a tribute to teachers

We had a visit by a teacher from local primary school 3 days ago. As you guessed it rightly, it was for filling census form. Throughout the form filling process he never made any complaint about anything, about the heat of the afternoon, about how some people didn't even allow him into the home and he had to write all answers standing in the door only, about how he had to climb many stairs in the hot summer afternoon and sometime  people never bothered to offer even water to him. I could think of many such problems that i witnessed in my building itself.. but he had only one response to my query- a smile!

Then he told me he was teaching to 9th standard students and how it was important for them to finish the syllabus early so that they could start the 10th study.His only grudge was that due to this election duty, he could not finish the syllabus himself and now a substitute teacher is teaching them. Even in those few minutes of interaction he spoke about his students.  (it is surprising how government care little for education of students from government school.. they think they can snatch their class teacher whenever they want and can substitute with anyone they want.. )

When i offered him some sharbat, he declined politely and said he have to visit many homes and could not afford to waste time. Within 10 minutes all the form was filled and he left the home.

In all this interaction, i could not show the simple courtesy of asking his name or say thank you to him.. and i felt ashamed for it. 

But now i realised he was just a faceless representative of millions of teachers who had this responisbility of gauging the nation's potential, through the nation wide program of census. He represented all those whose first love is students but who will not shy away from a national duty.

During all these exercise, he had to visit many areas where people like me will not visit for anything. I wondered how he takes the journey to areas many people will shy away  from or afraid of visiting.. like areas dominated by maoists,  ghettos, red light areas.  

But still, his work is largely unrecognised. All big plans, assumption, projections etc based on the census should always acknowledge the contribution of teachers in the preparation of their grand plans. But sadly, here too, he remain largely uncredited. 

This is a tribute to those teachers who made sincere contribution in the nation building. Consider it as a personal tribute too as i am also one of those who studied in government primary school.

What's all the fuss about JPC?

There is a saying that "sunlight is a best disinfectant."

This saying can be used for the current spates of scams and all the allegations of scams.
And to clear all this muddle.. real and hyped, an open system of investigatins can be the only effective way. A Supreme Court controlled investigation could have gone a long way if all the parties have agreed to it. Any investigation by a select committee could end into some backdoor negotiations which will just put the problem under carpet.

But BJP Left and other opposition parties are not interested in this type of openness. In fact some allies are also (allegedly) against the open investigation and they will prefer investigation by parliamentary committee instead.

Despite congress's opposition to JPC for whatever reasons, they have finally agreed to have a JPC.
Good! BJP had their way.

Now as a citizen, i expect some outcomes.

1. BJP alleged that any investigation short of JPC will not be effective. Now that they have JPC, I want an in depth investigations, with the guilty person involved getting caught and CONVICTED in a time bound fashion.

2. BJP consistently made an aleegation that the scam is of 1,76,000 crore rs. They were adament on this figure even though many experts said the figure could vary. BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad also exhorted this figure from time to time on every media forum he could get to. Now the time has come for this 1,76,000 Crore rs to be returned to the government of India's exchequer. I will not accept a rupee less than this. This even meant that they take money from the companies who bought the spectrum who will be then charge it from the people. If the money is not recovered in a time bound fashion then BJP (a) have to accept the futility of JPC in public and should work with government to create a forum to deal with such charges. or (b) should be considered the party to the corruption as it will then be assumed that they got their 'cut' from the backdoor deals. and (c) BJP should agree that the figure they were quoting was indeed wrong and for that they should apologize to the nation .


3. There had been JPC earlier on Harshad Mehta scam which was alleged to be of some 5000 crore. But JPC could not trace the money. This money was lost forever for the nation. Only some beneficiaries were some people who were involved in the JPC, directly or otherwise. Also there were no foolproof recommendations that could have gone a long way to stop such share market scams from happening again in the future But within few years we witnessed a more massive scam in terms of Ketan Parekh scam.
This time, I want JPC to give a concrete suggestions that can stop future scams into 'spectrum allocation' from happening. If they fail in this, then it is a failure of the whole reason of JPC.

I hope opposition do not disappoint me and in fact surprise me by fulfilling all my expectation s.

omar abdullah and how well he adapted to tweeter

This is going to be a short post.
Omar Abdullah joined tweeter and he became an instant hit with tweeples. And no, there was no controversy that made him a hit with masses, but his continuous dialogue with all shades of opinionated people on tweeter. He displayed a remarkable openness in talking with people. And while talking to him, we don't feel as if we are talking with a chief minister of a state, but with someone close to us.
here is an example of his chat with someone illustrating the same

Omar tweeted about how gulmerg is beautiful these days of the year:






in response to that someone with tweeter handle ashwin_naidoo said:







Omar said:







ashwin:








to this, Omar replied.. (and this is the best thing of all):






It was really overwhelming for me how a chief minister of state can be so accessible to people.
I was simply bowled by this gesture of CM Omar Abdullah.

2G RAJA MEDIA AND OPPOSITION

the recent spate of scams to hit the headlines with alarming frequency is troubling in more ways than one.
one of the big trouble is inability or indifference of the media to understand how the figure quoted is derived and how this scam happened exactly. for various reasons, one of them being TRP .. they accept and in fact propagate these mind boggling figures.

one of the biggest scam to hit India - as media is often quoting it , to come into limelight recently is 2G spectrum scam. everyone agrees that there is a scam..but the figure quoted varies widely with the political affiliation of the person quoting it. it ranges from amazingly wild 1.76 lakh crore rs. quoted incessantly by BJP to "0" a rather hilarious atempt by mr Kapil Sibal. :)
in fact CAG have quoted a range of figures for the loss due to 2G spectrum auction from 50,000 crore to 1.76 lakh crore.
the figure varies.. but all are certain.. to lesser or greater degrees that A. Raja is the villain.

But no one in the mainstream media have made an effort to put the scam into perspective, taking all sides into account. all believe that CAG is sacrosanct and whatever it says is whole and complete truth.
It is not so.. Let us see how..

CAG works on estimates, on what could have happened/not happened .. if so and so things were done/not done. They don't deal with policy matters but only take notice of the accounts concerned.
the quoted loss (in 2G spectrum ) is based on a bid by one company for the 3G spectrum - failed - because the company itself was not sure that they can recover money if they pay so high price.. hence withdrew.

also CAG takes the number of mobile users into account. as if the number is going to increase irrespective of policy.
Let us take an example..
A bridge was built, and a committee was set up to determine the amount of toll charged from vehicles. Committee settles on rs 5 per vehicle but a lone dissenting member in the committee says rs 5 is to minuscule and considering the cost of building the bridge etc , the toll charged should actually be rs 500.
now after a year, if the total toll revenue was declared as 1 crore. The CAG will simply report that if the rs 500 per vehicle was charged as that member suggested, the toll revenue would have been rs 100 crore. thus loss to the exchequer is rs 99 crore!!

They dont take into consideration that if the toll was made rs 500 the number of vehicles who used the bridge would have been drastically reduced.. and possibility that the the revenue wouldn't even have touched rs 1 crore mark.

Such are the mysterious ways of CAG's working. *

the figure derived by CAG is similar.


Blaming raja only for the policy matter such as this is rather erroneous as policy making involves large number of people... bureaucrats, technocrats, foreign experts, those who have studied working of such spectrum allotment and it's impact in other nations, industry people all come together to decide the policy.
In this case TRAI wasthe main body on whose recommendations the 3G auction was based.
Now government policy was "getting revenue is not the aim of this spectrum auction "
That was clear from the outset.. and every minister from Arun Shourie to Kapil Sibal agrees with it. The main aim of the auction is to award the spectrum to reliable players who have the expertise to spread the network in shortest time all over the India.. hence benefit the customers the most.
And here exactly raja falters.
Raja is responsible not for the loss due to policy.. but in fact the loss to the national exchequer and to masses for not actually following the policy.

Raja had not followed the "first come first serve" policy of spectrum allotment. He changed it arbitrarily, changing the date of allocation, changing the parameters of allocation so that few players get more benefit than others.
Raja changed (preponed) the date arbitrarily from 1 oct to 25 sept arbitrarily so that some serious bidders were unable to furnish details and few chosen ones get the spectrum.

He is accused of setting some front companies like swann telecom , where , it is said that he have interests, so that they got the spectrum for some 1200 crore and within less that 3 months they sold it to serious players for rs 45oo crore. (the loss there is not only of govt's but also of masses who paid more amount to companies.. who naturally charged more rates to the costumers to recover their money)
Also TRAI's guidelines about confiscation of spectrum if the player fails to reach the minimum requirements of towers, number of customers etc about service specifications within a year, were not followed. some players got more leeway, and their spectrum was not confiscated and allotted again to serious players. some companies just sat on the spectrum and then sold it at very high amount to these big companies.
An ordinary citizen lost much more in all this. he had to wait for long for the service.. also the quality of service was not good. and also he had to pay much more for it.

Raja is guilty, not because he lost 1.76 lakh crore (whatever that amount meant.. i'm not sure how many 0's are in it) but because EVERY person in the nation suffered because he wanted to favour some people.

Raja is also guilty of sitting for long time .. almost a year.. on 3G spectrum allocation for reasons known to him only. When the world is getting near of 4G.. we in 2011 have 3G service in only selected cities. (Japan had 3G since 2001) Here too the talk is he wanted to favor some companies.. but as they were not yet ready for 3G specifications.. he sat on the spectrum for long and only opened it to bidding when these big RELIABLE companies were ready.

In the process we can imagine to the loss to the nation, as mobile connectivity is like roads, electricity.. have cascading effect on nation's development. And due to Raja's indifference to nation's needs.. nation's development had been halted or slowed down.

Raja is not guilty of just loss of such minuscule sum as 1.76 lakh crore. He is guilty of halting a speeding nation.. stopping it from becoming superpower.

now to the media and our esteemed opposition BJP.. a word of advice.. if you play by the rules of TRP, misinformation.. you'll die by TRP and misinformation.
BJP should take into consideration that just rabble rousing is not going to benefit it.. they should work as a responsible opposition and should go beyond just sloganeering and yatras and make some useful contribution to the nation's development.
BJP should understand that by accusing govt of scams everywhere, it is reducing it's reliability as eventually people will not listen to it even when it have to say something serious.
Media should introspect too.. for how long will you rely on breaking news and some information leaked (many a times deliberately) by govt officers. they should not just be the conduit of information as they are doing it now.. but a processor of information. they should pause a bit and talk about policy than figures (that are making little sense nowadays as the scam amount have now astronomical figures)

*about CAG.. is CAG is such ineffective ?
the answer is NO! CAG figures are used in PAC to understand the policy and cornering govt for a policy they pursued.
Also CAG figures can be useful for future policy making as one could now know what they expect if other policy routes were used.