Local Life

If you see a small railway coach, and find hundreds of people sitting, standing or hanging in or around it, then you are no doubt looking at the famous Mumbai Local.
This is not my first stay at Mumbai. I worked here for two years till about a year back, before I came back to my second home Kanpur. But at that time I was lucky enough to give these locals a miss. The distance to my workplace was not much and even that was without the local train in its itinerary. The rare journeys I had to make were planned by making sure that I was at least an hour or two away from the peak hours.
But my love for the city has brought me back to Mumbai and this time fate picked up the places for my home and office such that I don’t have any option other than the Mumbai Local to think of. As per the common man especially from North India, the fact that he is staying at the northern suburbs and his office is in town is way bad than all his worst night mares put together.
For occasional visitors these trains can be a real bad experience with people pushing you around, screaming at you and making bad faces. Indeed it can get scary at times. But if you are brave enough to overcome these initial fears and setbacks you will figure out the proper system and procedures in place and the new people are abused and pushed around only because they are disturbing this dynamic equilibrium.
Here are the few interesting things I figured out in past few weeks of my all new Mumbai experience.

1. First Class and Second Class:

a. As far as the coach is concerned the only difference between the First and Second Class sections of the train is that unlike Second Class, First Class section has cushioned seats, though this does not look like a huge benefit as you might never get a seat to sit in your life time.

b. The few specially marked segments called First Class do have a lot of benefits bundled with them, compared to rest of the Second Class segments.

i. These coaches stop close to the gate or stairs at nearly all the stations. So commuters in these sections have to walk the least to catch the train.

ii. All the fixed platform vendors have their outlets right in front of the area where First Class Section Stops.

iii. At non peak hours if you happen to travel, then you can find far less people in these parts of the train against the rest of the train.

2. Boarding the Local:

a. At the station when ever the train arrives, you see a group of people standing in loosely formed files parallel to the track. Now, boarding a train is big skill

i. Boarding from the first station of the local: If this is the case, make sure you are at the platform atleast 5 to 10 minutes before the scheduled departure of the train. Also try standing in the first line. Standing here though will not ensure that you get a seat but you will surely get a decent place to stand.

ii. If you are boarding from a non-starting station then try being in the second line, and leave the first line for the brave hearts and tough guys of the city. As the train stops, there is a huge rush of people coming out of the train so they take down the first line of defence with them, thus you waiting in the second line are amongst the first ones to get in and have maximum probability of standing on both feet and that too straight. Try boarding at the end or in between and I bet you will find that your one foot is on the floor but can’t find another inch around so that you can place your other foot down.

b. Boarding any train is the total game of speed and determination; if any of the two is missing then, you have to wait for the train till you get a right mix of both the skills. Local stops for just 20 seconds at a station (40 seconds for fast locals) so you know how important the speed is. And to get in along with 20 other competing commuters and that too after making sure you gave way to 15-20 people who are getting out, you have to show determination levels similar to that of an Olympic Gold Medallist.

c. One more thing is that once you start commuting in local and not a random traveller, you will start respecting the time. Like I take a local at 8:08 in the morning and if I get late by even 1 minute, by the domino principle I will be reaching office about 30-40 minutes late. So if you are a commuter in the local you can do anything but disrespect the timings that Railways follow.

3. While on Board:

a. While on board finding a place to sit should surely be considered as the biggest gift of God. It is your day that day; go touch anything it will turn into gold that day.

b. If you are not sitting (which is the most probable case) there is a very high probability that you are standing in the coach. And by standing I mean any position where at least your one leg is on floor and your butt is not resting on anything. Also no matter how comfortably you are standing, still you are starving for some oxygen all the time. Tall people do extract the benefit of their height by sucking out the little amount of oxygen that is available in the upper reaches of the compartment. Shorter guys – God Bless Your Souls.

c. If you are one of the brave and lucky people you can get a chance to stand on the foot board of the local. It is one of the most popular places to travel in local, as you avoid the cramped places inside the compartment and get some fresh air.

d. Then there is an ultimate breed of daredevils who travel on the roof of the coaches, these are seriously “Please Don’t Try At Home” kind of stunts, in which they risk their lives in multiple ways in each single trip.

4. Life in a compartment:

A local compartment gives you an opportunity to look at the culture of the city. Majority of people are commuting with their headphones on. Some people will be singing some nice old songs. You can also find a few religious people singing Bhajans etc. And slowly the whole coach starts singing the same bhajan in sync. In those coaches it looks more like you are travelling in a moving temple than in a local train.

5. Getting Out of the Local:

This is another skilful activity which Mumbai people take up daily. Getting down or not getting down at a station is a decision which one takes even before buying a ticket for the journey. But making sure that you don’t get down at the wrong station or stay stuck in the train at your intended destination is serious business.

a. For getting down at intended station you have to find a guy in front you who is getting down at the same station and have to follow him at all times. And this is to be done at least a station before your destination station else you might run out of time and the train might leave even before you reach the gate. But if another person asks you if you are getting off at that particular station then life is easy, all you have to do is nod in agreement and the pushes from behind will take care of the rest.

b. Now not getting down is a tricky thing, you have two options for avoiding it. You should either switch places with everyone who asks if you are getting down. Remember you have to do this swapping without disturbing the other people around. (Computer Engineers might remember the amount of computation we used to do for the program of swapping two variables without using third, this is a similar case just that instead of variables we are dealing with humans this time). The other option is to stay strong and hold your position no matter how many pushes and punches you get, from people getting in and people getting out.

c. And once you are out of the train you might thing that the plight is over, but the local gives you one last fight though not as severe as before but still a fight. As soon as you come out of the local you will be dragged towards the nearest staircases and then you have to again fight for some space to walk in the direction you intend.

Even after all this Mumbai Local is surely the fastest way to travel, and in just a few weeks time you get used to all this. Then you no more look at it a trouble but as a part of your life. It turns to as normal as breathing, you never notice it but you do. It is surely an experience to feel.

Hail the Father Land!!!

A labourer was asked to describe his American Dream. Here is his reply... “Before I came to America I was told that the roads in America were paved with gold, but when I reached here I found out that the roads were not paved with gold. Indeed they were not paved at all and I was supposed to pave them.”

This is what America is for me. Till this day I believe that the only thing that America is giving to rest of the world is the Great American Dream and in return the whole world lands into this nation and paves the roads there.

Recently, I visited the US consulate in Mumbai. I saw a long never ending queue of Indians standing in front of the gate in the pursuit of the American Dream. But I was shocked to see the way these people were treated. And mind you, these are the people who surely will be helping US both in the short and long term, which is in sorry and a desperate economic condition.

I’ll first explain my previous statement before I go further. The major categories of the people are as follows:

Work Visas: These people work for US companies (directly as an employee or through some domestic company which works for US corporate) thus they are directly helping the bottom lines of the industries and corporate there.
Tourist Visa: Tourism is the industry which most countries look at for revenue as well as employment as the tourists are the cash rich people who are willing to spend large sums on products and services provided by the host country. Also in the times of economic holocausts like these, all the tourists are valued in gold for the hosts.
Dependent Visas: This is group of people who might not be helping in revenue generation for the country but in the times of liquidity crunch and declined demands, they are the people who tend to push the demand in the positive direction.

Now, as I hope you will agree with me that any applicant who is willing to go to US is indeed helping the US economy, I will proceed further to tell you how these people treat Indian Nationals (Residents of the world’s second fastest economy, and the country whose nationals have been creating huge chunk of wealth in US year after year) in front of their consulate.

The friends and relatives were asked to stand on the other end of the road. They were not even allowed to stand across the road (it is a 50 feet road) from the consulate building due to security reasons. Imagine the kind of national risk an empty handed and sun baked Indian will be for the US citizens, even when he is standing good 50 feet from the 20 feet high walls. It actually is quite a serious matter as he can create a detailed layout of the building just by looking through a small door which is packed with a whole battalion of security personals.

If you are the one used to AC lounges or even a working fan over your head, US consulate is not the place you would ever want to be at. All the Visa hopefuls were asked to stand along the wall of the consulate under the sun god who was coming down with full force (which happens for some 10-11 months a year). They do not provide even a tin-shade for the waiting people. Another thing which is a serious “No-No” is carrying any kind of liquid with you including water. So the US people do test you on your strength by making you stand in heat without water for hours and see if you are worth being a part of the American Dream.

Still the biggest surprise was not who these US guys were treating us but the way we Indians were behaving like door mats to them. In my nearly 2 hour’s long stay at that place, I didn’t see even one person complaining about the hardships or atrocities they were facing. On the contrary everyone was happy either for themselves or for the relatives who got their visas.

This is how we Indians are, this is what long years of colonization has done to us. We tend to respect people who treat us unequally and look down upon us. Our sense of respect and devotion towards the people increases manifolds if the person standing in front of us is white skinned. There are millions of stories of hate crimes against Indians in most of the White dominated countries but still we are more than willing to go there and work for them. We leave our country, family, friends and home to enter the white world. To go to the people who kick-punch or assault us. But still we are happy. Indeed we are way more loyal to our father land (Uncle Sam) than we can ever be to our motherland.

Hail the Father Land... Hail Uncle Sam... Long Live USA...

Naxalism... Is there a way out??

"Naxalism has increasingly become analogous to acts of terrorism which are characterised by outrightly irrational and heinous conduct, and are completely devoid of any semblance of human rationality." CCSR chairman Justice M M Punchhi.
This is the attitude that most government agencies and government officials have for the naxal issue. According to some, they are hardened criminals who can not join the main stream simply because of the long, never ending list of criminal charges against them. But it is way too easy to brand these people as terrorist than actually finding the issues that made these people convert to this dangerous and blood laid path.
In this write-up I will be focusing on the issues mainly at the current Naxal hotspot of Bastar area of Chhattisgarh. Let us start with a brief comparision between South Bastar district and India, it looks like we are looking at two totally unrelated places.

It is evident from the above data that with vast population of ST people who live in sparsely populated villages, with desperately low literacy rate.
In 1980s, the Naxalites, the ultra-left wing armed opposition group, made inroads into Bastar region from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Then Madhya Pradesh government had little semblance of presence in the Bastar region. The plight of the dispossessed and exploited Adivasis provided the classical situation for starting a communist revolution. As the Naxalites took over the tasks meant to be done by the State and provided protection to the Adivasis against exploitation by the corrupt officials, police, forest department officials, timber mafia, money-lenders etc, it was not difficult for the Adivasis to relate to the ideology of the Naxalites. The Naxalites gradually increased their influence day by day. At present, at least nine out of 16 districts of Chhattisgarh are affected by low intensity armed conflict with the Naxalites.
Even after 60 years of independence and at the time when India is globally branded as one of the fastest growing economies, these areas don’t have the basic infrastructure in place. Till date the only lifelines for this district are two national highways NH 16 and NH 221. Leaving these two there are virtually no roads in the complete area. With lack of proper connectivity the other developmental activities also take a beating e.g. the district lacks doctors and hospitals, whatever hospitals they have are in desperate shapes.
With this kind of infrastructure in place and an eternal problem of caste divide, the problem of increased naxal activities can only grow bigger. With naxals the locals get sense of belongingness and pride, as the people who had been harassing them are now afraid of them.
If we look at how these Maoists work, it is quiet interesting that they have their own “Jantana Sarkar”, a parallel government. Staying in deep forests at all times they have proper well defined namely education and culture, finance, law, defence, agriculture, forest conservation, health and sanitation and public relations. They collect taxes from the local villagers based on the produces these villagers have, if there is low yield then they don’t collect taxes at all. With minimal infrastructure in place, they work with the mobile government and mobile departments.Comrade Pandu says no established offices exist yet, but their "mobile government" runs the show. "The Jantana Sarkar is in an embryonic stage but when the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army establishes control, we will form a regular government," he promises. He explains why there is no land department. "We have already carried out land reforms and redistributed land such that you will not find a single landless person here," says Pandu. The Jantana Sarkar also settles family disputes. "In the past three years we have settled about 200 disputes between brothers, husbands-wives, neighbours. In fact, if you check with the local police, you will not find a single FIR filed," he claims. Once the people's court pronounces a judgement, the guilty is held in custody and ''carried around'' in mobile jails till deemed fit to be released. The Maoists fund their government with tax collections from villagers. The amount is decided on basis of the crop. This year, for instance, no taxes were levied because the crop failed.
If we are talking about this kind of facilities and processes that are in place, local support is more than evident in it, as no mass movement can be sustained for aver 4 decades without support from local public. The kind of terrorising and brutal activities that government claims, naxals support and indulge in can surely not be the complete picture. Had that been the case then there should had been reduced support and reduced activities from the naxal front. As we can observe in the massive movements like one in Punjab area for formation of Khalistan, as the public support went down so did the movement. As to push any movement forward, one has to get at least some support at ground level in terms of infrastructure, information and financial aid. As naxals claim that they are getting taxes from locals and people preferring to go to them for justice than the government agencies proves it all.For past many years government agencies had been trying to handle this ever deteriorating situation of these areas by taking up various measures. But if we look at the government initiatives taken up for this issue are more focused on treating the symptoms of the problem and not the problem itself. They are considering them as armed terrorists and to counter them they are funding and supporting huge paramilitary and police forces. Till Supreme Courts ruling against Salwa Judum, the government had been openly supporting and helping these camps. If we look at some figures on the fatalities in states for past few years:

It can be noted that after the concept of Salwa Judum was started in the year 2005, there had been a marked increase in the number of deaths and activities in the state compared to any other part of the country. There had been a lot of reports about people using inhuman ways to bring villagers into Salwa Judum camps, torturing those who are not interested in joing the camp. These camps are also in pethetic shape, and all that inmates get in a square meal with waterry dal. With the inception of Salwa Judum, large number of young kids in mid teens had been recruited as special police officers. So kids who are not considered mature enough to vote, are holding weapons and are free to kill at will. Another question is that whom they are killing? With naxals using the policy to hire one comerade from each household, these SPO’s are mostly up in arms against their own familiy members and relatives.

From the graph above it can be observed that it has been a loss for all the three participants, with the locals suffering the most. These locals are in the “Lose-Lose” situation. They are getting killed by both Naxals and the government bodies. They have one of the lowest literacy rates in the country, and what can be worse it is actually going down by the day, as all the few school that these areas have are turning into refugee, relief camps or training camps for anti naxal forces. With no schools in place, the already backward area is getting pushed further into darkness.
With security forces facing this much heat and beating in the hands of naxals, there is a high amount of frustration amongst the forces which makes them do atrocities against the citizens The case like of Binayak Sen, a celebrated doctor and social worker has been put behind the bars for more than 22 months even when the forces have absolutely no evidence at all, against him. This is not the only case; there had been numerous cases like this one. Apart of this, there had been quite a few cases of fake encounters and custodial deaths in recent years.
This anguish is not only restricted to the government side, naxals also have lot of incidents against them.
The Adivasis became victims of gross violations of human rights such as “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; taking of hostages; outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment; and passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples”, at the hands of the Naxalites. Some of those who were injured in the landmine blast on 28 February 2006 at Darbhaguda village were allegedly stabbed and clubbed to death by the Naxalites. The policy of the Naxalites of forcibly recruiting one cadre from each Adivasi family compelled many families to give the female members to the Naxals. Hence, traditional Adivasi social taboos were challenged and destroyed by the Naxalites and resentment against the Naxalites grew. But, any rebellion against the rebels was quelled with brutality. In 1992-93, a rebellion against the Naxalites was silenced after the naxals killed 70 Adivasis.
I feel that government should use the money and machinery it has in place to create the basic infrastructure, like roads and electricity. As when these areas will have easy access to the world, not only the security forces can move easily, it will help the local people also. For example the dairy product that these local villagers produce, they have to sell currently at local market at very low prices of Rs. 3-4 per litre. If these villages have easy and regular access to cities in the area, their produce can be sold at the market price, so for the same milk produce without much investment they can earn up to Rs 20-25 per litre. With this, they will surely rise in economic condition. And milk is just an example; these areas are rich in other forest related products like Cashew, Chironji etc. which are of high value in the national markets.
And with this basic infrastructure in place, the policy makers should also focus on education, as due to the armed unrest for past 40 years, most centres of education had been destroyed or are being used for other purposes like relief camps or training camps etc. With increase in education levels, these tribal’s can also be empowered as today even if we have reservation for these tribes in whole country, these people who desperately need its benefits can not use it to their advantage.
Initially naxals will surly try disrupting the development work, but if government can use its forces efficiently in securing these developments, I feel the villagers will observe immediate benefits of these investments and will start supporting government against naxalites.

References
1. http://naxalwatch.blogspot.com/2009/01/naxal-problem-requires-attention-of.html
2. District Plan of Dantewada, Chhattisgarh submitted to Backward Regions Grant Fund. http://brgf.gov.in/brgfPlans/chattisgarh/Dantewada/Dist.%20Plan%20-%20Dantewada.ppt.
3. http://www.iloveindia.com/population-of-india/index.html
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India
5. http://www.iloveindia.com/population-of-india/sc-st.html
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India
7. http://www.achrweb.org/Review/2006/117-06.htm
8. http://naxalwatch.blogspot.com/2009/02/area-liberated-no-salwa-judum-here.html
9. http://satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/database/fatalitiesnaxal.htm
10. http://bastar.gov.in/forest/FOREST.HTML

IIT’s and IIM’s are they helping Bharat?

I am a student at IIT Kanpur. IIT is one of those few names in India that are comparable to if not bigger than “Brand India” itself. Every other day we read volumes in the newspapers about what this breed of graduates and postgraduates who were in one of the IIT’s or IIM’s and are changing the world. In the “SACRED” places like Silicon Valley or Times Square, having brand IIT or IIM on your CV can open the gates to success and laurels for you.
First Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had realized that to keep pace with the ever changing world of science and technology, it is necessary to collaborate closely with the outside world. Thus due to his vision five IIT’s were formed at Khadagpur, Kanpur, Delhi Bombay and Chennai with collaboration and assistance from the leading universities and intuitions from the countries like US, Germany, USSR etc. and since then many more have been added to this list.
Over the years these institutes of National Importance had evolved and grown into the centre of excellence in the field of Science and Technology. These institutes (like a factory) are now producing nearly 3000 graduates and many, many more post graduates each year.
Recently I read a report in Times of India that about 50% of successful entrepreneurs in India are the pass outs from these IIT’s and IIM’s. It surely makes me proud about the institute and being part of it. But the very next question that came to my mind was is all this actually helping India or Bharat as we Gen Y people refer to it.
We at IIT are made to live in a virtual world. Students of these elite institutes don’t have a much interaction with the local people, local Infrastructure or any other local thing or flavour of the place. I know IIT Kanpur more than any other IIT thus will quote examples of what I saw here than at any other place, even when I know that the story is more or less same at other places too.
City of Kanpur is in a sorry state but IIT Kanpur is a booming and happing place. In most of the areas of Kanpur you can actually not find even traces of road, but inside the campus you can see roads as smooth as silk. In the city, load shedding of 6-8 hours is a norm, but inside the campus, we are informed through a mail 2 days in advance about even 5 minutes of power cut. The institute which has Kanpur as an integral part of its name is simply out of bounds to the people of Kanpur. For our various festivals in campus we proudly spend about 1-1.5 crore in about 7-10 days, but we rarely think of helping the city to improve its infrastructure.
At in these colleges the students are not able to interact with the locals, they are just not aware about their issues, so when they graduate from this college they just can not relate to “AAM AADMI”. Thus for them these people are just part of infrastructure that is to be used for some time. I feel this lack of association more than affiliation with the locals is a major issue due to which India faced brain drain for so many years. Though now we are observing that more and more people are coming back to India or opting not to search for opportunities abroad, they still are far away from these people. Even the ones who are having some interactions with commoners are still interacting with the top 30-40% of the population (Mind you even the person who is at 50% line in terms of his net asset would be having at least ten thousand times less assets than any of the internet users in this country) and not with the vast majority of the nation, for whom the biggest challenge of the day is to arrange for the bread at the end of the day.
These colleges have surely produced more entrepreneurs than any other place in the country, and they are surely producing huge amount of wealth at a brisk pace. But it is the wealth only a few people earning, but what about the people who are at the bottom of the pyramid? What about the ones who were displaced from the very place which is now the centre of excellence? What about those who are not allowed to enter into these places of “National Importance”, the places which are the large giants that gallop a huge some of money that the common people paid for the nation’s development in the form of taxes?
India is surely gaining a lot from these centres of excellences in terms of the GDP growth and technological improvement. Indeed not only India but the whole world today looks at them with respect. The efforts these sharp and curious minds have made can not be equalled leave surpassing. But these gains are just restricted to India and are not getting transferred to Bharat, the poor India that still fights for the basic issues like “Roti aur Paani”.
I feel that the only radical step that is required to make India more equal and grow faster on each and every scale and not only on GDP indexes, is to make the two India’s stand face at least once in the life time. And what can be the better place for this than these great institutes. With a small interaction of about 2-3 months of the best and brightest minds of the country with these people can mark an impression on these people. And thus I hope slowly but surely they will try holding hands of BHARAT and make it walk shoulder to shoulder with India. This might reduce the speed of India’s growth a bit but then as the say it, “Rome was not built in a day”.

Bharat Nirmaan… Is it taking India anywhere??

India Shining!!! Bharat Nirmaan!!! These were the slogans to which; till recently; I regularly fell for. And I believed all these slogans with the heart and soul. Where ever I went I saw prosperity all around me. Roads built, green fields, children running in school uniforms, India doing great in all fields it was in…. nothing actually is bad in India. And India is moving at express pace to get into the league of developed nations.

I was born and brought up with high level bureaucratic officials all around me, in my family and my relatives. I had always seen them working for about 10-12 hours a day. So when ever I was told about the reports of inefficiency and non productiveness about Indian bureaucracy I conveniently used to believe that it is the lower level that does not work, it is the lower staff that is ineffective and uninterested and it was just the politicians that made false promises, but rest all is good.

But recently for some project in my course I went to a village called “Lodhar”. This village is just about 1-1.5 Kms from IIT Kanpur. When I reached there my beliefs were intensified in the growing brand called India. The streets were paved; there was proper drainage system on both sides of the road, electric wires reaching all houses. That village was looking more like a sparsely populated town; instead of a village; and that too a developed town. I also found out that it was declared as Ambedkar Village by UP state government. That is it will be a model village for all other villages in the state. And at macro level it surely looked impressive.

Then I met few people there, ranging from the ex village chief “Pradhan”, to a labour working in some field, to children playing on the village streets. For first five minutes they looked very excited, both about my visit to their homes as well as the system around. But then as we spoke about one topic and the other, striking differences started shaping up. I was told that politicians of all ranks; right from party workers to CM’s to party chief; do visit their villages regularly and make promises to them. But the villagers are so much habituated to that, that they don’t believe a single word said by them. (This was very much on expected lines of my belief).

Then I was told about the other MAJOR issue which I would like to mention here, I was told that the electric poles; about which I was very happy initially; were in place for a long time, but are mostly there for just ornamental purpose, electricity rarely comes. They told me there had been no electricity for even a single minute in past 7 days. Then a very sensitive topic came up; topic of land. I was told that initially they were encouraged to build houses in a particular area near village which was earlier demarcated as pasture land next to the village. But now when they shifted to this place the authorities are reluctant or shall I say, hesitant to legalize that area as a residential area. In this by authorities I mean the likes of District Magistrate and Community Development Officers. They had been regular visitors to the village and even said that they will get the issue done. But then words are just words.

For past few days I had been constantly thinking about this particular village and the attitude of these officers towards this village and their duty in particular. The only word that is residing in my mind is WHY? I was thinking, observing and even discussing about the possible answers to this question.

I figured out that the answer to this question can never be objective or simple; here I am talking about just the answer and not the solution to the problem. I felt that, in the rigid and long bureaucracy like ours, these higher officials are not all that powerful as they look. Even when they have full authority over their department but to move higher up the ladder; they need to have clean unbiased track record. And with India’s mean and corrupt practices being talked around the globe, being productive is the biggest sin for these officers. A top official in a government body said, “To get promotions, one has to stay quiet and not do any thing. As if one tries doing any thing positive, then there are so many vigilance and other probing committees which are ready to go over-time to read between the lines and build issues from nowhere.”

I also felt that though our politicians don’t have much interference on the day to day work of any government body. But they have kept the power to relocate these bureaucratic officials, and we regularly see the politicians use this power with full efficiency, every time when state observes a change in power. The main focus of these politicians is to appease their respective vote banks, their supporters in co-operate firms and also several other activists in other fields, and thus they are more than happy to use their powers if action of any officer does not suit their personal or political agenda.

I also found one more thing, that even when these officers are willing to work for the cause, the department is not willing to sanction adequate funds to them. This hesitation by the department can be due to a lot of reasons from as fundamental as no availability of funds, to differences in priorities between different levels of hierarchy.

I feel that the real change in India or dreams like India Shining or Bharat Nirmaan can come true only when we have a massive change in mindset of our top hierarchy. Things are improving slowly but surely, with “Gen-X” coming into the government system. But with the government structure being so rigid and bulky, we should hope that this generation can sustain its enthusiasm and change the system, instead of system changing them.

(Written 8th March 2009)

Downsizing - Its impact on India

The post slow down effect, that came after the subprime crisis and going down of the big ticket finance companies like Lehman, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had a huge ripple effect all around the globe. This global meltdown is now being considered as the biggest meltdown after “The Great Depression” that began in 1929. This is certainly the gravest and biggest one as it directly impacted many more economies and people (directly and indirectly) than any economic crisis ever did in the human history.

The direct impact of this crisis is felt not only by the developed economies like US and European Union but it also shook the fast developing giant economies like China, India and Brazil. The companies which were up-beat and were willing to take high risks are now into damage control mode with cost cutting and lay-offs. All around the globe companies are cutting jobs in a hurry. Citi group leading the pack with job cut in excess of 50,000. British Telecom cutting 10,000 jobs. Peugoet is axing 3,550 jobs. Russian firms will lay off around 200,000 workers from their companies.

Developing economies like China and India are also facing direct impact in their growing patterns due to this crisis. With the international demand hitting an all time low the exports from these countries are facing a sort of chin music. China which had been a strong export oriented economy has been impacted hugely due to this with reports of about 300,000 workers working in different parts of China had already returned to their native places by November mid.

This crisis had also touched India with its GDP growth forecast coming down to 6-7 % after clocking 9% for three successive years. Though there had not been a huge direct impact on India thanks to the huge consumer market India has and tight banking policies of India. India Inc is still watchful and is applying to wait and watch policy on how this crisis will pan out along with reducing the costs in the more traditional way. A few of the cost reducing methods that India Inc is undertaking are companies are now trying to lease out most of the assets instead of owning them, they are reducing the expenses by using resources more efficiently.

Though Indian companies are banking on cost cutting they are still reluctant to downsize its workforce. While IT Majors like Satyam are reviewing their hiring process, many companies have deferred their hiring plans to end of this fiscal. Most of these outsourcing companies are waiting for the dust to settle down and are aiming at major outsourcing contracts from west that are put on shelves after the turmoil. As a lot of people can foresee big outsourcing projects coming the India way to reduce costs as India is one of the major IT cost centre for the world with cheap work force available. Even in some other sectors also, HR Managers are willing to wait for some time before they go for hiring again.

But even in the tough times like these there are sectors like Auto, Insurance and Banking that reviled their desires of hiring in big numbers with Toyota and Maruti being the forerunners on the hiring front in the slowing Auto Sector showing the amount of confidence these companies have in strong fundamentals of India. But this is not the only case with Metlife banking big on India by promising to add about 32,000 jobs in India in current fiscal. Following it closely are PSE’s (public sector enterprise) and banks like SBI (promising to create 25,000 jobs) and IDBI bank. Most of these companies are looking to explore the Indian market for higher revenue in times of international slowdown.

So for India even in these tough times all is not lost. India being a strong consumption driven economy and RBI pumping more money into the system through rate cuts, the credit crisis being faced by the companies would also get subsided. So we can hope that within about next half year or so, India will emerge out successfully of this crisis with just few job cuts. By the time world is over this crisis India will be hopefully be a much bigger and stronger economic power than ever before.

(Data for this article was taken from various articles from http://economictimes.indiatimes.com and http://www.in.com)

(Written on 29th Nov 2008)

Satyam or A-Satyam

E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year (2007), Asia Business Leader Award (2002), Dataquest IT Man of the Year Award (2000) are a few of the awards this man received.

His journey began from a small town called Bhimavaram in Andhra Pradesh. Byrraju Ramalinga Raju born in an agricultural family and a management graduate from Ohio University, tried out a lot of ventures like construction and textile. He finally found Satyam in 1987, which grew leaps and bounds; it bagged its first fortune 500 customer John Deere & Co. in as early as 1991. By year 1999 it had presence in 30 countries across the globe and next year the employee head count crossed 10,000. It crossed the revenue mark of US$ 1 billion in 2006. By the end of 2008 it had about 53,000 employees, 690 clients of which 185 fortune 500 clients, spanning in 20 industries and 65 countries, development centers in 12 countries and revenue in excess of US$ 2 billion. Or is it?

On 7th of January 2009 came a confession from him that shook the nation. He confessed to Rs 7,136 crore fraud, Raju said Satyam's books had been cooked for years to inflate profit and revenue figures. In September 2008, they showed a non-existent cash and bank balance of Rs 5,040 crore and hundreds of crores of fictitious accrued interest and debtors' position. Liabilities worth Rs 1,230 crore were kept hidden. These huge figures made it the biggest accounting fraud in the Indian history. The first warnings signals came in as early as Sept’08, in the form of a report from DMRC chief Sreedharan hinting a big scandal in Maytas, controlled by Raju’s son, but these allegations were disposed of by Planning Commission on the basis of not backing with evidence on his suspicion. Also in mid December when Satyam announced its intensions on buying Maytas Infrastructure and Maytas Properties, serious questions and protests were raised against Satyam’s top management.

The fraud that is also termed as Indian version of Enron had enormous impact on the Indian markets; with Satyam Computers own stocks getting a beating at the sensex with value of its stock falling by as much as 78%. It also triggered the fall in both Nifty and Sensex, as people became cautious of stocks in family run businesses ranging from RIL, ADAG, DLF to Bharti Airtel. Stocks of the sectors that were not known for best of corporate governance practices also went southwards, thus totally negating the positive market sentiment that was build after the second stimulus package.

The more important question is about the future of those 53,000 employees that the company has. With this news of fraud coming in there is a low probability of Satyam getting new clients and even the existing clients will start parting away from it. FIFA already said that it is monitoring the situation related to Satyam. More of its clients are expected to follow and there is a bigger risk of clients even moving out of their existing deals. If this happens, then the staff working on those projects will be out of service. So they are facing a risk of getting laid in future along with the employees who are already on bench. There is one more issue that might be crossing the minds of Satyam’s employees that with minimum out-go of salary being estimated to Rs 500 crore but according to Raju’s confession mail, company had cash of only about Rs 320 crore in cash and its bank accounts, that too in the month of September. They somehow managed to pay salaries till now but possibility of paying full salaries to its employees in months to come looks impossible to say the least.

Within minutes of Raju’s confession, news of strong actions that are initiated against Satyam has made a lot of noise. With law suits filed against the company in US, SEBI ordering probe into Satyam operations. Major brokerage firms degrading its credit rating and slashing its target price. NYSE halted the trade of its stock. BSE and NSE removed Satyam from their benchmark indexes, Nifty and Sensex respectively. Government also started a probe into corporate lapses and financial misdemeanor in Satyam.

Even with all this happening and an own it all confession of Raju there are a lot of questions that are left unanswered. Or to say this whole issue gave birth to a lot of questions like the role of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), as per Mr. Raju’s confession this financial gap was accumulated over the years, then what was this auditing firm doing during those years? It is interesting to note that PwC had been the associated to accounting irregularities in the now-defunct Global Trust Bank in 2007 and in DSQ software also. Another interesting fact is that Raju stated that the operating margins of Satyam were unusually low at Rs. 61 crore or 3% which looks weird as traditionally software industry boosts of high operating margins with industry leader Infosys having about 33% and other IT companies have this figure in the range of 20-30%.

Sources for this article
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articlelist/40657581.cms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.Ramalinga_Raju
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyam_Computer_Services_Ltd

http://www.satyam.com/

(written on 7th January 2009)