Democracy at Work

Last evening, 27th Dec, while surfing the channels i chanced upon Lok Sabha TV. Time 9.45 pm.
The honourable House was in the process of passing the Lokpal Bill. Mr Pranab Mukherjee was at his parliamentary best. Interspersed with rhetoric, he chided the opposition for disrupting the functioning of the Parliament and took delight in rebuking Mr Yashwant Sinha on his "PM's farewell speech" remark.
Dr Manmohan Singh looked positively out of place and wishing that he were not there. His body language was closed as if he had been asked by the 'High Command' to sit tight and stay quiet.
Anoushka, my thirteen year old, had been pestering me to change the channel but got a lecture on the landmark occasion she was witnessing!
Soon the voting started on the various clauses and amendments.
It was quite a charade. The Honourable Speaker trying to maintain order in the House. The members seemed to be enjoying every bit of it, shouting 'AYE' or 'NO' as the proposals were brought up by the Speaker. Mrs Meira Kumar reminded me of a Cheshire cat, sans its whiskers, well coiffeured, smiling yet trying to look stern and passing/rejecting the proposals based on the noise made by the 'ayes' and the 'noes'.
She went on and on "...I think the 'ayes' have it, the 'ayes' have it. ....", or "... I think the 'noes' have it, the 'noes' have it...."
Anoushka was enjoying herself mimicking her. I looked at the clock. It was nearly eleven pm. I told Anoushka to go off to sleep.
"Papa, this is better that any serial on TV. It is so much more entertaining. Please let me watch for some more time."
Not willing to see the mockery of parliamentary proceedings and the proceedings being mocked at by genx, i switched off the TV.

Accepting Change!!

Driving to work today accompanied by my younger daughter, switched on the FM. Kolaveri di was playing. I reminded Anoushka that just about six months back, 'DK Bose' was a hot favourite and people seem to have forgotten about it now. The following conversation follows.
"Papa, that song is really old. Better songs have come."
"But I still hum the songs that i did when i was your age or younger."
"You did not have much choice those days."
"But i do have them now. So why do i still sing those songs?"
"Its so boring, sticking to the same songs. You need to change."
While I know that change is the only constant, i need to recalibrate my existing yardstick for expecting and accepting change!!

Shortage of Coal- Conspiracy Theories

Shortage of Coal: Conspiracy Theories
The rather candid acceptance sometime in Oct,before Diwali, by Mr SP Jaiswal, the Union Coal Minister regarding corruption, inefficiencies and low productivity in Coal India Ltd raises hopes that the government is at last willing to do a little introspection.

I was wondering whether the statement was just a canard or is the minister serious about 'Diwali cleaning' ?
Just then a little bird perched itself on the railing of my balcony. As I sipped my cup of tea, it told me that there were various conspiracies by different agencies to hurt the thermal power industry and further their own vested interests. It went on to tell me that following forces were responsible for the state of thermal power generation.
a. Foreign companies' stake in developing India's nuclear power plants. Some foreign companies were looking forward to getting multi-billion dollar contracts for setting up nuclear power plants in India. These plans have received a setback due to the recent protests against setting up of nuclear power plants in various parts of the country.
Considering the investments and returns at stake, I would not put it beyond these companies to try and disrupt the coal supplies and run the thermal power plants dry. This would create a climate of power shortage, influencing public opinion in favour of nuclear-based plants. The key protestors would be marginalised and the government would be forced to actively consider expediting nuclear power plant projects. The foreign companies could then step in as 'saviours' to build our plants and charge a premium towards expediting the projects. I would also not be surprised if emissions from thermal plants were brought under hard scrutiny during the next environmental conference.
b. China's long-term approach and their belief in Sun Tzu's dictum "… those skilled in war subdue the enemy's army without battle .... They conquer by strategy". The Chinese strategy to undermine India's growth story is to hit at the driver for growth - power generation. The Chinese could be covertly creating conditions that is impeding coal production in our country, leading to a crisis situation. The Indian companies have been quite agile in acquiring coal mines overseas. However, I see a time coming when China, with its trade-surplus muscle will overtly attempt to bully the host countries and hinder deals with Indian corporates. Its attempted muscle flexing in the India-Vietnam oil exploration in the South China Sea is a case in point.
c. Government doing an Air India to Coal India Ltd. The manner in which private airlines grew in size at the cost of Air India/Indian Airlines as per CAG reports, the government is trying to push private players in coal mining by going slow on improving efficiencies in CIL. Further, is the environment ministry taking urgent steps for checking illegal mining as well as preparing alternatives and strict guidelines for 'rehabilitation' after mining in 'no-go' areas.
The above theories are a throwback to the good 'old' days when every setback had a 'foreign' hand. I thanked the little bird profusely for enlightening me. Perhaps, there IS a 'foreign' hand.

FDI in Retail

The resistance by the opposition parties in letting the government introduce the bill permitting FDI in retail is ill-conceived and short-sighted.
The government should highlight the benefits that have already accrued due to growth of modern retail. The number of jobs that have been created by the Big Bazaars and the Hypercities is phenomenal.
We are witnessing the change in the way people shop in places like Bhopal, Nasik, Patna or even Bhubaneshwar. What is heartening is that young people from surrounding smaller towns and villages are getting an opportunity to be gainfully employed in these outlets. Based on their individual skills, they are engaged in sales, supply chain, housekeeping or security services. The companies also make efforts to train them to enhance their skill sets.

However, the Indian players have apparently achieved their scale and there is a need to infuse fresh capital and expertise to take retailing to the next level. Recent statements made by senior functionaries of retail chains point towards this.
The move by the government is a long over-due one. The diminished and fragmented land holdings have made farming highly unprofitable for the marginal farmers. The FDI will enable consolidation by the companies and support being provided to the marginal farmers in order to secure their (retailer's) source of supplies. Infact this is already happening in a number of states.
Newer technologies and methods will be available for increasing farm productivity. Fresh investment will radically improve the infrastructure and the cold chain thereby reducing wastages in the journey of edibles from farm to fork (or finger) . The gap between the price that the consumer pays and what the farmer receives will drastically come down.The farmers and the consumers both stand to benefit immensely due to improved efficiencies. A number of jobs shall also be created for operating this chain.

It is only the middlemen and the APMC who stand to lose.

Having said that, the resistance by the main opposition party is understandable, given that their main constituents are the traders and middlemen. However, I am sure given the scales, the middlemen also will find gainful employment in the logistics chain, be it in procurement or transportation.

The political parties need to rise above parochial political gains, see the larger picture and not misguide their constituents. The government needs to be firm. Otherwise it will be another wasted opportunity.

Remembering Friends!!

Deepawali is that time of the year when one opens up the closed drawers and boxes to check what is to be retained and what to give away. It is also an opportunity for me to see the old photograph albums and relive those good days.


And so it happened that going through my NDA album, I chanced upon a photograph which has seen 28 Deepawalis pass. My kid did not recognise me in the snap.


The snap has Laxmi Narayana Sahu, Ashok Karadi and self in the foreground and some other cadets in the background. The occasion is Deepawali celebration in our Squadron.


Sahu was a good boxer and a very good cross-country runner. I remember that he used to help me in practising for the physical training tests, at which I was not good. Barely used to clear the mandatory tests. Sahu always encouraged me whenever I showed signs of giving up. He had got commissioned into the Madras Regiment. He died under unfortunate circumstances.
Ashok Karadi was a great athlete and he used to sketch as well. In fact I still have a sketch of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore he made for me. Karadi joined the Navy and went on to become a navigator in Naval aviation. Karadi was in an IL38 which was involved in an accident with another aircraft during a flypast commemorating 25 years of their unit. He did not survive.

Adventures in the Culinary Domain

Cooking is great fun. More so if you are the 'experimenting' type. One late afternoon, my wife had taken the kids out to the market. The hot weather suddenly gave way to cool winds and the rain came lashing. The view from our balcony was beautiful. Sheets of rain being blown away by the wind. The poplar trees, in front of our house, swinging wildly enjoying themselves.
Spoke to the kids. They were likely to get delayed.
Ah, what an opportunity to impress them, again, with my sense of culinary adventure. Checked the refrigerator. Chicken breast pieces available. Other ingredients like onion,tomato and ginger-garlic not available. Scanned the cupboard for possible ingredients. Found mango and chilli pickle. Vodka available in the bar. The dish started cooking in my mind. Drunk Achari Chicken.
Ingredients
4 chicken breast pieces
4 tbsp mango and chilli pickle
Ginger paste
2 lemon
120ml vodka
1tbsp oil.
Zeera, rye, pepper etc
Oregano and red pepper
Salt to taste
Process
Mash the mango and chilli pickle together in a dish ensuring that the hard mango core is separated. Mix with 3 tbsp of ginger paste. This is the marinade.
Wash chicken pieces properly and rub the marinade on to both surfaces. Put the pieces in a hollow dish. Add vodka. Squeeze the lemon pieces and add salt to taste.
Leave aside for 90 minutes.
While the chicken is being marinated, pour yourself a large vodka in a glass. Add a dash of lemon, salt, a slice of green chilli, black pepper flakes. Pour chilled soda and 4 cubes of ice. Top it up with whatever is a available, a sprig of coriander or mint. Drink it leisurely while reading a book.

Repeat the process outlined in the above paragraph twicw, oops.. you can go slow and do it just once also. Wait for the rain to subside.
The chicken is marinated by now and ready to be cooked.
Heat oil in a pan. Add jeera and rye. Fry till red. Add chicken pieces. Let it simmer.

The kids call up. It has stopped raining. They are on their way back. Ask them to get onion.
Keep adding water to ensure that the masala does not stick to the bottom. Turn the pieces at regular intervals to ensure consistent cooking. Let the chicken cook in its own juice. Keep sipping vodka regularly to ensure that your drool does not fall into the dish while stirring.
The bell rings. Kids are back. Pour a large drink before opening the door. You have to make it appear that you have just made a drink. Do that, but the wife has a way of knowing the count.
The aroma wafts out from the kitchen. The elder kids sniffs and says,"Dad you are cooking achari chicken." I wonder how did she know. What the hell!! She should know. She is doing hotel management and watches all the TV programmes on travel & cooking.
The chicken is nearly cooked. Add oregano and red chilli flakes. Let it simmer for another fifteen minutes.
Since onion is now available, fry some diced onion.Serve the chicken on a bed of fried diced onion. Garnish with the leftover coriander/mint leaves. Serve with toasted bread.
Ask your wife to call up your sister to talk about this dish. Call up your M-i-L to tell her how caring you are.
Ensure that the kids also convey your culinary accomplishment to whoever cares to listen...

Recently I read a news report that Godrej&Boyce have stopped production of the manual typewriters. Following this report were columns and more columns with elegies for this great device which witnessed great thoughts being transferred to paper for the consumption of the masses. The transfer was accompanied by loud clicks, clatter, grrs, whhrrs and what have you, depending on the vintage and the maintenance of the machine. Scribes went ecstatic over these sounds too. To some of them it was rhapsodical. For others, a noisy machine which disturbed one's afternoon siesta. To many in government offices it was a device which could not let you take a nap at your table. Others were lulled to sleep if the typist was an accomplished one. Guess why? Because his typing was rhythmic.
As a youngster growing up in Delhi and Calcutta of the seventies, I used to walk by a number of shorthand and typing institutes on my way to school. There were young hopefuls clutching their shorthand notebooks walking into the tin-shed with a sole pedestal fan whirring away, to pick up a skill which would give them access to some secure secretarial or clerical job. The 'awakening' of the middle class was yet to happen.
By the eighties, the young hopefuls of seventies had turned into seasoned secretaries and clerks.
Then came the 286 with DOS and Wordstar became the latest buzzword in all government offices. Computers were being purchased by truckloads. To train the huge army of clerks was a task in itself. Automation committees were formed in almost all organisations. Computer training became the favourite horse. Everybody wanted to ride it.
Technology was upgraded before you could even master the earlier version. Change was imminent. There were some who saw the inevitabilty of computers replacing typewriters and they gladly embraced the new machine. They became the cynosure of all officials. They would strut about the office like prize-cocks. There were others who believed in the invincibility of the typewriter and continued to hack away at it. There were also days of irregular electric supply and the UPS would soon be beeping in protest. The typewriters devotees rejoiced at such moments. The faith of the unfaithful in the Remingtons, Godrejs, Facits and Underwoods would be restored.
Come the early nineties, the typing institutes started yielding space to the computer training institutes on the streets. A number of small entrepreneurs, sold off what they could to invest in a computer and training and thereafter start their own coaching centre. The computers moved on from 286 to 386 to 486. Typewriters were still popular and continued to be produced. The complex commands to be remembered for Wordstar deterred many people from learning the computer.
The launch of Windows95 changed everything. It was so user friendly and the help menu motivated a large number of people like myself to learn how to use a computer. The power situation improved, be it by regular supply or back-up, the reliance on computers increased. The enhancement in allocation of IT funds saw computers being purchased instead of typewriters. The writing was on the wall in bold types. The typewriters were typing out purchase orders for computers.
To start with, all computers were kept in a computer room which was airconditioned. If you had to work, you had to go to the computer room.Or the boss's office. The computer room was like a holy shrine. You had to take off your shoes before entering. Talk in hushed tones to the operator. Cajole him to type your document or make your presentation.
As more ruggedised machines came into the market, the desktops started replacing the typewriters. The typing ribbon started going off the shelves and the dot matrix printer ribbons taking the vacant space. I remember the excitement when the first inkjet printer was bought in our unit. We all gathered in the CO's office and saw the logo of our unit printed on a paper, in colour, coming out noiselessly from the recesses of the inkjet printer.
The typewriter was forgotten.

A Lesson in Sharing

The Navratras are a time for worship, abstaining from the good things of life ( read non-veg and booze). Two days, Ashtmi and Navmi also witness young girls carrying themselves from one household to another decked up in their finest. They are the 'kanchaks', representing the Goddess. They are worshipped by the lady of the house and thereafter served delicious food and sweets and sent off with Rs11 as a parting gift.
During one such Navratra, I happened to be at my parent's place. My mother had called some of these little girls. 5-10 year olds. As it turned out, there being no kids of that age group within the colony, the caretaker mobilised the children of housemaids and from a nearby 'basti'.

The girls came. Shy. Tentative. The younger ones holding the hands of their elder sisters. A few of them got their little brothers too.
After the customary 'puja', my mother made them sit down to eat.She served them the traditional fare. Puri, chana, aloo sabzi and kheer and laddoo in the paper plates. What happened next really amazed me.
The girls had a bite and then folded their plates with the food inside. My mother asked," Khana achcha nahin laga?". "Nahin Aunty, yeh ham ghar ja kar sabke saath khayenge", pat came the reply from the eldest. She was all of about nine years. We were amazed at this display of concern and the ethos of sharing imbibed by these kids.
And this was not all.
One girl, about four years old piped up. "Aunty, muzhe ek aur laddoo dijiye. Meri friend ko koi nahin bulata, uske liye le jaoongi". My mother asked, " Kya naam hai aapki friend ka?". "Nasreen", came the reply.
We were deeply touched. My mother made them sit down and eat and then packed all the food that had been prepared to be taken by them to their homes. And the four year old got all the laddoos which she carefully held in her little hands.
I could not help wonder how many of us have been able to instill this feeling of sharing amongst our kids?

Save Nationalism

An article by Lewis M Simons, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine on the ascendancy of Islamic fundamentalism is extremely alarming, to say the least.
Simons, who has co-authored a book-“ The Next Front: South-East Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam” elaborates his observations made during his recent travel to the South East Asian region. He has observed that 40 years ago, the Muslims of SE Asia were renowned for their moderation. Today, there is a subtle shift towards radicalism. Fundamentalists, slowly but surely, are getting to impose a greater role for Sharia, or religious law, not just in family life but in the affairs of the nation.
Simons goes on to point out that he found the drift throughout the region’s five major Islamic cultures; Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, southern Thailand and Singapore .
With Pakistan, to our west in a state of deep turmoil, and these conditions to our east, India is under a real threat of being caught in pincer by radical Islamism. How are we as a nation preparing ourselves to meet this clear and imminent danger. While the government of the day may evolve policies, it is our duty as citizens of the country to observe certain basic tenets to ensure that nationalism is not subverted by any form of fundamentalism.
Let us all safeguard indiscrimination by implementing it in our respective spheres of influence. Let us not fall prey to the parochialism being propagated by political bigots.
We have to ensure that the voice of moderation is not allowed to be suppressed and the fundamentalist voice is not given the amplification it seeks.
Let us all vow to keep our religious beliefs confined to our personal realms. And this would hold true for members of all religious denominations. Let us acknowledge and practice the primacy of nationalism in letter and spirit.
Let us also see through the diabolocal shenanigans of the political parties which encourage casteism by way pseudo-secularism and expose them for what they are.

Understanding the client's needs

I was watching a movie on Julius Reuter, the news agency pioneer. He was the first one to use telegraph for transmitting news. He established the Reuters News service and approached the leading newspapers of the day in London to buy the news from him. A couple of the papers agreed to carry his news when he offered it free for a month on a trial basis. The Times scoffed at the idea. They said that it difficult to put the credibility of the newspaper into someone else's hands.
It so happened that towards the end of the Crimean War, the King of France was to make the announcement of a cease-fire. Reuter met the King and conviced him to give a copy of his speech in advance. He got it translated from French to English and while the speech was being delivered by the King, Reuter was having it transmitted over the wires to London. Moment the King finished delivering his speech, Reuter was handing over the copy to all his subscribers in London.His news agency was the first one to break the news of a ceasefire.
Now what Reuter did is a lesson in building relationships for all businesses. He gave a copy of the speech to The Times,whose editor had insulted him, also. He dismissed this action of his saying that it would have made a great paper like The Times look small if they did not carry the news. The concern for The Times' reputation greatly endeared him to the Editor and they went on to become great friends.
Lesson for all businesses is that we have to understand not only the tangible but the intangible needs too of our clients.