ExpertDabbler

All of us have our own pet peeves about India. Its easy to crib. What if we can make a random list of TO DO items for the nation?
Assume you had the backing of the Union cabinet, State cabinet and the Kitchen cabinet, what can you do to make India better? Try to keep it economically feasible and realistic as much as possible. Its a good exercise

- Triple the number of courts, recruit more judges to finish of the backlog of cases. Justice delayed is justice denied. A case MUST be settled within five years. The lawyer and the judge will be kicked out of their jobs otherwise. The money spent is worth the cause.

- Provide free compulsory school education to all at any cost. Bring reservation for rural candidates. Remove reservation for those in urban areas. Another way to tackle reservation is to build more schools and colleges. Triple the number of agricultural, arts and science, engineering and medical colleges. Money spent on education is well spent too. We have a clear ROI on education. Ask any middle class person on the importance of education. Allow foreign universities in India so that the rich and the wealthy can go and learn there.

- Restrict the proliferation of organized religious schools and outfits of all religion.

- Let Railways complete the double track and electrification of routes where people pay for their tickets, not where the Railway Mminister comes from. Have a target for expanding the rail network across the country to all towns above 50,000 in population. It is bad to see towns like Dharapuram go without rail network even after 61 years of independence. I do not mind paying a hundred rupees extra on my tickets to achieve this.

- Make all our national highway and state highways multi-lane highways. We can pay more tolls.

- We lose more people in accidents than to major diseases. Habitual traffic rules offenders should not be allowed to vote. Their passports should be revoked.

- Allow corporates to run public transport, not necessarily buses, but definitely mini buses, vans etc. We need more efficient public transport.

- Begin inter-linking of rivers and lakes at district level and state levels. Why expect to connect Krishna and Cauvery if we cannot connect Thamiraparani and Cauvery? Maybe we should enable water to be pushed To and Fro.

- Encourage people to have an authorized ’side business’ except the government employees. The income from second job/business can be declared tax free. Hopefully this reduces the time spent before TV watching ‘Maanada mayilaada’ and ‘Arasi’.

- Make it compulsory to have master plans for all towns with a population of fifty thousand reviewable every five years. The same should be available to the locals on demand.

- Bring a ceiling to the number of people who can live in a metro. There is no perumai in having a metro with crores of people. Bar new developments within a defined area in the cities. For e.g No new building/development should be allowed within Chennai / Mumbai city limits. We take care to reign in inflation, but have no such concern to reign in people aggregating in a small place all through the year for centuries.

- Make elections more frequent - once in three years.

- Ensure inflation adjusted wages for labourers. A blue collar worker should be able to sustain a decent standard of living. The middle class Indian wants his software engineer son get a hike every year but insists on paying the same amount to his servant maid, auto guy etc.

- Bring a common coordinated network among the intelligence agencies. Acts of terror occurs in this country just because RAW was too busy to inform the local police and vice versa.

- Pay as much salary for a police man as we do for a trainee software engineer.

- Remove subsidies for petrol and gas for those in the cities. Make it available to only those who live in tier 2-3 towns and villages. People in the cities - either they can afford to pay seventy five bucks per litre or they can opt to move to smaller towns where fuel consumption will also be less. It takes lot of oil subsidy to drive from Maraimalai Nagar to Navalur in a car everyday.

- I think there are few ways to reduce corruption in government offices
a) automate, computerize the process as much as possible, which would reduce human discretion
b) increase the number and salaries of the officers and decentralize their powers.
So long as the CMDA, with a handful of officers is the only authority to grant approval to buildings in the whole of Chennai, we are bound to have corruption.

- Only about 10% of India’s work force are employed in the organized sector. While the rest 90% eke out a living on their own. How do we make their lives better? Maybe microcredit will really help these people escape the clutches of money lenders. I don’t know much on this.

- Encourage doctors to build more clinics, but discourage corporatization of hospitals. Hospitals should not be allowed to operate as a company and declare profits and dividends to share holders.

- Restrict our current active sports persons from appearing in Ads. If they do, let 50% of what they earn trough commericals go for sports development fund. Let the fund be administered by a non political, non bureaucratic body of ex athetes who have won medals for the country in Asian games and Olympics.

PS: It was kinda difficult to jot down a twenty point agenda. Its easier to crib than to write something like this. And I bet its easier to write than to implement. But I still encourage people to try this as a tag and see what they can come up with.

A lay off in US was on the cards for about a month now. It was featured and gossiped in the area portals.
So the announcement as such was not shocking. But what was indeed shocking was that some of the folks I had personally interacted with and who are the best have been asked to go.

It’s all fine to calculate like 1 resource in US = X resources in India. But there are some good resources who are invaluable. They can hire ten resources like me in India and yet we cannot compensate for that one critical guy who knows the product in and out for the past 5 years. I do not understand this logic of 1 guy with normal vision = 5 blind guys. Forget sentiments, this does not make business sense.

I cannot talk about this to the folks here since these are sensitive topics and NOT to be discussed. I cannot talk to the victims since they think they got fired because of us.

All this is done ostensibly to reduce costs. But some of the folks have been given benefits which are two years their annual salary ON HAND. So how does this reduce costs? My hunch is, and I may be wrong, its a mere accounting gimmick. A one time settlement, even if its a huge one will be written off from the company’s reserves, a Balance sheet item, while salaries which is a recurring item will be charged to P/L books periodically. These guys are going to show the analysts that we are reducing the salaries, and hence will increase profits in the P/L books in future while doling out two years pay from the balance sheet. They should have huge reserves in the balance sheet so it should not matter.

I think we are taking the adage, ‘Numbers don’t lie’ a bit too far. While numbers don’t lie, they only speak half the truth.

They weave a story of cost cutting which is stupid in the first place, and then spend a lot at one go as a result of such cost cutting! If the last sentence do not make sense, you are not alone.

As i type this, i feel like i am sitting in the beach, all alone, with a tsunami fast approaching. And i am just sitting, doing nothing because for some reason, i am not supposed to run away.

I guess at the bottom of it is some unshakeable belief that i will survive all this and much more.
Only time will tell if its a stupid belief or supreme will. That depends on the result anyway, is it not?

Everytime i face a tricky situation, i say to myself, “If only i can survive this, i can survive anything”. Obviously stupid idea, and as one would expect, it only gets more complicated with each passing year.

But sometimes stupidity gives you peace of mind which no genius can.

The last few days i was essentially revisiting my older posts (2006 and earlier). I dont know exactly how to convey what i feel honestly.

I cannot believe I’ve written on topics like NRIs, Hinduism, Health Insurance, IT, not to mention short stories, story series etc. I myself forgot about a lot of my own posts.
I am not much of a nostalgia person but it was fun nevertheless. Where have all the energy gone? Can i write with the same fever and passion again? I am not sure. Maybe I should start drinking Boost and see

Its also interesting to note how my thought processes and desires have evolved from those days to the present day fascination for authors like Seth Godin, Tom Peters, ideas, how to start my own thing, look up for higher education and job opportunities abroad and the likes.

I intend to just record my thoughts on various things more frequently in 2008. My readers may or may not find it interesting but it sure makes for interesting reading for myself later on

I would suggest the same to fellow bloggers as well. If you have time, look back on your older posts, you will be surprised:)

NEW YEAR EVE:
Which is the occasion for bigger celebration in Chennai – New year or Diwali? If you thought Diwali, chances are you are an NRI who left India 6-7 years back

I’d say New Year by a good distance. The new year celebrations are getting wilder wth each passing year. I had an offer to go to GRT Temple Bay for 3500 bucks today. Not my kinda fun.

Instead I celebrated my New Year eve in Kasi Vinayagar Mess in Triplicane. Okay that’s not the sort of place you’d take your girlfriend for candle light dinner but that’s one decent place to have food when you are terribly hungry. No wonder triplicane is still a heaven for bachelors.

Later in the evening, I visited the BOSE outlet and almost bought their Multimedia speakers. Somehow thought what my mom would say, how come I am thinking of buying a multimedia speakers (okay, very good quality) for 17K when that would far exceed the monthly income of so many lakh chennaites. I guess there is a socialist inside every conservative South Indian who jumps from nowhere every now and then. I am not saying its good or bad, but it’s a fact nevertheless.

WISH YOU ALL A VERY VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS.

Highlights of the year that was in reverse chronology :

Dec 2007:
My capable and friendly manager putting down his papers due to political turmoil. Too bad my organization is turning out to be one mini Pakistan nowadays. The coming days are going to be very interesting.

Getting Zune 80GB - one of the most strategic decisions I’ve ever taken in my life. The clincher was that Zune would enable me to synch all the latest, greatest music free of cost – thanks to to my buddy Madhu. I already have 6500 songs in no time.

Getting to meet Priyums in US. I know a lot of folks are waiting for years to get her majesty’s time.

My return to India. I did not see any banners welcoming me, but that’s okay, my followers know I am all for modesty

Nov 2007:
The 2000 odd miles during thanksgiving holidays.
Making dosais and chappathis for dinner with my close friend Mani - Never did I envisage a setting like that after all these years. The best part is, he eats more than as he always did when we were schooling together. So much for old times da!

Oct 2007:
Me being given a very interesting project at work.
LA trip and getting to know Gopi better. I’m glad for it.

Sep 2007:
Me eventually getting a US visa. I was one of those who always had a nightmare which goes on these lines.

Visa Officer: “Un peru enna?”

Me: “Prabu Karthik”

Visa Officer ( in true Goundamani style ): “Prabu Karthik nu peru vechavanukellam Visa tharadillai.. Odi poda naye”

I had been rejected earlier so my imagination was running wild. Eventually I did get a visa and reached San Francisco after a very eventful trip.

Aug, July, Jun, May, Apr and March 2007:
Life sucked pretty bad because of projects which had SCREWED written all over it.
One of those times of the year when you curse yourself for taking that home loan and putting up with all ensuing crap. Early mornings, late nights, cab home drops, ena odumai saravanan idhu!

Feb 2007:
Me joining this organization after almost deciding to go ahead for masters program.

Jan 2007:
Putting down my papers in my previous org. on the first week of Jan.

Come december and the mainstream media majors would sure have a special coverage of the year that’s drawing to a close. It would be ‘A year that was’ covering all major events and happenings at the international level, national level, the great movies, the best-selling books, the remarkable personalities, great discoveries, war and suffering, major setbacks and disappointments and how this would all impact the common man in the coming year.

When I think about 2006 on the personal front, the only underlying theme that creeps up is ‘Confusion and Dilemma’. Never in my life have I looked so confused and bereft of clarity for life’s questions. A person who almost did not bat an eyelid before dropping out of college, a guy who had on the spur of the moment decided to venture out to a strange city on his own, the guy who has made major investment decisions in a flash and one who never looks back at his decisions is suddenly feeling the pinch of ‘paradox of choices’ phenomenon.

I think it was Bill G who said ‘some amount of confusion is healthy’ or something like that. Going by his yardstick, I think it’s been quite a healthy year for me :). Talking about health, 2006 is also the year when I overcame GERD – something that literally made me lose sleep for sometime last year.

All this confusion implies that I’m no more the careless/carefree youth that I was. I’m beginning to think more for myself, my career, my personal growth, and my responsibilities, which is good. But sometimes I also feel I’m getting old, and analyzing too much.

Let’s see how 2007 goes as I am in the process of making some decisions which could potentially change the course of my life.

For now, i just keep telling myself that no decision on its own is lifechanging. It’s how we act based on the decision which determines the success or failure.