Nomination for BlogAdda Award

The Queen Bee and the Innocent Scapegoats

All my readers should have seen Bee Houses and the behaviour of Queen Bee. If not, kindly observe it at the next possible opportunity. I had seen my farmer friend Mohanettan shifting a complete Bee House by just capturing the Queen Bee and putting it in an empty match box and transporting it in his bike. Along with him and his bike, the entire battalion of Bees travels to the new destination!

At last, after such a huge hue & cry, Bansal had submitted his resignation. He was asked to do so by the Prime Minister. And, the Prime Minister was asked to do so by Sonia! Now, if you take this Government’s track record you will see some of the wonderful ministers had either quit under scams or still facing charges.

The crooks in politics mostly get away with their corrupt practices because they know how to tackle an accusation and also to manage an enquiry well. This had been the tradition of Indian politics across party lines for years together. Of late, when Manmohan Singh and his colleagues took charge, it was inspiring to see that many of the ministers were falling in qualified class and they were having a clean back ground. Still there were some of the veteran corruption kings as well in the ministry from both coalition parties and congress. Surprisingly, if you see the number of ministers who had to face scam charges, most of them (Not all) have been these people with clean track records?! To people who look at the surface of it, it is quite natural to feel that these people have transformed themselves at the corridors of power. But, there are quite a few unanswered queries for anyone who would like to think beyond the shallow waters…

See the scam matrix and the names and correlate it with the following queries….

Congress	S.No.	Name	Scam Gate	Remarks
	1	A K Antony	Tatra, Augusta Westland and more to come.
	2	Pawan Kumar Bansal	Railway Board appointments
	3	Ashwini Kumar	Cover Up of Investigation on Coal Gate Scam.
	4	ShashI Tharoor	Acquiring sweat equity for his girlfriend before she became his wife.
	5	P Chidambaram	2G and more to come.
	6	P C Chacko	JPC Report Adulteration
	7	Sheila Dixit	Delhi CM – Scams from CWG and so on.
	8	Salman Khurshid	As Law Minister, Scam of the trust headed by his wife came up. Tried to cover up & justify Robert Vadra during DLF Scam came up. As Foreign Affairs Minister, multiple flip ups in the case of accused Italian Naval officers who killed fisher men in Kerala.
	9	Manmohan Singh	2G, Coal Gate, Cover up of Coal Gate enquiry report, etc.

1. How can people with clean images made over their life time forego it for corrupt money which they had never touched so far in their life-time owing to the principles they upheld through their political career?
2. It is unbelievable that people who had ditched their close colleagues for being corrupt and upheld their clean image had gone berserk after money at the peak of their political careers??!
3. Sheila Dixit, just after her first term was not in the good books of Sonia, but she was loved by the people for her development works. However, after she came back for the second term, overnight political drama made her favourite of the high command and then onwards her public image declined sharply, thanks to multiple scams including the Common Wealth Games. Remember, she was the one who received appreciation for Delhi Metro ‘on time’ commissioning and she had never intervened during Mr. Sreedharan’s clean execution of the project. Her transformation into a corrupt politician after she became blue eyed baby of the high command spins lots of questions to the common people of India, naturally. In fact, there was a period when she was not sharing dais with the party President (rather vice versa) and was rumoured to resign from the CM post! 

All the above factors indicate to the involvement of the Party Leadership in successfully transforming some of the Country’s cleanest politicians into the most corrupt individuals?! We the AAM AADMI (Mango People as per Vadra’s definition) of this country should sense this as a wakeup call as British had looted India for centuries together after Moguls.  Beware, now it is time for another to loot India, if we do not wake up and resist. 

Induction of Culture – Limitless & Unconditional Methods

After a long gap, I had the opportunity to be there for the temple festival at Pallassana, which was an integral part of our lives during our childhood. It was nostalgic to watch Sri. Chandrasekhara Varrier’s awesome performance with his natural ease!  It was exciting to meet M/s. Unnikrishnan, Narayanan and Madhu after quite some time. Witnessing the stamps of time on each of them had inspired me to search for lost hair locks on my head as well!!

However, it was sad to notice that the number of days of Kathakali performance had been cut down to three instead of traditional five due to poor turnout of audience. Even for these three days, the audience presence was 1/4^th of its usual turnout?! When we discussed about it, there have been many reasons popping out for this deterioration (which has been gradual over last 3 – 4 years) and felt very sorry about the state of affairs.

The inspiration for writing this note was actually something very interesting and different. This is a reiteration of what I have been advocating earlier in my article regarding induction of culture; http://indpad.blogspot.in/2012/02/inducing-culture-in-young-minds.html . I wrote that post after watching an interview of Sri. Vellodi (The first Indian Ambassador to Tanzania) and I mentioned there that we Pallassanites are lucky to get such cultural induction through these temple festivities and performing arts, which is actually missing in the current system of education. In fact, Mr. Vellodi was very logically insisting on introduction of such a subject in the syllabus of the current education system.

Coming back to ‘Kalithattu’ (The stage where Kathakali is performed), I met Mr. Benedict ^* , (who’s at least 5+ years junior to me in school) at this temple ground watching Kathakali with his wife and children. I was meeting him after at least 5 years, though his parents lived quite nearby! But the most amazing fact was the revelation that he’s been quite a fan of ‘Kathakali Padhams’ (the verses) and I was awestruck at the knowledge he was having on the subject and my interaction became more interesting when he told that he had gone to Kottakkal and other places to watch Kathakali  performances! It was all the more refreshing to see the entire family there and he told me that his wife insisted on seeing Kathakali as she had heard quite a lot from him and became curious to know more about it. I also realized that such classical folk arts have audience at various planes which, ordinary people like me would find very difficult to express, because in the midst of our interaction, he was getting impatient when artistes started performing ‘Manodharmam’ as he was keen to listen to the verses! Earlier, he even explained some of the verses for me as I couldn’t make out from the recital by Sri. Narayanan. Then I moved onto the front side of the stage, where the crowd was very less unlike my earlier experiences! Standing on the side, I was watching beautiful Manodharmam by Sri. Varrier and I met Kuttan, one of the connecting links of our generation with all these festivities. I was introduced to Sri. Kesavan Kundliar (Very famous for his ‘Parasurama’), who was offering a live explanation of the meaning of the Manodharmam performed on the stage, which made it more interesting. He had also discussed regarding various ‘Shlokas’ on which ‘Manodharmam’ is based. Now, I could feel the next plane of sensitivity which is more comprehensive and enjoyable.

These experiences enhanced my conviction about the cultural thread these festivities used to play in all our lives despite our diverse socio-economic-religious backgrounds. These festivities contributed a lot to induce and nurture culture inside each of us, unconditionally. Whether the organizers knew it or not, this played a pivotal role in moulding our characters!! I think it is time now for all of us to give back this limitless love to the society for the sake of our younger generation, unconditionally.

Every art form had undergone tremendous changes in order to sustain itself and to keep it updated and attractive to the changing pattern of interests and sensitivity planes of its audiences. While in Hyderabad, during some interstate cultural exchange programme, I had seen a lot of welcome experiments with effective use of technology in classical art forms like ‘Chakyar Koothu’ etc., where they introduced a side screen with the dialogues and live explanations of ‘Mudras’ performed on stage. It was very useful even for those who were watching it for the first time. We should also provide proper seating arrangements for the audience to encourage them to come to such public places. Let’s do our best to retain this intuitive fiber created by the legends of the past.

(^*The original names are changed in order to respect the privacy of the individuals.)

Growth Management in Hospitals

Last few months have been ‘Hospital Season’ for me, thanks to health issues of own self and others, one after the other! This used to happen very often in my life since very young age and I have developed an expertise in hospital care & support services with some basic understanding of many do’s and don’ts, while in hospital. I don’t know how many people agree with me when I say that there are many skill sets required to effectively assist an in – patient of a hospital as a by-stander. I had developed some of those required skill – sets over a period of time and could use this expertise effectively to avoid many mishaps!

I shall give you some sample scenarios for you to understand the importance of above said requirement of skill – sets.

1)   This was quite a long time back in a super specialty hospital in Coimbatore, where I was a by-stander for one of my close relatives, who was admitted there after a series of cardiac arrests, brought there after unnecessary complications created by some of the old time famous local hospitals of Palakkad (They don’t exist now).  On the 3^rd day of admission, the patient was shifted to the room after some very critical moments in the ICU. The patient was found diabetic and asked to completely avoid sugar and I went out to fetch medicines from the nearby pharmacy after the Doctor’s visit. In the meanwhile, the dietician and a duty nurse visited the patient and for some odd reasons, they had a different patient profile with them. They asked to purchase baby food and lots of protein rich food for the patient along with another set of medicines. When I came back the patient handed over another list of item to be bought for him. I went through the diet chart (even the patient diet was to be administered by the duty nurse as per the hospital system) and the corresponding list of medicines and food supplements. Immediately I had a doubt and rushed to the doctor’s cabin and shown him the list. The doctor called both the nurse and the dietician and gave a piece of his mind for the blunder they had done. It would have been a disaster if it was not brought to Doctor’s notice as the patient who is already weak and whose heart was going through a recovery process, would have struggled further by sudden shoot up in the sugar levels in the blood. This hospital was in the initial stages of growth at that point of time. Now, they are one among the veterans in the industry.

2)      Very recently, I had been in a leading hospital of Palakkad, again as by-stander. Even before my relative got admitted I had to accompany her regularly for various diagnosis processes. It was here my Mom underwent a minor surgery, years back and the quality of services and the cleanliness were appreciated very much on those days. However, the whole scenario is changed now, as years passed by….! It is overcrowded and the expansion (construction) is already on and it was quite difficult to get a room there and at last when we got a shared accommodation, we realized the pathetic state of its affairs. In fact, I was left alone at this room when my relative was undergoing a surgery and the other patient in the adjacent bed got discharged. When the housekeepers came to clean the room, I asked them to just dampen the cloth and wipe the partition and when they did that, all those basic stains vanished and it looked new. They themselves were appreciating each other for the new look of this wooden partition. It reflects that there’s a clear gap in supervision of the process.

3)      Another funny incident was that when I requested for a room to one of the front office managers, he was expressing his helplessness and then carried on to mention that many a times, he had helped people and once the room is given, then there would be numerous complaints regarding the facilities. I understood his intolerance about the grievances and also it was sad to realize that the man who’s employed to resolve the issues thinks that he had done a favour by allotting a room to the client?! Above all, having received a favour of getting an accommodation, you are not supposed to demand quality of service…..? Are we living in ‘Banana Republic’?

4)      Another incident is at a practicing local clinic of an integrated health scheme of defense forces, where the crowd is multifold than its optimum capacity. There are lots of systems and processes, but still it should be appreciated about the way it has been handled. There is a whole gamut of scope for improvement, but then with the current facilities and limited manpower, they are doing their best!

5)      The best example was yet to come! I had to be at RCC, Thiruvananthapuram with my relative and then I realized what growth management is and I came across the effectiveness of one of the intuitive employee orientation programme! We keep boasting about various HCM (Human Capital Management) initiatives at corporate places and take pride in providing the best motivation to the manpower through most pampering methods! However, I witnessed more meaningful HCM initiatives at RCC, though it is a Govt. of India undertaking and most of the employees are permanent with assured salaries regardless of their performance! I don’t say that everything is perfect and flawless here and of course, there’s huge scope for re-engineering of certain processes with the modern perspectives. But then, given the volume and crowd they are handling, I have limited words to express my awe towards each one of them!! Once again, the most distinctive characteristic about this place is the soft words they utter to the people who visit here, despite the huge work pressure they carry and this quality is uniform across the staff right from the top to the bottom.

I have only one suggestion to all those corporate hospitals: Realize your growth and empower your employees to effectively manage that growth through consistent trainings. Otherwise, the growth will turn out to be negative! 

The Business of Better Living

In a remote village, recently I came across a 7 day camp of a well-known cult, who trains people to lead a better living. The venue was an auditorium owned by one of my relatives, who had given this place at no cost to the organizers as a token gesture towards the good will of the organization they represented. My inquisitiveness made me observe the characteristics of the people who attended the programme with utmost dedication and without any absenteeism.  It was an insight to me that regardless of the social backdrops, there was quite a heterogeneous mix of people who attended the programme; that too despite paying a handsome fee for registration! First of all, I was surprised to see the huge number of people turn out, who religiously attended patiently till the end of the programme and also the excitement they carried all the way! I think for most of them who attended, it has been awesome to look at the minute points of life which they had experienced or tried never before in their lives and the very fact that they are able to look at life through somebody else’s populist lenses, which is well crafted or designed to suit the most common person’s lifestyle so that they can easily relate themselves with the programme and its standards.

I have been appreciating such organizations and their efforts to induce the thought process of refinement and the resource pool they generate to further expand their services in order to reach more people. I had personally witnessed transformation of many people, who never had any perspective of depth of life and its values, into a completely different, refined attitude towards life!

While these are the much appreciated works of such cults, the ugly parts are also gradually on the rise…?! The moment these cults become establishments, corruption creeps in and the intoxication of power (on people from every walk of life) makes it more vulnerable to unethical practices!

When I met some of the people who attended the above said programme, I realized the excitement they are undergoing and I sincerely hoped that they will all practice the refinement they had been taught in this programme. My skepticism about this is because I know some of the organizers of these camps of different cults, who are the synonyms of ‘ego’ and ‘negativity’…?! The question is not just about them, but if their long association with such cult does not change their attitude, I doubt how many of these participants would be the real ‘transformed souls’? This is the base of my skepticism about the dilution of values in such establishments and the amount of corruption which in turn lead to the deterioration of quality and class.

I do write about this with pain in the heart as I had been one of the admirers of such neighbourhood groups and cults which had contributed in improving the thought processes and thus the quality of many lives among the middle class, who once had strong values and in the verge of losing it gradually. In fact, it has been very easy to invoke such values among people from the middle class. These organizations had created amazingly excellent models of self – refinement and it had improved spiritual, mental and physical health of many ordinary people and for me, I looked at it as a hope for many millions of followers of such cults! Now, any dilutions in the quality will actually backfire and affect the entire species of cults and hopes of millions!

Chasing DMRC Out – The Undercurrents

In the recent past, the media have been celebrating the controversy regarding Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL) by reporting every bit of news and non-news about it – Left, Right and Centre! Being a close observer, I felt that we as a society need to respond to such issues more creatively rather than just political gimmicking and forgetting it forever, once media loses interest in it.

At the outset, let me introduce Mr. E. Sridharan and his background to put the thoughts in right perspective for the readers of this article.

What we Know/ told in the media time and again:

·   Sreedharan is the man who took up the challenge of building Konkan Railway (which was discarded by British and later by international infra firms) and completed it on time, rather before time. To achieve this, as he told many times, he had to build a strong team for execution, who had steel nerves.

·

      He is the man who built a dream, world – class metro rail (The first of its kind and class in the country) in Delhi, again on time with very minimum hindrance to an already messy Delhi Traffic. I had witnessed this personally during my frequent stays in Delhi during 2005 – 2006.

What many people Miss Out:

·      He was the person behind Bombay Local Train to become operational on the third day after the serial blasts. This was considered impossible by any standards before and after it by Railways’ standards. Way back in an interview published in a daily, Sreedharan thanked the then Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav for the free hand he had given for execution, which made all the difference.

·     

      DMRC was the consultant (Like for KMRL) for Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited and the day after finalization of the project concluded, Sreedharan called for a Press Meet and publicly announced his displeasure in continuing with the project as he accused HMRL of favouritism and foul play in nexus with Maytas Infra (A Satyam Group Company). The very next day he was given a defamatory notice by HMRL.

·   However, very soon there was India’s largest corporate fraud exposed through Satyam Chairman Ramalinga Raju’s confession about riding a tiger and not able to climb down and along with that the dubious deals of Maytas also got exposed. Later the whole project was scrapped and as recently as in 2010, it was re-tendered and L & T has taken the contract. Two years down the line, the project is progressing in snail’s pace, thanks to lack of leadership from experts of Sreedharan’s class, with straight forward attitude.

·      

       Recently there was a claim by ‘Namma Metro’ of Bengaluru regarding their learnt expertize and they even claimed that instead of considering DMRC, KMRL should consider Bengaluru Metro for KMRL execution. The DMRC was the consultant there and during execution phase ‘Namma Metro’ had taken the execution job on their own, expelling DMRC citing that ‘Namma Metro’ wanted to build expertize within for future expansion and maintenance (The same reason being told in the case of KMRL, as well!). The fact of the matter is that there have been very vicious interventions and there have been 5000 trees cut for the project, which further dented the climatic equilibrium of Bengaluru (This was against the primary study and recommendations of DMRC) and in the process of building expertize, they could complete only 6.7 Kms (15% only) out of the total 42 Kms proposed. This is against the initial target of 14 Kms set based on the feasibility study for the phase – 1 (Three years).

Though people, who hear this theory of ‘Expertize Building’, would definitely fall in for the genuineness of it and nod their heads for it, they should also be made aware of the above facts. In fact, what makes these groups of unholy nexus to hate Mr. Sreedharan is the very facts mentioned above and there are lot of under currents which are flexing its muscles to drive Sreedharan & DMRC out by hiring few bureaucrats and some political black sheep.

The moment media drops this issue like a hot cake (which they had done on several issues with the interventions of powerful PR lobbies), it will become another Arushi case and another 2G or many such controversies?!  So, it is we who can keep this cause alive and respond continuously till we achieve our right of getting a world – class transport system.

Tail Piece:

The latest development is that the DMRC had agreed to extend its support in technical guidance and supervision and Sreedharan would be part of this team. This seems to be well crafted strategy to eye-wash the public as there’s a suggestion to constitute a body to define, control and operate the roles and duties of Sreedharan and his team! The funniest point is that the constituted body would have people like Sudheer Krishna, Principal Secretary and other bureaucrats, who had taken clearly sabotaging stands on previous occasions.

Final Point:

Sreedharan would not be a part of the suggested controlling body, which decides the roles and duties of his team and this means that Sreedharan would not have any say in the committee. Obviously, if Sreedharan comes across any kind of restrictions in his operations, he would publicly react and drop it like a hot cake (as he had done on previous occasions) and all the conspirers would become happy as thorn in their flesh gets removed on its own! If he sticks on despite controls imposed and a reduced role by the above said committee, it would be suicidal for him, as he will become a scapegoat for any failures and delays due to the unholy alliances. In both the cases, the project would suffer multilevel setbacks.

Inducing Culture in the Young Minds!

I recently bumped into DD Malayalam Channel at 11.30 in the night after I reached home after a brainstorming skype session with the client and got hooked on for a good one hour+, watching an interview with Tanzania’s first Indian Ambassador, respected Shree M.A. Vellodi, who’s living his retired life in Chennai. He is officially invited by the President of Tanzania as state guest for their Golden Jubilee celebrations of their National formation.

At first, it was his pure valluvanad diction, which pulled me in, and with the interviewer Dr. Nedungadi also speaking the same lingo, it was a treat to listen on! As he went on, he was passionately talking about the need for youngsters to understand the culture of our state through its history in the formative years so that it gives a better perspective throughout their life.

One more aspect I had noticed throughout the interview was his positive attitude and refinement. While he was critical about the cynicism of looking down upon the state by many of us who live outside Kerala, he was sad about it rather than being angry. The gracefully old man who travelled across the world was sad about people being cynical of the state rather than acknowledging many good achievements. He reiterated that it’s this lack of knowledge of the history and culture of the state which bereaves the pride of being Malayali from each one of us. He insisted to induct ‘Kerala History’ as a subject in the syllabus of 6^th or 7^th standard in our curriculum just for one year so that young minds adore it through rest of their lives. In fact, he even suggested  a book for the same, Shree Krishna Iyer’s ‘Kerala Charithram’, which is a very lean book written in simplest of Malayalam.

At this juncture of the interview, it was a reconnect for me with Pallassana and I realized that even though the education system did not induce the culture in us, the village did! Pazhayakavu, Puthan Kavu, Vettakkaruman, Sabhamadam, Shiva – Vishnu temples of east – west villages respectively did the trick of inducing the culture, traditions and values in each one of  us through festivals, when Kanyarkalis, Kathakalis and other folk art forms were performed. Even the remote influence of Iruppakkal, Vaamala, Maariyamma and Chudala Karuppan had a strong influence on all of us, which makes us proud of our small, quiet world within this large, busy World! Even the only mosque near my house was influential to open my eyes towards the sensibilities of other religious practices in a cohesive living environment. During my school days, we have been an integral part of their ‘Ramadan’ month celebrations and I used to get ‘Ramzan Pordridge’ every evening and it was tasty for me with its spicy flavour!

Shree Vellodi was correct in his views and our little Pallassana is a classic example of the his view point. As he said, it’s not just in Kerala, but in every state, there is a need to introduce this system of learning their own culture through their rich history, to re-induce the pride of being Indians.

Corporate Communications and Jargons

I wanted to write this note for some time. My interactions with lot of teams who works with me triggered to take a determined effort to make this note for all those youngsters, who’re seeking jobs and also for those who’ve just landed at their first jobs.

  

I request all those who work in senior positions at various organizations to add more value through their comments to this collection of vocabulary of jargons used in corporate communications.

Jargons have been part of human culture since ages and of late, it became the order of the day in corporate communications as the conventional and conservative business practices withered away with new thrust of information technology and the work culture built around it. Many a times, in my professional journey, I came across shockers of such acronyms and found myself humiliated for lack of knowing it. Things are different now and anyone can google about anything and in the most likelihood, one will end up with many answers and sometimes, it becomes confusing to choose the right one.

However, there are lot of acronyms used in new era ‘SMS’ and ‘Chat’ communications, which I’m not touching at all, as it is not very important in the corporate communication at this point of time.

So…here we go….

S.No	Usage	Expansion	Context
1	PFA	Please Find Attached	Mail Attachments
2	ETA	Expected Time of Arrival	Flight schedules/ Project Scenario
3	ASAP	As Soon As Possible	Mails/ Correspondence
4	FYI	For Your Information	Forwarded mails/ Files
5	FYI & A	For Your Information and Action	Forwarded mails & files
6	TL	Team Lead	Projects
7	TL	Top Line	Finance projections (Gross Revenues/ Profits)
8	BL	Branch Lead	Sales & Marketing
9	BL	Bottom Line	Finance Projections (Nett Revenues/ Nett Profits)
10	FYP	For Your Perusal	Reporting/ Submissions
11	FYP & A	For Your Perusal & Action	Reporting/ Submissions
12	PFB	Please Find Below	Mails/ Correspondence
13	UP	Under Production	IT/ Film Industry (Very context specific)
14	UT	Unit Test	Education & Software Testing
15	UT	Union Territory	Geography & Politics
16	UAT	User Acceptability Test	Software Testing/ Quality Assurance
17	PPt	Power Point/ Paper Presentation	Corporate Presentations/ Seminars
18	JFM	Jan – Feb – Mar (Quarter)	Sales & Marketing/ Finance Projections
19	AMJ	Apr – May – Jun (Quarter)	Sales & Marketing/ Finance Projections
20	JAS	Jul – Aug – Sep (Quarter)	Sales & Marketing/ Finance Projections
21	OND	Oct – Nov – Dec (Quarter)	Sales & Marketing/ Finance Projections
22	PLC	Product Life Cycle	Product Management
23	TQM	Total Quality Management	Quality Policy
24	QA	Quality Assurance	Quality Management
25	CAP	Corrective Action Process/ Programme	Corporate Counseling & Rehabilitation pgm
26	Pgm	Programme	Programs/ Package etc.
27	Id/ ID	Identity	Identity Card/ Code
28	PR	Public Relations	Corporate Media Management
29	PR	Please Revert	Corporate Communications
30	KUG	Key User Group	Project Scenario
31	PM	Project Manager	Projects

Once again, I request all the readers to contribute more into this world of Jargons. If this was useful and interesting,  kindly write your comments.