Do it yourself

  Exploring India – Part 3 In the past couple of weeks, we travelled to the states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh (HP) and Haryana. In our nine days of travelling, we covered ten districts of Punjab spread across three divisions, viz., Jalandhar, Rupnagar and Patiala; six districts of HP spread across two divisions, viz., Mandi and Shimla; and eight districts of Haryana spread across five divisions, viz., Gurugram, Rohtak, Hissar, Karnal, and Ambala. It is pertinent to note that these three states in the present form came into existence in November 1966, after enactment of the Punjab Reorganization Act 1966. Through this act, the erstwhile province of East Punjab was divided into largely Punjabi speaking state of Punjab and largely non-Punjabi speaking state of Haryana. Some areas of East Punjab were transferred to the union territory of Himachal Pradesh, and it was granted a full state status. The city of Chandigarh also became a union territory, serving as temporary capital of P...

 Ricky Ponting, the former captain of the Australian cricket team, commented during a TV show on Sunday that Indian team may not be able to score 200 runs in the fourth inning of the third test match played in Sydney. Ponting was obviously trolled badly on unforgiving social media for his “prejudiced” and “audacious” forecast. India went on to score more than 300 runs and even managed to draw the test. Ponting later clarified that his “view” was based on the condition of the pitch on fourth day. The pitch did not deteriorate on fifth day as expected. Nothing much should be read into his statement. He need not have presented his defense. The social media would have forgotten his statement in couple of days, anyways. The stock market experts (strategists, analysts, fund managers and seasoned investors etc.) who stick their neck out and make forecast about the market trends and likely levels of benchmark indices often face the situation like Ponting; especially for past 2 months tho...