It is with the deepest regret that I have to announce that Aniruddha Mahajan’s post on how long his fingernails have grown is the victor in the September Blog Mela. I would like to extend my halfhearted congratulations to Mr. Mahajan for his impressive display of rigging skills.
That only ray of hope that we can discern in the dark picture is that he failed to win an absolute majority of posts; so we can take heart in the fact that only thirty percent of the readership of the Indian Blogosphere finds itself utterly fascinated by the length of Mr. Mahajan’s …fingernails.

Anya is requested to contact Shanti Aunty for his Amazon gift certificate. I also have a recommendation for him as to what he should buy with it.
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The essay I was talking of was George Orwell’s Lion and the Unicorn. The objective demonstration of socialism being better than capitalism was, according to him, provided by the fact that Nazis were doing so well in the war. (The essay was written in 1942).

Funny isn’t it?

That is half the story. In the nineteenth century, imports from Britain killed off Indian industry, especially the textile industry. But then, towards the end of the nineteenth century, something interesting started happening. Indian industrialists started setting up industries in India. An entire textile industry came into being. And, this is the most interesting part – the industrialists started off their lives as traders, more specifically as importers. See here for a detailed description of how that happened. Actually, go ahead and read the whole book. The traders found that cheap imports had created a market which made it feasible for them to set up here.
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As you know, for the first time in its history, the Cartel is faced with the disgraceful prospect of losing at the Blog Mela. As of this writing, Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan is running fourth in the polling, and I don’t think he has any chance whatsoever of pulling ahead. I think that drastic measures need to be taken for us to be able to truthfully claim that the Cartel has never lost at the Mela hustings.

I therefore propose that we expel Ravages from the membership of the Cartel. What do the others think?

That the Chairman of BHEL is Mr. A. K. Puri?

This expresses my philosophy perfectly.

#1
To all those who claim that the British “deindustrialised” India, and Nehru started us off on the right path.
Do you know when and how India’s textile industry developed?

#2
You all know that George Orwell was a dedicated opponent of communism and, especially Fascism. But he was also a dedicated socialist. He wrote a three-part essay calling for the socialist takeover of Britain. I won’t give you the name of the essay, because then you will be able to google and find it.

In that essay, what did he give as “proof” that socialism would work better than capitalism?

I had meant to link to Sandeep’s review of a book claiming that Nehru was a communist at heart. But I had to hold off because I wanted to write in some amount of detail about this. I am rather surprised that the entry did not get any comments.
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How porcupines make love is of course a matter of scientific interest to me, but as an engineer-by-training, I am more interested in the problem of
how strapless gowns hold up.

Effective as the strapless evening gown is in attracting attention, it presents tremendous engineering problems to the structural engineer. He is faced with the problem of designing a dress which appears as if it will fall at any moment and yet actually stays up with some small factor of safety. Some of the problems faced by the engineer readily appear from the following structural analysis of strapless evening gowns.

Sorry for the delay in putting up the poll. The delay was caused because Shanti Aunty insisted on getting experts from Florida to vet the design of the voting system, in order to ensure that the high standards we have come to expect from the Bharateeya Blog Mela are maintained. Questions about why some of the contestants are linked and others are not and why some of the links are not working, should not be directed at Shanti, as she is already suffering from a nervous breakdown from the strain of finding a poll that would take so many options.

Those rare souls who wish to read the entries before voting are requested to head over here to do so. Others may proceed

I will find some way of fitting the poll into my side bar. Till then, however, if you wish to bus your supporters to vote, you can direct them to this post or send them directly to the URL http://www.madhoo.com/polls/september_poll.php

If you face any problems in voting, it means that the system has determined that you are thinking of committing fraud. Clear your mind of dirty thoughts and try again.

(Update: Voting will go on till Sunday, the tenth day of October A. D. 2004 1800 hours Indian Standard Time)

Yes, unfortunately, as the title of this article says:
The Left wins the first round

But I don’t agree with this:

So, it had no business to spring a surprise on the Left with policies that would upset it. The Budget proposals on raising the limit of foreign direct investment in civil aviation, telecom and insurance sectors were sure to have invited the Left’s ire.
Why the senior Congress leaders did not anticipate such problems and seek the Left’s views before announcing the new policy is a puzzle.

What exactly would the government have achieved by discussing with a bunch of retards whose vocabulary extends to just one word: No?
The only reason the left did not join the government was so that they could say no to everything without being responsible for anything.

As I have explained before, the only way to deal with these idiots is by tiring them out through diversionary tactics. If the Congress is really smart, they will make an “announcement” that the US ambassador will be invited to sit in on cabinet meetings, “just as an observer”.

Update 2: Readers sent in by Shanti Aunty and JK are requested to note that the mela has not been “outsourced to the shores of Bangalore”. For one thing, Bangalore does not have a shoreline. For another, it is more accurate to say that it has been insourced to Bombay.

Update: Some nominations I had missed out have been added below and marked with (Update:)

Demarketing is a little known concept in marketing which aims at dissuading people from buying something, either because it is harmful (such as cigarettes) or simply because the demand is more than one can handle.

Blogging satisfies both criteria. It is of course well documented that blogging is addictive and as such harmful to both bloggers and readers.
Now poor Shanti aunty has simply collapsed under the weight of all the entries you people have submitted. I think it is time for some demarketing with this Blog Mela.

How will you persuade people not to blog? How will you demotivate people from submitting entries to the Mela? Ideas for ads invited in the comments. The more humiliating and snarky the ads, the better.

Now I move on to the unpleasant task of introducing the contestants for the ten dollar prize that Shanti has gracefully and enthusiastically provided. In order to avoid accusations of bias, I have decided to order the entries strictly by date. I would have ordered alphabetically, but I thought it would be unfair to those who will always be stuck in the middle (like me) and lose out on both the primacy effect and the recency effect.
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