New Year - Old Routine

The new year is already 3 days old and it has been boring as ever. On new years eve we went out for dinner and visited a desi night club... and believe me this is one place which is definitely not Texas Size... the cramped place was crawling with people... all in various states of drunken stupor dancing away to glory... trying to usher the new year....

Feeling claustrophobic and suffocated by the wafting cigarette smoke we beat a hasty retreat. I was shocked to see a long line of people waiting in the biting cold to get into the night club. "These guys are crazy" I thought... wanting to get into that cramped, suffocating, airless space.. wonder what they were expecting to do there...

Anyway since that day I have been hanging around at home doing nothing much but reading books. I finished the book How Walmart is Destroying America and the World in which veteran journalist Bill Quinn explains the various negative impacts of the largest retailer in the world. How Walmart has virtually closed down most of the independent grocery stores and drugstores? How Walmart is a greedy company with no sentiment? How Walmart exploits its employees (associates) by paying measly wages and no health and other benefits? and other important questions are answered in this book. The author explains that for every 100 jobs created by Walmart, 150 people lose their livelihoods... not just jobs but they lose livelihood... the sole source of their living.

Reading this book it is scary to think what might happen to India when this retail giant enters and conquers the country. Already there are more than 800 million who eke out a living with less than $2 daily... there might be more added to that number. That is so much for bad news. Let me finish here before I get too cynical....