Another year gone, and arrival of another new year 2026. Years come and go leaving good and bad impressions. It varies from individual to individual. How was the old year for you and what the new year will bring? Everyone hopes for the best!
Come December, people all
over the world wait anxiously for the arrival of the new year. As we approach
the stroke of midnight, it’s fascinating to realize that "New Year’s"
is one of the few truly global traditions, yet it is celebrated with a wild
variety of local quirks. All over the world, people gather at iconic structures
and hotspots. The New Year is welcomed with colourful lights, crackers, clapping,
song, music, dance and drinks.
Here are a few things that
make the turn of the calendar so interesting:
1. The "First
Footing" Superstition
In Scotland, the tradition
of First Footing dictates that the first person to cross your threshold after
midnight determines your luck for the year. Ideally, you want a tall,
dark-haired male carrying gifts like coal, shortbread, or whisky. If a fair-haired
person arrives first, it was traditionally considered bad luck—a superstition
dating back to the Viking invasions!
2. Time Travel is (Sort of)
Possible
Because of how time zones
work, you can celebrate the New Year twice. If you take a flight from Auckland,
New Zealand, to Honolulu, Hawaii, immediately after the countdown, you’ll
arrive back in the previous day. You effectively "gain" 23 hours and
can ring in the New Year all over again.
3. The World’s Most Popular
Resolution
While we often think people
want to "lose weight," the most common resolution globally has
shifted toward "living life to the fullest" and "saving more
money." Interestingly, research shows that about 80% of resolutions fail
by the second week of February, leading many to call the second Friday in
January "Quitter’s Day."
4. Old Man bon fire
In many parts of India, big funny dummies of old man in full dress, representing the old year is made with hay, clothes and crackers. At the stroke of midnight, the dummies are lit and as it burns people, especially children sing and dance to music with lot of merriment and laughter welcoming the new year. Sometimes sweets and goodies are distributed.
4. Eating for Luck
Different cultures eat
specific foods to "code" their luck for the coming months:
Spain: Eating 12 grapes at
midnight (one for every chime of the clock) to ensure 12 months of happiness.
Italy: Eating lentils, which
represent small coins, to bring wealth.
Southern US: Eating
Black-eyed peas and collard greens (representing coins and green bills).
5. Why January 1st?
We owe our current New Year
to Julius Caesar. In 46 BCE, he dumped the lunar calendar for a solar one. He
chose January because it’s named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and
transitions. Janus is depicted with two faces—one looking back at the past and
one looking forward to the future.
Are resolutions made to be broken? Since,
most people give up on resolutions because they are too vague or too
restrictive, the secret is to pick goals that are
"identity-based"—focusing on who you want to become rather than just
what you want to do.
Here are a few unique ways to approach
resolutions for 2026:
1. The "Rule of Three" (Balanced
Growth)
Instead of one giant goal, pick three
small ones that cover different areas of your life:
One for the Body: (e.g., "Walk 15
minutes after dinner" instead of "Run a marathon.")
One for the Mind: (e.g., "Read 5
pages of a book before bed.")
One for the Soul: (e.g., "Text one
friend a week just to say hello.")
2. The "Anti-Resolution"
(Subtracting)
Sometimes the best way to improve is to
stop doing something that drains you.
The No-Phone Zone: No screens for the
first 30 minutes of the morning.
The Unsubscribe Cleanse: Spend one hour
unsubscribing from every marketing email you don't actually read.
The "No" Goal: Resolve to say
"no" to one social obligation a month that you don't actually enjoy.
3. The "Bucket List" Style
If you hate the pressure of
self-improvement, make it about adventure instead:
The Local Tourist: Visit one museum or
park in your city that you’ve never been to.
The Skill-Syllabus: Spend 10 minutes a day
learning a "useless" but fun skill (like juggling, card tricks, or
basic bird-watching).
The Chef Challenge: Cook one recipe from a
different country every month.
4. The "Word of the Year"
If specific goals feel like chores, pick a
single theme word to guide your decisions. For example:
"Consistency": Focus on showing
up, even if you don't do a perfect job.
"Curiosity": Say "yes"
to learning new things and asking more questions.
"Space": Focus on decluttering
your home, your schedule, and your mind.
Tips for Success
The 2-Minute Rule: If a new habit takes
less than two minutes (like putting on your gym shoes or washing one dish), do
it immediately. This builds the "muscle memory" of starting. This helps in making the new year resolution a habit.
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you feel that Aneela Nike Post is making a difference to your life, do take a
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your valuable feedback.
The blog is authored by Aneela Nike Post
and appears to be an active platform that blends personal experience with
globally-relevant topics.
Core Identity & Focus
Tagline/Theme: "India * World *
Communication"
This suggests the blog aims to cover
subjects with specific relevance to India while maintaining a global
perspective on communication and world affairs.
Activity Level: Active, with posts dated
recently in late 2025 (October and November).
Key Content Examples
The posts are diverse, indicating a wide
range of interests appealing to different audiences.
Content Focus: The recent posts seem to
cover diverse topics, including personal anecdotes (like a cricketing journey
being cut short), travel/logistics (like the rush at Mumbai Airport's tarmac),
and social media/tech trends (like trending YouTube video ideas for 2025).
October 19, 2025: "Trending YouTube
Video Ideas for Beginners (2025)"
Branding/Affiliation: The snippets
frequently mention brands like Croma, Myntra, and Nike in the metadata, which
might indicate sponsored content or affiliate links.
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You have heard of Budi
Kunderan, Farokh Engineer, Syed Kirmani, Kiran More, MS Dhoni, Risabh Pant,
Dinesh Kartik and others. But have you heard of Janardan Navle? He was India's
first wicket keeper.
The man who faced the first
delivery for India in their first-ever Test innings in 1932, Janardan Gyanoba
Navle, was India's first Test wicket-keeper as well. Rated highly for his
lightning fast glovework, Navle made his first-class debut for Hindus at the
age of 16.
He was the regular
wicket-keeper for the Hindus in the Bombay Quadrangular and Pentangular
tournaments and kept wickets for them for 16 consecutive years. He also
represented Indians against Arthur Gilligan's MCC in 1926/27, and against Jack
Ryder's Australians in 1934/35.
During India's tour of
England in 1932, he was involved in 41 dismissals. Out of those 41 wickets,
only one came in the one-off Test at Lord's when England skipper Douglas
Jardine was caught by him on 79.
The 1932 Indian Test Cricket
team that toured England. Janardan Navle part of the team captained by Maharaja
of Porbandar.
Navle faced the historic
first delivery of India's first Test innings in 1932. He opened in both innings
at Lord's in 1932 and also kept wickets. A small man, Wisden called him "a
first-rate wicket-keeper, very quick in all that he did". He played for
Indians against Arthur Gilligan's MCC team in 1926–27 and Jack Ryder's
Australians nine years later. For many years he kept wickets for Hindus in the
Bombay Quadrangular and Pentangular tournaments. He made his debut for Hindus
at the age of 16.
Navle hailed from a
Maharashtrian family. He did his schooling from Bhave School in Pune,
Maharashtra. In his later life he worked as a security guard in a sugar mill
and lived in a two-room flat. He died in Pune on 7 September 1979.
If
you feel that Aneela Nike Post is making a difference to your life, do take a
minute to consider a comment or contribution. We would also value your
suggestions as how to make ourselves more relevant to you. Please write to akn929@yahoo.com to give
your valuable feedback.
The Economic & Moral
Case for Abolishing Income Tax
The income tax is often accepted as an inevitability of modern life, but for much of history, major economies functioned without it. Arguments for its abolition generally fall into three categories: Moral, Economic, and Practical.......
From time to time many
financial experts and economists have recommended doing away with income tax.
Is income tax legal? Is income tax, which forms around 12 percent of government
revenue, worth collecting with government expenses, such as a huge income tax
department staff, salaries, pensions, office premises all over the country, and
other expenses involved in enforcing collection of income tax?
India’s net direct tax
collection (including income tax) reached around Rs19.58 lakh crore (approx.
USD 235 billion) for the financial year 2023-24, a 17.7% increase over the
previous year. For the fiscal year 2023-24, personal income tax collection in
India accounted for approximately 30.2% of the total tax revenue. These are
figures put out by the government.
If you look at countries
around the world with no income, they are flourishing economies with good
growth and revenue collection. In India you already have GST, collection
through property registration, levies, and other taxes as revenue. But the
problem here is twenty-five percent of the collection goes in payment of
interest for the loans taken by the government; another twenty-five percent
goes in paying salaries and pensions to a large number of government employees.
The balance of fifty goes for development, and some goes into corruption and
other unaccounted practices.
The experts advocating
abolishing income tax say it will boost India's economy with taxes and revenue
going up. More money will be spent on various things like buying stuff,
property, travelling, etc. And if the government is still reluctant to do away
with income tax, they can levy taxes on income over one crore. Doesn’t this
sound sensible?
The Case for Abolishing
Income Tax
The income tax is often
accepted as an inevitability of modern life, but for much of history, major
economies functioned without it. Arguments for its abolition generally fall
into three categories: Moral, Economic, and Practical.
The Moral Argument:
Liberty and Property Rights
The most philosophical
objection to income tax is rooted in the concepts of self-ownership and
property rights.
Taxation as Coercion:
Opponents argue that if you own your labor, you should own the fruits of that
labor. When the government takes a percentage of your income by force (under
threat of imprisonment), it is effectively claiming partial ownership over your
time and effort. If a tax rate is 30%, you are essentially working nearly four
months of the year solely for the state, which some argue is a form of
"partial involuntary servitude."
Privacy Violations: To
enforce income tax, the government requires invasive access to the private
financial lives of its citizens. The collection agency must know where you
work, how much you earn, how you invest, and where you spend. This level of
surveillance is often seen as a violation of the right to privacy and the right
to be secure in one's papers and effects.
The Power to Destroy: As
Supreme Court Justice John Marshall famously noted, "The power to tax
involves the power to destroy." Income tax gives the government a
mechanism to target specific industries, classes of people, or political
enemies, thereby shifting the balance of power heavily toward the state.
Economists who oppose income
tax argue that it punishes the very activities that drive prosperity: work,
savings, and investment.
Punishing Productivity:
Income tax effectively places a penalty on work. The harder you work and the
more value you create, the more you are penalized. Progressive tax rates (where
rates rise with income) are particularly criticized for disincentivizing success
and upward mobility.
Discouraging Savings and
Investment: Income tax often involves "double taxation"—money is
taxed when earned, and then taxed again when it generates interest or capital
gains. This discourages saving and investing, which are capital accumulations
necessary for funding new businesses, research, and infrastructure.
Distorted Decision Making:
In an income tax regime, individuals and businesses often make financial
decisions based on tax implications rather than economic merit. Capital flows
into tax shelters or tax-favored industries rather than where it would be most
productive, leading to a misallocation of resources.
Hidden Costs to Workers:
Corporate income taxes are often passed down. While intended to tax
"profits," the cost is frequently absorbed by workers in the form of
lower wages and by consumers in the form of higher prices.
The Practical Argument: Complexity and
Waste
Even those who do not object to taxation
on principle often argue that income tax is the most inefficient way to collect
revenue.
Compliance Costs (Deadweight Loss): The
cost of complying with the tax code is astronomical. People around the world
alone spend billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars annually just
filing returns, hiring accountants, and navigating regulations. This is
deadweight loss—time and money that produces nothing of value and could have
been used for productive economic activity.
Lobbying and Cronyism: The complexity of
the tax code allows politicians to carve out special loopholes, credits, and
deductions for well-connected special interests. This breeds corruption and
crony capitalism, where success depends on lobbying power rather than market
value.
The "Underground" Economy: High
income taxes incentivize tax evasion and the growth of black markets. By moving
activity "off the books," the government loses revenue, and legal
protections for workers in those sectors vanish.
It is worth noting that the
United States had no permanent income tax for the first 137 years of its
existence (1776–1913), a period that saw the greatest explosion of economic
growth and standard of living in human history. The federal government was funded
primarily through:
Tariffs: Taxes on imported
goods.
Excise Taxes: Taxes on
specific domestic goods (like whiskey or tobacco).
Land Sales: Revenue from the
sale of public lands.
Proposed Alternatives
If income tax were abolished, how would
the government be funded? Several alternatives are frequently proposed:
A. The FairTax (National Consumption Tax)
This proposal would replace all federal
income taxes (including corporate, capital gains, and payroll taxes) with a
single national retail sales tax.
Pros: It taxes consumption (taking
resources out of the economy) rather than production (putting resources in). It
eliminates the need for filing annual returns and dissolves the IRS.
Prebate: To address concerns about the
poor, the plan includes a monthly "prebate" check to every household
effectively covering the tax on basic necessities up to the poverty line.
B. The Land Value Tax (LVT)
Proposed by economists like Henry George,
this taxes the unimproved value of land.
Pros: It is impossible to evade (you
cannot hide land overseas). It encourages efficient land use and discourages
speculative land hoarding. It does not penalize production or improvements to
the land (like buildings).
C. The Flat Tax
While still an income tax, this model
simplifies the code to a single rate with no deductions (e.g., everyone pays
15% of income above a certain threshold).
Pros: It eliminates the complexity,
loopholes, and high compliance costs of the current system, though it retains
the invasive nature of income reporting.
Conclusion
The argument for abolishing income tax is
not just about keeping more money; it is about fundamentally realigning the
relationship between the citizen and the state. Proponents envision a society
where privacy is restored, productivity is rewarded, and the massive machinery
of tax compliance is dismantled, unleashing a new era of economic innovation
and personal liberty.
The file above outlines the major arguments
against income tax, ranging from moral concerns about property rights to
economic concerns about efficiency. It also details the most common
alternatives proposed by advocates of abolition.
While travelling over the
years, we have been staying in top-grade hotels or three-star hotels. And it
was always in my mind to experience four-star and five-star hotel stays,
amenities, and cuisine. Many a time, I would go to a four- or five-star hotel
either to attend a conference or seminar, attend a function, or meet a friend
either from India or abroad.
After many decades, we
planned to experience a four- and a five-star hotel. And got an opportunity
this May. On our way back from Singapore, we landed in Delhi to attend a family
function. We decided to stay in a five-star hotel for a change. We had
booked the Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, Delhi. We enjoyed our stay and the
five-star experience. It was different and quite pleasant.
Since we were in Delhi, we
decided to visit Vrindavan and Mathura to see the temples and other
attractions. We booked a tourist car for our round trip. On our return journey,
we visited Agra. Here the Taj Mahal was on top of our list, as I had last seen it
in the early seventies, and my spouse was very keen to see it. Also visited
some other tourist attractions in Agra. Since we had a day to spare, we planned
to visit all the tourist hotspots in Delhi. We covered all the major tourist
attractions and had a sumptuous Maharni Thali at Gulati’s. By then it was late
evening. And finally returned to our five-star hotel, and the next morning we
had to check out.
Next, we had to attend a
family function at Gurgaon, which was the main purpose of our visit to the
north India. The next morning, we checked out of the Leela Ambience Convention
Hotel, Delhi, and left for Gurgaon. Though early in the morning, we faced
a few tariff jams on the way and finally reached Gurgaon.
Here we stayed close to our
relative’s house in a four-star hotel, Fortune Select Global ITC, Gurgaon. The
room was booked by them. So, we got an opportunity to enjoy the four-star
experience. Explored the refined comfort of a 4-star hotel stay. With features,
value, and how 4-star hotels balance luxury with affordability for modern
travelers.
Fortune Select Global ITC, Gurgaon
Our stay at Leela Ambience
Convention Hotel, Delhi, and Fortune Select Global ITC, Gurgaon, fulfilled our
dream to stay in four- and five-star hotels. It was a pleasant and enjoyable
experience. I would recommend you to experience it at least once. Hospitality
and service of another level. Four-star hotels provide quality, comfort,
and essential amenities. They emphasize convenience and service. Five-star
hotels offer exceptional luxury, personalized service, and more amenities. The
main difference is in service level and overall guest experience, with
five-star hotels meeting higher hospitality standards than four-star
hotels. In contrast, a 5-star hotel promises an exceptional experience. It
includes luxurious accommodations with finer furnishings and high-end
amenities. Guests enjoy personalized services such as concierge support, spa
treatments, and gourmet dining options. The attention to detail in 5-star
hotels extends to room service, often available 24/7, and a higher
staff-to-guest ratio ensures individualized attention.
The primary distinction lies
in the level of service and the quality of amenities offered. While 4-star
hotels provide comfort and convenience, 5-star hotels focus on providing an
indulgent and memorable stay. Understanding these differences helps travelers
choose the right type of accommodation for their needs. Each hotel class caters
to specific preferences and budgets.
If
you feel that Aneela Nike Post is making a difference to your life, do take a
minute to consider a comment or contribution. We would also value your
suggestions as how to make ourselves more relevant to you. Please write to akn929@yahoo.com to give
your valuable feedback.
