Saturday, March 31, 2012

How to motivate yourself

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents. - Andrew Carnegie
If you want to excel in life, self motivation is essential. You must know how to motivate yourself. You must be able to keep your spirit high no matter how discouraging a situation is. That’s the only way to get the power you need to overcome difficulties. Those who are discouraged in difficult times are certain to lose even before the battle is over.
The question is how do you motivate yourself ? Here are several tips found to be effective to build self motivation :
1. Have a cause :
I can’t think of a more powerful source of motivation than a cause you care about. Such cause can inspire you to give your best even in the face of difficulties. It can make you do the seemingly impossible things.
While other causes could inspire you temporarily, a cause that matters to you can inspire you indefinitely. It’s a spring of motivation that will never dry. Whenever you think that you run out of motivation, you can always come to your cause to get a fresh dose of motivation.
2. Have a dream. A big dream :
Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be. - Karen Ravn
Your cause is a powerful source of motivation but it’s still abstract in nature. You need to make it concrete in the form of a dream. Imagine how the world will be in the future. Imagine how people will live and work.
Having a dream is important because it’s difficult to be motivated if you don’t have anything to shoot for. Just think about people who play basketball. Will they be motivated to play if there is no basket to aim at? I don’t think so. They need a goal. You need a goal. That’s what your dream is for.
But just having a dream is insufficient. Your dream must be big enough to inspire you. It must be realistic but challenging. It must stretch your ability beyond your comfort zone.
3. Be hungry :
Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will   invariably come your way. - Les Brown
To be truly motivated, you need to have hunger and not just desire. Having mere desire won’t take you through difficult times since you don’t want things badly enough. In many cases, hunger makes the difference between the best performers and the mediocre ones.
How can you have hunger? Your cause and your dream play a big role here. If you have a cause you care about and a big dream related to it, you should have the hunger inside of you. If you think that you are losing hunger, all you need to do is to connect again to your cause and dream. Let them inspire you and bring the hunger back.
4. Run your own race :
I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. - Mikhail Baryshnikov
Comparing yourself with others is an effective way to demotivate yourself. Even if you start with enthusiasm, you will soon lose your energy when you compare yourself with others.
Don’t let that happen to you. You have your own race so how other people perform is irrelevant. Comparing yourself with others is like comparing the performance of a swimmer with a runner using the same time standard. They are different so how can you compare one with the other?
The only competitor you have is yourself. The only one you need to beat is you. Have you become the best you can be?
5. Take one more step :
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill
When you meet obstacles along the way, there could be the tendency to quit. You may think that it’s too difficult to move on. You may think that your dream is impossible to achieve. But this is where you can see the difference between winners and losers. Though both of them face the same difficulties, there is one thing that makes the winners different: the courage to continue.
In difficult situations, just focus on taking one more step forward. Don’t think about how to complete the race. Don’t think about how many more obstacles are waiting for you. Just focus on taking the next step.
6. Let go of the past :
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Believe it or not, one of the best demotivators is your past. Your past can drag you down before you realize it. Your past can give you a heavy burden on your shoulders.
The good news is it’s a burden you don’t have to carry. Take it off your shoulder and leave it. You might make mistakes in the past. You might disappoint others with what you did. But it’s over. It’s already in the past and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Today is a new day and you have the chance to start again. No matter how bad your past might be, you still have a bright future ahead waiting for you. Just don’t let the burden of the past stop you.
Apply these tips and motivate yourself. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Let yourself motivation take you to excellence.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

India is world's second most economically confident country: Report

-- Source of News : Economic Times --
NEW DELHI: Indians have emerged as the second most confident people about their economy across the world on easing inflationary pressure and increased foreign investments, says a report.
According to global research firm Ipsos, India's economic confidence jumped by 9 points to 74 per cent in the month of February compared to the previous month, becoming the second most economically confident country after Saudi Arabia which tops the chart with 90 per cent.
Sweden is the third most economically confident country, where 73 per cent are optimistic about their economy, followed by China (72 per cent), Germany (71 per cent), Australia (66 per cent) and Canada (65 per cent).
"The Indian economy has continuously recorded high growth rates and has become the second most preferred destination for foreign investments and business. India's economic growth is expected to remain robust in 2012 and 2013, despite likely headwind of double-dip recessions in Europe and the US," Ipsos India CEO Mick Gordon said.
More than half of Indian citizens (51 per cent) believe their local economy which impacts their personal finance is good and 56 per cent people expect that the economy in their local area will be stronger in next six months, Ipsos said.
Mick further noted that inflationary pressure eased as the wholesale price index fell, making daily consumption items relatively affordable and giving hopes that Reserve Bank of India will ease its monetary policy stance by reducing the policy rates in the coming months which will further fuel economic growth of the country.
The report, which examined citizens' assessment of the current state of their country's economy said the overall global average economic confidence remained unchanged at 38 per cent last month.
On the other hand only a handful of those in Hungary (3 per cent) rate their national economies as 'good', followed by Spain (4 per cent), Italy (6 per cent), France (7 per cent), Japan (9 per cent) and Great Britain (10 per cent).
Countries with the greatest improvements include India, China, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, while, countries with the greatest declines are Argentina, Poland, Belgium, Indonesia and Australia.
The survey was conducted in February this year among 19,216 people in 24 countries like Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the USA.

Dabhol gets its first LNG cargo, terminal to be commissioned in two weeks

-- Source of News : Economic Times --
New Delhi: The 5 million tonne Dabhol LNG terminal at the Maharashtra port will start functioning in less than two weeks as it has received the first cargo of 138,000 million standard cubic meter of liquefied natural gas, Gail India executives said.
The terminal's initial capacity will be 2 million tonne till the completion of support infrastructure such as breakwater and jetty, executives said. "The support infrastructure would be ready in 14 months. Till then LNG will be supplied in the terminal through smaller ship, one executive said.
Gail plans to increase importing LNG from spot market in 2012-13 because of commissioning of the Dabhol terminal, director-marketing Prabhat Kumar said at the Asia Gas Partnership summit, held last week.
The company has bought 16 cargoes of LNG from spot market in the current financial year. Promoters of Dabhol project plan to double the capacity of the terminal to 10 million tonnes a year.
State-run Gail and power utility NTPC own 31.52% equity stake each in Ratnagiri Gas & Power Ltd (formerly known as Dabhol Power). Maharashtra State Electricity Board holds its 16.68% stake and financial institutions hold balance 20.28%.
GAIL is managing the LNG terminal of the project, while NTPC is responsible for power generation. The project has a 1,967 MW power generation plant.
The power plant currently runs on 5.6 million standard cubic meters per day of natural gas supplied from Reliance Industries' D6 gas fields and generates about 1,100 MW electricity.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Angre' port set to open in March 2012


Angre' port at Jaigad, scheduled to be inaugurated on March 23, 2012, is being looked at as a major reliever for the exporters and importers who are victim of delay and traffic congestion at the JNPT (Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust) in Navi Mumbai. It is likely to eat up a major business share of JNPT, in Maharashtra, and the Mundra port in Gujarat (majorly dealing with sugar cargo).

Angre' port has been named after the first naval admiral Kanhoji Angre' of the Maratha navy. It is being set up by the Goa-based Chowgule Group under green-field project and is merely 45 km from Ratnagiri and 200 km from Kolhapur. It is surrounded by an industrial zone.

Currently, the cargo for these two regions is cleared at the JNPT and the Mundra port. Ratnagiri is around 303 km from the JNPT and 1,212 km from the Mundra port.

“The location of the Angre' port would allow a cargo coming from Kolhapur to be cleared in merely two days over the 2-week clearance time needed at the JNPT port. Not only this, the total cost of the container would reduce from Rs 28,000 to Rs 8,000-10,000,” claims Gautam Kumar, executive assistant to CEO, Chowgule Group.

The National Highway and Konkan Railway are about 45 km from the proposed site. A four-lane road and dedicated rail link to the port site is also proposed.

Angre' would be a major gain for the traders given the cost and the time in transport being saved. Also the port would carry all-weather operations with minimum or nil effect of the South-West monsoon. The proposed jetty dimension is 450 X 43 m and would have a dedicated liquid berth.

The immediate storage area for the port would include container yard, dry bulk, liquid bulk and focus on clean cargo. A large back up area is already under possession by the company. Bharat Petroleum has a plant set up at the location.

Besides, the Chowgule Group is also planning to set up a consolidation centre at Kolhapur which would be a major booster for the traders who would save money spent in sending one entire container even for a small quantity of the product needed to be transported. Thus, a consolidation centre would allow several traders to consolidate items and send it via a single container.

For setting up this port the company has entered into a concession agreement with the Government of Maharashtra under the BOOST (Build-Own-Operate-Share-Transfer) scheme.

BOOST refers to a project based on the granting of a concession by a principal (the government or a local authority) to the concessionaire, who is responsible for the construction, financing, operation and maintenance of a facility over the period of the concession before finally transferring the facility, at no cost to the principal, a fully operational facility. During the concession period the promoter would own and operate the facility and collect revenue in order to repay the financing and investment costs, maintain and operate the facility and make a margin of profit.

At the moment, India has around 12 major ports and around 200 small ports hence encountering problems like congestion, delay and cost overrun.


From Empire to Independence: The British Raj in India 1858-1947


1858: Beginning of the Raj

In 1858, British Crown rule was established in India, ending a century of control by the East India Company. The life and death struggle that preceded this formalisation of British control lasted nearly two years, cost £36 million, and is variously referred to as the 'Great Rebellion', the 'Indian Mutiny' or the 'First War of Indian Independence'.

Inevitably, the consequences of this bloody rupture marked the nature of political, social and economic rule that the British established in its wake.

It is important to note that the Raj (in Hindi meaning 'to rule' or 'kingdom') never encompassed the entire land mass of the sub-continent.

Two-fifths of the sub-continent continued to be independently governed by over 560 large and small principalities, some of whose rulers had fought the British during the 'Great Rebellion', but with whom the Raj now entered into treaties of mutual cooperation.

Indeed the conservative elites of princely India and big landholders were to prove increasingly useful allies, who would lend critical monetary and military support during the two World Wars.
Hyderabad for example was the size of England and Wales combined, and its ruler, the Nizam, was the richest man in the world.

They would also serve as political bulwarks in the nationalist storms that gathered momentum from the late 19th century and broke with insistent ferocity over the first half of the 20th century.

But the 'Great Rebellion' did more to create a racial chasm between ordinary Indians and Britons. This was a social segregation which would endure until the end of the Raj, graphically captured in EM Forster's 'A Passage to India'.

While the British criticised the divisions of the Hindu caste system, they themselves lived a life ruled by precedence and class, deeply divided within itself. Rudyard Kipling reflected this position in his novels. His books also exposed the gulf between the 'white' community and the 'Anglo-Indians', whose mixed race caused them to be considered racially 'impure'.

Government in India

While there was a consensus that Indian policy was above party politics, in practice it became embroiled in the vicissitudes of Westminster.

Successive viceroys in India and secretaries of state in London were appointed on a party basis, having little or no direct experience of Indian conditions and they strove to serve two masters. Edwin Montagu was the first serving secretary of state to visit India on a fact-finding mission in 1917-1918.

Broadly speaking, the Government of India combined a policy of co-operation and conciliation of different strata of Indian society with a policy of coercion and force.

The empire was nothing if not an engine of economic gain. Pragmatism dictated that to govern efficiently and remuneratively, 1,200 Indian civil servants could not rule 300 to 350 million Indians without the assistance of indigenous 'collaborators'.

However, in true British tradition, they also chose to elaborate sophisticated and intellectual arguments to justify and explain their rule.

On the one hand, Whigs and Liberals expounded sentiments most iconically expressed by TB Macaulay in 1833: 'that... by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. ... Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.'

On the other hand, James Fitzjames Stephen, writing in the 1880s, contended that empire had to be absolute because 'its great and characteristic task is that of imposing on Indian ways of life and modes of thought which the population regards without sympathy, though they are essential to its personal well-being and to the credit of its rulers.'

What was less ambiguous was that it was the economic interests of Britain that were paramount, though as the 20th century progressed, the government in India was successful in imposing safeguards. For instance, tariff walls were raised to protect the Indian cotton industry against cheap British imports.

Financial gains and losses

There were two incontrovertible economic benefits provided by India. It was a captive market for British goods and services, and served defence needs by maintaining a large standing army at no cost to the British taxpayer.

However, the economic balance sheet of the empire remains a controversial topic and the debate has revolved around whether the British developed or retarded the Indian economy.

Among the benefits bequeathed by the British connection were the large scale capital investments in infrastructure, in railways, canals and irrigation works, shipping and mining; the commercialisation of agriculture with the development of a cash nexus; the establishment of an education system in English and of law and order creating suitable conditions for the growth of industry and enterprise; and the integration of India into the world economy.

Conversely, the British are criticised for leaving Indians poorer and more prone to devastating famines; exhorting high taxation in cash from an inpecunious people; destabilising cropping patterns by forced commercial cropping; draining Indian revenues to pay for an expensive bureaucracy (including in London) and an army beyond India's own defence needs; servicing a huge sterling debt, not ensuring that the returns from capital investment were reinvested to develop the Indian economy rather than reimbursed to London; and retaining the levers of economic power in British hands.

The Indian National Congress

The foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 as an all India, secular political party, is widely regarded as a key turning point in formalising opposition to the Raj.

It developed from its elite intellectual middle-class confines, and a moderate, loyalist agenda, to become by the inter-war years, a mass organisation.

It was an organisation which, despite the tremendous diversity of the sub-continent, was remarkable in achieving broad consensus over the decades.

Yet it was not a homogenous organisation and was often dominated by factionalism and opposing political strategies. This was exemplified by its splintering in 1907 into the so-called 'moderate' and 'extremist' wings, which reunited 10 years later.

Another example were the 'pro-changers' (who believed working the constitutional structures to weaken it from within) and 'no-changers' (who wanted to distance themselves from the Raj) during the 1920s.

There was also a split within Congress between those who believed that violence was a justifiable weapon in the fight against imperial oppression (whose most iconic figure was Subhas Chandra Bose, who went on to form the Indian National Army), and those who stressed non-violence.

The towering figure in this latter group was Mahatma Gandhi, who introduced a seismic new idiom of opposition in the shape of non-violent non-cooperation or 'satyagraha' (meaning 'truth' or 'soul' force').

Gandhi oversaw three major nationwide movements which achieved varying degrees of success in 1920-1922, 1930-1934 and in 1942. These mobilised the masses on the one hand, while provoking the authorities into draconian repression. Much to Gandhi's distress, self-restraint among supporters often gave way to violence.

Reasons for independence

The British Raj unravelled quickly in the 1940s, perhaps surprising after the empire in the east had so recently survived its greatest challenge in the shape of Japanese expansionism.

The reasons for independence were multifaceted and the result of both long and short term factors.

The pressure from the rising tide of nationalism made running the empire politically and economically very challenging and increasingly not cost effective. This pressure was embodied as much in the activities of large pan-national organisations like the Congress as in pressure from below - from the 'subalterns' through the acts of peasant and tribal resistance and revolt, trade union strikes and individual acts of subversion and violence.

There were further symptoms of the disengagement from empire. European capital investment declined in the inter-war years and India went from a debtor country in World War One to a creditor in World War Two. Applications to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) declined dramatically from the end of the Great War.

Britain's strategy of a gradual devolution of power, its representation to Indians through successive constitutional acts and a deliberate 'Indianisation' of the administration, gathered a momentum of its own. As a result, India moved inexorably towards self-government.

The actual timing of independence owed a great deal to World War Two and the demands it put on the British government and people.

The Labour party had a tradition of supporting Indian claims for self-rule, and was elected to power in 1945 after a debilitating war which had reduced Britain to her knees.

Furthermore, with US foreign policy pressurising the end of western subjugation and imperialism, it seemed only a matter of time before India gained its freedom.

Partition and religion

The growth of Muslim separatism from the late 19th century and the rise of communal violence from the 1920s to the virulent outbreaks of 1946-1947, were major contributory factors in the timing and shape of independence.

However, it was only from the late 1930s that it became inevitable that independence could only be achieved if accompanied by a partition. This partition would take place along the subcontinent's north-western and north-eastern boundaries, creating two sovereign nations of India and Pakistan.

Muslims, as a religious community, comprised only 20% of the population and represented great diversity in economic, social and political terms.

From the late 19th century, some of its political elites in northern India felt increasingly threatened by British devolution of power, which by the logic of numbers would mean the dominance of the majority Hindu community.

Seeking power and a political voice in the imperial structure, they organised themselves into a party to represent their interests, founding the Muslim League in 1906.

They achieved something of a coup by persuading the British that they needed to safeguard the interests of the minorities, a demand that fed into British strategies of divide and rule. The inclusion of separate electorates along communal lines in the 1909 Act, subsequently enlarged in every successive constitutional act, enshrined a form of constitutional separatism.

While there is no denying that Islam and Hinduism were and are very different faiths, Muslims and Hindus continued to co-exist peaceably. There were, however, occasional violent outbursts which were driven more often than not by economic inequities.

Even politically, the Congress and the League cooperated successfully during the Khilafat and Non Cooperation movements in 1920-1922. And Muhammad Ali Jinnah (the eventual father of the Pakistani nation) was a Congress member till 1920.

Although Congress strove to stress its secular credentials with prominent Muslim members - for example, Maulana Azad served as its president through World War Two - it is criticised for failing to sufficiently recognise the importance of a conciliatory position towards the League in the inter-war years, and for its triumphant response to Congress's 1937 election victory.

The Muslim League advocated the idea of Pakistan in its annual session in 1930, yet the idea did not achieve any political reality at the time. Furthermore, the League failed to achieve the confidence of the majority of the Muslim population in the elections of 1937.

Hasty transfer of power

The lack of confidence in the Muslim League among the Muslim population was to be dramatically reversed in the 1946 elections.

The intervening years saw the rise of Jinnah and the League to political prominence through the successful exploitation of the wartime insecurities of the British, and the political vacuum created when the Congress ministries (which had unanimously come to power in 1937) resigned en masse to protest at the government's unilateral decision to enter India into the war without consultation.

The rejuvenated League skilfully exploited the communal card. At its Lahore session in 1940, Jinnah made the demand for Pakistan into its rallying cry. The ensuing communal violence, especially after Jinnah declared 'Direct Action Day' in August 1946, put pressure on the British government and Congress to accede to his demands for a separate homeland for Muslims.
The arrival of Lord Louis Mountbatten as India's last viceroy in March 1947, brought with it an agenda to transfer power as quickly and efficiently as possible. The resulting negotiations saw the deadline for British withdrawal brought forward from June 1948 to August 1947.

Contemporaries and subsequent historians have criticised this haste as a major contributory factor in the chaos that accompanied partition. Mass migration occurred across the new boundaries as well as an estimated loss of a million lives in the communal bloodbaths involving Hindus, Muslims and also Sikhs in the Punjab.

The final irony must remain that the creation of Pakistan as a land for Muslims nevertheless left a sizeable number of Muslims in an independent India making it the largest minority in a non-Muslim state.

India’s First Independence Day 15 AUGUST,1947