The food safety of “Young India”

This note of mine has reference to my earlier article titled as “The Grain drain may touch our lives any time…” and an article of Ms. Suzanne Daley appeared in ‘The Hindu’ regarding the situation of the jobless in Spain, where opportunities are denied to get back to work in agriculture sector! The crux is that during the boom in infrastructure in Spain, people who were engaged in hard labour of farms upgraded themselves to softer jobs in infrastructure sector…! As the boom is over and jobs ceased to exist, suddenly many of them find it difficult to get back to their old jobs as it had been occupied by immigrants from countries across Eastern Europe and Africa. Now, the farm owners are not willing to induct these old employees back since they don’t want to jeopardize the current equation. Another aspect is the doubt that these locals will not be able to work as hard as the foreigners, as they had been doing softer jobs so far…!

I would like to compare the Indian scenario with this….India is currently undergoing infrastructure boom and unlike other places, we have a large unorganized employment sector, which amounts to 93% and this sector attracts predominantly people from the agriculture sector. To my own knowledge and experience, both farm owners and farm workers are slowly becoming species which are in the verge of extinction…thanks to unviable farming business model, exploitation of middle men and a huge real estate lobby! India is now a young country and expected to remain so for at least next 3 – 4 decades..! As of now, the agriculture sector is still the primary employment provider in our country. However, the growth and boom in the economy is bringing in lots of radical social changes– both good & bad! As of now, the generation who are employed in the farm sector seems to be the last to exist and their next generation does not want to undertake hard labour in the farms as they have multiple easy opportunities available during this growing economy even without much skills. Apart from this, multiple initiatives from the Government also guarantees a fairly reasonable livelihood for rural sector. However, the social change emerging from these initiatives will be non – availability of man power for the hard labour in farms and thus bringing in a huge vacuum in the already hit agriculture production!

The fears I mentioned in the previous article in this blog (The Grain drain may touch our lives any time…) had become order of the day as agriculture ministry started importing various grains to bring down the prices! We were a country boasting of huge food reserves till 2 years back!!

Now to understand the eroding human resource supply in agriculture sector, listen to the story of social change in a village….

There is a Gram – Panchayat which had shown the world that the Govt. employment can be assured to one member of each family in the village through focused preparatory classes for the ‘Public Service Commission’ examinations. Over a span of less than a decade, they had achieved their goal of having at least one in every family getting employed in Government sector! However, pit fall of this social change is that the elders of these families who were very efficient farm workers despite their age had taken an abrupt retirement as their children genuinely wanted them to take rest..! It’s a significant change in the existing social system and though it is a welcome change in terms of a reliable income source for those families, there is a gap created in terms of farming sector manpower requirement is concerned…? Every good social change can backfire if not planned well in advance!!

Now, let’s look into some practical answers….

We need to accept the fact that the country’s economy is in a growing spree and it will definitely induce more opportunities in various sectors and the brunt will be on the agriculture sector…?! In the above mentioned scenario itself, the young population of India, who had received basic education avoids hard labour and prefer softer opportunities, which are available in plenty..! Leaving some exceptions, those who stick on to farming (Be it farmers or farm workers) are mostly uneducated and unskilled people. This is the very basic problem of the sector! 

In this context, our Governments need to address this issue by attracting young efficient people into farming to improve our production and granary reserves. Call it a second green revolution or whatever; the thumb rule of attraction is to make farming a viable business model with less dependency in man power, especially by eliminating hard labours through intelligent automated solutions.

To achieve this, there should be a multi pronged approach to address each issue in the sector at micro level…

• To devise a fresh credit policy with a strong monitoring system for any agriculture sector projects with preference to induction of advanced technology to optimize the results.

• The application for credit should be accepted and evaluated by a ‘single window’ central agency and then asked to service it by local banks distributed geographically across the country, thus eliminating the delay in the evaluation process at the banks.

• Enough thrust should be given by the RBI to the banks to avoid further delay by the banks in servicing and disbursement of credit for such recommended projects, even after the approval of this ‘single window’ agency.

• The successful models of precision farming should be replicated across the country by educating youngsters on such advanced farming methods & techniques by introducing rural technical training hubs (knowledge centres) across the country.

• The Government should envisage a target change in the sector in terms of making it more organized and soft labour oriented.

• The micro tools depending on the area and the people, should be developed through participatory research programme by initiatives from premium institutions of the country and also with the technological affiliations from countries who are well advanced in agri-tech & research.

• The training content should be prepared in such a way that it inspires the youngsters to take up jobs in the farm sector. It should inspire more youngsters to become entrepreneurs in the sector as well.

• The agriculturists, agronomists and scientists should revamp the traditional image of the sector to make it more like a business option by building up a viable business model with very transparent and practical projections.

• Like in every other sector, the farmers should be trained to do product costing before they fix the pricing for their produces taking into account of the production process, percentage of wastage & defectives, the input cost and the marketing cost. A similar approach should be taken to attract the young farmers to plan & optimize their production.

• The production should be controlled based on the market trends and demand – supply studies in farming as well. This is possible in technology enabled farming like ‘precision farming’ and through various micro processor based technologies with controlled ‘fertigation’ models.

• Controlling of the prices should be handled by the farming community based on the market demand and supply chain challenges.

• The Government needs to set up a Farm Produce Price Regulatory Authority (FaPPRA) in line with TRAI and IRDA in order to control and audit abnormalities and exploitation in the sector.

• There should be a continuing education programme on ‘Post Harvest Handling’ and marketing. There should be awareness and support programme to inspire group initiatives in food processing projects.

• There should be micro monitoring system (not micro management) established under ‘FaPPRA’ to support and execute such projects vide credible NGOs working in those areas with strict accountability norms.

• Though linking of technology to the farmers seems to be the biggest challenges now, it will become much easy once the youngsters take it up. They will drive the change in the sector in positive direction.

So it becomes all the more important to attract youngsters to more organized, scientific and precision farming by facilitating infrastructure for such a revolutionary change in the sector!

As a hand holding initiative, Governments can link the PDS outlets procurement to such farming groups under the guidance of ‘FaPPRA’ through long term procurement contracts, which should envisage both interests of the farmer as well as the consumer. This will induce price stability and eliminate middle men’s exploitation. 

However, if the Governments do not act fast, we’ll be left with no grains for the youngsters and there will be a generation who will look up to other countries to produce and feed them!

Development agenda and importance of enthusiastic professional politicians

What is the qualification required to become a successful politician in India?

Minimum:          3^rd Std failed or No school

Maximum:         3^rd Std passed or No school

I know our beloved District Panchayat President Sri. Thankappan Pillai since my childhood days. The first time I knew him was as the one who loudly reads news paper for those labourers of Beedi manufacturing unit on my way to school..! He must be a 4^th Std drop out and no one was bothered to know about it. For his service of reading news papers to his employees and thus saving their productive time, the owner of that beedi manufacturing unit used to reward him with ‘4 Annas’ (close to 25 paise) in those times. Thankappan Pillai became aware of world affairs through those numerous news papers and he started quoting those news bits in relevant and irrelevant contexts. Most of his audiences were either as less informed as him or much lower literate than him! So, for them he became genius and an expert in world affairs!

Over a period of time, he had grown in stature and as he neither can think of doing any hard work nor does he have any skills, he found politics is the easy and apt profession for him. After having multiple tenures in Gram Panchayat as its president, he was elevated as Block Panchayat President and eventually he became District Panchayat President in these revolutionary times of ‘Panchayati Raj’ and de-centralized development!!

Thanks to Thankappan Pillai’s brand of development that it was never beyond his capacity of thinking and even after years of tenures, the villages remained as primitive as it used to be…! In his capacity, he allowed illegal metal quarries and sand mafia to thrive..! When it became intolerable, some of the responsible citizens went and got a stay order against such illegal mining..!

As responsible citizens of India, we all should realize the serious deficiency of our system in terms of attracting qualified brains in participating in the process of policy making for the development of our country! Like innumerable superstitions and blind-beliefs of our country, we all are prejudiced about the way politicians are supposed to behave…?!! We all say that’s the practice followed by our ancestors and any deviation from such a pattern is seen as offensive behaviour?!

In this context, we need to analyse the rise and fall of a Minister of Tharoor’s stature , who has a strikingly bright professional background, internationally!

When today’s opposition was the ruling party in centre, another minister for State in the Ministry of Railways, who hails from Kerala gave a letter of reference  requesting HRD Minister to consider my friend’s  application for a ‘Jan Shiksha Sansthan’ (a continuing education centre) for our Panchayat under the NGO represented by him. Understand the fact that he was trying to help my friend; just because it comes to his home state (He was not even representing Kerala). As a matter of fact, my friend didn’t get this institution as two out of the proposed three centres were allocated to HRD Minister’s state and another one was allocated to one of the North-Eastern states!

In this context mentioned above, can anyone say that the minister who gave reference letter had misused his good offices to lobby for us?! The local president of their party was with my friend as one of the advisory committee members of the NGO…! Can anyone say that this person got the post under any shady deal? Nowadays, to get a confirmed railway ticket, you carry MP’s letter…how do you qualify that?

It is clear in the case of Tharoor that he called to find why the signing process was delayed for no reason? This call would have been made by any one of us, if we were enthusiastically involved in offering moral support and help…!  Not just to IPL commissioner, for that matter to anybody, when you suspect there’s a foul play…! Call will be actually made by you as an individual, regardless of the position you are holding!

We need young dynamic people with intelligence and transparency in public places, who should bring modern thoughts and bold new practices in their respective places. Our system is such, there are lots of Thankappan pillais who neither have the capacity to envisage better quality of life nor have exposure of the development happening across the world!!

Given the situation, it is time for Tharoor to re-invent himself to focus on keeping in touch base with the common people by continuous interaction. I feel he should come up with an action plan on the development agenda he has for his constituency and for the state and then for the nation..! If he can publish it in the site and update it with the ‘target vs achievement chart’ in simplified, illustrated form which could be understood by the youngsters of this country…I’m sure he’ll win many hearts!

Though at the cost of his designation, Tharoor controversy became a positive initiative towards cleaning up the IPL and its systems apart from the individuals. However, with the kind of mentors Modi has, he never thought it would become the end of the road for him so soon..!

Three Idiots, Five point Someone and me….!

This is an open thought for all of us to think, think and keep thinking before decide or conclude!

Nowadays, it has become fashion for everyone to talk in length & breadth about the lacunae of the education system of the country..! Everybody agree that there are lots of problems with the system of education & examinations. I too have been advocating the need of liberation and focus needed on grooming the self learning process in young minds. Apart from my own experiences, the books of ‘Paulo Coelho’, ‘Chetan Bhagat’ and so on, had also influenced my thinking process! Another important influence was my friend Vinod, who is the founder of ‘Mazhavillu, the alternative school’. All these points of view are acceptable and there is a huge movement initiated among educationalists, institutions and educational regulatory/ advisory bodies (from NCERT to ICSE in Indian context) to reform the prevailing system…

Now, I would like everyone to do some serious action to visualize in our minds about the change required in the system….!

We all say the following three points quite often…

1) There should not be pressure for our kids at the young age….!

2) We should allow our kids to choose their career path based on their passion…!

3) Our education system should be more application oriented…

Let’s have some honest analysis of the same…

Though we say that there should not be pressure, we enjoy a lot when our children get 1st Rank since class-I and when they don’t get good percentage, we put pressure on them to improve the marks…not their understanding!

Why do we want our kids to score more marks? Because, in India, due to exploding population, our limited number of institutions and infrastructure, kept the percentage of marks scored as a filtering mechanism for the admission process. Over a period of years, though there had been a phenomenal improvement in the educational infrastructure, we follow the same mechanism to filter instead of a well balanced, scientific and appropriate aptitude analysis! Thanks to our old generation of educationists, who still resist the change in the name of credentials of our system (The same system, which is not indigenous, but just a ‘left over’ from British of 19th Century) quoting examples of Sir C V Ramans and other Indian scientists, who made a mark of their own..!! Most of these scientists made their presence felt when they could go outside India and if you analyse the statistics, not even one of our premier institutions could register any patent for years together…! But still our society is keen to push our kids into IITs & IIMs year after years!! A recent revelation by a group of alumni of one of such institutions is that there was not even a properly working ‘CNC Lathe’ in their lab, which is a shame for a country boasts of 6+% growth during when the whole world is under the grip of recession….!!

Now, it’s a vicious circle, here in our country…! More & more middle class push their children to these premier institutions because the country’s corporate world (The India Inc) prefers to induct their workforce from such institutions! So, in effect, entry to such institutions is considered to be a passport to the best business houses of India. Kids stop living from 9th Class onwards by starting off preparing for ‘Entrance Exams’….can you believe it? The youngsters curse their parents and those who make it to such places acknowledge their parents’ extra ordinary efforts. But only a few discusses candidly about the lacunae of the system, which produced them …!

So, the reforms we speak about should happen not in the education system prevailing in the country, but in the minds of those parents who push their wards so hard and in the mind sets of the ‘India Inc’, who feels that if they recruit from the premier institutions their organizations will be taken care forever..!! In fact, the change in the system should start from the attitude of such organizations first, which will reduce the insecurity of the parents and their wards thereby, of course, as a repercussion, it will bring in welcome change in the education system as well.

When we have this reverse engineering in place, we will not pressurize our young kids too much and we’ll be bold enough to allow them to follow their respective passion! Our educationists can bring in aptitude analysis and guide each individual to follow what he would like to pursue in life….! And if these institutes, in association with the boards & universities, can bring in application/ skill oriented system of education, the same ‘India Inc’ will prefer recruits with application based skill sets.

Technological Innovation - The charger gets ejected when fully charged!

Outlet Regulator Video from conor klein on Vimeo.

The change and resistance

“Change is the only constant in this world” – Though we all know and quote this on every given occasions, when it happens in our lives, we resist….to the extent that we break ourselves!

I had already written a short article on how to manage change from organizational perspective and now I would like to add on the same from life perspective!

I had been interested in innovative initiatives in culture and technology for the betterment of common man’s Life standards since early college days…! This nature of mine helped me in initiating many such projects/ programme in my life so far….! Though some of them died down after I moved out from the concerned positions, many have set trends and were continued by my successors and the very ‘thought’ of such initiatives gives you instant inspiration to move in the same direction! As a matter of choice, for last few years, I, along with my associates, have been doing, in professional terms, ‘Market Gap Analysis’ and conceiving various projects of technological innovation, which would help change the standard of living of common people…!

In the process, I had numerous setbacks and few successes. However, I continue my pursuit to unlearn, understand, learn and analyse newer horizons, which gives me immense satisfaction and joy!

When India is growing globally in terms of GDP perspective and in terms of recognition of our rich cultural heritage, one point we all (The citizens, the politicians and all other eminent individuals) need to manage this growth very carefully, as individuals, as society and as a nation! My experience vouches that ‘Growth which is not managed well can kill an organization’!! This is applicable to our great nation as well and we all have lots of duties to expedite cautiously to make our nation achieve inclusive growth…..which I doubt at this point of time?!

Our country’s development came after a long wait…! Now, if we don’t manage it properly we may get into deeper troubles than yester years.

In 2006, when I was driving through the ‘Golden Corridor’ 4 lane high way (Then it was new), it was really quite an experience! However, I could observe that I had to drive cautiously though I was driving in the faster lane, as I encountered vehicles coming opposite to us!! At last, somewhere near Bhubaneswar, I lost my cool, when a two wheeler came honking towards me with lots of abuses?!!! While I was arguing with him I was shocked to realize his perception about these four lane…..Instead of 2 lanes going towards North and 2 Lanes coming towards South, separated by a divider, he understands that in each side of the divider, there’s two way traffic allowed and according to him I was coming on the wrong lane as it was supposed to be my right lane…!! This incident reminds us that along with the development, how important it is, to equip the common man to manage such a change by disseminating information to the grass roots levels!

Every new initiative will face resistance and bulldozing such resistance should be done by tactfully bridging through lot of consensus among resisting elements and this is where imparting

logical reasoning will be essential! Now, when we discuss about change, I myself may not be able to endorse every change, which is happening in our society! If you analyse history, every change which brought in ‘Social Evils’ were crushed by the mother nature over a period of time…The maximum life span of such changes are between 2 – 3 decades in the modern times, though earlier, it used to be much more…

So, let’s be prepared to change and understand that the resistance never succeeds on a longer run….!! How to manage these changes is our challenge and we should wake up and move on….!! 

A Nostalgic Sivarathri - 2010

I’m excited to write about participating in ‘Sivarathri’ celebrations at Pallassana after such a long time! ‘Hats off ’ to Chandru and his young team…..Thanks a lot guys!

I’m not able to express the joy I felt when I joined them on the day, quite a coincidence?! Not really…I met Kannan (Kongassery) at Secunderabad station on the day of my departure and he reminded me of the event and told me that he may also take a short break from work to join there..! So I kept up the date and went to our nostalgic ‘mannam’ after a long time….!

Let me quickly put my points of appreciation and correlate to our golden days….

1) The felicitations of people who contributed extensively to bring laurels to ‘Pallassana’. It was really appealing to see the age range of people, who were felicitated….it was a fabulous cross section of our small village!

2) ‘Kavettam’ was another interesting innovative programme, which went in synch with the tradition of ‘New Exposures’, which was initiated during our golden days! People who were with us on those days were cherishing those moments when we have exposed our innocent village audience to the ‘world of miming’, ‘Mass Hypnotism’ and ‘Fusion Vocal Concert’, year after year…..Let me bow in respect to our team and the togetherness…! ‘Kavettam’ too was such an experience! I could see many glittering widened eyes amongst our sweet, curious ‘Desam’ audience!!

3) Kudos to Vasudevan (Sreekuttan) and his young team to have conceived, developed, practiced and presented such an insightful short drama within such a short period! I really loved the work….!! It was more like a ‘one act play’ though it was spread over few scenes.

4) The dances were definitely good, but were not spectacular, owing to the lack of live vocals! The dances by the tiny tots were obviously fanta-fabulous!!

Once again, I would like to thank as well as congratulate Chandru, Sreekuttan, Ponnan, Sivan and the entire team for conducting such a nostalgic event…!

To conclude, let me thank each one of them, who supported this event by contributing to make this programme a reality….!

May ‘Ponnin Kiratha Moorthy’ Shower his blessings on one and all….

Inspiring Wrong Values!

Having written about the right inspiration and its influence in all our lives, I just can’t keep quiet about another experience from which we all need to take a leaf of realization to not to do something like this…!

Thanks to my friends’ community across the world, who share their experiences with me in order to enrich & empower me to write about it..!

This is another couple among my close friends’ group and the husband works in an MNC and the wife used to work with an international school, which intends to ignite the light within the young minds..!

My friend’s wife Brinda was forced to resign the job from this school due to her mother’s ill health in last June. As they were two daughters and her younger sister being in Australia, Brinda had to take a serious call while she was on her summer vacation at her native place. Though her presence was immediately required there, she did not refrain from joining back as she has been very ethical all through her professional life. She convinced my friend Biswas that it will be difficult for the school to replace a teaching staff immediately and hence, despite all the adverse conditions, she joined back in June and discussed with the Head Mistress regarding her handicap and immediately put down her papers with a notice period of one month.

Immediately after submitting the resignation, she went and enquired with the administrative staff regarding the formalities to be completed and they assured that there was nothing to be done as there were no loans or dues. As it was opening days and also as the school was undergoing international curriculum implementation, the planning and scheduling process was on a hectic mode. She had been actively involved in all those assignments till the day she got relieved! In fact, I drove with her husband to pick her from the school on that last working day in July, as we were travelling to their native by road..! As promised, she received the relieving letter with a ‘No – Dues sheet’ attached along with it on the relieving day.

Now, the drama begun….! She got relieved on 3rd July, 2009 and she was supposed to receive her salary for the month of June on 5th July, 2009 along with the others. I regret to note that she did not receive her salary for quite some time…!! (The latest update is that she received her salary in Jan-2010 after a long struggle)

They are my very close friends that I know them for quite long years and I have been always there with my family during their good & bad times. My friend has been a multifaceted personality and had contributed immensely as a social activist and educationist apart from his professional achievements!

In this context itself, when Brinda decided to quit, many of her friends advised her to leave immediately after collecting her salary..!! However, she never listened to all those, since they both have strong belief in abiding by values, principles & professional ethics, which many of us just preach...!

When she called up and asked why she was not paid her salary, first response was that they were yet to get the no-dues from the Principal. On inquiring with the Principal, he clearly told that it had been given to the finance department. One of the individuals in finance department wanted to prove a point that he’s Mr. Perfect for the organization and he told that she has to submit the insurance card back…!

As a matter of fact, the health insurance card is normally issued on individual’s name which cannot be revoked until and unless it is not under special employee – employer scheme operated by some private sector insurance companies. That too is operated with the knowledge and consensus of the employee. Hence, in this context, by taking Brinda’s card back, nobody was going to gain any benefit! If you take the lower income group employees, they are offered an ESI (Employee State Insurance) card, which can be used for the treatment of all the dependants of the family in ESI hospitals. It is the right of the employee to hold the card with him/her, as the contribution paid would be shares from the employee’s salary along with the employer’s contribution, which is a statutory obligation. The latest development is that it’s going to be nationwide network and these members can avail health services anywhere in the country and the ESI coverage eligibility income bandwidth is proposed to be increased to include maximum number of employees under this umbrella of social security. Since the health card issued by the employer can be viewed as a state obligation in place of the ESI facility, the employee holds the right to retain the card, legally.



However, to avoid confrontation and as she had separate personal health coverage, she gave back the card to the school…! Now, again months passed and still the salary was not paid..! They even stopped responding to her calls for some time! Though my friend was trying to pacify her, she was very firm on following up as she felt that she had been taken for a ride by the management despite the faith and ethics shown towards the organization and the profession. Above all, she knew that she had worked hard till the day she got relieved and deserved the fruit of her hard work..!

Now, my point here is that this school management did not realize that they were setting a wrong precedence by doing this…! As a consequence, anybody who would like to leave the school would wait till they collect their salaries and do a vanishing act just after receiving it!! This will definitely put the school in very awkward position as far as their quality standards are concerned as the implementation of international system is on…!

The proposed bonds will be of no use as all these ‘labour bonds’ are against the constitutional provision of prevention of bonded labour and will not have much legal sanctity in the court of law…!

As in this case, an individual from the administrative department tend to overdo things in order to make an impression on his superior to get some cheap attention, which hampers the serious long term mileages for the school and the irony is that under the influence of such sycophants, the management keeps on distancing themselves from their core function group and most of the times the realization happens after occurrence of a mishap! Already this had become known to many in the organization and I would say that the first person to leave this organization without notice in future would be our ‘Tiger’ who created this mess!! In fact, he was trying to cover up his own failure and in the process, our lady became scapegoat!

My sincere concern is about the lack of control from the management perspective and the whole incident inspires everyone to follow wrong practice by shedding off values & principles!

Let’s analyse and avoid inspiring wrong values like in this case…

1) The whole incident shows that there is a lack of system and absence of processes/ SOPs.
2) The cover – up exercise of such an individual should have been ‘seen through’ by his superiors and should have initiated corrective action as damage control.
3) The management should have taken a reactive (if not proactive) stand as soon as the issue happened.
4) Above all, an individual’s mishandling of situation should have been controlled by the management to inspire others to uphold the values, professional ethics & principles.

Auto Rickshaw Diplomacy

The Real Inspiration!

This note of mine purely intends to express my respectful gesture to one of my friends & his wife and to inspire all the readers to practice it & appreciate such acts whenever they come across, in their lives!

I know Sri Suresh Kumar since I came to Hyderabad in August, 2002. He was a rick driver in the narrow lanes of twin cities hailing basically from Thiruvananthapuram. He was introduced to me by one of our common friends who used to work in GE’s BPO arm (Later became Genpact). Sri Suresh Kumar is a graduate and quite a knowledgeable person, who is well read too. He easily should have been in a good organization in a far better position with his knowledge & skill levels. However, he was an auto rickshaw driver with a difference for the reasons better known to him. Once you use his services, you will become addicted as he offers lot of value additions with personal touch! When I was introduced to him by my friend Sri Venu, he was reading ‘The Hindu’ News paper sitting in his rickshaw! A brief introduction and five minutes down the line, he made me a fan of him!!

Sri Suresh Kumar has helped me a lot in settling down in Hyderabad and guided me on many issues to resolve and move on…! Quickly we became thick friends and I understood that in addition to rickshaw driving, he owns 3 more ricks, which is given out for daily rent and he also finances rick drivers across the city! Apart from this, he had a chit fund business as well!

God had much different things for him in store! Times had changed suddenly for him as he went into ruffles on finance recovery with the rick drivers and as a chain reaction; it affected his chit payments & overall credibility. However, he moved on with great struggle till he reached a point, where he had to take up a small time job as a billing clerk in a large steel plant! His wife Laya was also a commerce graduate and worked with a private firm. They were undergoing testing times as there was lot of pressures from the creditors…!

He sold all his ricks to settle some of the major issues and approached each of the pending creditors personally and told that he’ll be able to pay only a tiny amount per month as he is not able to give anything substantial! Many of them protested and demanded settlement through advocate’s notice! Many of his friends like us intervened to help him in convincing these creditors to accept the reality & compromise….!

In the last 5 years, they both (Husband & Wife) struggled hard and managed to move inch by inch and kept servicing their loans along with providing good education to their only son ‘Bharath’! Now, they had cleared all the debts and started saving again!

Now, let me come to the crux of this note!! In the beginning of this turmoil, Sri Suresh used to approach all the close friends like us for short term financial helps and we all had sincerely helped him whenever possible. One of our common friends, Sri Roy, in a critical instance gave his engagement ring to pledge as he was not able to give cash…!! Years passed and as things worsened for Sri Suresh, he couldn’t return the ring! Once, Roy offered to pay the sum and take it back and by then Sri Suresh realized that he had lost the mortgage slip as well!! The day he was searching for the slip, I was there in his house and that day only both I & Laya came to know about this adjustment! Laya immediately offered the only gold chain she had and started crying! Roy got upset and consoled every one by clearly spelling out that he considered relationship important, not the money and that’s the very reason for not asking for it till then!

All these incidents faded from the memory over years till I received an ecstatic call from Roy at around 11.30 PM, about a week back! He was gasping, struggling to conceal his emotions and literally in the verge of crying!! He wanted to meet me immediately and when I reached their home, both Sri Suresh & Laya were also there…! As I had just reached back from work and didn’t even have my dinner, I strode in with a demand of food to Roy’s wife Beulah, who’s very popular for her culinary skills amongst our peer group..! However, there was no response from anyone, as if all of them were in a dream world staring at me without even recognizing my arrival! I felt little odd at the reception and made a huge noise to make my presence felt!

Roy came hurriedly towards me and hugged with big splash of tears! Like everyone there, I too became emotional and after the initial spurt was over, he had shown me his engagement ring engraved with the name ‘Beulah’..!

I believe that the thankful glitter in the eyes of Roy & Beulah at that moment was the best ever blessings showered on this amazing couple and their only son ‘Bharath’ for the years to come! Because it was not just thanking this special couple, but it was an expression of gratitude to the ‘Almighty’ for reinforcing our values and beliefs….for which we have been fighting this world all through our lives!

Still I’m struck by the marvelous act of this couple, which not only inspires Roy and family to keep up their helping nature, but all of us as well….!

(This is based on true incident. However, the names are all changed to respect the privacy of the individuals)

VVIPs and Laws/ Rules of our Great Land

It is with a heavy heart that I’m forced to write this note when the aftermath of the sad demise of the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh is taking place. India had been the country of Maharajas and lots of so called privileged people at the cost of millions of homeless and deprived sections. In the modern democratic India, we come across new avatars of Maharajahs, in the forms of democratically elected representatives of people and the bureaucrats who serve them (not the people).

We, the common citizens of India get our thin temperament tested, whenever our beloved leaders are frisked or questioned inside (very unusually) or outside the country. We take it as an offensive towards our prestige/ ego, self esteem or whatsoever it is called…?! We immediately tend to compare the sops we offer all those so called VVIPs from abroad (Many a times, even the security guards are garlanded) and cry that we are offering this facility of exempting the law for just an individual and we expect them to do the same for our politicians. When they call a spade a spade, we make lots of noise and of late, we try to give all these incidents a colour of racism. However, in most of the cases (if not all), the truth is that the outside world understands the purpose of the rule and act accordingly, regardless of the personal charisma or fan following of the individual…!!

There are very stringent and far sighted rules made by our predecessors for the ultimate safety and security of the citizens of India and there have been continuous amendments incorporated according to the varying contexts, technologies and market gaps. However, what I noticed is the confidence/ guts of influential people who flout any law with the help of either money or power.

People who violate the laws/ rules on security checks or making it controversial when checked do not understand the purpose of every such checks and by flouting it they not only put themselves in danger, but also others, who are present there.

When it comes to air safety, despite the fact that there is a ban/ warning on flying in adverse conditions by DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), most of the VVIPs push their way through without understanding the serious consequences of such a move. This is because our VVIPs do not properly understand/ realize the danger or the possible consequences of such decisions.

Let me quote some relevant parts from an article published in Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad dated 6^th September, 2009 for your info….

“Helicopter pilots agree that even in cases where VIPs become adamant, it is bureaucratic and political hangers on who are the bigger problem. ‘Kuchh karo jee’, they will insist even when you have told them the weather is impossible.”

“I have known senior politicians and bureaucrats to stomp in frustration and start shouting when flights have to be cancelled.”

“He refused to listen so we took off only to encounter dense clouds and lightening soon. His confidence turned to panic and he screamed ‘Wapas chalo! Wapas chalo!’. Half an hour later, we were back in the airport, where we started from…”

These are the various accounts of experiences by some of the senior pilots who fly VVIPs across the country.

Now, we need to set up a permanent mechanism for continuous education to all those who fly frequently on the norms with the examples and video clips to keep everyone’s memory afresh on such issues. Most of them ignore the warnings to keep up their schedule, but fail to understand that it can cease their schedule forever…!! In the process, these VVIPs put the entire crew’s life in danger too. This is very sad and our people should realize that every rule is made with a purpose and it should be followed to serve the purpose.

Another suggestion evolved out of various discussion groups is to have a very stringent law and more stringent execution to cancel the license of the pilots who fly despite the warning by DGCA. This may give the pilots some firmness to respond to such pressures…!!

At the same time, the people who are supposed to execute the rule should be educated to understand the purpose of the rule and interpret it logically to serve the purpose of the rule and not just to follow the rule blindly to block the public/ public servants in the pretext of a rule….!!

As an irony of life, I shall write about some funny experiences later, where the rules are followed vigorously to deny or deprive people of their facilities without understanding the purpose of it.