The President Question - Online debate goes even as media seems to maintain a studied silence!

I had written earlier regarding my concerns on the process in which the Presidential candidate was being chosen (Jun 13, 2007, Desicritic - Selecting the Indian President - Loyalty Above Pride) and later with a hope that perhaps whoever is the new incumbent, the good precedence set by Kalam be followed (Jun 23, 2007, Desicritic - Will India Have Another People's President?) .

At that time I was not much focussed on the person being proposed as much as the process of arriving at the proposal, but, the online discussions that have followed since then including a few press reports seem to indicate that there a few skeletons in the cupboard of the current favourite that needs to be looked into. I thought that these are issues that those who proposed (and in this case, decide) names will be careful about. Apparently not, the Business Standard news item talks about a few of the skeletons, bloggers have been far more forthright not having to adhere to any bureaucratic norms or dependent on government advertisements for their survival, so, we have some strong writings, 'Why Prathiba Patil should not be the President', 'You may make her the President...but you cannot make us respect her', 'Prathiba not for President',...resulting in an online campaign that has been launched called, 'India demands answers first'.

As I haven't seen much of this in the regular media and only among bloggers, wanted to flag this.

De-Classified CIA documents on Communist Party of India

A few years back I remember reading a column by an ex-Communist party member who questioned the patriotic credentials of the communist parties in India and who had chronicled (there was a reference to a book, I have since then lost the article, anyone who knows more on this can shed light) their biased behaviour particularly during the freedom struggle. Certain facts that shocked on me included how the Communists wanted Independence being granted to India to be withheld for some time as Russia was still recovering from the War!

Of course all of are aware that though the grass root communist movement representing people often fights for the local issues, the national level party seems best suited to be in the opposition, as their protests are always louder than their positive contributions. While the 30 years of the Communist rule in Bengal is being celebrated, here is some news that might upset the celebrations. The recently de-classified documents from the CIA archives apparently contain the following revelations. They have been brought to light by a right of center blogger group from India and a detailed article on this issue is available here :

"HK Surjeet influenced by Russia to setup an underground organization

CPI did proceed to recruit a secret organization within the Indian Army

China Russia insisted that the CPI must develop a standby apparatus capable of armed resistance, while intensifying penetration of Indian Military forces.

With the PLA now present along the Indian Border the Indian Party had a channel of support for Armed Operations and a potential liberator in the event of mass uprisings - 13 Sept 1959

4 powerful radio sets had been installed in the office of the China Review in Calcutta to listen to broadcasts from Peking

Chinese Financial Subsidies to sections of the CPI particularly the left faction strongholds in West Bengal

a foreign supply base was now available for the underground organizations with Chinese occupation of Tibet and other frontier areas

letter asking for collaboration in Indian underground organization work aimed at an eventual revolution, because China has a border with India and can provide arms and supplies

Also Jaipal Singh, head of the illegal organization within the Indian Army decided to reactivate his organization in May 1961 following the hard left faction gaining control of the party"

Need for Sex Education according to Gandhiji

Yet again the Nation starts another debate on the relevance of sex education in schools. I recall the controversy in Tamilnadu two years back (Khusboo the actress who started off the debate then is again in the center of the storm yet again on the same subject I am told). Now the debate stems from the states of MP and Karnataka (and Punjab just after this blog was written). It is ironic that we continue to allow obscurantist politicians to make decisions on issues that ought to be made at the level of class teachers. Any school teacher will tell you today the need for sex education in schools, with the growing influence of all forms of media amongst the students even in remote parts of the country, there is a definite need for such an education. The problem perhaps stems because of the local cultural issues. If parents and elders at home do not permit nude pictures at home, how can it be permitted in the classroom? could be a genuine question from someone concerned. Perhaps one then has to look for answers from someone who understood the relevance of the issue and also had the highest regard for conserving the local traditions and cultures, Gandhiji.

It is interesting to note what Gandhiji had to say on this subject (strangely I found it among a rather short list of writings that the official Gandhi Samadhi website chose to display):

What place has ... instruction in sexual science in our educational system, or has it any place there at all? Sexual science is of. two kinds - that which is used for controlling or overcoming the sexual passion, and that which is used to stimulate and feel it. Instruction in the former is as necessary a part of child's education as the latter is harmful and dangerous and fit therefore only to be shunned. All great religions have rightly regarded kama as the arch-enemy of man, anger or hatred coming only in the second place. According to the Gita, the latter is an offspring of the former. The Gita, of course, uses the word kama in its wider sense of desire. But the same holds good of the narrow sense in which it is used here.

This, however, still leaves unanswered the question, i.e. whether it is desirable to impart to young pupils a knowledge about the use and function of generative organs. It seems to me that it is necessary to impart such knowledge to a certain extent. At present they are often left to pick up such knowledge anyhow with the result that they are misled into abusive practices. We cannot properly control or conquer the sexual passion by turning a blind eye to it. I am, therefore, strongly in favour of teaching young boys and girls, the significance and right use of their generative organs. And, in my own way, I have tried to impart this knowledge to young children of both sexes for whose training I was responsible.

Who should teach this true science of sex? Clearly, he who has attained mastery over his passions. To teach astronomy and kindred science we have teachers who have gone through a course of training in them and are masters of their art. Even so, we must have as teachers of sexual science, i.e. the science of sex-control, those who have studied it and have acquired mastery over self. Even a lofty utterance that has not the backing of sincerity and experience will be inert and lifeless, and will utterly fail to penetrate and quicken the hearts of men, while the speech that springs from self-realization and genuine experience is always fruitful.

That is Quintessential Gandhi for you! It gives a solution to the states that object to sex education on cultural lines. If we only had more content in education that was rooted in the local culture, many such subjects can be incidentally attended to without much ado. The problem stems out of our adopting a system of education where every sphere of knowledge has to pass through the lens of 'science', hence much of what needs to be taught with care and concern cannot be accommodated, the values of care and concern don't count for much in science.

Later
Coincidence - just within couple of hours after posting this blog my news aggregator produced this news from Taiwan. Interesting to see the terms adopted by the ministers there, 'fostering correct attitude towards the opposite sex' is the objective and the course itself is called, 'courses in gender relations'. So much more sensitive.

Goa Elections!

A small group of activists took up the task of scrutinizing each of the candidates in every one of the constituencies of Goa and used the web medium to broadcast (apart from printed work in three languages) to ensure that at least the public are aware of the corruption. The web site contains records, the submission of the candidate to the election authorities, etc.

Whether the Goa election was influenced by their work I don't know, (and how long will the wafer thin majority last with almost every MLA having the possibility of becoming a minister) but, it certainly holds a lesson for others in other parts of the country, lookup www.goavotes.info

Survey on Queues in Banks!

Way back in the early days of 'customer friendly banking', maybe around 1995-96 I remember writing to a customer service center of a nationalized bank complaining how I had to wait for over 15 minutes to complete a transaction where with additional queues it would have just taken about 2 minutes. I really didn't expect anything, but, after a few weeks I was surprised to receive a letter from them stating that during very crowded times they do have additional counters, but, maybe it was not in operation at the time of my visit, any which way they were sorry for wasting my time! Rather neat. Another time, I was in a bank where the teller was unnecessarily delaying issuing of a Draft and I started taking down the customer service number when the branch manager (who had observed me) walked to me and enquired whether I had a problem and asked me that I first have to approach him before I write to the customer service cell. Both were nationalized banks.

The conditions today if anything is nowhere as promising. My bank handles large number of pension accounts and obviously at the beginning of each month there is a large crowd of elderly who are there to collect their monthly pension / returns from investments (the equivalent of a salary for many and in poorer families perhaps that which sustains the family too) and they are subjected to extreme humiliation.

Firstly most of our banks are not designed to cater to people. If there are large number of accounts, then it makes sense to have the bank in a larger premises with seating arrangements. We don't need sofa's in banks, more like the metal chairs that are now part of every railway station in the country. Our banks for some strange reasons seem to have less than a tenth of seating capacity to its highest transaction time crowd. So, obviously people will have to stand around. More people standing around in a closed environment always gives the impression of something is going wrong or about to go wrong.

Second, the stupid system of part-computerised, part-manual method that is still followed in many nationalized banks. Either they become fully computerized or they switch back to their manual systems. Only our banks can have the 'system is not working, we don't know when it will be all right' at the middle of a busy business hour as a valid transaction excuse. I have been a victim several times of this malfunctioning system. People have no way to know when the computers will work, because there is no resident computer service personnel nor does any of the bank employees ever get trained on how to tackle things. In one branch I saw the entire staff convene at a safe distance from the customers just to ensure that they are not lynched. While at that I should also mention the utter unreliability of some of the ATMs (some other time).

Third, banks don't believe in treating people as customers. Still like the policemen in the roads, they tend to treat customers as some kind of low level creatures on whom they are bestowing a great reward by transacting with them. I often wonder why not organize all the elders who are regular pensioners in a branch and make them manage the crowd coming for the pension transactions at least. They can help the bank to manage the crowd during those busy two - three days and ensure that the pensioners are also felt like they are important to the bank. It can only provide yet another local platform for the elders to interact from and perhaps may find ready volunteers.

Four, corruption is high in banks. So,what is surprising?! The worst thing for some one in a queue is to find this sneeky oily little rat who will always go past every line right into the cabin to get his work done and even flirt with the rest of the staff. Nothing can be more frustrating if you are 65 years old, come early in the morning to withdraw your pension, have been issued that stupid metal token and while you wait in the queue for over an hour, there is this chap sneaking in and out in a jiffy with his transaction over. Some banks have touts hanging around the place who in the process of helping the customers also broadcast and manage the corruption of the bank officials.

Customer service call centers doesn't work. At least the one bank I have tried, I have to go through so many automated menu's that at the end of it when I reach the message that says, 'wait and some one will attend to you', I feel like kicking someone.

Despite its longer queues, I think the railways with their innovative music chair arrangement have made the ticket booking not such a bad exercise. People have been made to feel comfortable and perhaps this adds to how they behave at the counter.

Queues are unavoidable in a heavily populated country, but, queues can be managed only if those who are servicing the queue were to respect those who are part of the queue I feel. If there is no respect for the pensioner in the bank, the ticket seeker in the railway station or the poor women who is about to collect her annual government gratis from the tehsildar office (or in the RTO office or in the ration shop, .....the very many places in which the servant of the government makes people queue up). Couple of years back, Chennai witnessed the tragic death of people in a stampede resulting from bad queue management, a good example of how a badly managed queue behaves badly too.

Now to the survey which does provide some very interesting results. I am particularly surprised that more than 20% have actually rescheduled their business plans because of the queue. One should estimate the loss of productivity and loss of opportunity and perhaps extrapolate the economic impact of the queue if possible. Many bank unions start talking of the NPA of large corporate houses whenever there is talk of more private banks, perhaps one should see how many banks are NPAs or contribute towards creating NPAs.

Source: http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jun/07survey.htm
June 07, 2007 09:38 IST

Indians across the country are getting increasingly frustrated and losing their patience with the serpentine queues for banking, ticketing and bill payments.

'Bank' queues have been identified as the single-biggest queue problem by 84 per cent of the respondents to a just-released NCR Corporation Queue Frustration survey conducted by ACNielsen. They spend close to an hour waiting in queues.

This is closely followed by 'ticketing' queues at 80 per cent and 'bill payment' queues at 27 per cent.

The survey also reveals that 26 per cent of the all-India respondents had little patience with service providers too, having switched to another service provider offering better self-service solutions.

The survey also reveals that waiting in queues goes much beyond frustration as 60 per cent of respondents got really angry, 23 per cent respondents admit to have cancelled or rescheduled important business plans, 22 per cent of respondents had an argument, and 20 per cent have pushed in line as a result of queue frustration.

World Environment Day, 2007

What does it mean to us in India?

While the developed world starts to watch its over obese waist line and wants to cut back on its carbon emission, thinks up cheap ways of balancing its consumption such as carbon credits, wants to calculate and reduce even environmental consciousness into a number to measure oneself against and hence feel less guilty ('you know I scored rather well above average in my personal carbon foot print this week, better than most of my neigbours, I am happy'), we in India want to turn every green patch into a concrete foundation if possible.

Our obsession with attracting FDI and facilitating FDI in just about everything, to ensure that those who bring in the solemn FDI can have it easy in every way, that they are provided with the land, water, mines, people, government, ministers, corruption and whatever else they require even before they say a word is today the greatest destructive force against our environment. Our bureaucrats are its carriers and mouth pieces. Our press sees no contradiction to carry news only few days back on the high speed land purchase running to several hundred hectares by MNCs for yet another SEZ promotion and also carry page long 'dedication' to green causes this morning. After all increase in their business and increasing number of pages is a direct affront on trees.

Notional planting of a tree is all that the political bosses have done for many years and as the famous joke goes, maybe they are planting in the same spot every year. Trees disappear in cities and highways in the name of road or building expansion. Chennai's green cover (such as it is) has been challenged like never before through the current road expansion. Some green groups have reduced even planting of trees to number game, there was a celebrated guru planting 'lakhs' of saplings in one day, how many survived is doubtful. Maybe Gurus who promise instant nirvana also think they can create overnight forests. The traditional conservation activities in temples and common lands may only remain part of a memory.

Perhaps ten years back those who spoke of 'development', many NGOs in particular would talk about 'green', 'environment', 'sustainability' as a value that was easy to understand. Currently with the advent of the 'market', these are all but disappearing. 'Market integration' of their 'developmental' agenda has taken over as a priority among many in this field too. Fuel, particularly bio-diesel has crowded the discussions in many environmental discussion groups as a matter of livelihood to communities, the environment in which the communities have dropped from the agenda. The entire perpetuation of the carbon credit has been latched on to by many in the development sector as an opportunity to attract sure money.

Our development today is at the cost of environment and as Gandhiji mentioned, if India ever desires to live the life of America, then all the resources in the world also cannot be enough. But, that is precisely what we are working towards, eventually we may declare that the problem is too many of us, and as the popular columnists TJS George points out, there may not be too distant a future when we start questioning why not reduce the people cover a wee-bit in some non-productive sectors (similar to bringing down tree cover today) so as to bring down needless consumption!