DON’T CRY MILORD! (Just do your job)

Your Honour!

Indian Railways are struggling with nearly 30% vacancies in the cadre of track maintainers. We are also short of 20% Loco Drivers over the sanctioned strength. Indeed, we are short of manpower by the given yardsticks in almost all areas. But, we run ALL the trains with 90+% punctuality, we carry all the goods cheaper than any other mode and our safety is improving every day. We add new trains every year, run specials during festivals and holidays without additional resources. Our online ticketing is rated to be the best in the world. Our stations and trains are cleaner than ever, quality of food is improving and so is the passenger satisfaction across the country. True, we lack resources for expanding our network, but we do our assigned job well and without complaining.

We don't keep a pendency in running of trains. We do not have a hundred or a thousand trains waiting to run tomorrow or next week just because we have vacancies in our ranks. Yet, we find that the media, political parties and public at large are ready to accept backlog of cases in our courts on account of vacancies! 

Yesterday you cried, Milord! You lamented the vacancies in superior courts and stated that vacancies were the reason for pendencies. In my heart, though I don't think believe that you subscribe to that view. Vacancies can never be zero. I read in the newspapers, after the NJAC judgement, that the real problem of the judiciary is vacancies – 30% of late. But the pendency is older than this recent spurt in vacancies, which has worsened due to the NJAC issue. I have learnt that twenty-four High Courts together sit on a pile of some forty-five lakh pending cases. Appeals in criminal cases against conviction are waiting to be heard for as long as thirty years, more than the maximum sentence in the cases. I am certain all this cannot be explained away by vacancies alone. In any case it was the collegium, which ought to have filled those vacancies.

The only way to overcome this problem is that those, who are in the saddle, work a little harder to compensate for the vacancies. All of us do that in government, public sector or private enterprises. We work longer hours till late evening, on weekends, forego personal leave and certainly do not go on summer vacations. Even Secretaries to the Government of India are now required to punch-in their attendance sharp at nine AM every day. Surely, working longer hours is not anathema to you, My Lordship!

I often get judgements and awards from courts for compliance within two months, one month, or even a fortnight. I have no option but to burn the midnight oil and fulfil the orders in the judgement. How I wish I could one day beseech or request, though certainly not order Your Lordships, to deliver a judgement in two weeks since an important developmental project is held up, a contract is getting annulled or an international agreement is at stake! But, that would be a contempt of court, I guess. Surely, the judiciary is entitled to its independence and autonomy, surely it can rightfully claim non-interference and neutrality, but it ought to know that like other organs of state, the legislature and the executive, the judiciary too is paid out of taxes and that it is ultimately answerable to the paymaster, the common citizen of the country. The common person is increasingly getting restless. She wants good governance, she wants delivery of goods and services and above all she wants a just society. And, she wants them quick. Judiciary is answerable to her for its own share of deliveries.

How does the common citizen force change in governance? He votes. He votes a party out and brings in a new government. He gets the opportunity to do so every five years. Political parties, after having fooled the masses and after their repeated failures have realised that the public means business. They have yielded to a change in discourse from caste, religion and freebies to development and performance. How does a common man pull up the executive? How does he seek relief from exploitation and unfairness? He goes to a court of law. Leave aside the delays for a moment, he still hopes for justice, solace and compensation. What is important is that he has a door, which he can knock. But, were does he go, when the same door is closed to him for thirty years in his face? Whom does he implore, when the very institution he implores, has queued up lakhs of relief seekers ahead of him?

This frustration with the judiciary has led to abject hopelessness in the masses and ridicule of the process of law. Undertrials and appellants spend the best years of their lives in incarceration, people resort to coercion and murder for solving land and property disputes and an occasional dejected one commits suicide. 

Any organisation works with hierarchies, which are arranged in the fashion of a pyramid. The senior levels have fewer positions than the lower ones. Indeed, the entire supervision and management structure follows this dictum. Yet we have a State in the country, which has an inverted pyramid in the judiciary. There are one hundred sixty High Court Judges and just seventy-five district Judges! Yet, this High Court has the highest number of cases pending within its portals.

All organs of the State have undergone reforms and infusion of technology. Most departments of the government and companies in the private sector have become leaner as a result. The judiciary too has had its share of modernisation and IT embrace. But, the courts work at the same pace, actually slower than ever. One of the High Courts of the country has, on the 17th October last year, invited bids for supply of iPhone6S for use by the Hon’ble Judges. This model of phone was launched in September, i.e. just a month ago. We do not mind Our Lordships owning the latest gadget in the world costing sixty thousand Rupees each, not even if the poor people of India pay for it. But, we want a return on that investment. Please give us that.

We have all heard Justice Ruma Pal, who candidly showed the mirror to the judiciary by enumerating its seven sins – turning a blind eye to a colleague’s indiscretion, hypocrisy, secrecy in appointment of judges, plagiarism and prolixity, verbose judgements, personal arrogance, professional arrogance and nepotism.* We have all heard you, Your Lordship! You want total independence and autonomy. We agree with that too. You also said that you will improve the system from within. We know from experience that insulated systems are the most difficult to change and often a change promised from within is more of a chimera than an action plan. Yet we trust you for this time once again. But, remember, the outcome of the reforms will be judged by the people of India and not by the government or the legislature. Next time, the call for change may not take the legislative route.

So, here is my twopenny advice. All of these are within your purview. Maybe, if you followed some of these, you could smile the day you lay down your office.

1. Tell your colleagues and subordinate judges to come to office at 9:00AM and not leave before 6:00PM.

2. Fix a yardstick for judges and courts by which their performance will be measured - limit number of adjournments and hearings, limit the total span of time over which a case is heard and limit the number of pages a judge will write in his award.

3. Spend quality time in courts hearing arguments and delivering justice and stop playing the adjournment game, better known as tareekh-par-tareekh.

4. You and your fellow judges in superior courts are also supervisors to lower judiciary. Do that job well. Pull up the lazy ones and compel them to deliver.

5. Force some discipline on lawyers to come in time and come prepared on the first appearance itself.

6. Learn some English and unlearn all that Latin. Make it simpler for the common man to understand what you say and intend.

7. Tell your colleagues to cut that sarcasm out of their speech in the courts. Don't speak what you cannot write in your judgements.

8. Make it possible and easy for a common man with an average level of education to argue and contest his own case rather than be fleeced by greedy lawyers.

9. And, last but not the least, give up that summer vacation. You do not have to sail to England to avoid the Indian heat. Stay here, and feel for the fellow citizens.

http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/justice-ts-thakur-breaks-down-before-pm-modi-stresses-need-for-more-judges-1398829?site=full

MAN AND CHILD (Aged 22 and 29 respectively)

Here is a man. Capt. Pawan Kumar of the Indian Army. Martyred at the age of 22 in the service of the nation. When he turned 22, he had already put in three years of active service, earned a promotion and was leading a team of soldiers, who were ready to die for the country. Capt. Pawan Kumar led his men against entrenched terrorists and made the supreme sacrifice for the Motherland. There is not a single person in the country who is not proud of him. Capt. Pawan Kumar joined the Army not because he wanted to die for the country. He did so because he wanted to protect his country. He entered the Armed Forces not because it was easily available. He did it through a tough process of selection called the NDA examination - A highly competitive written test, a rigorous physical test and a test of his aptitude. He, of course, knew the risks and dangers of an Army Officer's life. Yet he chose it over easier career options of Engineering, Civil Services or IT.

Here is another man,  err.. a boy. Kanhaiya Kumar. All of 29. Pursuing a PhD in a subsidised education system of the country that Pawan Kumar laid down his life for. Kanhaiya Kumar earns a scholarship of nearly thirty thousand Rupees per month, gets free housing, free medical care and has all the time in the world to profess breaking up of his Motherland. A parasite that he is, he leads a team of equally parasitical "boys and girls" to apologise to a terrorist's soul, who was responsible for slaying Kanhaiya's compatriots. Kanhaiya Kumar does not study "African Studies" (his topic for PhD) because he is even remotely interested in Africa, its history, literature or its people. He is studying it because a seat was available in that department, which paid him a handsome salary-like scholarship for five years of mollycoddling campus life. He did not choose to do a PhD to contribute a great deal to the knowledge of mankind. We will also check out his PhD thesis for original thought it is supposed to contain. He opted for a PhD because he did not get a job with his earlier education. He chose it because he was actually good for nothing else. His academic scores in JNU will prove that once again.

Capt. Pawan Kumar also holds a degree from the JNU. If he had lived to be 29, like Kanhaiya, he would be a Major in the Army, living a life of fulfilment and inspiration. He could still die for the nation as a Major. In fact he would protest if ever he was not sent to the front. He would be commanding a few Captains and a much larger unit of soldiers, each one of whom would look up to him for lessons in grit and gallantry. 

Kanhaiya Kumar would have turned 36 by then and would be pursuing a second PhD in "Gender Discrimination in Angola", raising slogans against the Country and promising to destroy it. He would, however, still be called a simple misguided boy. If Kanhaiya played his cards well, which he seems to be doing, he could become a Professor in the same incestuous system of education and spawn more middle-aged boy-traitors like himself in a never ending chain process. Worse, he could become a politician himself, given his recent display of power over them, to unite against the country. In the worst, though not unimaginable case, Kanhaiya Kumar could become the forerunner of a new ideology, where biting the hand that feeds is fashion.

गाल-सटाऊ चुंबन

उमुआँ .. उमुआँ .. .. 

आपने अक्सर पार्टियों में ऐसी आवाज़ सुनी होगी। अरे ये मैं क्या कह रहा हूँ? आपने कहाँ सुनी होगी? आप तो हिंदी पढ़ रहे हैं? ये आवाज़ें हाई सोसाइटी की पार्टियों में सुनने में आती हैं । क्या कहा आपने? हाई सोसाइटी क्या होती है? हाई सोसाइटी का हिंदी में कोई अर्थ या पर्यायवाची शब्द नहीं होता। अरे भाई साहब, हिंदी में तो हाई सोसाइटी होती ही नहीं|

अरे मैंने भी कहाँ सुनी थीं ऐसी आवाज़ें, मानों कोई बिल्ली अपनी सहेली से सालों बाद मिल रही हो। वो तो एक बड़े उद्योगपति की पार्टियां आजकल टीवी पर दिखाई जा रही हैं, उसी मैं मैंने सुना। आप भी वॉल्यूम ऊँचा करके ध्यान से सुनेंगे तो आपको सुनाई देंगी। उन्ही उद्योगपति, मच्छीमार हवाईजहाज वाले या बियरवाले दढ़ियल साहब की पार्टियों की बात कर रहा हूँ, जो करोड़ों लेकर फुर्र हो गए| इन पार्टियों में गाल से गाल सटा कर एक दूसरे के कान में हौले से हवा छोड़ते हैं और कहते है, "उमुआँ .. उमुआँ"। और भी कुछ बोलते होंगे, जैसे, "यूअर प्लेस और माइन?" या, "उस कमीने को देखो, कैसा मिसेज़ शर्मा पर लाइन मार रहा है।"

सुना है कि सरकारी बैंकों और सचिवालयों के अधिकारी भी इन हाई सोसाइटी पार्टियों में शरीक होते थे। क्या वे भी उमुआँ .. उमुआँ करते थे? अब कंडक्ट रूल्स में उमुआँ .. उमुआँ करना मना तो नहीं है? सो करते होंगे, मेरी बला से। लेकिन एक उमुआँ पर नौ हज़ार करोड़ न्यौछावर कर दें, ये भी कोई बात हुई। मैं तो ऐसे गालसटाऊ नाटक के पाँच रुपये भी न दूँ। कान में हवा जाने से मेरी तो फुरफुरी छूट जाए। और बेचारा आम करदाता जो फ़िल्मी मैगज़ीन में उन सुंदरियों की तस्वीरें निहार कर ही अपने को निहाल समझता है - उमुआँ तो एक दिवास्वप्न सा ही रह जाता है। नौ हज़ार करोड़ हालाँकि उसी की कमाई के जाते हैं|

आपसे फिर मुखातिब होउँगा। तब तक के लिए उमुआँ .. उमुआँ|

एंड टेक केयर!

DOES THE FARMER REALLY KNOW?

Creation, or non-creation of jobs, has been discussed as a yardstick of success or failure of a government. It is indeed a meaningful measure of the wellbeing of the economy. An ITI-pass plumber or a welder in a small town can at best hope to earn subsistence wages of about ten thousand Rupees a month. In fact even graduate engineers go abegging for such a salary. Thinking of a marginal farmer or a small milk-producer (gwala) numbs the mind. He has no salary - he and his entire family work for free in the field or in tending to the cattle. He sells the produce out of what is leftover from family's own consumption. That pays for his other needs - clothes, medicines, house-repair, cooking, education of children and the other myriad necessities of daily life.

Now, there is no job like that in the world that doesn't pay wages. Surplus produce cannot be called a wage, certainly not for all the members of the family. The wife, the mother, all the children are actually working for free. Each one of them should actually be getting the minimum wage every day for their back breaking labour, say ₹200 to ₹300 per diem. If they did claim that wage, our milk would cost us seventy-five Rupees a litre and wheat sixty Rupees a kilo. After all a large farmer or a dairy-owner does pay his workers some wage. So, our cheap milk, vegetables and food grain are actually a product of self-inflicted slavery. 

So friends, pray to God that the small farmer doesn't became aware of this!

                    ---ooo---

BLOATWARE IS BACK

With the advent of Android and iOS there was a hope, howsoever slim and shortlived it proved later, that software writers were back to being sensible once again. I was told the Windows XP had a billion lines of code. The initial years of Android and iOS were ruled by constraints of limited processing power, low memory in the mobile devices and need to quickly roll out software. Apps, the nifty little pieces of software, had made the routine easier and quicker. The mobile Operating Systems themselves were compact, yet functional and stable.

Soon, the cliques of code-writers realised that they would be out of business and jobs. So, the guild struck with a vengeance. They soon started writing bloatware once again like there was no tomorrow. And lo and behold, the hardware industry lapped up the opportunity like a drowning man clutches a life buoy thrown to him. So we are now commonly looking at 1.7GHz Octa Core processors, dedicated graphics processors and assisted cooling accompanied by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

We are back to the past, where software was distributed on double sided DVDs. Apps now are as big as half a Gigabyte. Even an upgrade is a few hundred Mega Bytes. Take a look at the attached screenshot - an upgrade of MS Word weighs in at 306 MB. A mere upgrade of just a component of the MS Office, that too of the mobile version is all of 300+MB or the size of half a CD! Not long ago, full MS Office came on ten floppies adding up to just about 14 MB and later on a CD of 700MB. Hard Disks were considered large if they had a capacity of 30GB. But that was before the bloatware took over.

That is not all. All other Apps that I fondly installed on my iPad or the Android phone also need  upgrades every two weeks. So if you have say 40 Apps, not an unusually large number, each one of these will "offer" a free upgrade (update) twice a month, demanding an average of 50MB data traffic for it. That makes nearly 4GB of data every month (2x40x50) just to make up for the stupid code-writers' slip-ups. Well, I often think that I am the stupid one to have fallen for all this. Even unlimited WiFi plan is not really unlimited - we all know that. There was a time, when the industry or the discerning users or at least the nerds cursed Microsoft for coming out with an upgrade (they called it a patch) every six months. But, now we do not even murmur at this rip off - in matter of data charges, personal time and possibly unknown security-holes in the App, which they want to plug every fortnight.

The Empire has Struck Back!

                                            ---ooo---

KANHAIYA KUMAR (Why target a single person?)

Numerous TV debates have harped on this point. Why single out one student, when a whole lot of others were shouting seditious-slogans? Why only in JNU, when they dance tango with similar people in Kashmir? Well, Kanhaiya was (is) the leader of the JNUSU and was leading the crowd that day, when they called for destruction of India. That is good enough reason to put him behind bars. Whether he uttered those same very words from his own lips is not important. But, the legal issues go beyond that. Why make a single person (or just a few) pay for the crime of many? 

Let's go back to the days, when music piracy was at its peak, five to ten years ago. Powered by peer-to-peer networks like the Limewire, BitTorrent or Napster, millions of young men and women, older ones too, downloaded and shared songs, which were copyrighted by record labels or music companies. It happened in India and many countries.  But, in the USA, which prides itself on a tough regime of patents and copyrights (a great factor in its vibrant culture of innovation and creativity in academic, scientific, technological and entertainment fields), the record companies took the matter into their hands. They sued unknown millions for damages. Of course, it was technologically possible to list out each one of those anonymous downloaders and make them party in the legal battle. But, they narrowed down to just a few, out of which two cases are the most celebrated. The judiciary went along with this course.

Jamie Thomas-Rasset, a Woman from Minnesota was fined US$2,20,000 (RS. 1.5 Crores at today's exchange rate) for just 24 songs. She ended up paying US$9167 (Rs. 6.25 lakhs) per song. The case was filed by the Recording Industry Association of America and went up to the Supreme Court, which upheld the penalty.

The second case is of Joel Tenenbaum, a PhD student of Boston University, who ended up paying US$6,75,000 for just 30 songs or US$22,500 (Rs. 15.30 lakhs) apiece. The Supreme Court refused to even admit his appeal.

The argument that a single person should not be penalised since millions others were doing the same fell flat on the judges. The downloaders (pirates, actually) even argued that they would pay for the album, which they had copied, an amount of a few dollars. The judges were not impressed. They said that an example had to be made of them. They also said that the loss to the recording industry went far beyond just the loss of sale of one single album by the accused. Today, such blatant music piracy is virtually non-existent in the USA. One is scared of even making copies of CDs for one's friends.

Well, an example has to be made each of Kanhaiya Kumar and of SAR Geelani. And the damage they have caused goes far beyond mere an evening of slogan shouting and a seditious press-meet. Thank you.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/11/minnesota-woman-songs-illegally-downloaded

http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/appeals-court-denies-piracy-penalty-plea/

THE RADIO WAVES A HELLO FROM THE PAST

One of the biggest regrets of my life is that I have not listened to the Vividh Bharti for decades now. Such has been the invasion of the television in our lives that we have voluntarily surrendered to its designs. Sitting in a couch, staring at a flickering screen while those unrelenting enemies, fat, cholesterol, triglycerides, unburnt-calories, Vitamin-D-deficiency, varicose veins, and flabby-belly ceaselessly shooting at you, has been a lost battle for good health.

The laws of physics are mercilessly unfriendly. A visual must be viewed directly since the line of sight is but a straight line. The potato is therefore necessarily bound to the couch. Sound waves, on the other hand waft and swirl around the house, from room-to room, in you garden and onto you balcony. The radio uncomplainingly sits in a corner, a most tolerant and liberal device not seeking to arrest you into confinement yet regaling you while you read the newspaper, sip your morning cuppa, walk on you treadmill, brush and shave or even take a shower. It works on your mind and not on your eyeballs. It doesn't enslave you, it befriends you. It captivate you, yet doesn’t take you captive. Human mind, the radio knows, is a powerful receiver. It can process multiple inputs, all at once. So, you can listen to the news while you drive, tap the table to Kishore Kumar while you eat your porridge or play with your children while the radio entertains you faithfully unconcerned with what you are doing.

So, whether it was a lazy summer afternoon or a cold winter night, you could be snuggled indoors and let the tuner beat the blues for you. The radio was a democratic device that entertained no matter where you were in the house. It enchanted the children, the Dad and the Mom, the housemaid and the passerby alike. If you wanted to enjoy a primetime serial, though the term serial was not invented then, you could curl up in warm blankets and listen to the Hawa Mahal. Or you could tune in to Radio Ceylon and enjoy the Binaca Geetmala, the weekly "award" rating of music that could easily outdo the glitzy Grammy Awards function. The best part of it was that the compère Amin Sayani came out tops every Wednesday, beating the songs that he played. The Vividh Bharti was the station, we didn't have channels then, that kept the love of music alive across generations through special programmes like Chhaya Geet and special programs for Fauji Bhais. Does Jhumri Talaiyya still exists on the planet earth? Let me find out next time I tune in. Raju, Babli and Pinki must have grown up now. Their postcard requests were read out as if they were personal messages from long lost friends.

Tuning in to obscure and distant radio stations gave greater pleasure than actually visiting London, Peking or Washington DC. The Aha Moment of locking into the clearest reception of the BBC or the Voice of America was as rewarding as a grandmother's success in threading a needle without glasses. The modern avatar, the FM Radio, comes close to the old faithful AM, but the latter still wins because it served you, without aerials and antennae, in basements and on sky-scrapers, in the hills and forests, on sea beaches and on high seas.

I have missed you, Radio! The #WorldRadioDay just told me that I have missed a lot in these years. I promise to make up for it. #ThankYouRadio.

---ooo---

PATANJALI STORES - Bhag MNC Bhag!

Visited the Patanjali Store just out of curiosity after having heard good things about it from many persons. "Total delight" is the only term that describes my experience. I have always been suspicious of Babas and have kept my distance from them. I would prefer to learn Yoga from Shilpa Shetty to a Baba-type teacher.

They say that Baba Ramdev has commercialised his brand. Nothing could be further from truth. He indeed has. The Patanjali brand of household stuff sells like hot cakes even in a small town like Salem and one has to wait one's turn in a queue. The reasons are not difficult to see. Everything is so well presented, packaged and ridiculously low-priced that one can only curse oneself for having been cheated all these years by the likes of Hindustan Lever, Colgate and Proctor and Gamble.

The Patanjali Stores sells everything of daily need - soaps, detergents, toothpaste, rice, atta, pulses, cooking oil, biscuits, cornflakes and even instant noodles. Every single thing is packaged professionally matching, if not beating the MNCs. Prices are unbelievably low. Soap cakes for half the price of what Hind Lever sells, shampoos and seventy percent cheaper, biscuits at half price and so on. Pulses are unpolished and very attractively packed. All foodstuff is fssai approved.

The range of soaps can shame Hindustan Lever and that of biscuits the Britannia company. The quality is top class and reassuring. The salespersons are ultra polite and are obviously well trained. They had staff, which spoke Tamil, Hindi and English. There is also an in-house consultant, who prescribes Ayurvedic medicines for you, all of which are available in the store at very reasonable prices. The blend of heritage and herbal offerings with modern stuff like moisturisers, sunscreens and hair-conditioners, liquid hand-washes is seamless.

This Baba is soon going to give the MNCs a run for their money. He has also launched a major advertising campaign in the media. The best part of it is that he does not use a beauty-queen or a film star as a brand ambassador. His market savvy and care for details will soon be a case study in Management Schools.

I recommend a visit to your nearest Patanjali Store.

(Disclaimer: I am not a follower of Baba Ramdev)

IS THIS GUY A SALES AGENT OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES?

We all know the "seminars" Australian Universities hold every year in India to catch the rich kids. Education is business in Australia and Indians are the biggest customers. Or, shall we say the raw material or the fuel to keep their teaching factories going?

But, Narayan Murthy is professing that India spends five billion dollars every year in educating our students in American Universities for next fifty years!

Mr Murthy! Why not spend five billion dollars every year in India to set up world class Universities? One can set up a Harvard style University in India for about 100 million dollars or say 700 crore Rupees. We could set up fifty Harvard Universities in India for five billion dollars. Fifty every year, that is. For next fifty years!

We will not get good teachers, you would say. Then set up forty Harvard style Universities for four billion dollars and employ the best professors for the remaining billion dollars. You could get the best in the world for that kind of money. 

The problem, Mr Murthy, is not sending 10,000 PhD students every year to the USA. The problem is what jobs we will offer them when they come back. Do we have the laboratories and research houses to employ ten thousand PhDs every year? And what salaries will we offer them? That of the peon? Didn't you hear that nearly two million candidates, some of them PhDs and MTechs, applied for a mere three hundred jobs of peons in Uttar Pradesh?

On second thoughts, why not spend half of five billion dollars in setting up twenty five Harvards or MITs in India and spend the rest in setting up high class research labs. But again, who will be the customers of such labs and of the fantastic designs they will churn out year after year? Does the Indian industry have it in them to absorb such research products? 

Well, Mr. Murthy! You need to read up some economics after all that COBOL programming that you have learnt. You can't develop an economy in such a lopsided manner. And please stop being an agent of the American Education system. It is sinking for some time now and it is going down for reasons well known to them. We will not prop them up.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Send-10k-PhD-students-each-year-to-US-Narayana-Murthy/articleshow/50780069.cms

BUREAUCRATISATION OF EDUCATION

When I was a school going child, the only authority I knew in the school was the Principal or the Headmaster. The Principal, aided by the Vice-Principal, epitomised all the powers that were to be exercised in running the school, from caning and disciplining the students, decisions regarding admissions, upkeep of the playgrounds and gardens, cleanliness of the campus, time-tabling, examination and vacation dates to meeting the parents.

 

In the last two to three decades or so, schools have come to be owned by "trusts". So, now we have a Chairman of the trust, a vice-chairman, a Secretary, a Treasurer and numerous trustees. The poor Principal is now placed so low in the hierarchy that he is probably just a trifle above his pupils. Same goes for colleges thousands of which have sprung up every few kilometres as one travels in the country side. Of course, the trusts are just a facade for ostensible "no-profit" venture that these seats of learning pretend to be. All the donations, building funds, development funds, proprietary sale of books and stationary to students from in-house counters and all other non-tuition payments form the real motive of these trusts, which only fatten their members and line their pockets. 

 

I was once invited as the Chief Guest to a famous engineering college in Salem, Tamil Nadu. The Principal himself came to invite me and I felt honoured to be visited by him. But, when I was seated on the stage, the Principal was nowhere to be seen. I had the company of the trustees and some other spurious dignitaries. The programme started and I was surprised to find the Principal getting up from a corner seat come up and touch the feet of the Chairman, the Secretary, the Treasurer and a few other members in succession. This was a shocking let down for me. I had always envisioned a Principal as the supreme authority in a college. As the programme progressed, it became clear to me that the whole exercise was a show of sycophancy, subservience and obsequiousness. The trustees were the reigning deities, who were paid obeisance by one an all, the Principal, the Heads of Departments and College students alike. In the melee the Chief Guest was also forgotten. The Principal, upon whose visit I had felt honoured, was merely a messenger of the trustees after all!

 

I remember my days in school and college, where the Principal and senior teachers were role models and symbols of dignity and probity. But, here I saw the Principal and HODs in a role so diminished that students would probably have no reverence towards them. They would all learn to stand in awe of non-academic authorities. I have, likewise, seen some schools that are run on "corporate" lines, many of which love to call themselves XYZ International School. We see a Managing Director, an Executive Director and a few Deputy Directors in them. Each one of them have office chambers in the school building and when they come avisiting, the Principal is seen running errands for them or flitting in and out of the hallowed chambers attempting to look like obedient junior schoolboys. And, when the MD himself visits, they line up small students from the gate up to the portico showering flower petals on him. In my school the Principal's office was a much feared or a much respected place depending on the type of student one was.  There was absolutely no authority above him. Today the Principal stands probably at number seven in the rank.

 

The school and college management has taken faithfully after the government or corporate bureaucracy. Teaching and learning are incidental and the main purpose seems to be massaging the ego of hierarchy that has been unnecessarily created. Money making and its laundering continues as the hidden agenda.

 

Needless to say, I never visited any such Institution again. 

चाय मैं क्यों बनाऊँ?

आप किसी बड़े होटल में जाकर चाय का ऑर्डर करें तो कमबख्त आपको चाय-पत्ती, चीनी, दूध लाकर परोस देते हैं। यहां तक कि छन्नी भी पटक जाते हैं। "लो जी, बनाओ और पी लो।" वह तो गनीमत है कि कोयला और अंगीठी नहीं दे जाते कि जाओ चूल्हा भी आप ही जला लो। पानी गर्म दे जाते हैं।

अब आप ही सोचो कि ऐसे होटल में आपको यदि चिकन-मसाला और पराठे खाने की इच्छा हुई तो क्या होगा? बेयरा आपकी टेबुल पर जिंदा मुर्गी और मसाले धर देगा और बोलेगा, "साहब जी, आप मुर्गी हलाल करो और मसाले कूटो-पीसो, तब तक मैं कड़ाही लेकर आता हूँ। और आटा आपको कौन सा चलेगा - शक्तिभोग या पिल्सबरी मल्टीग्रेन? आटा गूँथने के लिये पानी कौन सा चाहिए - बिसलेरी मांगता है या नलके का मारूँ?  अभी लेकर हाजिर हुआ।"

अब ये भी कोई आउटिंग हुई, साहब? ऐसे ईटिंग आउट का क्या मज़ा? अरे भाई, मैंने चाय मंगाई है। सीधे-सीधे एक प्याली चाय ले आओ। और ये क्या टेबुल पर काटना-पीसना-पकाना? तुम्हारा खानसामा भाग गया है क्या? मुझे बख्शो, बरखुरदार! आगे से मैं रामप्रसाद के ढाबे पर ही जाऊंगा।

                                           ---ooo---

NIRBHAYA'S RAPIST WALKS FREE

It had to happen. There is no law under which the juvenile criminal could have been kept in confinement any longer. The same TV anchors and activists, who had painted the country black, called all men potential rapists, cried crocodile tears at the deficiencies in the criminal justice system and at the treacherous social mindset are now crying themselves hoarse at the inadequacy of the law. They are acting in stupefied horror that the boy has been set at large. Didn't the other day Leslie Udwin videograph the boy, who showed no remorse. Didn't the Barkha Dutts and Rajdeep Sardesais bark at you from the idiot box how the boy represented half the country, namely all the males of India? Well, the criminal, who gave the country shivers is now out, set free by the same justice system that delivered judgements on Salman Khans and Tarun Tejpals, the cocktail-mates of these very anchors and activists. 

The only person, who appears as a symbol of sanity and calm in this cacophony of TRP chasing TV channels has been the mother of Nirbhaya. She has appeared in TV programmes as an image of immense fortitude and patient demeanour, demanding justice for her daughter in a calm and firm voice. She has been consistently composed, yet articulate in all her appearances in spite of the indescribable pain she suffers every day due the gory mutilation and death of her darling daughter. The grieving mother has handled provocative questions designed to incite angry response and to break her down with memories of her child. But, while the TRPs of the shows went up, the lady never gave in to emotional outbursts, remaining steadfast in voicing her demand for justice.

Even today, when she walked towards the courtroom, insolent and rude TV journalists blocked her path and indecorously thrust the microphones in her face. All she had for them was a frown as she pushed the mikes aside. She was disheartened with the judgement of the High Court, but disappointed the byte-hungry reporters by her stoic calm and display of restrained grief.

माँ, तुझे सलाम!