Being cynical is the safest bet you can take on India unless, of course, you are either of the two Singhs conducting our great economy -- which seems to be tanking, too. But if the topic is governance and corruption, cynicism, which is founded on decades of underachievement and utter failure, is also wisdom.

Who can challenge you when you say nothing works in this country, nothing will ever change, we are all like this only, this country has no hope…. so will you stop bothering me while I bend a few rules please, thank you?

Nobody. A billion plus nobodies, actually.

The answer to what will come out of Anna Hazare and his Jan Lokpal agitation is easy: nothing, or at any rate, not much. Even Anna's supporters would have taken to the streets half in hope of change and half in expectation of failure. Decades of repudiation trains them to do that. If the "system" gets the better of Anna, they can always seek solace in the comfort of their cynical half.

Of course, after Singh Senior is done

A finance ministry official says "If foreigners are allowed to invest directly in India, volatility will go down in Indian markets". I am completely unable to understand this.

Like I cannot understand what is wrong with Intra day or Intra month volatility! Markets have always been volatile — the question is how volatile that is all. We should also stop this excessive 'foreign' syndrome. The hangover of the gora just refuses to go away.

Let us look at FDI in retail. We allowed FDI in banking — we now have only  foreign banks in India — other than the PSU banks that is. Has it helped in banking? We have had FDI in mutual funds — at least for the past 20 years — has it helped in penetrating the rural markets? We have FDI in life and general insurance….same answer is it not? L O L.

Then we thought we need FDI in retail (I guess this was a ploy to hold the real estate price high) — but somebody said it was to tackle the runaway valuation of the US dollars!!

Now imagine the foreigner wanting

The Sensex may have given 19% returns over 33 years, however, it may not have given 19% in any particular year! This is fairly simple — the standard deviation is quite high, and good years are followed by bad years. Simple.

In the year 2011 the Sensex's performance looked bad because of the poor performance of Reliance, L&T, Infosys, ICICI, SBI while HUL, ITC stocks did well.

Unfortunately, for Sensex watchers Reliance and Infosys — both very good P/E managers — and perhaps EPS (earning per share) managers too — seem to be in their mid life or descent. This means that even with all their media management, the market's respect for these companies (read PE) is not likely to increase in the near future. Infosys is in a mature industry with not too many entry barriers and Reliance, well, is Reliance!

ICICI bank does not have a single promoter — this means there is no single person 'managing' the P/E and its EPS is not really respected. The NPA (non performing assets) of ICICI bank and SBI