Eco Friendly Vehicles: A Case of Misplaced Emphasis?

In this year’s budget, the Government reduced the excise duty on electric cars from 8 per cent to nil. Recently the Government repeated the same with 2 and 3 wheel electric vehicles. (Full article here) Why? Well, if one were to believe the advertisements, this is because the Government wants to promote these “eco friendly”, “zero pollution” vehicles. Just open any electric vehicle manufacturer’s website and you will see these words laced all over the site.

Well, that might be true if one were to compare electric vehicles with carbon dioxide emitting vehicles. However, I seem to have been bitten by the recent bug of measuring everything by its carbon footprint. Considering that most of the power produced in India is from hydro carbon fuels I fail to see how these vehicles are eco friendly. Just because you choose to be blind to the technology that brings the electricity right to your doorstep it does not cease to exist. Add to that the fact that we are an energy deficient nation, I fail to see the rationale in promoting electric vehicles.

I see a lot of similarities between ethanol blended fuel and these electric vehicles. Ethanol blended fuel was supposed to be environmentally friendly since it used natural component that could be regenerated. However, this has a hand in the spiraling food prices as food crops like corn were diverted to produce ethanol. Similarly agricultural land meant for food crops began to grow crops that were in demand to produce this “bio-fuel”.

As and energy deficient nation and one that meets its electricity needs primarily through fossil fuels can we really afford to promote electric vehicles?

Also posted at http://desicritics.org/2008/05/11/140745.php

Whats in a name?

I recently came across an article that referred to India Held Kashmir. Now while many Indians are familiar with POK or Pakistan Occupied Kashmir I’m not sure how many have heard this term.

There is a saying that history doesn’t determine who is right. It determines who is left. It is the winner who writes the history books. With both sides claiming their own victory and scripting their own histories, can one really blame the people for their mutual distrust of each other? If your whole life you were raised to believe that America was your number one enemy, would you be able to accept any help from them without worrying about the fine print or the possibility of a Trojan horse?

If a name can cause enmity between nations or people, I guess there is a lot in a name after all.

Microsoft can be such a pain in the ***

Just in order to publicize your search engine you are making me go through an extra bloody step when I typed the link in correctly?



No wonder you are lagging Google in terms of search queries if you have such a lousy publicity team that doesn’t have a pinch of creativity. Wait a sec. Did I just say “number of search queries”? Guess with the battle for Yahoo going to get bitter there is a need to boost the actual number of “search clicks” that Live Search is getting.

P.S on a similar note check out this post