OverTea - Retired!

It has been over four years since I started blogging and OverTea is the first platform on which I have started expressing my views. Now the time has come for me to let my dear friend go.

Started as a platform for argument, though each post didn't really bring up one, OverTea has had a few posts which most certainly invited view points that starkly differed from its own. Some of my favourites were Mahabharata "controversy", B.E vs BSc, Of conservatism and liberalism, Why should a politician be selfless?, celebrating Gandhi.

Writing OverTea has been a great journey of discovery and education. I owe my association with ThinkChange India, NGOpost, the opinion I formed on many issues of public relevance to OverTea. Now, somewhere down the line I started BlackNike in a whimsical moment and not too long after that I realized that managing two personal blogs is redundant, and OverTea can very well fit into BlackNike. But after prolonged laziness today I integrated both the blogs under BlackNike. So, do visit BlackNike!

Though I have transferred all contents of OverTea into BlackNike and I won't write on this blog anymore, I just couldn't bring myself to delete the blog. After all, it does bring in fond memories.

Obituary: YSR

It has been sometime since I have blogged in this site. But now is a good time to restart the discussion OverTea. After about a day's mystery finally we know that CM of Andhra Pradesh YSR has died in the chopper crash.

After he had taken over from Chandrababu Naidu as CM, a visionary credited to have ushered in an IT revolution in Hyderabad, YSR had done well not to root out the best of reforms the former CM brought in.

For example, the Velugu project to eliminate poverty renamed a Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP) in YSR regime did very well to imrprove the rural poor's quality of life. The same example also points that he seems to have learnt from ostensible mistakes of Naidu too. Often Naidu election debacle after 9 years of rule was attributed to his "one-sided focus on the cities" and ignoring the poor. While the claim is arguable, YSR seems to have maintained the urban-rural development balance well. His own initiatives like Arogyashree (health care) and Indiramma housing programme seems to have been received well by the public.

In my own personal experience during my last 5 years of residence in Hyderabad, I find the municipality of Hyderabad as less corrupt and more proactive than any other municipalities I have found. So, all said and done, as a CM YSR did well, and Andhra Pradesh and the country at large is at a minor loss at his untimely death. May his soul rest in peace and hope his replacement is at least as good as he was.