The Bangalore Lock

Bangalore is one of the best cities i have ever been to and am seriously planning not to leave it anytime soon for reasons various!!
The whole Bangalore story started when India experienced something called as the IT Boom, in the 90's i suppose. This boom has always been blamed for the actual time-bomb that in reality Bangalore is turning out to be. What this is time-bomb? , how all this happened suddenly?...
Let me tell you the story of Bangalore..
In reality, Bangalore was nothing but a small city (Around the time the first invaders came to India, little before the British and alike stepped here). Believe it or not but this place was DEVOID of trees!!!! This is in striking contrast to the image of Bangalore we always knew, full of trees and gardens. There were hardly any trees and for some reason, after the British occupied it, changes started happening, the most important one being greenery, don't ask me how it happened.

Then later this greenery started the slow climate change of Bangalore and reduced the temperature to pleasant, unlike all other South-Indian states and the best part was that this city did not even have the privilege of a water body like what other places enjoyed!!

After the colonization period ended and India gained its freedom, after all the foreigners left home, Bangalore slowly and steadily developed, one step at a time.. Still, there was never a problem called as population for this sleepy town where people still had a good time roaming in the gardens of LalBagh and alike.

The 90's advent marked the beginning of the IT boom, an invader of a completely different kind!! Bangalore slowly started to be invaded by everyone.. suddenly, everyone wanted to be in Bangalore.. All the companies wanted to be here, the government policies also favored them immensely and everyone was happy to be here. Slowly and steadily the companies built up, starting with a guy called Azim Premji who thought its high time he shifted his focus from making Santoor soaps to something better like say developing solutions. Then another guy called Narayana Murthy also thought that it was indeed a good idea and talked about this to one Nandan Nilekani and they established the now famous company Infosys.
Infosys like other companies started its growth pulling up people from all over India and got them here as Bangalore and Mysore were its two main camps. Then companies from abroad also started seeing the advantages to be in Bangalore and started setting up their camps here and this was the perfect start to developing a good city.
The government that always gave good policies to the companies was actually doing nothing but providing them good policies!! when the companies asked for things more practical, the government shied away.. This nature of the government (the Congress Govt. to be particular) of showing all the good, bad, and ugly faces to the companies was not well received by them.
But nevertheless they did never had such deep problems and also the fact that this was still the most favorable place in the south with excellent connectivities to all major places.
Then the story took another turn with all kinds of educated people settling down in Bangalore as their companies were based here. This went on and on till the population of Bangalore was something like this:
65% ~ non-native population
35% ~ native Bangaloreans

Now i do not hold the opinion held by some against the north-Indians in some cities but wanted to discuss how its actually affecting the people who were originally based here.
The Villain in this story comes now. His name is Inflation and he also just came in the same way with all the people who came to Bangalore dreaming of a better lifestyle and nobody knew he was here to stay. Slowly he kept getting stronger.....
Why did he come in the first place??... Because of the changing population of this place, the citizens became more educated, slowly the middle class was rising to the upper-middle class and the upper-class moving on to the top-level... all this courtesy the IT Boom as i talked about before.
These people were paying good taxes and this in turn meant good development right... but that did not happen and the average shopkeeper realized that this class of people was ready to spend.. and spend like crazy.. so he increased his rates and others followed alike. This was the birthday of Inflation. Inflation started growing and finally resulted in a very high rate-of-living or in other words high and costly lifestyle.. prices soared up and people were still paying...
Now after all this you would ask me.. well so whats the problem??.. we are paying our taxes and doing nothing wrong!!

Thats perfectly true, but when we turn our attention towards the 35% odd natives here who are happy to be classified as "non-techies", we notice that they are bearing our fat-asses... they are bearing the brunt of the "techie"...
These people are normal government employees and small time businessmen as like any other non-IT guy would be . The salaries that they take home is quite less compared to their IT counterparts, who sit in front of the monitor the whole day and take home easily 20 times more.
The native population found it really hard to buy regular stuff that they always used to and slowly some of them started the great exodus.
Now Bangalore is slowly becoming a place for the "Techies".. you find them everywhere.. Pubs, Malls, everywhere....
They have slowly transformed the peace-loving city(it still does, but not to that extent) into a jargon of High-Lifestyle places... the best example is the enormous increase Bangalore has seen in Pubs and malls being opened.. now there's a mall at every damn turning and ditto for the pub.
People are still swarming into Bangalore and i fear nothing will be left soon!! its a conquest thats depleting all the nature..
Car and bike sales have never witnessed such a craze as is going on now.. All the streets ( I would not prefer calling them Roads!!! ) are jammed with more and more vehicles adding to the city's choking problem... The whole point being ,Bangalore was never built/planned for the tremendous population it handles today.. Apparently Bangalore has been handling about 16-17 "times" what it was designed to handle... The direct affect of this resulted in citizens asking for wider roads to commute... and wider roads in Bangalore only means one thing.. Chopping down trees that have been living here long before the techie arrived !!..
Bangalore is undergoing a change, and this change is at the expense of nature, and hence I think this is not going the right way... Know what.. not only me, but the Times of India has also started the Unlock-Bangalore campaign which explains the significance of the title I chose for this.
Its up to us to save Bangalore from this unending colonization of the "Techies"
Now to reveal the ultimate surprise!!
I am myself a techie based in Bangalore and have absolutely no plans of leaving this beautiful yet Locked City!!!

Microsoft (vs) IncomeTax Dept., India

Everyone must have read about the Microsoft issue...
I kind of found it interesting ..
Microsoft has been asked to pay up by the IT department ( Please read IT as IncomeTax . .. this will be the new IT that will be of interest to us in some time soon!!! ) to pay up a whooping 90 Crores...

This blame was put up by India because of the laws that are in place and Microsoft apparently broke them ... So whats this all about??

Basically this is quite a complex issue, but I'll try to explain it..

Whenever we buy products of Microsoft, they apparently "license" it to us.. remember, its always the licensing agreement that we agree to .. So in other words, Microsoft only pays its taxes for the licenses in India and not for selling products (there was a big argument whether s/w should be classified as a product or service and hence tax levied on it like others ..... case was by Lotus Soft, if i am right and they won it as the situation was different in their case)
Well whatever.. so every CD's tax was actually due to its license..
BUT the problem comes here:
If you remember, there are Enterprise/Network edition Windows CDs.. This is basically using the same CD and Microsoft giving many licenses/Product-keys in the same pack.. so one CD and many codes to authenticate the product..
This was caught saying that Microsoft was paying the TAX on only 1 CD while attempting to sell many licenses using that pack ..

Now it does make some sense right!!

So this matter was based upon one particular clause in the IT.. But as usual, there was another duplicate clause that stated just the opposite that they cannot be taxed upon (adding to the confusion which rule should be kept in mind ! ! ! )... and this was the older rule.. and this was what Microsoft had been following..
Now because of the new rule, Microsoft was taxed upon ALL such CDs that it had sold.. But as i found out, the case is slightly tilted towards Microsoft's side because the old rule is quite popular and is used in most countries.

Now i think the matter is scheduled to be heard sometime soon and apparently Microsoft has a Very Strong group of lawyers who go to ANY length to get out of legal shit such as this, and these people are really well paid !!!
How do you think it got away with all the apple-copying stuff!!!! :D its these lawyers behind this....

So i think most likely Microsoft will escape the TAXMAN this time around!!!