US NRI's get your PAN number

This is just an informational post, i did not find any information for this process on the net and thought i would write down my experience for anyone who could use it.
Me and my colleagues/friends who came to the US are finally at a point where we could invest in long term investments for out futures. What better place to invest in India where the SENSEX has risen 42% over the last year and will keep climbing steadily with a GDP growth projected close to double digits. Add to this, the two Ambani brothers duking it out for market supremacy, the Birlas looking to make a strong comeback, Maruti possibly going public soon, TATA about to start a new project to build the cheapest car in India, any one would want to jump on that gravy train before it leaves the station.
The Indian government has decreed that anyone wanting to deal in shares and/or mutual funds in India are required to have a PAN number assigned to them. Indian shares are no longer issued in the old paper format and are held in online accounts called DeMat accounts. All the big banks in India and stock brokerages offer DeMat accounts. The problem for NRI's in the US like me is that PAN numbers were introduced in India in 1999. They were made mandatory after the year 2000. Anyone who paid Income taxes in India after those years were automatically assigned PAN numbers. Then came PAN cards. These are like the state-Ids issued in the US with a persons picture and signature on them. SEBI rules in India have now made it mandatory for Banks to request for this PAN card from their clients to open a DeMat account. This is all very annoying for an NRI who gets to go to India for around 2-3 weeks. The Govt. of India has outsourced the process of issuing new PAN numbers to UTI and NSDL (tin.nsdl.com). They take about 2-3 weeks to issue you a new PAN in India, if you are lucky and if you grease enough palms.
I was plenty frustrated by the incompetent clerks in the UTI offices when i visited India in December. Upon return to the US, i kept investigating how i could file for a PAN online. There has to be at least one government related company in India that exists in the 21st Century. I found it. Here is the process to file for a new PAN.
1. Contact someone in India, a relative or a friend who you can assign as a Representative and who can do a couple of tasks for you.
2. This person will have to get a DD for Rs. 67 drawn on a bank in India payable in Mumbai. The DD number has to be conveyed to you, this number has to be filled in on the form.
3. The website mentions that you can pay via Credit card but in an extremely convoluted logic, NRIs cannot pay via credit card, only resident Indians can.
4. Go to the NSDL website and get to the Online PAN Application.
5. They have a long list of instructions for this form but mostly the information required is straightforward.
6. Fill in the name and address of your Representative in this form. This will provide NSDL with an Indian contact to send your PAN card to, and contact if they have any questions about your application.
7. Fill in your DD information on this application. They do not have a 'Save and return' function so you should be equipped with all information before hand.
8. Submit the form, it prints you an acknowledgement form with your application number. This form also has room to affix a photo and sign.
9. you will require photocopies of your passport for proof of identity and copies of Bank Statements for proof of Residence.
10. They have plenty of Instructions about where to list your application number on your various documents including the DD.
11. Send all your documents to your representative in India, (be careful not to send this via regular mail, there is a strong possibility of someone stealing your identity).
12. Your representative can send the packet in the format required by NSDL to their offices in Mumbai.

NSDL has promised to email my PAN number to me within 10 days of receiving my packet and send my PAN Card to my Representative within 15-20 days.

This is quite the hassle for something that the govt could have used SSNs for US NRI's. but who is gonna argue with PC and PM.

Great Women of India - Captain Saudamini Deshmukh

Heres the thing about India, we as a nation have the worst reputation when it comes to women, we have one of the worst female foeticide, female child killing rates ever. Throughout rural India, women are not allowed to lift thier veils or get basic education. Traditions like Sati were prevalent even in the recent past. Dowry is expected even today and brides are still sacrificed for Dowries. Even in cities eve-teasing and assaults against women are very prevalent. This is the ugly side of the Indian attitude towards women
On the other hand, we have had the strongest Prime-Minister of India who was a woman in Indira Gandhi. She remains the only woman to have imposed an emergency in India and arrested the entire opposition overnight. Her assasination has shaped the political landscape of India, the direct consequence being Sonia Gandhi's strength in India today. In India we have powerful women chief ministers and legislators. We have women incharge of the highest ranked educational institues in India. Anuradha Desai, CEO of Venkateshwara Hatcheries is one of the top industralists in India. This is the empowerment side of the Indian attitude towards women
Imagine my surprise then when i researched Captain. Saudamini Deshmukh. She is currently the Deputy General Manager of Indian, what was once Indian Airlines.

Capt. Deshmukh has many firsts to her credit.

She was the first woman in 1985 to become a check-pilot on a Fokker-27.

Then, she went on to captain an all-woman crew on a Boeing 737 from Calcutta to Silchar in 1989.

Then, in 1994, she became Captain on Airbus-A-320, and in 1995, in another first, she captained the airbus with an all-woman crew.
And she's the first woman to occupy the chair of Deputy General Manager (Operations) at Indian.

wow What a trailblazer!!!

Other firsts for women in India.

1. Kiran Bedi - The lady of steel.. first woman to join the Indian Police Service - 1972

2. Kalpana Chawla - first Indian woman in space. - 1997.

3. Priya Jhingan - first woman officer in the Indian Army - 1992

Image and Text courtesy of The Hindu.

Great Women of India - Barkha Dutt

Barkha Dutt is one of India's best Journalist. She is extremely articulate, smart, very good looking and a daredevil. My first memories of Barkha are during 1999, the Kargil war. At that time, 'embedded journalist', a term made famous in the on-going Iraq war, was a non-existent term. Images of a war consisted of grainy, black and white footage of the previous two wars in India, 1963 and 1972. The government had labeled the Kargil incursion and occupation of the strategic "Tiger Hill" by the Pakistani soldiers as a mere conflict. The "hip" source of news in 1999 was NDTV, beaming their news on the Star News channel. During the inital days of the conflict, Barkha would show up during prime time news with pictures and scenes of the ongoing skirmish. There were bombs exploding around her and one could hear bullets in the background, Barkha would be reporting with her trusty star news mike in hand, wearing a helmet. The image was very movie-like for me and Barkha was an action-hero!!

Soon the skirmish extended to a month... May turned to June to July.... Soon Indians, Pakistanis and the world knew that this indeed was a war, though no one wanted to call it that. Barkha continued to be a star of the war.

She has since said that she broke laws of Journalism and projected the Indian side in far better light. She said it was a result of years of partiality built up in her since school and the social structure in India. She saw the Indian soldiers involved in some barbaric acts towards killed Pakistani soldiers and treating the dead with disrespect and not reporting it. All this while, the world saw atrocities committed by the Pakistani soldiers against captured Indians.

She now has a desk job at the NDTV news channel and has a prime time talk show 'We the People'.

Personal greats in the Area of Indian Journalism are:

1. Pranoy Roy. The man who made the news fun for me. I would stay up on Friday nights to watch "The world this week". This program was produced by NDTV and hosted by Pranoy during the late 80's, early 90's.

2. Vishnu Shom: Another classy NDTV news reporter.

3. Rajdeep Sardesai: This guy is a really good news reporter but ticked off the Hindutva brigade during the elections following the Gujarat Riots. Narendra Modi won in a huge landslide and that evening Rajdeep got a public dressing down from the chief-minister elect. He was unfortunate to be caught like that but he took it like a man.

Book Club - No way home - Andrew Coburn

This book is a little slow... Its a wonder i stuck with it. I did get some payoff towards the end in this elaborate whodunnit but there was a lot of fluff to wade through. Its a story of a small town. This town can put desperate housewives to shame. All the lonely housewives have a thing for the police chief, our hero Morgan. He has been sleeping with all these women since the death of his wife. A twin death in the town shakes things up and the chief tries to pick up the trail of the killer in competition with the state trooper lieutenant. He really does a bad job of the investigation and still comes out clean a the end.

Book Club - Guilt By Silence - Taylor Smith

A fantastic CIA conspiracy theory book. I couldn't put this one down! Following our heroine Mariah through an accident which left her husband in a vegetative state and her little girl crippled, the story of how Mariah life turns on its head when she realizes she was and is infact the real target. The men in her life, her husband, her boss and the svauve news reporter who is smitten by her each have secrets of their own and each of thier secrets provide twists and turns in the book. We have rougue CIA agents and cold blooded killers and nuclear scientists from Russia and a seductive German secret agent... this book is a real old school potboiler..

Taylor Smith has written a sequel to the book called "Innocents Club" i might have to go hunt it down, im not done with Mariah just yet...

Farewell to my Heroes...

With the end of India's chances in the World Cup, we may have witnessed the last time we have seen Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly and Anil Kumble together on the cricket field. Maybe they will all play another year or so of International One-Day cricket but if the Indian Cricket Board have any decency and plans to construct a team for the next World Cup, the four greats of Cricket will be dropped in the near future and Indian cricket will begin to move on. As my brother 'A' mentioned yesterday this will be the last time we see real cricketers who play with any cricketing technique, the game is so glamorized in India now that at the end of the day, we only have wannabe actors and models pretending to be cricketers. Mahendra singh Dhoni is not a cricketer.

I feel privileged to have seen and been a fan of these cricketers all my life, I will cherish the memories of them all my life and recall them with great passion. I will remember Sachin's Desert storm performance in Dubai, I will remember his follow-up inning in the finals. I will remember Sachin carrying the entire Indian team on his shoulders in the 2003 world cup to the finals after he came out and apologized to the fans after a bad start. I will remember Sachin's first century against Sri Lanka, I will remember Sachin destroying Shane Warne, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram, Shoiab Akhtar, Mike Kasprowicz... Sachin's final over against South Africa in the Hero cup. Sachin's performance in the Titan cup where he lifted the trophy on diwali day as a captain. Sachin's 187. In India Sachin was God during the entire 90's. The entire country would hold their breath every time he lofted a ball in the air. "As long as Tendlya is there we will win" is a sentence i have uttered hundreds of time in the last decade. As soon as Tendlya was out, i have been pushed into bad moods and thrown things at my television.
Saurav-Dada has always played with a chip on his shoulder. I will remember his blinder of 184 against Sri-Lanka in England 1999 World Cup. I will remember his shirt twirling at the Oval, a show of defiance to the England captain. I will remember his innings in Bangladesh against Pakistan when we chased down 312, He sat down on the pitch refusing to leave due to bad light.
Rahul Dravid always antagonised me. I have to admit i haven't been a fan. hes too laid back. He doesn't show any emotion. He doesn't bat with any authority or aggression. He doesn't seem to be in a rush to win anything. I will remember his over-the-head six against Alan Donald which drove him nuts. I will remember his 146 when Sachin scored his 187, he was also with Saurav when he scored 184. Always the Bridesmaid never the Bride. Unfortunately, most of my memories about Dravid are about him scoring big and India loosing.
Anil Kumble, the guy who took all 10 wickets against Pakistan at Delhi, he partnered with Srinath in bangalore to win against Australia where we got to know both their mom's. The guy who always got a wicket with his flipper when India needed one. India's last spinner.
Bye guys, you will be missed, some more than others but missed nonetheless.

The perspective Bob gave me

Bob Woolmer died in hotel room last week. He was found unconscious and rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival. This was after the Pakistan team lost against Ireland and were eliminated from the first round of the World Cup. My first thought was poor coach couldn't handle the humiliating loss and died of a heart attack. I have known Bob to be the coach who brought back South Africa after their 20 year ban and took them to the absolute heights of success in partnership with Hanse Cronje. Then Hansie was suspended from Cricket for match fixing and Bob moved on to coach the Pakistanis. He was one of the very best coaches in cricket for the last 10-15 years. It would be understandable if he couldn't handle this loss. God knows i was depressed when India lost on that day and i wasn't even a part of that team.
The investigation began into why he died and the rumors began to trickle out. Bob died of a drug overdose. They found alcohol in his room. Then it came out that Bob was in fact murdered. Someone manually strangled Bob. This was just shocking news. A coach of one of the 16 teams playing in the Premier Tournament of one of the oldest games in the world was murdered in his own hotel room. It might have been a bookies mafia that Bob may have been involved with. The Pakistani team has been the center of a lot of Match fixing controversies, players falling randomly sick, 2 stars caught using steroids, flare ups with bowlers, apparent fist fights, a lot of drama. Bob surely knew about all the inside details. His contract was up at the end of the world cup and Bob was a writer, he wrote Blogs, he wrote books, he was about to write a book about match fixing. Maybe someone didn't want the information to come out.
Here's the frightening thought, if Bob was killed by a Bookies mafia, it is bad enough, what if Bob was killed by a crazed fan. The loss to Ireland pushed some fan/promoter of Pakistan cricket over the edge and he killed a slightly inebriated Bob for revenge!!!
That is the worst reason in life to loose a life. Hansie Cronje died in a plane crash, a broken and shunned man. Bob died alone in a hotel room in West Indies away from his family and friends. To die over a simple game of cricket that has survived hundreds of years and will endure this controversy and be stronger for hundreds of years more. This world cup will be remembered for the early exits of India and Pakistan the two powerhouses of International Cricket and the loss of a fine Coach, but if there are 5-6 more exciting cricket matches, and Australia win their third in a row, this world cup will be remembered for that and Bob will only be an afterthought.
Again the worst reason in the world to loose a life.... Puts all of us bleeding blue fans to shame

Its just Cricket... if only i believed

I've been gone a while because i have been trying to get work done before the world cup began. I thought i would have to spend a month and a half cheering India. I spent $200 getting the live cricket package to watch on tv. It began with what seeemed the easiest game on the schedule, against Bangladesh. Boy was i wrong.. India was bundled out for 192 and the bowlers looked like they couldnt bowl out my friends in the gullies of pune. Needless to say India lost big, i spent the evening in mourning. Then Pakistan lost to Ireland and my day brightened up. They had made the earliest exit from the World Cup and it was beautiful...
Then came Bermuda, the trashing. Everyone in India found thier lost touch and scored 413. The bowlers still sucked big time. They won by a large margin and improved thier net run rate to where they only had to win against Sri Lanka to qualify for the super eights.
"Only" win against Sri Lanka. What a joke. It was a clinical destruction of the vaunted Indian Batting line up and India was on thier way out of the world cup in the first round, before April even arrived. I felt sick all evening but the events of last week gave me some perspective of handling this game. I think i've learned to handle bad sports performances better.