Road ahead for India to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK)

Road ahead for India to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK)

This is all about what lies ahead for India as one of the world's largest military forces, as a double-trillion-dollar economy to do about Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. We will explore this by looking at some of biggest questions that come in the minds of Indians and India’s allies when it comes to PoK.

The first one: Why is India not willing to get back POK from Pakistan?

Simla Agreement 1972 is the reason.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the then PM of Pakistan and Indira Gandhi the then PM of India signed this agreement in Simla in 1972, after Indo Pak war of 1971. Both the countries agree in the agreement that Kashmir issue is a bilateral issue and will be solved by peaceful means. The agreement converted the cease-fire line of 17 December 1971 into the Line of Control (LOC) between India and Pakistan and it was agreed that "neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences and legal interpretations.” India has a record of honoring any treaties and agreements signed. Be it bilateral or Multilateral. India is just keeping its word as given in the treaty, and honors the agreement. The Government of India will not seek to alter it unilaterally, just because people want then to do so. Her clean record of not failing any agreements makes India a trusted partner when signing any bilateral agreements.

“What is the main reason India does not try to annex the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan? Why can't India win back PoK?”

The time for India to get back PoK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir as it called in India or Azad Kashmir as it is called in Pakistan) is long past.

1. Jawaharlal Nehru prematurely went to the UN Security Council in 1948 that brought external intervention to the dispute. India is still paying for many of the mistakes of our first Prime Minister. Once the UN got involved, it became hard for India to take aggressive action there. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kashun47.htm (This article will show India's advantageous position before Nehru's intervention brought a ceasefire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Kashmir_War)               

2. After 1970s, both nations developed nuclear and missile capabilities precluding the possibility of a major war. If India were to attack PoK, Pakistan is guaranteed to respond with a nuclear attack.

3. Currently, Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PoK) are almost entirely Muslim (after the minority Hindus were driven out or got killed in partition in 1947) and India will find it hard to argue its case of winning back. If anything, India could have fought to keep Sindh (that had the largest Hindu percentage among Pakistani provinces in 1947) rather than Kashmir.

4. Status quo is beneficial to everybody (even if Pakistan makes noise otherwise). Ending the current status can open Pandora's box.

5. Because it is not worth to annex Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

5a. Arable Land: India have maximum arable land in disputed territory. Pakistan occupied Kashmir is not much useful. It is less densely populated, rugged mountains. These are no use of India. Even India win these territory they have to spend lots of money and military to hold it. Gorilla warfare and militant proxy war will be an overhead in controlling these areas. So economically it will be expensive to hold such land. Similarly for China occupied Kashmir Shaksgam valley and Aksai Chin. These two territory is filled with soda lakes. So question is what China is doing there? They have National highway 219 which connects mainland China with Xinjiang province.

5b. Demographics: Demographics of Pakistan occupied Kashmir do not favours India. Consider current situation of Kashmir. Just imagine what will happen if North west of India is full of militants and stone platters. So its fools paradise to fight for such land.

5c. Geo Strategic Land: Some people argue that it is important geo strategic land. But I believe it’s not much important after India captures Siachen Glacier. NJ9842, Indira colony and Karakoram pass provide triangle boundary between India, China and Pakistan. Hence India can easily monitor militant or any army moves from these areas. India maintains control over all of the 47 miles long Siachen Glacier and all of its tributary glaciers. So geopolitically we have enough land.

“What are the long term solutions, if any?”

Maintain the status quo. India will not give Indian Kashmir. Pakistan will not give Pakistan occupied Kashmir. Infact in both countries it becomes political suicide if any government do any change in Line of control. So in current scenario touching or altering Line of control is highly implausible. Best is maintain status quo.

Conclusion: India and Pakistan should maintain status quo without interfering in internal matters of each other. India and Pakistan should understand that they have problem inside their nation. They should give priority to develop whatever land they have. Pakistan should leave its obsession for Indian Kashmir. Indian should leave their obsession to Pakistan occupied Kashmir. They should prosperous their respective nations.

“When might India get back Pakistan Occupied Kashmir?”

India will not get back the entire Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, in the coming 20–30 years. But definitely India will be able to capture some portion of it in the next two decades, if some serious border clashes happen between the two countries. In 1984 India successfully captured the Siachen Glaciers from Pakistani army, and in 1965 Indo Pak war, India captured the strategic Haji Pir Pass which dominated Kargil town and many other tactically important areas , and later returned back respecting the Tashkent Declaration.

After the successive surgical Operations in November 2016, the cross border policy of India towards Pakistan is facing a Paradigm Shift. Thus if a future war erupts between both the Countries (unlike in 1998, Kargil Conflict, India strictly didn’t cross the LOC and recaptured it’s territory after a fierce battle), Indian Army definitely will occupy some of the Border territories including the Peaks in Gilgit and Baltistan, other areas of POK, without any hesitation. Now the Indian Govt, and International Community including US, France, Russia, and UK will back India as they strongly feel, India is their only friend in the region that can tackle China. Also the regional Players like Afghanistan (where majority of the population hates Pakistan, and strongly believes Pakistan is the reason for their instability), will strongly support India, whom they see as it’s natural Ally.

“Can India get its occupied land back from neighbors like Pakistan and China? If yes, how?”

India is not going to get an inch of land from either Pakistan or China for the near future. Pakistan and India have an equal claim to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir —Azad Kashmir & Gilgit-Baltistan. From Pakistan’s POV, India and Pakistan were divided along religious lines, and thus Kashmir should belong to Pakistan, since Kashmir was Muslim majority when the partition happened. From India’s POV —the provision was that areas under the direct control of British India was to divided along religious lines, and not the princely states, which had the option to either join India or Pakistan. Kashmir had no obligation to accede to Pakistan, given that it was not at all under the direct control of British India.

As it happened, the princely states enclosed by Pakistan acceded to Pakistan, and the ones which were enclaves of India acceded to India (a few states like Hyderabad, Manipur and Tripura put up a defensive; the ruler of the princely state of Hyderabad was defeated by Indian forces, while Manipur and Tripura acceded to India, after India gained control of Hyderabad).

However, Kashmir was bordered by both India and Pakistan, and the ruler of Kashmir wanted to remain independent. The Muslim Conference of the state wanted to accede to Pakistan, since Kashmir was 90% Muslim back then. Result? 1947 Poonch Rebellion. Then, the Maharaja doesn’t have the military might to quell this revolution and asks India for help, promising to accede to India.

As for Aksai Chin —the territory controlled by China, but claimed by India and parts of Arunachal Pradesh —the territory controlled by India but claimed by China, the differences go back to the British era.

In the first few decades after Indian independence, China used military might to gain pieces of land. Pakistan and India fought over disputed Kashmir —and ended up getting almost half each. I wouldn’t say either of them “gained” over the other. No country had any right to Kashmir whatsoever and so nobody lost and nobody gained (as far as I’m concerned).

But that was the 20th century. The three nations were rebelling kids back then and have now learnt the lessons of what a full scale war can bring. China and India are easily among the 5 most powerful nations in the world. A war between these two countries can derail the robust economic growth both countries have had in the past few decades, and I’m sure neither country wants a war. Even if, say, China (or India) gets to control both Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh, the benefits (the gained territories) will be far, far, lesser than the damage, both in terms of lives lost and economic loss. Pakistan is a far lesser military power than India, but even then it can put up a stellar defense against any Indian incursion, and it’ll be much like India and China fighting. A full scale war probably won’t trigger a nuclear war, but the damages caused by even a conventional war can be enormous, again, considering the fact that these countries are in their golden period of growth. You don’t want to derail a train that’s moving on the right track with great speed.

Thus, we’re left with a few options:

    Preserve status quo, but maintain claims: Talk all you want for political gains or international diplomacy —but nobody is getting anything. Whatever border exists now will remain so in the future. There will be no wars, only claims. The three countries can claim all they want —Pakistan can claim the entirety of Kashmir, or even parts of Punjab or fuck it, Tamil Nadu, and India can claim Islamabad! But again, really, nobody is getting anything.

    What this means: Pakistan gets to keep Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan; China gets to keep Aksai Chin; India gets to keep the remaining of Jammu & Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh.

    Formally withdraw claims, preserve status quo: The three kids can all grow up and formally withdraw all claims on each other’s territory and preserve status quo.

    Diplomacy: Get other countries to withdraw claims on your territory —but refuse to do the same yourselves. Ha! Not happening, not happening at all. Or, exchange territories. China gets to keep the parts of Arunachal Pradesh it wants, and India gets to keep Aksai Chin —this is not preferred, of course, but just saying that it is one possibility.

The best option, and the one currently practised by all three nations is (1). All three nations talk quite a lot; they don’t withdraw their claims, but they’re not warring each other other. Sure, there are a couple of skirmishes along the borders every now and then but that’s about it. (1) is the best option, because it pleases the nationalists in all three countries and so it is a viable option for the political parties in all three nations (a majority of the population won’t prefer war, but still can’t digest the fact that their country has withdrawn claims over some territory and so the “Ah! They’re doing stuff” will be there). No party will be willing to take the serious risk of giving up claims —that’s suicide.

That said, China and India have taken steps to that effect: China ready to make concessions in Aksai Chin if India cedes part of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, China offers India fresh proposals to mend ties. As a democracy, it’s hard to expect India to publicly state that it will also withdraw its claim on Kashmir or give up parts of Arunachal Pradesh, but has supposedly expressed its intent behind closed doors”: India 'will let China keep Aksai Chin' in return for Arunachal Pradesh (note: This is not an official statement, rather a derived intent from “foreign ministry documents”, as quoted by the Daily Mail). An excerpt:

    Publicly, India has been holding to its stated position that there can't be any territorial concessions. But behind the closed doors of the negotiating room, India has told China that it "may not be averse to status quo position".

With some maturity amongst the majority population, this is a viable option. But it’s hard to tell when the population will attain that level of maturity. Until, a war of words should continue, with no real expectations. The words released to the press will purely be to satisfy the public.

How unsafe is Gurugram?

How unsafe is Gurugram (Gurgaon)?

‘How unsafe is the city’ is the first question that comes to a person’s mind while he/she has to move to a new city. In case of Gurugram that becomes more obvious when one gets to hear to everyday news like this ‘Man arrested for rape, murder of 5-year-old girl in Gurgaon’ or this ‘Two brothers were fired at by four men following a property dispute in Gurgaon, leading to the death of one, the condition of the other being critical’ or this ‘Male employee alleges sexual assault by Portuguese boss’.

With city being the business hub about 20 miles to the south of the capital where many multinational companies have opened offices, there are people commuting for over two hours every day from Delhi, or nearby NCR cities. This makes it even worse for women, whose complaints about their everyday ordeals in the city can be heard in the media.  They lament about the private auto rickshaw drivers, “the alternative to costly cab would be to take a shared auto, though that put you at risk of being groped by male passengers”, about the police, “thinking about how the Haryana police had said they couldn’t guarantee the safety of women after 8 p.m. I wouldn’t be able to call the police for help, as they’d likely blame me for being out in public late at night”, or about the state as a whole, “in Haryana, which has one of the worst male-female ratios in India, a woman walking down the street was apparently quite an event”.

And, the crime graph is on a rise in Gurugram. If January 2015 figures are anything to go by, crime promises to keep Gurugram police on their toes. Compared to the corresponding month last year, the number of vehicles thefts at 247 and robberies at 11 went up by 8.5% and 54.55% to 268 and 17, respectively. It is not just the numbers that are startling but also the nature of the crimes and the manner in which they were executed. About 10 robberies this January involved gun-toting miscreants, triggering panic among residents. Another rising concern is the increase in number of rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, and thefts, including motor vehicle thefts. The total vehicle thefts registered by the police in Gurugram in 2014 was 3,638, and this trend continues. Gurugram is experiencing high rates of homelessness, drug abuse, gang violence and prostitution. Several organized cartels and street gangs operate in the city.

The police department in Gurugram is headed by the Commissioner of Police - Gurugram Police, which forms a part of the Haryana Police, and reports to the Haryana state government.

You can see the most wanted criminals on the city Police’s website: “http://gurgaon.haryanapolice.gov.in/most-wanted-criminals.htm”

Gurugram’s population continues to swell. People are drawn here from all over the country, and in India’s 21^st-century workforce, the average age is 25 to 35. I fall into that category, but after living the so-called dream, I’ve had enough. It is about the time for change.

Crime rates in Gurugram, India Level of crime 74.3 High Crime increasing in the past 3 years 75.6 High Worries home broken and things stolen 60.9 High Worries being mugged or robbed 69.0 High Worries car stolen 63.1 High Worries things from car stolen 63.1 High Worries attacked 67.9 High Worries being insulted 60.0 High Worries being subject to a physical attack because of your skin color, ethnic origin or religion 36.2 Low Problem people using or dealing drugs 47.4 Moderate Problem property crimes such as vandalism and theft 63.1 High Problem violent crimes such as assault and armed robbery 69.3 High Problem corruption and bribery 80.2 Very High Safety in Gurugram, India Safety walking alone during daylight 53.2 Moderate Safety walking alone during night 20.9 Low

Donald Trump's Elements of the Deal

Donald Trump’s Elements of the Deal

1. Think Big

The idea is simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning.

Don't be too complacent as it hampers growth in the long run. From the start of his career, Trump remembers his father built low-income and middle-income buildings in Brooklyn and Queens, but even then, he gravitated to the best location. When he was working in Queens, he wanted Forest Hills. When he grew older, and perhaps wiser, he realized Forest Hills was great, but Forest Hills wasn't Fifth Avenue, so he began looking towards Manhattan.

He wasn't satisfied earning a good living, he was looked at making a statement. He was out to build something monumental - something worth a big effort. Plenty of other people could buy and sell little brownstones, or build cookie-cutter red-brick buildings. What attracted him was the challenge of building a spectacular development on almost one hundred acres by the river on the West Side of Manhattan, or creating a huge new hotel next to Grand Central Station at Park Avenue and 42nd Street.

The same sort of challenge is what attracted him to Atlantic City. It’s nice to build a successful hotel. It’s a lot better to build a hotel attached to a huge casino that can earn fifty times what you’d ever earn renting hotel rooms. You’re talking a whole different order of magnitude.

One of the keys to thinking big is total focus. It is almost as a controlled neurosis, which is a quality found in many highly successful entrepreneurs. They’re obsessive, they’re driven, they’re single-minded and sometimes they’re almost maniacal, but it’s all channeled into their work. Where other people are paralyzed by neurosis, these are the people who are actually helped by it.

Not that this trait leads to a happier life, or a better life, but it’s great when it comes to getting what you want. This is particularly true in New York real estate, where you are dealing with some of the sharpest, toughest, and most vicious people in the world. Trump loved to go up against these guys, and loved to beat them.

2. Protect the Downside and the Upside Will Take Care of Itself

In a way, Trump believed in the power of negative thinking. He happened to be very conservative in business. He always goes into the deal anticipating the worst. If you plan for the worst—if you can live with the worst—the good will always take care of itself. The only time in his life he didn’t follow that rule was with the USFL. He bought a losing team in a losing league on a long shot. It almost worked, through their antitrust suit, but when it didn’t, he had no fallback. The point is that you can’t be too greedy.

If you go for a home run on every pitch, you’re also going to strike out a lot. He tries to never leave himself too exposed, even if it means sometimes settling for a triple, a double, or even, on rare occasions, a single.

One of the best examples is his experience in Atlantic City. In 1980s, he managed to piece together an incredible site on the Boardwalk. The individual deals he made for parcels were contingent on him being able to put together the whole site. Until he achieved that, he didn’t have to put up very much money at all. Once he assembled the site, he didn’t rush to start construction. That meant he had to pay the carrying charges for a longer period, but before he spent hundreds of millions of dollars and several years on construction, he wanted to make sure he got his gaming license. He lost time, but he also kept his exposure much lower.

When he got his licensing on the Boardwalk site, Holiday Inns came along and offered to be his partner. Some people said, “You don’t need them. Why give up fifty percent of your profits?” But Holiday Inns also offered to pay back the money he already had in the deal, to finance all the construction, and to guarantee him against losses for five years. His choice was whether to keep all the risk himself, and own 100 percent of the casino, or settle for a 50 percent stake without putting up a dime. It was an easy decision.

Barron Hilton, by contrast, took a bolder approach when he built his casino in Atlantic City. In order to get opened as quickly as possible, he filed for a license and began construction on a $400 million facility at the same time. But then, two months before the hotel was scheduled to open, Hilton was denied a license. He ended up selling to Trump at the last minute, under a lot of pressure, and without a lot of other options. Trump renamed the facility Trump’s Castle and it is now one of the most successful hotel-casinos anywhere in the world.

3. Maximize Your Options

Protect yourself by being flexible. Never get too attached to one deal or one approach. For starters, keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first. In addition, once you’ve made a deal, always come up with at least a half dozen approaches to making it work, because anything can happen, even to the best-laid plans.

For example, if Trump hadn’t gotten the approvals he wanted for Trump Tower, he could always have built an office tower and done just fine. If he’d been turned down for licensing in Atlantic City, he could have sold the site he’d assembled to another casino operator, at a good profit. Perhaps the best example is the first deal he made in Manhattan. He got an option to purchase the Penn Central railyards at West 34th Street. His original proposal was to build middle-income housing on the site, with government financing. Unfortunately, the city began to have financial problems, and money for public housing suddenly dried up. He didn’t spend a lot of time feeling sorry for himself. Instead, he switched to his second option and began promoting the site as ideal for a convention center. It took two years of pushing and promoting, but ultimately the city did designate his site for the convention center—and that’s where it was built. Of course, if they hadn’t chosen his site, he would have come up with a third approach.

4. Know Your Market

Some people have a sense of the market and some people don’t. Steven Spielberg has it. Lee Iacocca of Chrysler has it, and so does Judith Krantz in her way. Woody Allen has it, for the audience he cares about reaching, and so does Sylvester Stallone, at the other end of the spectrum. Some people criticize Stallone, but you’ve got to give him credit. In a 1987 book, Trump said about him, “Here’s a man who is just forty-one years old, and he’s already created two of the all-time-great characters, Rocky and Rambo. He’s a diamond-in-the-rough type, a genius purely by instinct. He knows what the public wants and he delivers it.”

Trump likes to think he has that instinct. That’s why he doesn’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. He does his own surveys and draw his own conclusions. Trump’s a great believer in asking everyone for an opinion before making a decision. It’s a natural reflex. If he is thinking of buying a piece of property, he’ll ask the people who live nearby about the area—what they think of the schools and the crime and the shops. When he is in another city and he takes a cab, he’ll always make it a point to ask the cabdriver questions. He would ask and ask and ask, until he begins to get a gut feeling about something. And that’s when he makes a decision.

Trump learned much more from conducting his own random surveys than he could ever have learned from the greatest of consulting firms. They send a crew of people down from Boston, rent a room in New York, and charge you $100,000 for a lengthy study. In the end, it has no conclusion and takes so long to complete that if the deal you were considering was a good one, it will be long gone.

The other people Trump doesn’t take too seriously are the critics—except when they stand in the way of his projects. They mostly write to impress each other, and they’re just as swayed by fashions as anyone else. One week it’s spare glass towers they are praising to the skies. The next week, they’ve rediscovered old, and they’re celebrating detail and ornamentation. What very few of them have is any feeling for what the public wants. Which is why, if these critics ever tried to become developers, they’d be terrible failures. Trump Tower is a building the critics were skeptical about before it was built, but which the public obviously liked. Trump is not talking about the sort of person who inherited money 175 years ago and lives on 84th Street and Park Avenue. He is talking about the wealthy Italian with the beautiful wife and the red Ferrari. Those people—the audience he was after—came to Trump Tower in droves.

The funny thing about Trump Tower is that Trump ended up getting great architectural reviews. The critics didn’t want to review it well because it stood for a lot of things they didn’t like at the time. But in the end, it was such a gorgeous building that they had no choice but to say so. Trump always followed his own instincts, but knew it’s also nice to get good reviews.

5. Use Your Leverage

The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead. The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can’t do without.

Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, which is why leverage often requires imagination, and salesmanship. In other words, you have to convince the other guy it’s in his interest to make the deal.

Back in 1974, in an effort to get the city to approve his deal to buy the Commodore Hotel on East 42nd Street, Trump convinced its owners to go public with the fact that they were planning to close down the hotel. After they made the announcement, Trump wasn’t shy about pointing out to everyone in the city what a disaster a boarded-up hotel would be for the Grand Central area, and for the entire city. When the board of Holiday Inns was considering whether to enter into a partnership with him in Atlantic City, they were attracted to his site because they believed his construction was farther along than that of any other potential partner. In reality, Trump wasn’t that far along, but he did everything he could, short of going to work at the site myself, to assure them that his casino was practically finished. His leverage came from confirming an impression they were already predisposed to believe.

When Trump bought the West Side railyards, he didn’t name the project Television City by accident, and he didn’t choose the name because he think it’s pretty. Trump did it to make a point. Keeping the television networks in New York—and NBC in particular—is something the city very much wants to do. Losing a network to New Jersey would be a psychological and economic disaster. 

Leverage: don’t make deals without it.

6. Enhance Your Location

Perhaps the most misunderstood concept in all of real estate is that the key to success is location, location, location. Usually, that’s said by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. First of all, you don’t necessarily need the best location. What you need is the best deal. Just as you can create leverage, you can enhance a location, through promotion and through psychology.

When you have 57th Street and Fifth Avenue as your location, as Trump did with Trump Tower, you need less promotion. But even there, Trump took it a step further, by promoting Trump Tower as something almost larger than life. By contrast, Museum Tower, two blocks away and built above the Museum of Modern Art, wasn’t marketed well, never achieved an “aura,” and didn’t command nearly the prices they did at Trump Tower. Location also has a lot to do with fashion. You can take a mediocre location and turn it into something considerably better just by attracting the right people. After Trump Tower, he built Trump Plaza, on a site at Third Avenue and 61st Street that he was able to purchase very inexpensively. The truth is that Third Avenue simply didn’t compare with Fifth Avenue as a location. But Trump Tower had given a value to the Trump name, and built a very striking building on Third Avenue. Suddenly he was able to command premium prices from very wealthy and successful people who might have chosen Trump Tower if the best apartments hadn’t been sold out. Today Third Avenue is a very prestigious place to live, and Trump Plaza is a great success.

The point is that the real money isn’t made in real estate by spending the top dollar to buy the best location. You can get killed doing that, just as you can get killed buying a bad location, even for a low price. What you should never do is pay too much, even if that means walking away from a very good site. Which is all a more sophisticated way of looking at location.

7. Get the Word Out

You can have the most wonderful product in the world, but if people don’t know about it, it’s not going to be worth much. There are singers in the world with voices as good as Frank Sinatra’s, but they’re singing in their garages because no one has ever heard of them. You need to generate interest, and you need to create excitement. One way is to hire public relations people and pay them a lot of money to sell whatever you’ve got. But to Trump, that’s like hiring outside consultants to study a market. It’s never as good as doing it yourself. One thing about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. It’s in the nature of the job. The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you. I’ve always done things a little differently, Trump doesn’t mind controversy, and his deals tend to be somewhat ambitious. Also, he achieved a lot when he was very young, and he chose to live in a certain style. The result is that the press has always wanted to write about him. That does not mean they necessarily like him. Sometimes they write positively, and sometimes they write negatively. But from a pure business point of view, the benefits of being written about have far outweighed the drawbacks. It’s really quite simple. If he took a full-page ad in the New York Times to publicize a project, it might cost $40,000, and in any case, people tend to be skeptical about advertising. But if the New York Times writes even a moderately positive one-column story about one of his deals, it doesn’t cost him anything, and it’s worth a lot more than $40,000. The funny thing is that even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business. Television City is a perfect example. When Trump bought the land in 1985, many people, even those on the West Side, didn’t realize that those one hundred acres existed. Then Trump announced he was going to build the world’s tallest building on the site. Instantly, it became a media event: the New York Times put it on the front page, Dan Rather announced it on the evening news, and George Will wrote a column about it in Newsweek.

Every architecture critic had an opinion, and so did a lot of editorial writers. Not all of them liked the idea of the world’s tallest building. But the point is that we got a lot of attention, and that alone creates value. The other thing Trump does when he talks with reporters is to be straight. He tries not to deceive them or to be defensive, because those are precisely the ways most people get themselves into trouble with the press. Instead, when a reporter asks him a tough question, he tries to frame a positive answer, even if that means shifting the ground. For example, if someone asks him what negative effects the world’s tallest building might have on the West Side, he'd turn the tables and talk about how New Yorkers deserve the world’s tallest building, and what a boost it will give the city to have that honor again. Trump says, "When a reporter asks why I build only for the rich, I note that the rich aren’t the only ones who benefit from my buildings. I explain that I put thousands of people to work who might otherwise be collecting unemployment, and that I add to the city’s tax base every time I build a new project. I also point out that buildings like Trump Tower have helped spark New York’s renaissance."

The final key to the way Trump promote is bravado. Trump plays to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. It is the truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.

8. Fight Back

Much as it pays to emphasize the positive, there are times when the only choice is confrontation. In most cases, Trump is very easy to get along with. Trump is very good to people who are good to him. Trump says, "But when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard. The risk is that you’ll make a bad situation worse, and I certainly don’t recommend this approach to everyone. But my experience is that if you’re fighting for something you believe in—even if it means alienating some people along the way—things usually work out for the best in the end."

When the city unfairly denied him, on Trump Tower, the standard tax break every developer had been getting, Trump fought them in six different courts. It costed him a lot of money, Trump was considered highly likely to lose, and people told him it was a no-win situation politically. Trump thinks he would have considered it worth the effort regardless of the outcome. In this case, he won—which made it even better.

When Holiday Inns, once his partners at the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, ran a casino that consistently performed among the bottom 50 percent of casinos in town, Trump fought them very hard and they finally sold out their share to him. Then he began to think about trying to take over the Holiday Inns company altogether. Even if he never went on the offensive, there were a lot of people gunning for him now. One of the problems when you become successful is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow. There are people—life’s losers—who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others. If they had any real ability they wouldn’t be fighting him, they’d be doing something constructive themselves.

9. Deliver the Goods

You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on. Trump thinks of Jimmy Carter. After Carter lost the election to Ronald Reagan, Carter came to see Trump in his office. He told Trump he was seeking contributions to the Jimmy Carter Library. Trump asked how much he had in mind. And he said, “Donald, I would be very appreciative if you contributed five million dollars.”

Trump was dumbfounded. Trump didn’t even answer him. But that experience also taught him something. Until then, he’d never understood how Jimmy Carter became president. The answer is that as poorly qualified as he was for the job, Jimmy Carter had the nerve, the guts, the balls, to ask for something extraordinary. That ability above all helped him get elected president. But then, of course, the American people caught on pretty quickly that Carter couldn’t do the job, and he lost in a landslide when he ran for reelection.

Ronald Reagan is another example. He is so smooth and so effective a performer that he completely won over the American people. Only now, nearly seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile. Trump sees the same thing in his business, which is full of people who talk a good game but don’t deliver. When Trump Tower became successful, a lot of developers got the idea of imitating our atrium, and they ordered their architects to come up with a design. The drawings would come back, and they would start costing out the job. What they discovered is that the bronze escalators were going to cost a million dollars extra, and the waterfall was going to cost two million dollars, and the marble was going to cost many millions more. They saw that it all added up to many millions of dollars, and all of a sudden these people with these great ambitions would decide, well, let’s forget about the atrium.

The dollar always talks in the end. Trump was lucky, because he worked in a very, very special niche, at the top of the market, and he could afford to spend top dollar to build the best. Trump promoted the hell out of Trump Tower, but he also had a great product to promote.

10. Contain the Costs

Trump believes in spending what he has to. He says, "But I also believe in not spending more than you should. When I was building low-income housing, the most important thing was to get it built quickly, inexpensively, and adequately, so you could rent it out and make a few bucks. That’s when I learned to be cost-conscious." Trump never threw money around. He learned from his father that every penny counts, because before too long your pennies turn into dollars. To this day, if he feels a contractor is overcharging him, he’ll pick up the phone, even if it’s only for $5,000 or $10,000, and he’ll complain. People say to him, “What are you bothering for, over a few bucks?” His answer is that the day he can’t pick up the telephone and make a twenty five-cent call to save $10,000 is the day he is going to close up shop.

The point is that you can dream great dreams, but they’ll never amount to much if you can’t turn them into reality at a reasonable cost. At the time he built Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, banks were reluctant to finance new construction at all, because almost every casino up to then had experienced tens of millions of dollars in cost overruns. Trump brought Trump Plaza in on budget, and on time. As a result, they were able to open for Memorial Day weekend, the start of the high season. By contrast, Bob Guccione of Penthouse had been trying for the past seven years to build a casino on the Boardwalk site right next to Trump's. All he had to show for his efforts was a rusting half-built frame and tens of millions of dollars in lost revenues and squandered carrying costs.

Even small jobs can get out of control if you’re not attentive. For nearly seven years Trump watched from the window of his office as the city tried to rebuild Wollman Rink in Central Park. At the end of that time, millions of dollars had been wasted and the job was farther from being completed than when the work began. They were all set to rip out the concrete and start over when he finally couldn’t stand it anymore, and offered to do it himself. The job took four months to complete at a fraction of the city’s cost.

11. Have Fun

Trump doesn’t kid himself. Life is very fragile, and success doesn’t change that. If anything, success makes it more fragile. Anything can change, without warning, and that’s why Trump tries not to take any of what’s happened too seriously. Trump says, "Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what I should have done differently, or what’s going to happen next. If you ask me exactly what the deals I talk about all add up to in the end, I’m not sure I have a very good answer. Except that I’ve had a very good time making them."

Curiosity: Did god create the universe?

Curiosity: Did god create the universe?

PART 1:

According to Stephen Hawking’s cosmic cookbook, we need three things for creating a universe, one Matter, second Energy, and third is Space.

In 1609, Galileo had analyzed Jupiter from his self engineered telescope, which helped him to see the space 20 times magnified, every night. The church was not into believing any of this (Aristarchus, in around 280 B.C., had said that earth was not the centre of universe, and it itself makes revolutions around the sun). Galileo had merely escaped death sentence for putting his revolutionary finding before the world. He had to take back his theories and he was put to life-sentence of public disappearance. He spent rest 30 years of his life in isolation. At the time when he had accepted his fault in the eyes of church and had accepted the punishment, he had spoken to himself, “Earth does make rotations.” While observing Jupiter, Galileo had noticed three shining points in close proximity of the spot of Jupiter. Sometimes there were four, and this number may become four but never increased. He observed the motion of these four points and it was in some way relative to the Jupiter. These four points were the moons of Jupiter which were rotating around it, which simply implies that not everything in universe has earth as its center, and hence Aristarchus was right.

There exist two types of laws in this world: one type is man-made, and second is nature-made. We can manipulate man-made rules to our comfort, ease and use, but we cannot manipulate the laws of nature which are same for everyone and apply in the same way on everything whether it is a tennis ball bouncing in the tennis court or it is big ball of gaseous in the cosmic space taking different shapes by virtue of gravitational pull of nearby galaxies. Nature-made rules can’t be violated by even God in case if he wishes to. Church had told not to go in depth of space research to the point of creation of universe, because it has been created by god himself. Stephen Hawking was against it. He had learnt from his childhood days in London that nothing comes for free, but then this was not wholly right, this universe was given to us for free, out of nothing.

PART 2:

If we consider a very simple example of creation of a mountain by a man in a large dusty ground in some highland, we shall understand an important, yet simple aspect of creation. The man starts digging the ground on his left and pours the sand on his right; he digs on his left and pours the sand on his right to form a heap. He digs and pours, digs and pours, this happens until he sees himself totally in the depth of dug ground on the side of his equally high sand mountain. This shows that where he built a mountain we got an excavation as well. In the overall process, the total change he brought to the surroundings is zero; the world is still there right from where he had started. So if universe had come out of nothing then from where did this energy come from, how this huge massive universe came into existence out of nothing? The dark matter, the anti matter is the substance which answers this intuitive question. Dark matter is present everywhere in space, until the mass and energy is concentrated itself in certain points in the vast volume of infinite space. The dark matter is everywhere, unlike mass and energy, yet on a whole when we bring the matter and anti-matter of the entire universe together once more it will amount to nothing, the zero, right from where it had once started.

This simply eliminates the doubt about the coming up of everything out of nothing after the Big Bang.

Albert Einstein had given beautiful, yet intelligent and complicated, equation E=mc^2 to show that mass and energy are two sides of a single coin. He said that energy and matter are different forms of each other. This further shortens our list of ingredients for ‘creating the universe’ cookbook to two; one is Energy and second is Space.

It is known that the creation of this universe had started with one big explosion which led to the release of all the energy and matter that currently constitutes this universe. Whole universe was of the size smaller than that of a proton, and it was an extremely condensed mass of black hole itself. Studies on black hole tell us that their gravitational pull is so powerful that even the light cannot escape of out of one. If we imagine a cosmic clock that is inching towards a distant black hole, then we find that as the cosmic clock inches forward its duration of one-moment increases. This decrease in the flow of time continues as long as the distance between the clock and the black hole decreases. If we assume that the clock remains intact even long after it has entered the black hole, we see that the clock stops ticking, there is no flow of time inside the black hole, and the black hole does not see the time passing.

Albert Einstein had beautifully shown how time and space are interleaved into each other. It is not new; it had been this way ever since the universe started to come into existence. Space and time cannot be without each other. The universal clock we live in had started right with the zeroth moment of Big Bang, neither before it, nor after.

PART 3:

Because we know that everything that is happening now is a direct result of the things that happened around the place before moment in question. When we try to explain one happening we point to what had happened before it. This is how the things happen.

It is in human nature to question, if ask for the reason behind the water-fall, then we get the answer from the mountain top that it must have due to a water body there. If we question the presence of water body, we see that it had rained there. If we reason try to reason the rainfall, we see that it must have been because of evaporation process going in the nearby see. If reason the evaporation process, we see that it is the sun, the source of heat. If try to reason the heat coming from sun we see that it is nuclear process of fusion of hydrogen with helium, and other crossed nuclear reactions. If try to reason the presence of hydrogen on sun, then it is the Big Bang, the process that created the entire universe. If now we will try to reason the Big Bang, then we will have go in time before it was there, before the universe was there, the time when there was one and only one thing, the super condensed black hole. The time in question is the about the moment when there was no time. Universe didn’t need a reason to take birth, the Big Bang wasn’t initiated, and it happened, it just happened. Universe didn’t need a moment to take birth, it just happened.

Therefore to ask ‘if god created the universe, was god the reason why everything came into being’ means going back in time when there was no time. It is like finding the end point of the surface of earth, the end point of this spherical planet we live on.

                                                                                                                                   “I believe that there is no need for god to be here, there is nothing like luck, destiny, hell, or heaven. There is nothing above, or below us, everything that’s here is here, and we have just this one life time to do what we can, to learn what we want. A life time that is like 6-minutes-and-a-quarter on the time course of 3000 years of human-kind, represented by a mere moment on this universal clock running since 14 billion years.” –Stephen Hawking

Why should you invest in mutual funds?

Why should you invest in mutual funds?

1. Power of compounding

Imagine if you earn an annual bonus of, say, $10,000 and you choose to invest it in a scheme to get an interest of 10% a year, at the end of the first year, you'll get a total of $11,000. Now, next year, instead of getting 10% on $10,000 again, with compounding interest, you'll get it on $11,000!

Imagine, if you keep investing over many years, how big a sum of money you'll be left with! Compounding allows you to turn just one dollar into thousands of dollars, if you leave it invested for long enough.

2. Making your money work

Investing your money is like giving you money a job. When you invest, you get your money back plus you earn interest or dividends, which are like to salary to your money.

3. The inflation problem

Inflation is when the price of goods and services rises over time. This occurs due to their demand growing faster than their supply, or when companies increase the cost of goods to maintain profit margins. And this is why you get fewer chocolates for $10 now than you did before.

So, does inflation mean that your money is losing its value? Yes, inflation simply means the same amount of money will buy you less things today than it did yesterday. That is to say, all the money one saves loses its value in the future because of inflation. But relax, as there is a way to prevent your money from losing its value and beat inflation. You have to make your money work effectively. All you need to do is put your money into investments that provide returns higher than inflation.

4. Introduction to equity

To invest in a company, you need to buy shares of that company, provided they are listed on the stock exchange. When that company makes a profit, the value of your shares goes up and you get a part of the profits of the company. It is like owning a small part of the company.

Well, the stock market is not easy to participate in. The price of shares depends on many factors in addition to profit a company makes, which you need to understand first, like the economic environment of the country, the prevalent market sentiment, estimated earnings of the company, among others. Yes, investing takes a lot of time and knowledge that most people do not have, so they make use of mutual funds. Mutual funds make investing in shares simple.

5. Mutual fund concepts

When you invest in a mutual fund, your money, along with money from like-minded investors, is pooled together and given to a fund manager. Then the fund manager will invest this money in stocks or bonds, depending on the mutual fund scheme's investment objective. Also, through mutual funds you can invest in large companies in which it may be difficult to invest on your own. Plus, your risk will be divided amongst all the investors and the best part - your money will be managed by a professional expert, so you don't have to worry about a thing. You do not need a lot of money to invest in mutual funds; you can even invest small amounts every month using a systematic investment plan (SIP).

6. Expert tips on SIP

Taking a SIP and making an investment for the long term is a great idea. In fact, SIP(s) are one of the best ways to invest. If you invest through a SIP, you invest a small amount regularly and enjoy the benefit of an average cost rather than paying a lump sum at one time.  When you invest through a SIP, it buys you units of mutual fund at regular intervals at various prices, this way, you get the benefit of Dollar Cost Averaging, this means, in the end, poor performance of the market on a single day does affect your investments that are spread across time at various prices. From the investor's perspective, you may also benefit from a lower average price per unit as opposed to a single, possible higher price!

7. Diversify and conquer

The importance of diversifying your investments is that it lowers your risk by offsetting your losses from one asset with profits from another, thereby helping you achieve your long-term financial goals. Losing your walled is a great example of how diversification works: let's suppose you had kept your license and ATM card in separate cardholder and some of your cash in your bag, by diversifying the places you carried things, you would have reduced the risk of losing everything at once. Basically, diversification is just a fancy name for the age-old saying, "don't put all of your eggs in one basked". If you put your investments in many 'baskets', a dip in one investment may be offset by a rise in another, thus diversification helps you reach your long-term financial goals while minimizing your risk.

8. 30-30 challenge

With longer lifespans today, we spend 30 years on an average working and another 30 years retired. Basically, your 30 working years need to fund your 30 years of retirement. Hence, the 30-30 challenge! Remember the ant and the grasshopper's story that takes place over one summer and winter. Think of summer as their 30 working years and winter as their 30 retirement years. Both the ant and grasshopper start at the same level, working through the summer of their lives at the same job. While the grasshopper fritters away all of his earnings with no regard for tomorrow, the ant invests a portion of his salary every month. Grasshopper needs to start saving and investing his money right now or else he will have no money left when he retires. Grasshopper thinks otherwise, "It is not like I'm retiring tomorrow. I'll start saving someday." But he is not considering inflation in the future; he is busy enjoying himself right now. When winter rolls around, the ant's meticulous planning pays off as his investment returns allow him to continue his standard of living. Meanwhile, the now-penniless grasshopper realizes too late that he should have listened to the ant when he had the change. So, the earlier you start investing, the lesser you'll have to save in the end. The later you start, the more you have to save from your earnings and the less you will get to spend. That’s the power of compounding at play.

9. Taxing trouble

The government takes a percentage from the earnings of the individuals and businesses to maintain public infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and so on. This is what you call tax. Government also gives you the opportunities to save, provided you are helping the economy grow. One of the best ways is by investing, when you invest, you are pumping money back into the economy, helping the economy grow. If you invest your money in certain tax instruments that come under section 80C of the Indian income tax act, the government will give you tax deductions for that financial year! You could invest in an equity linked savings scheme (ELSS). This helps you save tax and seeks to grow your money while beating the inflation rate.

10. Child plans

While thinking of rising education expenses of your children, what you need is a child plan. Invest a small amount for your child every month in a child plan and through the power of compounding over the long term, this money will exponentially grow into a tidy sum for the child later in life. They are like SIP(s) for children.

11. Volatility and waiting it out

Sometimes, waiting it out is the best solution, even when it comes to investing. You see, the stock market is subject to fluctuations, due to both internal and external factors like growth or decline of the economy, global market prices, war, even global warming. These fluctuations are what you call stock market volatility and are completely normal. People get worried when the stock market goes down. This is when you have to wait it out. Investments, especially SIP(s), are safer in the long term because over the long run, this volatility will spread out and will not affect your returns adversely. In fact, it can work to your advantage. If you've invested in a SIP, you will purchase more units when the market has gone down. Thus, over the long term, due to Dollar Cost Averaging, you stand to get better returns.