Andher Nagari Chaupat Raja Approach by Govt and Pseudo Intellectuals

With Diwali season over, Delhi and the surrounding suburbs witnessed a phenomenal increase in the presence of particulate pollutants and has been covered with smog for over three days. The air purifiers at people’s homes showed red indicators implying that the air quality was extremely poor. This, like always is followed by rants all over the social media and with appeals for banning firecrackers. The Delhi government passes the blame on crop burning by farmers and say that they took measures such as implementing ‘odd-even’ scheme. Of course there is a demand by people to ban diesel cars altogether.

What’s however is unexplainable is why aren’t these clowns who rant on articles pretending to be the intelligentsia of the country unable to comprehend the scores of reports prepared by IIT-K and IIT-Delhi and other institutions who, again and again try to point out that vehicular emissions contribute very less to the presence of particulate matter in the atmosphere (well ok, the statistics vary between 10 and 25% depending on the pollutant PM 2.5, PM 10, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide etc). It has been pointed out time and again that the power plants, MSW burning, crop burning and burning of other solid items such as firewood, funeral pyres amongst others are the biggest reasons for inducing SMOG and increasing the levels of pollutants and carcinogens in the atmosphere.

Research shows that a pile of firewood when burnt produces the same amount of carcinogens as three large SUVs produce after running 100 kms a day for an entire year. Yet, the liberals don’t want to talk about the taboo subject. The ‘poor’ apparently burn firewood and anything that they find on the road. Municipal workers simply set fire to mountains of garbage piled up on the roads. Slum dwellers set fire to tyres, rubber, plastic and everything and while away time. Farmers set fire to crops season after season causing irreparable damage to the atmosphere.

The Delhi government nor the governments of the surrounding states have done anything to shut down factories that pollute heavily. Builders continue to openly flout NGT norms and openly dump construction dust wherever there is a vacant land available. Illegal mining mafia gather sand from riverbeds and transport them on tractors. No system of solid waste management has been put in place neither by the Uttar Pradesh nor the Haryana governments. Most of the policemen do not know that it is against the law to burn things in the open. Yet people continue to flout laws and set fire to anything they want. Nothing has been done to sweep or vacuum clean the roads and remove the existing mud and dust that keeps flying from one part of the city to another with no place for the dust to settle. Of course we know that the sweeper recruitments are nothing but scams in which there have been reports of degree holders enrolling themselves as sweepers and getting salaries credited without actually being present to sweep the roads.

Now let’s get to the root cause of vehicular pollution. Two wheelers cause most of the pollution on the roads. Trucks and other ‘jhugaad’ contraptions such as motorised rickshaws, motorised carts and trolleys have nothing to fear on the roads and continue to drive anywhere and everywhere particularly in Uttar Pradesh. Despite the Supreme Court’s ban on entry of trucks that are not destined to Delhi, lakhs of trucks continue to pass via Delhi and move towards Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and onward. Oops, these people apparently form the votebank of the AAP party don’t they? – The truckers, rickshaw drivers and slum dwellers?

Everything said – Andher Nagri, Chaupat Raja. Let’s hang the man who is fattest and fits into the noose and hence – all diesel CARS having government approved pollution under control certificates shall go under the guillotine. And the left-liberals meanwhile cheer like the audiences watching a Roman Gladiator fight. They are ‘rich’ people after all.

Propagating a Devil’s Ivy

Devil’s Ivy or ‘Money Plant’ is one of those crawling species of plants frequently found as decorative plants in households and offices. They grow so fast that I have seen people finding it so hard to control them. One of my friends’ mom started with a sapling a few years ago and now the plants are everywhere in the house. Being a typical plant lover, she doesn’t want to simply trim them off.

They are beautiful plants with variegated heart shaped leaves. You can consider them virtually indestructible. I have been quite a plant bully and have killed plants like the Holy Basil and a few others either due to over watering or I don’t know what. Plants do not easily adapt to transplantation to another pot. Indian nurseries do not have the technical know-how of making ideal potting mixtures or the nitty-gritty of optimal usage of plant hormones and plant food. Most of the saplings in nurseries die as soon as they get transplanted elsewhere. People prefer to buy plants that are already potted or hire experts (maalis) for setting up their indoor gardens.

Now taking all the above into account, the Devil’s Ivy is a magical solution to naive plant lovers. The problem now is that not many plant nurseries keep these. They require a lot of space to manage and additionally they are so easily propagated that no one wants to pay for them. You may have heard from people that all you need to do is to pluck a node off a plant and stick it in soil. I have had terrible luck even with the hardiest of plants. I have even ended up killing a dieffenbacia (Dumb cane) by over watering. Anyway now if a plant bully such as me can grow Devil’s Ivies, you surely can.

First of all, you need to understand a Devil’s Ivy to be able to nurture it well and to make it decorative for your indoor keeping. These are leggy plants that keep crawling further and further and keep rooting as they move away from the mother plant. Owing to their length, rooting at one spot isn’t enough to provide all the leaves with nutrients. You will notice buds at most of the nodes and these are actually baby roots. They get rooted wherever they find moisture. If you cut one of these, with a leaf or two, you can plant the node in soil and it is likely to grow from there. But like I said, you don’t get good potting peat based soil easily. However, the best way I have seen is to keep them in water for a weeks till the roots develop. When you simply transplant them, they take weeks to develop roots and the leaves may not be able to survive till then. I had planted a few such nodes and after two weeks, the leaves began to curl up. Realizing something was wrong, I dug them out and found that none of the ‘buds’ had grown into roots. The plants had been surviving on the nutrients that they had in them. I took it out and placed them in a vase of water with the leaves above water. After a week, I found that the leaves had become healthier and a baby leaf started to unfurl. When I checked the stem, the brown buds had started to grow white healthy roots. This is the ideal way to propagate these plants. Do not immediately transplant them into soil. The roots are too tiny to absorb enough water. Let the roots grow to at least 4-6 inches. If you need a bushy Devil’s Ivy, plant many cuttings like this at a fair distance from one another in a pot. If just one end of the vine is planted, the plant simply gets leggier and barely anything remains in the pot itself.

If you look at the pictures you would understand  it better. The cuttings must be made just below the nodes because the roots develop from the nodes. I had kept a vine in water with the leaves kept above the water. Once a few of the buds developed roots, I could cut them into four  parts ensure each part has at least one node. I then placed them back in the vase of water to allow them fully develop roots. Notice where I have highlighted the white roots with red circles and the red cuts are made at points where it is ideal to cut the plant. I can plant several of these saplings in a pot.

A few tips to note once you have potted the saplings:

Water only once in a week if they are kept indoors.

Ensure your pot has a hole in the bottom for water drainage. Although the plant lives when kept floating in water, they don’t like being sunk in soggy soil. I have killed so many plants by over watering them and causing root rot.

The Pursuit of Reservation

Of late I have come across quite a lot of Facebook pages and blog sites wherein women say they deserve the ‘ladies seat’ and men arguing the archaic tradition must be done away with. Well most of the comments from both sides are so silly that I think “Oh come on, come up with a new argument.” Well, the problem with the Indian way of arguing is that they memorize something told to them or something they learnt from their textbooks having so many flaws in it, and repeat that statement over and over till the opponent gives up. Two Indians debating results with the idiot having more stamina to exhaust the other, winning the debate. It is not a test of intellect. It is more of something like “No, you are the idiot. You have no sense” whose answer is “Oh look who is talking! You are the biggest fool I have seen.”. So effectively the person who manages to say his senseless statement more number of times turns out to be the winner. Whoops! I diverted from the subject. Where was I? Oh yeah on the question of reserved seats for women in public transport, I am against it.

First of all, I am with the men who are called ‘male chauvinists’ when they say that if women are looking for gender equality, then they should work on par with men and not expect a sympathetic approach. It is funny how men who try to fight for gender equality get titled as ‘male chauvinists’ while their female counter parts are called feminists and not female chauvinists. Well again, you know the Indian IQ isn’t great to counter facts with facts. Whatsoever exceptions you may state against the above ‘aam aadmi’ argument, it falls on deaf ears and you get the same statement repeated. Well anyway, let me try doing the real method of argument and give a counter answer to every excuse given by women for being given the ‘ladies seat’.

Women are supposedly weaker physically and hence cannot stand for long hours in a train or a bus.  I saw a blog by one such feminist who attempted to flaunt her scientific knowledge citing examples of how women vomit while travelling in buses. Oh now come on! Don’t give me that pseudo scientific explanations. Give it to some idiot who has zero knowledge of science or biology. It has been proven over years and with conducting experiments on thousands of subjects that women have higher endurance capacities than men. Women have been found to be able to climb rocks easier and without exhaustion or fatigue than men. The reason is the anatomy itself. Large muscles consume more calories and oxygen even if the task is small. This means that men’s muscles are strained more than women if they have to stand for long. A man can perhaps lift weight double that of what a woman can lift. But that is the test of strength. We are discussing stamina and endurance here. Women can sustain longer periods of starvation, dehydration, stress and have higher chances of survival than men when injured.

What about pregnant women? Men don’t go through this difficulty. There are also women who bring children along and hence they need to be seated. Well, I have no argument against consideration of pregnancy. Most men would happily give up their seat for a pregnant woman. But yet, one out of one hundred women being pregnant does not imply there has to be a universal reservation of seats for ladies. We may have to treat that as a disability. I always wonder how come women don’t take offense with the announcement in Delhi Metro trains saying ‘Please vacate seats for the physically challenged, senior citizens and ladies’. Well that looks like women are generalized as equivalent to physically challenged people.

Men harrass women. Yeah right! All men are molesters. I find it ridiculous to say anything against that justification. If that is the case, then we have the Indian Railways model. There are special coaches for ladies only. We have the Tamil Nadu Government buses model. There are special buses plying on every route for ladies only. The Delhi Metro introduced exclusive coaches for women a couple of months ago. But the stickers in every coach reserving those seats for ladies haven’t been removed. I have seen dozens of instances when older or sick men were woken up and asked by young chicks to vacate the ‘ladies seats’. What justification do the feminists have for this kind of arrogant behavior? As for the complaint by women that men argue and don’t leave the ‘ladies seats’, have you ever seen a woman offering the senior citizens’ seats when she sees an old man standing?

India is a crime prone country. We don’t have enough prisons to accomodate ALL the criminals nor enough policing system to catch all of them. There is this criticism of Delhi by the media that it is the molestation capital. I would rather say that it is a crime capital being sandwiched between two states that have extremely high rates of crime. Why is it that only gender crimes have to picked out and highlighted out of everything? Thousands of road accidents happen because of rash driving. Thousands of revenge murders, abductions, robberies, kidnapping and assaults happen every year in the city. Rather than specifically picking up crimes that happened only against one category of people and demanding action to prevent that, why not demand overall improvement  from the perspective of safety and security for citizens?

Now coming back again to our subject of discussion, I am not completely against exclusive compartments for women in the Delhi Metro. If women want to be segregated, let them have it. But giving reserved seats in ALL the coaches is just not justified.

FDI in Retail Vs. The Local Grocery Store

One of my previous posts have been about how people are trained to be cattle in country. They know to follow the herd without knowing why they do so and neither have the IQ to question it. Over the last one year, we have been hearing protests and a lot of discussion about FDI in multi-brand retail. This post is not to re-iterate how FDI helps the farmers, gets rid of the middlemen, etc. that have been quoted by advocates of FDI. I have tried to convince the reader as to why we desperately need to bring the disorganized retail on the leash. To the people who do not understand what FDI in multi-brand retail means:

A multi-brand retail is a store that has the right to stock and sell items of various brands. For instance, any grocery store stocks and sells products made by thousands of manufacturers. Hitherto, FDI has existed in single brand retail. That means, a showroom funded by a foreign company can only stock products of a single brand. For example, an Adidas showroom co-owned by Adidas can only sell products of Adidas and not of other brands. Hence, this new amendment in the Indian market can enable companies to not just open grocery supermarkets but also showrooms of clothing and accessories, stationery, etc.

Coming to the question of the local grocery shops that exist all over the country. First of all, the coming of big retail chains like Subhiksha, Big Bazaar, Reliance Retail, Easy Day etc. have made no difference in the livelihood of the existing grocery shops. As a matter of fact, opening a grocery store is still the most sought after business for anyone who has nothing better to do. Lets say the coming of big retail chains like Walmart creates some competition to the local ‘kirana’ stores. Do we really need to sympathize with them? They are the biggest tax avoiders in the country.

A law-abiding person who wishes to invest in opening a grocery store has to do the following:
1. Obtain a license to run a commercial establishment. Get his shop registered under the Shops and Establishments Act of India. This involves paying money for the license and revenue to the government. I am not aware of the precise details about the license and the cost of the license. How many shops really do this? Not even a small fraction of the total number of stores in the country.
2. Purchase or lease a shop only in a location demarcated for commercial establishments or markets. This means, the shop owner pays a few lakhs for registering the property and the builder who sells the property also pays capital gains. This generates revenues of a few lakh rupees to the government. However, a vast majority of the grocery stores are illegally set up in residential areas and are not registered as commercial properties. To top that, these stores encroach upon government land, the sidewalks etc to increase godown space. Not just that they act as a nuisance to other residents by bringing trucks and other delivery vehicles at all times of the day causing traffic congestions.
3. Pay sales taxes on all the goods sold. Ask any of your neighborhood retail outlets if they know anything called a sales tax. Do they even issue genuine bills with Tax Identification Numbers? The Maximum Retail Price mentioned on a product is far higher than the price retailers pay for obtaining that product. This is taking into account the money they spend on running a commercial establishment, sales taxes, value added taxes etc. These taxes amount to as high as 50% of the product’s final MRP. By not paying any of these taxes the retail vendor pockets a huge margin from the sale he does.
4. Must pay commercial electricity bills for the airconditioning, cooling systems and refrigeration. This is again not followed by local retailers. They conveniently convert a portion of their house into a shop illegally and use subsidized domestic electricity for their commercial activities.
5. Is answerable and responsible for selling genuine goods that are not adulterated. Which grocery store can one really trust to be stocking only unadulterated food products? Ghee, vegetable oil, butter, grains, turmeric and a whole variety of loose items sold in retail shops are mostly adulterated. In case a big retail store like Big Bazaar stocks a fake item, a customer has the bill as evidence and can sue the retail chain for thousands of dollars. No one has ever heard of a shopkeeper being arrested for selling adulterated food products.

With all the above being said, it can easily be presumed that the government can easily earn lakhs of rupees from each grocery store in the country. Taking into account the fact that it is a really big industry, the revenues can go into trillions.

In my opinion if the mafia raj of these criminals can end with Walmart coming in, I think it is well deserved.

As for the stupid excuse that several retailers would lose their jobs given by meddling politicians, can they answer this:

When various development projects like for example the Delhi Metro are being launched all over the country, that also leads to losses to many taxi drivers. Does that mean the Delhi Metro should be stopped? Should the government stop supplying water to newly developed urban areas so that the contractors who supply water to societies can keep earning their revenues? People who have the brains of cattle fall for it and support such meddling antics of the politicians. It has been drilled into their brains ‘oh the poor should be helped. Foreigners would only come to invade the rich country of India. FDI would lead to a new age colonialism’. They need to go get a life!

Simon go back!

Death of a White Elephant

The news about Reliance Airport Express shutting services came as a shocker to me. I was fascinated by the entire system. The trains were super-fast, had front facing chairs and the stations were all beautiful. In fact, switching trains from the Airport Express to a regular – although state of the art – Delhi Metro was so depressing. I felt like I had just woken up from a dream metro and entered an Indian Railways train.

Right from the start, I knew the entire project was a mug’s game. First of all, the Metro leads to the international terminal. Now why would someone who pays for air tickets exceeding 50,000 Rs. use public transport to reach the airport? He might as well spend a few hundred rupees and hire a cab. Additionally international travellers (Indian) usually bring their entire clan to the airport to have them seen off. So let’s say five people are to travel to the airport to see off a loved one, the token costs ends up being 80 x 5 = Rs. 400. Bingo! That is what you need to pay to a taxi driver. Now which moron would drag his whole family to a metro station, stand in queues to get five Delhi Metro tokens, hop into a metro with the family and luggage, change three trains and then again go through another ordeal of getting Airport Metro tokens (DMRC tokens are not accepted at Airport Express entry gates. They have separate tokens.), and finally reach the airport?

Second, the price of the tickets (Airport Express tokens cost almost 4 times that of a DMRC token covering the same distance) would deter working class passengers to use the metro to travel to places which it covers such as Dhaula Kuan, Shivaji Statium etc.

Third, people who wish to go to the Domestic Terminal would have to hire a taxi from the International Airport station and travel to the domestic terminal. This adds an expense of at least 200 Rs. plus all the hassle that it involves.

Fourth the starting station of this train is at New Delhi Railway station which is hardly a junction station in the Delhi Metro Network. Ideally the starting point should have been Rajiv Chowk which forms a junction for Metros coming from Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Jahangirpuri and Dwarka. It is really a hassle for passengers to change three trains carrying luggage to finally reach the airport. Take for example, a person who has to to the airport from Noida. He would board a DMRC train from Noida, get down at Rajiv Chowk junction, get into a yellow line, get down at New Delhi, buy a token for the Airport metro and then finally board the Airport Express train. Any person with common sense would rather just spend a few hundred more and hire a taxi to the airport.

That said, I still feel sad that I won’t be able to travel in one of the most state of the art public transpot system in the country. 57 billion rupees and a project so poorly surveyed. I am assuming the business development manager of Reliance who had sold this idea to his bosses for approval should have been fired by now.

Follow the Herd Syndrome

 

A couple of days ago, I remembered walking to a Metro Station in Delhi. There were two security check gates and one of them had a long queue. The other one was empty for some reason. Presumably, the guard had just arrived and opened it. I saw how everyone who came noticed that only one gate had a queue and stood in the queue. The other security guy laughed to his colleages asking why no one wanted to come to his gate and if it was because he looked scary. I realized how we all have yet to come out of the “Follow the herd” syndrome. People thought it was safter to follow the ‘herd’ than try something new.

This age old tradition of not questioning conventions and blindly following them is perhaps what is leading to disputes, quarrels and wars. A democratic governance is one of the most difficult forms of governance. It is impossible to persuade everyone into accepting a certain law or bill that is passed in Parliament. The syndrome is the most prominent in Asian countries, apparently being the reason why religious extremism is highly prevalent in the region. Surprisingly, it is very very rare coming across someone who questions a rule. People do not bother to worry about knowing why something has to be like the way it is. Lets take an example of a celebration such as Holi. Why is it that it has to be celebrated by throwing colors on one another and on this specific day only? If I need a day to celebrate, why can’t I burst firecrackers on this day? It is after all meant to commemorate one of the victories of good over evil. Or for that matter, lets take Valentine’s day for instance. Is it some kind of extra lucky day to make a proposal? Can’t I spend a happier day with a loved one if I plan a date on any other day? Why can’t one modify a car to look like an aubergine? Why? Why?

I know many people who have blind patriotism to the extent where they could go to fight with anyone who points out a drawback with their country. The reason is simple, this idealogy has been implanted in them that they must love their country and feel proud of it no matter what. Anyone who opposes or says anything bad about the country should be punished. So irrespective of how true one may be in criticizing, people tend to shut that person up because they have to demonstrate their patriotism. Various tactics like pointing out idiotic examples to prove otherwise, make loud noise so that the person cannot be heard or simply use violence so as to force that person into acceptance; are employed by people. Isn’t the entire world filled with good people? If someone commits a massacre in what is called an ‘enemy country’, how is that noble? Isn’t he just being loyal to the ruler of his country? I would say that I do not respect Bhagat Singh nor Subhash Chandra Bose because they simply targeted anyone who was British and killed them irrespective of whether they were good or bad people. When I openly admit this, people call me anti-national.

Life needs colors, we cannot live in a world of black and white. Similarly we need different shapes. It is the diversity that makes things beautiful. Why cannot we have some anti-gods, some insect eaters, some homosexuals and atheists among us as long as they do not persuade us to join their cult? Why can’t I defy this rule that only kids are supposed to play with toys? I don’t care to admit that I still love watching animated movies, I have cerelac and I love playing what are called ‘childish’ pranks. Why? Why? Why does it have to be meant to be followed or restricted to one set of people only? Why cannot a guy wear pink? There are more differences between lets say a tall Chinese man and may be a short African man than the dissimilarities between a Chinese man and a Chinese woman. But why should there be different dressing patterns meant for men and women irrespective of their color or race or height?

It takes a lot of courage to defy conventions and admit that in front of everyone. People force themselves to follow the herd even if they like doing something else. Why does someone have to be ‘normal’. That said, I am now off to decorate a Christmas tree to celebrate Holi today.

I follow the herd and so I am always right

The Not-My-Business Syndrome

The mentality of ‘it is not my job’ existing among employees in any organization is what causes most of the unwanted expenditure in the company. For implementation of Lean and other waste-reduction techniques, a co-ordination among departments in a company is essential. However, every one in India seems to only worry about his work and those tasks on which he is subject to questioning and ignores other factors that can contribute to reduce wastage in the organization.

For instilling a feeling of belonging to an organization and treating it as one’s home the thrust has to come from the senior management. An ideal manager or a top level executive such as CIO or a CFO must pay attention to not just his departmental processes but others as well. To better explain my idea, let’s take an example. There was this IT giant which had recently opened a branch in a city in India. The CIO had ensured all the IT infrastructure was set up. All IT requirements fulfilled for the department operating in the building to function smooth. However, there was one major drawback in the de-humidification systems in the building. This led to occasional spillage of water droplets from the air-conditioning vents on the furniture and equipment. Being an IT giant, the company had adequate funds for equipment replacement. So each time a keyboard or a computer peripheral was found to have failed due to moisture was replaced immediately by the technology team. The employees of the department found no hindrance to their work because the CIO had ensured efficiency in meeting service levels for fixing defective computers. The process ran smooth without any problems. The repair personnel in charge of infrastructure realized that the issue required much more than simple patchwork on the vents. They left raising their hands. Out here none of the top management, neither the department head of the process nor the CIO took initiatives to raise the matter to the heads of infrastructure management about the problems in central air-conditioning. With ample funds allocated to technology, it wasn’t being a problem replacing defective equipments frequently. This ultimately resulted in losses for the organization as a whole and a constant annoyance to the employees working in the department. Each department’s chief thought it was not his job to fix the problems.

Let’s take the example of the CWG mess. The apartments for athletes were constructed, clear of debris and well polished. When there was some problem in the plumbing, the plumbers fixed the problems and left the broken walls and tiles as they were. Those were the work of the masonry team. Electricians hammered walls to attach fixtures and left the damage and the stained walls as they were thinking it wasn’t their job to fix that. The debris left behind were to be cleaned by housekeeping and it was not their business. Had each of these employees taken the pains to notify the management that their activities had caused damage or debris in the apartments, the country would not have had to face the embarrassment in front of the foreign delegates.

Assume an organization to be a spaceship with four chambers. Four astronauts are in charge of each chamber. In case of a leak of oxygen in one chamber unnoticed by the one in charge of it, another must take the initiative to ensure that the leak is fixed. If not, the life-supporting oxygen in the spaceship would soon get depleted for all four of them and not just the one whose negligence caused the problem. Every chief of a company such as the CIO, CFO, and Presidents of business processes must treat themselves as one of the astronauts mentioned in the example. Although each one does his job well, the mentality of doing only one’s job leads to losses and financial drains in a company. Only if the chiefs of a company carry such attitudes, can the same practice by dissipated down to the sub-ordinate employees. This mindset can enhance loyalty to the company.

The New Generation Casteism in India

Once upon a time, the profession of a person was determined by his caste. The society forced a potter to be a potter for ever, make his son and all his descendents a potter. Deviation from the profession was considered to be blasphemy. People were subject to be cast away from the society if any one attempted to switch to a profession traditionally practiced by a person of a different caste. With the abolishment of casteism, any individual in the country is free to pursue a profession of his own. Opportunities are made available for every citizen of the country to pursue his own interests. Well is that really true?

Post independence and the giant leaps in development that India had witnessed, there seemed to be an education boom. Education seemed to be of primary importance well understood by every citizen of the country. People spent a major chunk of their earnings on their children’s education. Education became the euphemism for training a money minter for the family. People ran after what seemed to be the profession in demand and paid the most. They started to force their children to study what would earn them a ‘respect in the society’ than what their children were interested in. Such was the social pressure attached to certain fields of education that thinking about anything else was regarded as a crime that could evict capital punishment. Suicides by students who failed in examinations was not uncommon.

A sort of revolution seems to be going on especially influenced by Chetan Bhagat’s novels as well as movies made on his books. The new generation of people pursues their field of interest than go by the traditional forms of vocation. But yet, the mindset of people to enforce a traditional vocation on people has not vanished from the society. Rather, this casteist mindset has the society so firmly in its grip that a person is doomed to live with his vocation for life. The fact that most premier institutes of learning have set an age limit for application itself proves this fact. Is it a crime if a person decides at a certain point in life that the vocation he is pursuing is not in his field of interest? What if a doctor at some point in life wishes to get out of the medical profession and wants to study technology from IIT for instance? The society mocks at him! People consider him crazy. Why start over when he has a well established career and is making money? Making money is the key word for a human being in India.

The orthodox mindset of people is what is causing lack of skilled workforce in almost all industries in the country. People don’t realize the fact that most professions are interlinked. An architect can construct better buildings if he understands the human anatomy and reason as to why staircases should have a certain length and breadth; can reason and incorporate better facilities to make buildings friendly for the senior citizens or disabled people. So why cant an expert in physiotherapy study architecture and be an architect? A friend of mine was mocked at when she appeared for a screening round for selection into one of the premier mass communication institutes in the country. The reason was that she had studied Botany in her graduation. Mass communication is all about information broadcasting. Why can be a better candidate for a channel catering to agriculture than a Botanist? This reasoning is never applied by recruiters whose primary fear is of attrition. They fear that a person with changing minds cannot be entrusted with a job. A preference is given to a student who had only studied humanities all his life in the mass media than a person who has the knowledge of subjects he is going to be reporting about.

A significant revolution of the Chetan Bhagat kinds is required to change the casteist perception of Indian corporate world. Else, we would continue facing losses of talent by means of brain drain.

The Generation Gap

'Eve Teasers' in Chennai

We all hear about the generation – gap causing a rift between the elderly members of the family and the younger generations. Everywhere, there are debates, essays and articles about how the elderly people in the family cannot adjust to their children getting dressed up in what is called ‘hep’ or ‘funky’ clothing. We say that kids in the country violate all customs, don’t believe in traditions and are only interested in the pop culture. In my opinion these talks about disputes in the house are simply made up. Although witnessed on TV soaps, I have not noticed any parent in any metropolitan city in the country in real objecting to the dressing style of their children. Even if there are disputes, they are minor and not of mammoth proportions as presumed by many.

The real gap does not actually exist between the generations but between the cities and villages in the country. Metro cities in the country primarily have co-educational institutions which are quite rare in villages and smaller towns. Delhi, which is in the center of a very vast region of highly conservative towns and villages, is quite an attraction to migrants. The beliefs and mindsets carried by the people in a Metro are very different from that of the surrounding towns. Just driving a few dozen miles away from Delhi, we get to notice total violation of the law in terms of rash driving, people indulging in brawls, unauthorized constructions and commercial institutions. I remember one colleague of mine with smaller town upbringing stating that he preferred to marry a woman from a village who would be dedicated to him than a skimpily clad lady from Delhi. I didn’t every come into agreement with him but his beliefs are deeply rooted in conventions from the place where he came from.

When Chidambaram, the Home Minister said that Delhi was a crime capital because of the migrants from the smaller towns, it was true and conveyed a deep meaning to the ‘generation gap’ between people of the same generation in the country. However, as a person holding a position of power, such a statement was unwarranted because it proved how India has been incapable of breaking the barrier between bigger cities and smaller towns. It is a common practice in small towns to indulge in eve-teasing, drunken brawls, rash driving and escape the law. People with upbringings in such towns often carry their criminal mindsets to the grave and indulge in such activities even when they migrate to metro cities.

A solution to the problem would be to upgrade the educational systems in every town and village in the country. Shuffling of teachers between schools as done by Kendriya Vidyalas need to be done in every school to help in knowledge exchange. Co-educational institutions have only helped in developing better relations between the sexes and mutual respect for one another rather than being a center for eve-teasing. If we say that co-ed schools can suffer from eve-teasing and thereby there has to be a segregation of the sexes, then we imply that our educational system cannot teach children how to abide the law and have respect for other individuals. Education teaches a human being to use a gun as a weapon of self-defense. Barring the use of guns for fear of increased crime implies that our country cannot trust its citizens of abstinence from crime. Improving the primary education in all parts of the country can alone help solve numerous problems such as migrant problems, over-crowding of cities and several other social menaces caused due to poor upbringing of an individual.

India Shining Only in its Metros?

The Identity Crisis

Quite often, the Indian government is criticized for its poor database of its citizens. Unlike the United States where every citizen is identified by a Social Security Number, India has no database of its citizens. People use their Permanent Account Numbers (PAN) or their driver’s license numbers as unique identification. However, owing to the lack of a centralized database of these numbers, it becomes impossible to track a fraud or forgery of documents. In addition to that PAN cards are not present with several million people nor do the PAN issuance system use stringent methods of preventing duplication. Therefore, an alternative numbering system similar to the SSN in the US is necessary to be implemented in India.

The Aadhar project has been surrounded by criticism from many quarters. Many argue that the developmental perspectives put forth by the UID marketing team are highly exaggerated. Many critics suggest improvement in the existing system of distribution of goods and services to achieve the benefits that a UID can provide. Therefore, this massive project has been termed as an unnecessary wastage of the taxpayer’s money.

Several million people in Indian cities are migrants. For them, availing the government subsidies and other services is a very difficult task owing to the complications involved in obtaining a voter’s ID. An individual who migrates to another town in search of better prospects finds it very difficult to obtain a telephone connection, book an LPG kit, obtain a driver’s license, open a bank account, and apply for a passport or a voter’s ID card and many other things that a civil society demands. The existence of mafias that resell illegal LPG can by itself be attributed to the difficulty one faces in getting oneself an identity in a new town or city. Even those individuals who already have identification documents from their hometown, are not lucky. They still struggle hard to obtain a document as a proof of their present place of residence. This business of forging documents and of issuing various kinds of identification or address proofs is by itself an illegitimate million dollar industry in the country. Every city has thousands of brokers who offer to bribe the authorities and obtain things like a driver’s license, voter’s ID card, house-rent agreement etc. Government doctors and other ‘Gazetted officers’ earn thousands per month in the side business of attesting documents. Almost every application for an exam or college or university requires the candidate to attest his/her photograph from an officer of authority. If a UID existed that could be accessed by institutes of repute and could verify the authenticity of the photograph and the details mentioned in the form, the hassle of getting an attestation on every form by people can be done away with. Additionally corruption in the public distribution system can be done away with and various other social initiatives launched by the government can reach its rightful recipients.

From a security perspective, the UID can again be a boon. In the country today, anyone can commit murders or loot millions and can still escape the law by running away to another city and establishing new identification documents by bribery. The UID which uses biometric database can obviously not be forged. India does not have an absolute count of the number of citizens nor of the number of births and deaths in the country. Planning would be better and easier if a precise database is established. The problem of illegal immigration from neighboring countries as well as the threat of terrorism can be tackled easily if every Indian has his own unique identification card. Using multiple PAN cards and other state government ID cards, people accumulate black money and wealth that is untraceable. Such illegitimate activities can also be curbed. It is time when honest tax-paying citizens get their rewards and the AADHAR project could be the stepping stone for such an initiative.