Violence in Nashik, 26 MNS workers detained

NEW DELHI: Barely hours after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) announced that its chief Raj Thackeray, facing possible arrest, would not seek anticipatory bail, the party workers unleashed violence on the streets in Nashik

Reports suggest that MNS workers vandalised shops owned by north Indians in Nashik. As many as 26 party workers were reportedly detained by the Nashik Police.

Despite heavy police presence, unrest was seen in several parts of the region.

Earlier, in the wake of cases against Raj Thackeray for "promoting" enmity between groups, the Mumbai Police beefed up security at his residence and all entrances were barricaded ahead of his possible arrest.

Media personnel trying to reach Thackeray's residence were told to wait several meters away.

On Monday, Joint Commissioner of Police (law and order), K L Prasad had said that arrests are mandatory in cases registered against MNS chief and SP leader Abu Asim Azmi.

They were charged with the offences which were cognisable and non-bailable, Prasad had said.

Police had filed a case against Thackeray for "promoting" enmity between groups. Thackeray had been booked for provoking with an intention to cause riot and promoting enmity between groups.

Thackeray and Azmi were booked ( see video ) under sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153 A (promoting enmity between groups on the basis of place of birth, residence, etc) and 153 B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration).

Azmi had allegedly made provocative speeches at the Samajwadi party rally held at Shivaji Park on February 3.

The case against Raj was registered at Vikhroli police station and against Azmi at Shivaji Park police station.

Sanjay Gadhi, the chief coordinator of MNS, had sounded a warning, "The situation in the city and the state will worsen if Raj is arrested, and the state government will be responsible."

On Monday evening, a few MNS activists started closing down shops in Kannamwar Nagar and Tagore Nagar. Seven activists were detained by the police.

Don't go shopping when sad

Feeling glum and introspective, and think a little shopping might be the ideal therapy?

Don't do it. According to a study released on Friday at the annual meeting of the Society for Social and Personality Psychology, inward-looking people who are down in the dumps tend to spend more money on the same item than their neutral-emotion counterparts.

Earlier studies have drawn a link between mood and spending habits, but this one highlighted the key role played by how self-focussed a person is.

"It is the combination of sadness and self-focus that drives the effect, and it turns out that sadness leads to an increase in self-focus," said Cynthia Cryder, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the co-authors of the study.

"What we think is going on is that sad and self-focussed people are feeling pretty bad about themselves and have a decreased valuation of themselves. They want to enhance this valuation, and one way to do this is by acquiring material goods," she said.

Placing a higher value on those goods could be an attempt by the sad, self-focussed person to boost their self-esteem by transferring the value of the item to themselves.

The big problem is, the purchase is often regretted later. "A huge key to avoiding decision-effects like this is being aware that you're sad in the first place. But that's rather hard to do," Cryder said.

"Participants in studies such as ours usually have no idea that their feelings influence their decisions, so it's impossible to correct," she said.

"Secondly, always re-evaluate major purchases one day or one week after you make them so that you can make sure that whatever you bought is still attractive to you," Cryder said.

"That lowers the probability that you'll have an over-priced mistake due to some fleeting influence that you didn't know about and still don't know about. You just know, 'Wow... why did I pay so much for that?'"

Slowdown: Economy to grow at 8.7%

NEW DELHI: Just when you were getting used to 9% growth, the government's statistics office on Thursday said GDP would rise by 8.7% in the current financial year, compared with 9.6% last year and 9.4% in 2005-06.



While Reserve Bank of India's interest rate hike to keep inflation under check is expected to see the manufacturing sector grow by 9.4% in 2007-08, compared with 12% last year, construction activity is also likely to slow down. But the blame mainly fell on the usual suspect — agriculture — with farm output projected to rise by 2.6% this year, as against 3.8% in 2006-07.

The Central Statistical Organisation's estimates, however, have already been questioned, with finance minister P Chidambaram saying the agriculture ministry, which released crop output estimates on Thursday, "not sharing the assessment that agriculture growth will be only 2.6%".