I stare at a screen for 8 hours, press keys & get paid money for it so I can buy a better screen next year. Mail - [email protected]
India
Joined June 2009
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Hardik Rajgor retweeted
The entire Indian system is geared towards *prevention*.
*Prevent* all the bad things from happening, because recourse to cure is so poor. Why is there no cure? Courts and police are total failures - for instance, if somebody commits a financial fraud, it can take decades to prosecute them. Hence prevent the fraud - throw multiple OTPs at the user for a Rs 5000 fund transfer. Banks make you do KYC like fanatics because they are trying to *prevent* the last bad actor from getting away - if millions are to be tortured for it, so be it.
This prevention-first mindset throws sand in the wheels for everything. It makes life hell for consumers and small businesses.
Just imagine what the accumulated cost is of preventing all the bad things from happening - surely it shaves off many basis points from GDP growth when you stack up all of it.
And yet the cheats, criminals, troublemakers and frauds all find ways to do what they do anyway. Those who are just trying to run their business and get through life are burdened with this mountain of compliance and paperwork. None of this moves babus and ministers - they live in a parallel reality where somebody else works (at taxpayer expense of course) to remove these frictions from their existence.
Then they blithely bark at poor consumers and business operators: “ek form hi to hai, bhar do”. But of course it is never one form - every leech in the system demands a form and a submission. Stacked up, it goes into hundreds of pages of documents and dozens of tasks.
The associated parasite lobby of lawyers, consultants, company secretaries and chartered accountants makes merry. They lobby the government for more regulations and offer compliance services to hapless people. In exchange, they place the government elite’s nepo kids in jobs.
This parasite gang has a field day because more documents means more business for them. They are joined by economists and intellectuals, who want to join the leeching and bloodsucking bacchanalia. This intellectual cabal wants to snag a coveted role in the “world’s best” prize winner central bank or other sarkaari gig.
Productivity dies in India, businesses slow down and overall it is a slow-motion economic disaster. In isolation we feel happy to have 6-7% economic growth. Decades go on then somebody says - oh, how did Singapore, Vietnam and China do so well? We look at the delta and feel awkward. We justify it saying “we have democracy”. The super-cabal didn’t just prevent accidents or disasters like they claimed - they killed off and prevented growth and progress with it. Mega accidents and disasters happened anyway.
Enjoy the democracy. Praise the cockroaches and jholachhaps. Celebrate the thugs, parasites, leeches and bureaucrat-goons all around you.
Mera Bharat Mahaan!
Hardik Rajgor retweeted
Terror was met with courage. Courage was met with honour.
President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed embraces Captain Smit Machchhar, hero of flydubai Flight FZ1073, honoured with the Order of Zayed II.
In the UAE, bravery knows no nationality. Heroes are treated as heroes. 🇦🇪🇮🇳
"Sai Pallavi as Maa Sita, seriously?"
"How is this musical choice appropriate for Ramayan?"
"Why do they have this costume in the film?"
It's a nightmare to make a film on a cultural or religious topic in India.
You're basically trying to commercialize a story, that has people's aastha associated with it.
And so, every person and his grandmother has a strong opinion on it.
It is only fair.
For you, it maybe a money making endeavour. But for the audience, it's their faith.
And you better do justice to it.
I sympathize with the filmmakers.
You can have the best intentions at heart. You can do all the research, consult all the priests and experts, get the best talent from around the world, and still fall short in the eyes of those who feel so passionately about it (as they must).
I humbly request the audience to also consider this.
People putting thousands of crores of rupees on the line, obviously want the story to travel.
Which is why certain casting choices are made. Which is why the action and VFX has a certain 'style'. Which is why it's called 'fantasy' or 'mythology' in certain parts of the world (there's an audience that loves this genre). Which is why musical choices are more modern for today's audiences (unlike Ramanand Sagar's Ramayana).
Wouldn't it be great if the Ramayan were to travel far and wide? Wouldn't it be great if that is the story the world knows Indian Cinema by?
It is certainly made at the scale and vision.
This is the most ambitious attempt to tell the Ramayana in almost 40 years!
Don't get lost in the noise of what Ranbir or Sai said in some interview, or if Vishal Dadlani is a communist, or why this 'leftist' artist was a part of this project.
The Ramayana is bigger than all of this.
Eventually, if the film breaks out globally, everyone gets to experience a story that is dear to billions of us. And that is the only thing that matters.
It is about time that Indian Cinema made its mark globally, and what better story could be the vehicle, than the one most rooted in our culture and history?
I genuinely wish Team Ramayana the best.
Hardik Rajgor retweeted
Currently there are two simultaneous race wars, Turkey vs. China and Japan vs. French leftist/immigrants.
The Japanese 🇯🇵, as you know, are culturally allergic to public disorder. So the Franco-Japanese War kicked off when they saw French accounts cheering on the riots while using anime avatars and Japanese characters in their handles.
They said those anime characters are about virtues such as courage, justice, effort, and friendship, and they shouldn't be associated with torching cars or looting. Basically the message was: “if you need a symbol for destruction, invent your own. Stop culturally appropriating ours for your ugly ends.”
From there it escalated into classical mutual stereotype annihilation. The Japanese didn't hold back, using typical allusions to apes and hounding on their failure to build thriving societies despite being given all the aid and welfare in the world. The French accounts (majority were rocking North African flags) hit back, insulting Japanese for screwing sex dolls and working so hard they commit suicide. It wasn't pretty.
While that was cooking, a separate Turkey vs. China war was already underway. Algerians 🇩🇿 noticed and decided to ride for their “Turkish brothers,” dropping cartoons roasting the Chinese.
The Moroccans 🇲🇦, watching from the sidelines, started laughing and saying "screw the Ummah," telling them they really didn’t want to invite the Chinese to attack them. The Algerian account responded by calling the Moroccan’s sister a whore. This, my friends is what I personally call "fractal racism."
On the surface, you think it's just one undifferentiated “brown Muslim” mass. But when you zoom in, what you get is infinite-resolution tribalism and more divisions of recursive hate. At this magnification, the French Muslim immigrant blob split along Maghrebi lines that few of us outsiders know exist.
French-Algerian accounts volunteering as Turkish proxies then invites Chinese 🇨🇳 online aggression. Which means the Chinese and Japanese (and Koreans 🇰🇷 who joined them), are now united in common cause in mutual contempt for the same people. Two separate race wars are threatening to collapse into one lol.
The internet is so weird and entertaining isn't it.
Where and how else could this have happened? Two sides with the deepest historical hatreds on the planet, and likely a fissure point of the next actual kinetic World War, are briefly aligned.
Hardik Rajgor retweeted
We are the indigenous people of Jack Dorsey. Elon Musk is our coloniser and we will not leave this land.
My dad is not a tech-savvy person.
In over three decades of his CA practice, he has discarded many computers because of hardware issues or because they stopped working for one reason or another.
But he always took out the SATA hard drives from the CPUs and kept them safe in a cupboard, knowing they might still contain sensitive client data that could fall into the wrong hands. He never knew what to do with them.
Some were 1TB, some 500GB, some 250GB, and a few older ones were 80GB.
The other day, he stacked all of them in front of me and asked me what the safest way to dispose of them was.
I asked him, “Are they working?”
He had no idea.
So I bought a SATA to USB connector from Amazon for ₹750.
And upon testing them, I found that every single one of them (except one) was still perfectly functional! 🤯
In a year when storage devices and portable HDDs have become ridiculously expensive, this felt like finding a ₹500 note tucked away in an old pair of jeans. 😁
Hardik Rajgor retweeted
"Sharjeel Imam is a nightmare for liberals because he says in public what many of them are afraid to say even in private. He does not look like a textbook text-adherent mulla, yet he sounds like one. The reaction is shock, or the performance of shock. He is a scholar of a particular kind, and his colour is too stark for the liberati, who keep a Sufi sher ready for every argument. When pressed, they retreat into the claim that understanding him requires critical theory, and this, and that, blah blah.
Calling the Constitution fascist, secularism a trap, and democracy a device to deny Muslims their "divine right" is not critical theory. It is the Two-Nation Theory updated for a new century."
By @kkstau
indiatoday.in/opinion/story/…
Hardik Rajgor retweeted
The full picture on Chinese export controls is sharper than just TBMs alone.
The licence rule applies to exports to “sensitive countries and regions in dispute with China.”
The list also covers walking excavators and plateau shotcrete machines used above 3,000 metres.Basically the equipment that builds roads and tunnels as part of India's massive infrastructure buildout in Himalayas.
Beijing has also put controls on drone autopilots and engines, and last week floated a draft to restrict 40+ technologies, including next-gen solar manufacturing.
Every sector where India is trying to cut dependence on China is now a chokepoint.
Just need to face it and build it here, and build it fast. via @businessline
China announces export controls for tunnel boring machines (TBMs)
From Nov 18, exporting TBMs will require a licence. These are the machines fuelling India’s infrastructurebooming especially metros and highway tunnels.
Beijing is classifying them as “dual-use” items, which gives the move a security label, but in effect it is economic coercion.
This has happened before. In 2024, China began delaying customs clearances for TBM shipments to India, and in August 2025 it told India it had lifted the curbs on TBMs. With this licence rule, the delays become a formal mechanism that Beijing can tighten or loosen whenever relations change.
India’s dependence here is real, but it is narrower than it might look. TBM imports from China had already dropped sharply, from $18 million in 2022-23 to $3 million in 2023-24, and most self-propelled TBMs have come from outside China. The serious risk is deayed metro timelines and cost escalation if suppliers’ Chinese plants or components get stuck in licensing.
India’s response has to be to make these machines itself, and that work has started. The government is preparing a $1.2 billion incentive scheme to make tunnel boring machines, firefighting equipment and elevators in India. It is expected to bring in about $1.8 billion in investment over seven years.
BEML is preparing to manufacture TBMs locally, and L&T could also benefit. Building this capacity will take years, but each round of export controls from China makes the case for it stronger. asia.nikkei.com/economy/chin…
Hardik Rajgor retweeted
OHHHHHH MY GOOOOOOOD!!!! 🤯🤯🤯
ANAHAT SINGH UPSETS 8-TIME WORLD CHAMPION & LEGEND NOUR ELSHERBINI! 🥹
World No. 15 Anahat has absolutely dominated World No. 3 and Top seed Nour ElSherbini 🇪🇬 3-0 to storm into the QFs of the Chicago Open, a PSA Gold-level event!
11-8, 11-8, 11-7
THIS IS THE BIGGEST WIN OF 18-YEAR-OLD ANAHAT’S CAREER! 🔥🔥🔥
People (including me) often use this platform to complain about brands.
It's only fair that I also share a positive experience I had recently.
I had to cancel a trip a few days back due to medical emergency at home. It was a serious matter, we had to get multiple tests done and then schedule a surgery immediately.
I knew the flight tickets were non-refundable but I asked @airindia if they would consider, since it was not an ordinary case.
Honestly speaking, I wasn't expecting much. The rules in terms of ticket cancellations are quite clear.
But they asked me for a few documents, just to assess that the case was genuine!
And Air India offered me a full refund.
A couple of their executives also called me and wished the patient quick recovery.
I really appreciate it.
They didn't have to, but they made that extra effort. And I believe it is this soft human touch that separates our Indian brands from many others in the world.
Thank you, Air India.
Sanjay Raut had no idea his own party will split in half and Eknath Shinde would end their political careers, but he knows who is right and who is wrong in Albania. 🤡
The French police must learn to respect the democratic right of students and ordinary citizens to protest against their government.
A democracy is not merely about holding elections, but also about allowing dissent, listening to opposing voices and protecting the right to peaceful assembly.
Using violence against students and protesters is unacceptable and only weakens the democratic spirit.
The French authorities must remember that liberty, equality and fraternity are not just slogans to be invoked when convenient, but values that must be upheld even when citizens challenge those in power. 🙂