Dona Mandal is just 11 years old, and Akash Sharma is 14. Holy Wow! They’re breathtakingly talented these two!

19 of the 38 in this list annoy Indian co-workers.

• Loud typing
• Loud talkers / people who take calls on speakerphone
• Loud or irritating mobile phone ringtones
• Listening to music or videos without headphones
• People chatting by your workspace
• Humming/whistling/tapping
• Chewing gum
• A pungent-smelling lunch
• Taking food from the refrigerator that isn’t yours
• Dirty common areas (such as a dirty community microwave or refrigerator)
• Not putting things in the office kitchen/pantry back where they belong
• People throwing things in your garbage
• Messy desk
• People borrowing and not returning items from your desk
• Too much perfume
• Grooming (filing/clipping/polishing nails, tweezing, etc.)
• Clothing that’s too revealing for the workplace
• Constant complainers
• Eavesdropping and then chiming in
• Excessive gossiping
• Too much talk about health issues, spouses, children
• Colleagues who make too many personal phone calls
• Office pranks
• Too many meetings
• Starting meetings late or going long
• Showing up late for meetings
• Using phone or laptop during meetings
• Hitting “reply all” on mass employee emails
• Being CC’d on a long email string that doesn’t pertain to you
• People that don’t respond to emails
• People who send too many unimportant e-mails
• Not filling an empty printer with paper
• Overachievers that pander to the boss
• Overuse of workplace/industry jargon
• Trivial interruptions
• People who are first in and last out “just because”
• Coming to the office when sick
• People not taking ownership for their actions
• Other (please specify)

Anyone familiar with the farmer suicide crisis in India will know the place Warangal. Located in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, Warangal is considered the epicenter of the farmer suicide crisis. It is here that the farmer suicides by the hundreds were first recorded in 1998.

Finally some good news to report: Marks & Spencer, UK based retailer will continue to invest in the ‘Better Cotton’ Initiative for the next three and a half years. Their press release says the investment will extend to 20,000 farmers in Warangal.

M&S will now continue to fund the project for the next three and a half years to extend the project to 20,000 farmers. It is a joint venture between M&S and WWF. Results from last year include:

• 51 per cent less water use;
• 81 per cent less pesticide ‘active ingredient’ use;
• 53 per cent less synthetic fertiliser use.

Why should we care?

India is currently the 2nd largest producer of cotton in the world (China is #1). And, cotton is a water hog – It can take more than 20,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of cotton; equivalent to a single T-shirt and pair of jeans.

Equality comes slowly in some parts of the world. That it is happening is news enough to celebrate this week.

Saudi Arabia becomes the 6th nation in the 21st century to allow women to vote and run in municipal elections. But they will have to wait till the next election in 2015. And the Saudi women currently do not have the right to drive. They can’t exercise the right to vote, or campaign for office if they run if they must wait for a male to drive them places!

Kaun Banega Crorepati? That question is easily answered in this National Election Watch List! Something is appallingly wrong with the system when it’s easier to count the non-millionaires amongst India’s minister list.

At 122+ crores, the richest is Praful Patel, former Minister of State for Civil Aviation and presently Cabinet Minister in the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises. The number gets the special attention in P. Sainath’s scathing op-ed in the Hindu today:

(Read the full P. Sainath’s Op-ed) Air India might not be doing as well we’d like it to. But the braveheart who flew it fearlessly into dense clouds of debt is doing okay. Praful Patel (who no longer holds the aviation portfolio) added, on average, over half a million rupees every day to his assets in 28 months between May 2009 and August 2011.

Imagine that – half a million rupees a day in 28 months! Meanwhile India’s Planning Commission just had the unbelievably audacious balls to declare that rural Indians making 26 rupees per day, and city dwellers making 32 rupees a day would be officially considered not poor.

“The Planning Commission suggests that spending Rs 5.5 on cereals per day is good enough to keep people healthy. Similarly, a daily spend of Rs 1.02 on pulses, Rs 2.33 on milk and Rs 1.55 on edible oil should be enough to provide adequate nutrition and keep people above the poverty line without the need of subsidized rations from the government. It further suggests that just Rs 1.95 on vegetables a day would be adequate. A bit more, and one might end up outside the social security net.”

The elected leaders get richer by the day. And their solution to end India’s poverty – just change the criteria of what defines poverty.