and-sniff experiment at low temperatures failed to turn up any trace of water or ice in the scoopful of soil that was delivered to the lander's test oven last week. Scientists planned to heat the soil again this week to up to 1,800 degrees, said William Boynton of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Phoenix landed in the Martian arctic plains on May 25 on a three-month, $420 million mission to study whether the polar environment could be favorable for primitive life to emerge. The lander's main job is to dig into an ice layer believed to exist a few inches from the surface.

The project is led by the University of Arizona and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The lander was built by Lockheed Martin Corp.

For Latest Phonix News : - http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php

Life as Dance

- Contributed to Indiaved by DJ Chadda, a Businessman and World Traveller via Email

Start with meditation, and things will go on growing in you — silence, serenity, blissfulness, sensitivity. And whatever comes out of meditation, try to bring it out in life. Share it, because everything shared grows fast. And when you have reached the point of death, you will know there is no death. You can say goodbye, there is no need for any tears of sadness — maybe tears of joy, but not of sadness. But you have to begin from being innocent.

So first, throw out all crap that you are carrying. Everybody is carrying so much crap, and one wonders, for what? Just because people have been telling you that these are great ideas, principles.... You have not been intelligent with yourself. Be intelligent with yourself.

Life is very simple; it is a joyful dance. The whole earth can be full of joy and dance, but there are people who are seriously vested in their interest that nobody should enjoy life, that nobody should smile, that nobody should laugh, that life is a sin, that it is a punishment. How can you enjoy when the climate is such that you have been told continuously that it is a punishment? — that you are suffering because you have done wrong things and it is a kind of jail where you have been thrown to suffer?

I say to you life is not a jail, it is not a punishment. It is a reward, and it is given only to those who have earned it, who deserve it. Now it is your right to enjoy; it will be a sin if you don't enjoy.

It will be against existence if you don't beautify it, if you leave it just as you have found it. No, leave it a little happier, a little more beautiful, a little more fragrant.

2.

You are not accidental. Existence needs you. Without you something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it. Thats what gives you dignity, that the whole existence will miss you. The stars and sun and moon, the trees and birds and earth - everything in the universe will feel a small place is vacant which cannot be filled by anybody except you. This gives you a tremendous joy, a fulfillment that you are related to existence, and existence cares for you. Once you are clean and clear, you can see tremendous love falling on you from all dimensions.

3.The moment you start seeing life as non-serious, a playfulness, all the burden on your heart disappears. All the fear of death, of life, of love - everything disappears. One starts living with a very light weight or almost no weight. So weightless one becomes, one can fly in the open sky. Zens greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children.

4.

In this world the greatest courage is to drop the mind aside. The bravest man is who can see the world without the barrier of the mind, just as it is. It is tremendously different, utterly beautiful. There is nobody who is inferior and there is nobody who is superior -- there are no distinctions

5.

The Payoff in Unhappiness
Misery has many things to give to you which happiness cannot give. In fact, happiness takes away many things from you. Happiness takes all that you have ever had, all that you have ever been; happiness destroys you.

Misery nourishes your ego, and happiness is basically a state of egolessness. That is the problem, the very crux of the problem. That's why people find it very difficult to be happy.
That's why millions of people in the world have to live in misery...have decided to live in misery. It gives you a very very crystallized ego. Miserable, you are Happy, you are not. In misery, crystallization; in happiness you become diffused.
If this is understood then things become very clear. Misery makes you special. Happiness is a universal phenomenon, there is nothing special about it. Trees are happy and animals are happy and birds are happy. The whole existence is happy, except man. Being miserable, man becomes very special, extraordinary.
Misery makes you capable of attracting people's attention. Whenever you are miserable you are attended to, sympathized with, loved. Everybody starts taking care of you. Who wants to hurt a miserable person? Who is jealous of a miserable person? Who wants to be antagonistic to a miserable person? That would be too mean.
The miserable person is cared for, loved, attended to. There is great investment in misery. If the wife is not miserable the husband simply tends to forget her. If she is miserable the husband cannot afford to neglect her. If the husband is miserable the whole family, the wife, the children, are around him, worried about him; it gives great comfort. 1 feels 1 is not alone, 1 has a family, friends.
When you are ill, depressed, in misery, friends come to visit you, to solace you, to console you. When you are happy, the same friends become jealous of you. When you are really happy, u will find the whole world has turned against you.

Nobody likes a happy person, because the happy person hurts the egos of the others.

6.The others start feeling, "So you have become happy and we are still crawling in darkness, misery and hell. How dare you be happy when we all are in such misery!"

Of course the world consists of miserable people, and nobody is courageous enough to let the whole world go against him; it is too dangerous, too risky. It is better to cling to misery, it keeps you a part of the crowd. Happy, and you are an individual; miserable, you are part of a crowd — Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Indian, Arabian, Japanese.

Happy? Do you know what happiness is? Is it Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan?


Happiness is simply happiness. One is transported into another world. One is no longer part of the world the human mind has created, one is no longer part of the past, of the ugly history. One is no more part of time at all. When you are really happy, blissful, time disappears, space disappears.

Albert Einstein has said that in the past scientists used to think that there were two realities — space and time. But he said that these two realities are not two — they are two faces of the same single reality. Hence he coined the word spaciotime, a single word. Time is nothing else but the fourth dimension of space.

Einstein was not a mystic, otherwise he would have introduced the third reality also — the transcendental, neither space nor time. That too is there, I call it the witness. And once these three are there, you have the whole trinity. You have the whole concept of trimurti, three faces of the divine. Then you have all the four dimensions. The reality is four-dimensional: three dimensions of space, and the fourth dimension of time.

But there is something else, which cannot be called the fifth dimension, because it is not the fifth really, it is the whole, the transcendental.


When you are blissful you start moving into the transcendental.

It is not social, it is not traditional, it has nothing to do with human mind at all.

7.

If you really want to know who I am,
you will have to be absolutely empty as I am.
Then two mirrors will be facing each other,
and only emptiness will be mirrored."

8.

" Looking at a sunset, just for a second you forget your separateness: you are the sunset. That is the moment when you feel the beauty of it. But the moment you say that it is a beautiful sunset, you are no longer feeling it; you have come back to your separate, enclosed entity of the ego. Now the mind is speaking. And this is one of the mysteries, that the mind can speak, and knows nothing; and the heart knows everything, and cannot speak. Perhaps to know too much makes it difficult to speak; the mind knows so little, it is possible for it to speak. "
osho

9.Misery is not so big as you make out. So the first thing is to reduce it to the right
proportions. Before you can get out of it, let the tiger disappear. Be very factual.
If you really want to transform your life, be factual. You cannot get out of fictions.
You can get out of facts; facts can be tackled, but fictions cannot be tackled.

10.

The beauty of facing life unprepared is tremendous.
Then life has a newness, a youth; then life has a flow
and freshness. Then life has so many surprises.
And when life has so many surprises
boredom never settles in you."

- By Osho

On The Brain

02:51 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 11, 2008

"U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy."

On Monday, June 2, 2008, surgeons at Duke University Medical Center announced that they had successfully removed a cancerous tumor from Sen. Edward Kennedy's brain.

Kennedy remained awake and alert during the entire procedure, doctors said. By keeping him awake, they were able to map the brain's key areas, like those that control movement and speech, and avoid cutting into them. His doctors were also able to use "neuronavigation techniques" to map his brain's cancerous areas. Doing this helped surgeons to better target the cancer and get all of it out.

Medical researchers have learned a lot about the brain in recent years, especially about the relationships between the brain's structure and functions. Understanding the brain has revolutionized diagnosis, treatment, and further research of a variety of conditions, including brain cancer and Alzheimer's disease. In this lesson, your own investigations will discover how exactly the brain works within the larger network of the nervous system.

Brain Basics

"An image of a brain scan"

Begin with some brain basics by going Inside the Brain. This interactive tour at the Alzheimer's Association has two parts, with the second part going into detail about the Alzheimer's affects the brain. For now, stick with part one exploring Brain Basics. On the first screen, roll your mouse over the colored text to see the brain's three main parts. Draw your own diagram of the brain (like the one shown in this diagram, which is basically a side view), labeling each part and describing its functions.

On the next screen, you will get an inside look at the brain's Supply Lines. About how much blood and oxygen does your brain need compared to the rest of your body? Next, find out more about those Thinking Wrinkles of yours. As you roll over the text to see and read about the specific regions of the cortex, which parts are you using right now? Add to your brain diagram, by color coding the smaller parts of the brain shown here, and adding labels and descriptions. Draw a second diagram of the brain&mdasha top view&mdashillustrating the Left/Right Brain sections and general functions.

Stepping deeper into the brain, wade your way through The Neuron Forest, Cell Signaling, and Signal Coding. What kinds of problems could a person have if a disease or tumor hampered the proper functioning of brain neurons? List at least two possible effects related to each cortex section. Discuss your lists with classmates.

Brain Games

"An illustration of the brain and the spinal cord."

Now it is time to play a few true "brain games" where Brains Rule! When you click open each game, maximize the browser window so that the game screen fills your computer screen. First, take a ride on the Brain-o-Coaster. In this game, you will get an inside view of the brain's early development. Take any seat on the neural plate for your first ride, and then grab a snack. Take the ride up to four times, choosing a different seat every time.

Next, Neuron Explosion will train and test you on what makes up a nerve cell. In Neuron Navigator, choose your favorite car to drive a leg to move.

Get up your nerve to enter the Neuron Laboratory. As master of the castle, it is up to you to straighten out Frankenbrain. After your assistant tells you what is going on, click the left-hand side of the room to take a look at the book shelf. Click on every item to see what they are. What do you notice about Frankenbrain's behavior?

"Nerve cells use electrochemicals to communicate in the nervous system."

Return to the middle of the room, and then go upstairs to get the laboratory key. Check out the lesson on the computer. As you answer each question correctly, you will get a number for the keycode. Once finished, your second assistant will use the code to unlock the door. Get downstairs and enter the lab.

Examine Frankenbrain through the machine, and try to fix the problem. What are the two different problems Frankenbrain has? Once you have sewn up the neuron circuit, fix the neuron's function. To blast the blue blockers, double-click on them.

Lastly, play Brain Attack. This game shows the different ways blood and oxygen can get cut off from our brains. What are the four ways? What happens when one of these occur?

If you have time, learn more about how illness affects the brain, by examining Alzheimer's Disease and the Brain and Brain Cancer.

source:- http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spe/nie/weeklylessons/stories/20080611-dnnieactivities.20ff5266.html

Consciousness a Problem

The inner universe of our minds is ironically one of the hardest of phenomena to study. We all should know the basics. Senses, emotions, memories, ideas - all are the raw materials of consciousness. But where does the brain come in? How are your subjective experiences explainable by neurons and synapses? (Or are they explainable?) Generally, in neuroscience and psychology, these questions are phrased as two different problems of consciousness.

The first part is the “easy problem.” It is basically a question of cognition, or how we process information. Our attention span, language skills, learning abilities, memory capacity, perception qualities, and problem solving abilities have been well-documented and explain a great deal of mental activity. After that there is the second part, or the “hard problem,” and it is in a totally different league. Why is there any experience at all if we are only physical machines and bodies of cells? More generally, what kind of automaton (e.g. the brain, a computer, a cell, and so forth) could generate consciousness? This is a harder scientific question than the easy problem for one simple reason: it could even be metaphysical.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts the questions of consciousness into three categories: descriptive, explanatory, and functional. Essentially this asks What? How? and Why? Describing consciousness is the easy problem, explaining it is the hard problem, and the question of its function is something not normally addressed with the first two. The question of its function comes down to how it is an adaptation in our evolutionary past. There are some ideas that say it is for free will, motivation, better flexibility (like learning), social coordination, and better cognition (like accessing cumulative information we gather). I’ll say a little more about the first two in the rest of this article.

There are some simple features of consciousness that everyone is familiar with. I would mark qualia, phenomenology, subjectivity, and flow as the major ones that are most self-evident. Qualia are the raw feelings of sensory perception that you have. How the world sounds, looks, feels, tastes, and smells to us. Isaac Newton wrote “to determine by what modes or actions light produceth in our minds the phantasm of colour is not so easie.” Behind the experience of qualia is phenomenology. Phenomenology refers to the organization that is intrinsic in consciousness. The “phenomena” are our thoughts and ideas we use to model the world. (SEP says “… the phenomenal structure of experience is richly intentional and involves not only sensory ideas and qualities but complex representations of time, space, cause, body, self, world and the organized structure of lived reality …”) Subjectivity is something of a casual term that we all know of. Subjective experience is dependent on point of view, and perhaps to some degree, it is uncommunicable to other people. For example, what is it like to be a cat? How would you know for sure? Finally, the dynamic flow of mental life is the storyline played out in your head. William James called it the “stream of consciousness.”

There is an explanatory gap present in trying to account for how consciousness exists. In a physical, material universe, it is hard to make sense of how consciousness arises and emerges from it. In spite of this there are numerous attempts to respond to this problem. Some are pretty common such as dualism (from Rene Descartes), where the soul is independent of the physical universe, or a closely related concept, idealism (from George Berkeley), where some contents of consciousness are uninvolved with matter. Other explanations seem odd or just plain absurd, like direct realism (from Thomas Reid), which says that the contents of consciousness are the world itself, or panpsychism (from Gottfried Leibniz), the notion that all matter is conscious. Emergence theory and epiphenomenalism posit that consciousness is the result of the brain’s immense complexity, and is therefore a physical construct. (For example, Hofstadter wrote a book I am a Strange Loop, saying consciousness is analogous to a sort of feed-back loop due to its self-reference, the “I.”) A strange combo of this idea and quantum physics is supported by Roger Penrose and some other scientists, called OOR. Their theory says a special quantum computation goes on in the mind allowing it to supersede some of the capabilities of rigid programming that regular computers have. (He argues his case in his book Emperor’s New Mind.)

Another very impressive question is whether or not consciousness is actually something that makes choices. It is conceivable that our consciousness is merely a byproduct of our deterministic brain so that it is only an endpoint and does not have any control over the brain’s processing. Perhaps you’re just along for the ride!

Some people (like Colin McGinn) say the hard problem is insoluble. Others (like Daniel Dennett) say it is an illusion; there is no hard problem. Still more (like David Chalmers) disagree with that, saying purely physical explanations are lacking. Take a look at the philosophical zombie, the Chinese room, the color expert Mary, and the Turing test for an idea of controversial issues with physicalism. A philosophical zombie is a theoretical human being that functions just as we do, exhibiting all of the ordinary behavior, but is not conscious. This begs the question, “What distinguishes conscious from non-conscious beings?” The Turing test is a situation played out between computers and humans where both a program and a real subject communicate with real interviewers, and if the interviewers cannot agree if the program is human, it is declared sentient. This raises the issue of whether or not it is even feasible to discern between conscious and non-conscious beings. (In AI research, this Turing test has been carried out in real life and is a part of an annual competition to see who can code the “most” human program. Also, for fun: An xkcd-twisted version of the Turing test.) The Chinese room is where a man sitting in a closed room, using instruction books, “translates” Chinese to English (or back), but does not truly “understand” Chinese. What makes up true comprehension? Lastly, the color expert Mary is a hypothetical scientist who learns all of the academic information about the color red possible, but then experiences seeing it for the first time afterwards. (Many people debate what her experience would be like.) What is the difference between qualia and information about qualia? These thought experiments flesh out some of the ambiguities we have in understanding consciousness, which prove problematic in reliably answering the hard problem.

And so the debate on the hard problem still persists, and one still wonders how and even if the problem can be solved. Can it even be properly understood? Is it in the realm of metaphysics or naturalistic science? How can we tell? Is there anything obvious being overlooked? Surely, the hard problem of consciousness ranks right up there with solving the millennium problems and understanding quantum theory. It is easily one of the hardest problems of the universe, yet it is what you live with every day.
Source:- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness, Technorati

Bodhisattava

My beloved bodhisattvas.... Yes, that's how I look at you. That's how you have to start looking at yourselves. Bodhisattva means a buddha in essence, a buddha in seed, a buddha asleep, but with all the potential to be awake. In that sense everybody is a bodhisattva, but not everybody can be called a bodhisattva -- only those who have started groping for the light, who have started longing for the dawn, in whose hearts the seed is no longer a seed but has become a sprout, has started growing.
You are bodhisattvas because of your longing to be conscious, to be alert, because of your quest for the truth. The truth is not far away, but there are very few fortunate ones in the world who long for it. It is not far away but it is arduous, it is hard to achieve. It is hard to achieve, not because of its nature, but because of our investment in lies.

- Osho

Inflation likely to hit double digits soon: Morgan Stanley

2008-06-02 11:04:00 Source :-CNBC-TV18

Watch Video

Chetan Ahya, MD of Morgan Stanley said the GDP numbers are backward looking and the services sector lags industrial data. He thinks the GDP growth rate is likely to come off from the next quarter and sees Q1FY09 GDP at 7.5-8%, while FY09 at 7.1%.
On inflation, he said it will hit double-digits soon. The oil price hike will trigger inflation spike, he said. He believes RBI will hike rates if oil goes to USD 150 and stays there.

He sees FY09 headline fiscal deficit at 5.1% and it may cross 10% if oil stays at USD 120 per barrel.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18�s exclusive interview with Chetan Ahya:

Q: What let to that GDP surprise you think and is it backward looking or do you think you can carry some of that momentum forward into the 2009 outlook?

A: I think it is backward looking. I think the sector which has really done well and the data if one looks at is services sector and that tends to lag the industrial production data and in fact there is a bit of divergence this time but we think next time it should come off.

Q: Do you expect this quarter to start showing slower numbers on the GDP?

A: Yes and I think the way to look at will be corporate revenue growth and if one looks at the corporate revenue growth that hasn�t moved back again to significantly higher levels. The last quarter number was for 1,500 companies that we looked at, at about 13% nominal growth from the peak of 29% in September �06 quarter and from the data which has come out so far, it doesn�t look like its going to be significantly better than that. So no matter what the GDP data shows, I think the underlying trend for growth is that of deceleration.

Q: To get down to the numbers: are you expecting Q1 sub 8% number?

A: We are expecting 7.5 - 8% for Q1 and for the full year we are expecting 7.1%

Q: You had no reason to scale up your GDP numbers for 2009 after looking at the Q4 numbers for 2008?

A: Not really.

Q: What about inflation already at 8.1% and we haven�t even had the fuel price hike. Do you need to now revise upwards the inflation projections because by this time a lot of analysts were hoping to see the first signs of moderation?

A: We are out with a note in the morning generally in the context of interest rate outlook - we are making a point that inflation will go to double digit soon; we are already at 8.1%. Typically the government has been revising previous week�s data by about 80-150 bps assuming that there is 100 bps revision; we are probably already at 9.1% and then we are going to see oil price hike of about 10-15%. So the moment we do the oil price hike, we will basically cross double digits.

Q: By when do you expect inflation to touch, Wholesale Price Index (WPI) to touch 10%?

A: I think the trigger will be the oil price hike and hopefully it is done in the next one week or so; then in other four weeks time we should see inflation at double digits.

Q: What do you think will be the RBI response to that? So far it�s managed or dealt with it through the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) route. Do you think more dire measures will be in place if we see that psychologically important 10% mark?

A: It is going to be complex task; the growth is slowing and we think growth will probably slow further. So ideally RBI should not tighten. But we are seeing two other added challenges - (1) fiscal policy is running extremely loose; we are continuing to run higher and higher deficit as oil keeps going up which makes RBI�s task more difficult. (2) If oil goes to USD 150 and stays there for four-five months, that will cause a lot of pressure on the currency which will basically then make RBI to consider the decision to hike the policy rates. So our view is base case right now - no policy rate hikes. But if oil goes to USD 150 and stays there considering that fiscal policy will still continue to be loose, the RBI will have to take the burden of tightening the monetary policy to reduce the pressure on currency.

Q: How do you see the RBI approaching the rupee now, which went to almost 43 to a dollar and is now cooled down a bit closer to 42 to a dollar; in the light of what is going around how do you see the Central Bank approaching that?

A: I think at this point of time, there seems to be active intervention from the Central Bank to hold the rupee below 43 to a dollar, but it is all predicated on what happens to global market place - particularly what happens to oil and what happens to the dollar.

The expectations in the US for the Fed rate cut is moving closer to the date; we were earlier expecting it to happen in the Q1 but the market is now beginning to discount it - probably happening even as soon as October still not fully priced in but if the Fed Futures expectation gradually turns, moves forward and the Fed does hike earlier then we will see the dollar strengthening and that will cause the added pressure.

So it will depend on where the Fed futures go and where the oil prices go. The combined effect of that will determine the direction of currency. At this point of time, we are expecting the dollar to appreciate generally against Euro and other currencies. I think the oil prices are not going to come down. So I think the rupee has got to move down going forward. The direction and magnitude will be determined by how the Fed Futures and oil prices move.

Q: What do you think is the most likely outcome of this impasse on oil price hike? What would be the contours of the package you think and how much would it stoke inflation?

A: It is not going to be a very significant move by the Government, it will be possibly be a weighted average hike of about 10-15% and that is also, if at all.

If they don�t touch kerosene, then diesel and petrol are the only ones which move then the weighted average hike will not be more than 10-15% which will not be enough to reduce the subsidy burden.

I think ideally the response right now from the government should have been to run a tighter fiscal policy; one good measure out of that would be to hike the oil prices. Although it will hurt the population at large right now but from a macro stability perspective, that is the ideal response from the policy makers needed right now. That will reduce the import bill for oil because the oil demand will come off too and that will help the overall macro stability. But I think we will probably not get that response soon.

Q: Do you think we will get substantial duty cuts, excise and customs. If yes, how much does it worsen the already precarious fiscal situation?

A: It�s just an accounting effect; so for our purposes we count that as a subsidy burden. Only if the consumer is bearing the increase in prices, then the overall subsidy reduces whether they account it by way of tax reduction in fiscal deficit or it stays with the oil companies. At the end of the day, it's still oil subsidy. So it�s just an accounting issue.

Q: What number are you penciling in, in terms of fiscal deficit? All these items put together above and below the line by the end of this year?

A: The headline fiscal deficit is 5.1%. But if you add the farm loan write-off, the fertilizer subsidy, food subsidy and oil subsidy with oil being at USD 100 per barrel for 12 months ended March �09, we are at 9.4% fiscal deficit and if oil stays at USD 120 per barrel average for F2009, then fiscal deficit will basically cross 10% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Q: Are you talking about just the center or Center plus States?

A: Center plus State plus all the off-Budget liabilities. I need to qualify; we have also taken the oil subsidy borne by the oil companies which the Finance Minister does not include in his estimates.

Q: What do the dealing room guys tell you about how nervous all this is making India in the eyes of global investors; this kind of macro, current account and fiscal situation?

A: I think everybody is hoping for oil to come down and the last two-three days' moves have raised that hope. So it�s all predicated on where oil goes and I think everybody is hoping for oil prices to come down. But there is quite a difficult macro environment and almost all of Asia is facing this. So India is not alone. But I think India�s fiscal balance condition is probably one of the worst compared to the rest of the region.

So everybody is watching on what happens - as you may have probably known there are some concerns on some of the other countries in the region -like Pakistan is facing some challenges, Vietnam is facing some challenges. So the environment is getting concerning, particularly from what�s happening on oil prices to a lot of the countries in the region.

British Leader Warns of Global Oil Price

Published: May 29, 2008, NY Times.

PARIS — As protests against the soaring cost of fuel threatened to widen in Europe, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain warned on Wednesday that the world confronted a global shock caused by skyrocketing oil prices.

“The global economy is facing the third great oil shock of recent decades,” Mr. Brown said in an article published in The Guardian newspaper and on his Web site (www.pm.gov.uk).

The challenge, he wrote, demanded “global solutions” that should top the agenda of the forthcoming G-8 summit of industrialized nations in Japan.

“There is no easy answer to the global oil problem without a comprehensive international strategy,” Mr. Brown said.

“As continuing high oil prices present us all with an immense challenge,” he said, “the way we confront these issues will define our era.”

His warning was published a day after truck drivers protesting increases in the price of diesel fuel paralyzed parts of London by driving slowly in convoys and halting their rigs on a busy highway leading into the west of the capital. Other truckers took similar action in Wales. representatives said they were demanding a reduction of more than $2 a gallon in the price of diesel.

The protests mirrored action by French fishermen who blockaded ports on the English Channel. At the same time, 300 farmers in southern France near Toulouse blocked entry to a Total fuel depot.

Such is the anger in France that President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested on Tuesday reducing the value-added taxes on fuel to offset increases in the price of crude oil that have climbed beyond $130 a barrel. Such are the price increases, coupled with steep government levies on fuel sales, that diesel fuel in Britain and France costs about $10 a gallon — more than twice the price in the United States.

Mr. Brown met oil industry executives in Scotland on Wednesday at a time when he is under pressure from legislators to postpone increases in taxes affecting the cost of driving. Oil industry leaders also want taxes to be lowered on their operations in Britain’s North Sea and the government is urging oil companies to increase oil production from the aging oil-fields there

In addition to the demonstrations in France and Britain, Spanish truckers have joined fishing boat crews n protesting the cost of fuel and demanding that the European Union relax its rules to permit higher subsidies from their governments. Fishermen in Italy, Greece and Portugal are considering broadening the action later this week.