Ashok Khemka Transferred to Museum Department by BJP Govt

Ashok Khemka, one of the celebrated IAS officer is again transferred from transport ministry to Archaeology and Museums Department, thanks to the Haryana BJP government. Mr Khemka has been transferred for the 45th time in his 23 years of career. Now this brings a question, how different is BJP government from Congress. Ache Din are back for few who do not wanted him in transport ministry.  

Mr. Khemka was trying to fix the problem of overloading of trucks in Haryana. Haryana like most of India has a great problem of truck overloading. Overloading of trucks leads to following problems:

 1. Accidents / Loss of Life : Overloading reduces the maneuverability and control of trucks  which causes hundreds of accidents where innocent people loses life.

2. Loss of Revenue:  Overloading also leads to loss of hundreds of crores of government revenue in the form of state taxes.

3. Damaging Roads: Overloading of trucks is also a big reason behind damaging roads, the road are designed for bearing certain pressure. Overloading leads to higher wear and tear of road causing monetary losses to the government.

4. Environment Pollution: When trucks carry more load than what it is designed to carry, it leads to environmental pollution. The inefficient burning of fuel in the engine leads to emission of harmful pollutants in the environment.

Now with him gone, what are the chances that the next officer taking strict action against truck overloading.  As per some news reports, " Mr Khemka had ordered district officials to penalize such vehicles which caused problem to some"

So the main question which comes to my mind:

Q Who is getting affected by the problem of Overloading? 

A.  "We the residents".

Q What are we going to do about transfer of Mr Khemka. 

A. Nothing, some may write blog, some may like it on FB , some may share but will do nothing. 

Q What should we do?

A.  We should demand reasons for transfer of Mr. Khemka to a department where people like him will be wasted. We should also demand that he should stay in transport ministry.

Q  Who  is to be blamed for such incidence ?

A. Not the politician but we the people who will not do anything sit idle.

Q. Who is to be blamed if a overloaded vehicle runs over someone ? And it can be anyone of us.

A. Please answer

Another Politician goes to Jail ..

Amar Singh became the new addition to the list of politician who went to judicial custody for various charges in last few months. Interestingly the whole drama of not turning up to court by showing medical reasons was strictly sorted by the court which usually does not hesitate in just giving the next hearing date. Amar Singh now have to just be happy with medical facilities of the prison. 

Mr Singh has also just added his name to the prominent list of politicians who tasted the salt of prison off-late like Mr. A.Raja, Mr. Suresh Kalmadi, Mr. Madhu Koda and Ms. Kani Modzi.   As the number of politicians going to Jail are increasing, it looks to be a positive sign for the Indian democracy. It also sends a good message to the political class that no one is untouchable when it comes to judiciary. If not in their own political term,politicians will be taken to the task once their term end for their misdeeds. So politicians should better do good things to stay away from a prison term. 

Our politicians must realize that doing corruption and escaping charges is become increasingly difficult for them as the media and use of technology is increasingly making the system more transparent.Government at times is also forced to stay away from influencing the judiciary to respect the popular sentiment of the citizens of the country. I hope it makes more politicians honest. 

Some of the question which comes to mind are how many of the politicians will finally be convicted, how much time will they stay in jail and how long will the case remain pending for judgement? I hope we witness some of the judgement in our lifetimes if not politicians.  

What exactly is CBI doing ?

If we look at the past, we all know how honest had all our politicians and bureaucrats been. The Central Bureo of Investigation was primarily created with following divisions:

• Anti Corruption Division: Cases of corruption and fraud committed by public servants of all Central Govt. Departments, Central Public Sector Undertakings and Central Financial Institutions.

• Economic Crimes Division: Deals with cases including bank frauds, financial frauds, Import Export & Foreign Exchange violations, large-scale smuggling of narcotics, antiques, cultural property and smuggling of other contraband items etc.

• Special Crimes Division: Deals with cases such as cases of terrorism, bomb blasts, sensational homicides, kidnapping for ransom and crimes committed by the mafia/the underworld.                      (Source:  Wikipedia)

Now if we analyze their work particularly in anti corruption,  I cant remember any of the politician or a top notch bureaucrat being nabbed by CBI. The Raja's 2G scam was discovered by central Vigilence Unit so was the case of Hasan Ali where Supreme Court has to intervene when it found CBI doing nothing. This is the story with almost all the prominent cases.

Even now that the CBI is investigating  the 2 G scam, the charge sheet filed by CBI is kind of soft towards Raja. I really dont understand what exactly are they doing ? Is there some genuine conflict of interest where all the posting and promotions of CBI are being done by the influential politicians and bureaucrats and they just cant do anything about them ?

Why Blame Politicians for corruption ?

Common Wealth Games Corruption, Why are we blaming bureaucrats and politicians for large scale corruption . I have the following questions ?

1. Why do we idolize our wealthy relatives without checking out their means of income and wealth ? And even when we know that they are corrupt, our respect and appreciation within society for them never change. 

2. Do we prefer to  bribe the Traffic Police man rather than paying actual penalties ? How much money are we annually saving out of it, nothing, But we still do it , right ?

3. Do we lay more stress of wealth rather than knowledge, personality or behavior of the person ?Do we speak with same respect and admiration to people with equal education but unequal wealth status ?

4. Do we prefer to worship Laxmi more than Saraswati ? Why so ?

5. Are we showing all our rental , interest and other sources of income for our Tax returns ? Is that because we  are afraid or tax man or due to strong value system ?

6. Do we publicly look down on people who bribe or receive bribe? Do we do it even when they are our relatives, friends, parents or close acquaintance ?

7. If we have a option of saving or gaining 1,00,000 which might have potential damaging affect on government of country by 50,00,000, what will you do ?

Changing politicians is out of our circle of influence and criticizing them will not change them . What we can do is that we can change ourselves and once society starts reforming the politicians will themselves change. The day most of the Indians have proud answers to these seven questions, we will not have much of problem with the rampant corruption in the society.

Credits : Inputs from lot of people who influence my opinion and knowledge. 

Common-Wealth Game !

N.D. Tiwari's Biggest Mistake !

N D Tiwari Ji might be one of the fittest octogenarian in the world. 86 year old man was caught in bed with 3 women. The incident is nothing new for the politicians .

I only fail to understand that why did he offered his resignation on health Grounds ?

BJP: What went wrong?

Jaswant Singh might not have had the slightest idea of getting impeached from the BJP party over his praise for the founder of Pakistan. What prompted him to write such a piece of literature which is totally against the ideology of the party which he served for 30 long years is a big question?

The case of Mr. Singh is not the only case where BJP has lost its image in public but unfortunately there had been countless number of cases and incidents off late which had made BJP suffer in public. Ever since the fall of the “ Indian Shining “ campaign BJP has not recovered yet and is not able to provide good competition to Congress. It’s not that they are not able to digest the defeat in the election but I believe their downfall is has more fundamental intrinsic and extrinsic reasons behind it.

Succession Planning : - Not only the corporate world but even the political parties requires proper succession planning , With the ageing of the founding members of BJP there is no clear leader which had been identified to take on the responsibility of the next leader and it had made people fight for posts inside the party . With Gandhi’s as a controlling centre of the Congress it had never been the case with Congress.

Conflict about Hindutva Ideology: - With the growing liberal face of Indian society and a major proportion of Indian population being in mid twenties, it had become rather confusing for the party to stick to their long term political ideology of Hindutva. This confusion has created a loss for BJP as even the staunch supporters of BJP are now confused about what BJP really stands for.

Rise of SP/ BSP: - Success in UP was one of the reason which made BJP prosper in the national politics. There was a time when BJP used to win 50 seats in UP. The rise of BSP and SP had made the equation very tough for BJP in UP where elections are closely integrated with the game of caste politics. Now we have four ways fight in the UP elections with Congress emerging as a strong force. This year assembly elections might be very interesting and there are strong chances of revival of Congress in UP.

Indian Railways a Social Venture?

Mamta Bannerjee presented a wonderful Railway budget this year with lots of emphasis on improving the railway infrastructure of the country which is coming under pressure due to rising population. Apart from announcement of new trains the schemes for backward areas, budget tickets for students and nonstop trains came as the pleasant surprise this year.

Inspite of all these good announcement there were few sweeping statements made during the budget session, one of them was “Indian Railways are not a profit oriented Enterprise but a Social Enterprise “.I beg to differ on this completely.

No social venture is sustainable unless it makes steady profits and shows a growth in future. I think that we are all now reaping the benefits of the profitability of the Railways in last 5 years. Only when a company makes profit, they can be reinvested and utilized for fulfilling some of the social commitments. No institutions will even lend to the institutions which are disoriented towards the profit aspect of business. A cliché statement but very appropriate for this discussion, “Wealth Maximization should be the ultimate goal for any corporation”.

Another observation about budgets is the lack of visibility on the implementation aspect of the various schemes. The government commits huge sums of money towards the development schemes but lot of funds leaks during the bureaucratic process. I believe we need a new department for reducing the inefficiencies of the various ministries by developing the implementation strategies of various schemes in close coordination with the ministries.

Budget 2009

Sensex may have crashed 600 points after the announcement of the budget, but I still found the budget very responsible although it has fair share of negative policy decisions too .

Positives

1. Government high degree of spending on rural and poor India clearly signals the accountability to the people of the country. They are fulfilling the promises made in the general elections.

2. Infrastructure spending will give boost to the manufacturing industry which is facing trouble due to recession. It will also have increased multiplier effect and will boost the overall economy.

3. Increasing MAT to improve the tax revenues from the company which are avoiding tax due to tax incentives given to them. If we see companies like TCS, INFY, they have established themselves well and don’t really need any tax breaks further. Ideally there should be a limit set on net profits and the time company crosses the limit, it should be taxed as a normal company.

4. Boost to agriculture sector in the form of 7% loan will improve the rural economy further, it will improve the purchasing power of almost 650 million Indians.

Negatives

1. No announcement of disinvestment in both loss and profit making companies is really shocking news. When the country is sitting on huge fiscal deficit and borrowing nearly 34% of the money used for spending, disinvestment could have been a trump card solution which is missed.

2. Imposition of Fringe Benefit Tax was a smart move by the earlier government, by abolishing it tax revenues will be reduced as companies will start paying its employees in the form of benefits and perks to reduce their tax load. This may also increase the fiscal deficit even further.

3. Reducing duties on Plasma TV, Mobile Phones and imported Car - This may be one of the decisions for the galleries, but it really doesn’t help the rising fiscal deficit of the country.

I think the major issue of this budget is clearly the lack of fiscal management by the finance ministry, increased borrowing by the government will cause following effects: -

1. Sovereign Ratings: - Increase fiscal deficit to more than 6%, it may also affect our sovereign ratings and increase the cost of borrowing by the government and the institutions.

2. Crowding out Effect: - Government is borrowing almost 34% of the expenditure from the markets. It will reduce the options for the private sector to get easy funding as it will be competing against the government to secure funds.

3. High Interest Burden: - Around 19% of the budgetary expenditure goes in just paying the interest on the loans taken by the government. High interest burden and increased borrowings is a negative sign for the growth targets of the country.

Slums.. Are we missing the larger Picture?

Slumdog Millionaire might not have done anything great for the slum dwellers but it has surely made few people very rich and famous, one is them is producer and director Mr Danny Boyle other includes actress of the movie ‘ Latika Fame‘ and last but not the least the slum cast of the movie who are finally having a good time after many ups and downs during and after the release of the movie .

What came as surprise to me is the lack of interest shown by people in attacking the real problem of poverty in slums. Actors like Salman etc are posing happily with the children from the slum who worked in the Oskar winning movie but they are simply ignoring the real issue of the condition of millions of kids who are still deprived of the basic necessities of the life.

Sending the Slumdog kids to school is really a great gesture shown by Danny Boyle but it could have really helped if they can simply build a school for slums in the locality or appeal to the general people to show some empathy to the major cause of slum development.

I think people are missing the larger picture of putting efforts in improving the conditions of slums as a whole and assuming that improving the life of few kids in slum will solve all the problems.

There is also a lack of initiative from the government machinery. We have ministries for urban development and rural development but we don’t have any focus on the slum Development or rather rehabilitation where 60% of the urban population lives. If India has to improve its condition and reputation outside , slum development has to be taken as a first priority .All the issues of poverty , malnourishment , crime and illiteracy are actually originating from the slums and as the population density in slums is very high , it will take significantly lessor effort and funds to improve the condition.

Instant Feedback..

Throwing a shoe at a politician has now been discovered as a new and effective way to express the dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. It’s like a instant feedback, no question asked.

The best part of this feedback is the kind of visibility it creates, the incident with President Bush made people order 1000’s of pair of same shoes from the Iraqi shoemaker. Websites developed different e-games on the same theme, Wow instant Hit.

Is this the true democracy or the freedom of expression, I don’t know  that but yes it is full of action and media is simply loving it.  

 Does Mr Chibambaram deserve it? , he has been a brilliant finance minister for India and just recently appointed as the home minister. I don’t think He deserved it, but who says life is Fair!

About Bollywood Stars and Power Politics ..

Sports, Politics and Acting are arguably the three most glamorous profession in the world . Few of the people in such profession keep shifting to other professions to keep their name and charisma alive .May be the fame and attention are the most desired elements for people who have achieved a lot in their career or life and they keep doing different things to seek attention to remain in limelight or Page 3 of the newspapers.

It was not surprised to see Sanju Baba agreeing to contest elections from Lucknow when he is nowhere related to the issues or politics of the place. One of the prime reasons of the actors entering politics is their dwindling acting career which can no more guarantee them the popularity of their past. Likes of Rajesh Khanna ,Govinda,  Vinod Khanna , Darmendra etc all have tried their hand at politics with little success at the fag-end of their careers . What differentiates Sanjay from other politicians is his checkered past and his experiments with AK-47 which may not help him in becoming the Nawab of Lucknow but can certainly revive the ugly stories of his past.

Lord Byron says “What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.” But in this world of people seeking power and attention, the charm of fame will remain as the illusionary power which will keep driving the people to fall for it.

Kudos !!

So it’s finally over today .The Tata’s have decided to move on and finally decided to stop all of their plans of continuing operations of NANO project from Singur .There are reports that even other companies are considering to abandon their plan of continuing their operations from the state.

Ms Benerjee told the press today that “It hardly matters to us. It is a joint gameplan of the CPI(M) and the Tatas to leave ... The allegation that our agitation was violent is bogus,"

I think with leaders like her no country needs outside funds, technology or help in the growth and development of the state. It shows the clear signs of self sufficiency which we were trying to achieve from so many years. We are proud of you Mamta Ji!

About Heros and Villains ..

Just few months back all the Newspaper and Media channels were flushed with news of Tata Motors launching NANO , the dream car made for middle class Indian who aspires to drive comfortably with his family in comfort of a four wheeler but can't buy the existing brands due to the high cost. The cute looking car was coming at literally half a cost of existing Maruti 800 which is the cheapest car now in market. The worlds applauded India for the frugal engineering , a new break through in applied sciences , comfort at bare minimum cost.Countess number of patents were filed for it , surely they dont needed any scantily dressed models to launch it.

Mr Tata gave a promise to the people which he is fulfilling even when the commodity inflation is touching new peaks . My friend in Tata motor told me that there in the office there are huge posters saying " A promise is a Promise " , so true only a gentleman can keep his promise and they feel so proud about it. We all are proud of it .


Today Tatas have made the final announcement that they are moving out of Singur. it will be a loss of more than $100 million , delay in schedule of launch , huge loss to the vendors who have set up the plants there to follow Just in Time (JIT) methodology to reduce cost.I think these losses may look huge but nothing in comparison to Singur which could have been part of history , could have been known to the world because of NANO and its even bigger loss to Bengal which is trying hard to shed its image of investment unfriendly destination.

Indian politics have shown lot of dirty faces but I think this will be amongst the top, when likes of Tatas are promising rehabilitation , price and jobs to land owners . why are people creating silly issues about it. Its a classic example of short sightedness where at times local issues take much more importance for some people of prominence and the whole Nation is discounted for the local cause. I dont understand why someone who is not the representative of the people , who has been defeated in the elections is taking the whole administration for a toss.This is surely not the democracy I have learned in books.


Mamta Bennerjee might have not done any good for the people of West bengal but here she surely has done a big mistake which people will remember for long time. She is truely deserves a Razzie Award . May this episode bring some sense to the politicians of India ! We dont need such people but we have the problem of plenty .


One more thing which is clear after this incident is that the TATAs are the best employers to work with , as for them its the employees which matters , they are ready to take losses to avoid agony and discomfort for there employees .Mr Ratan Tata has again shown why he is so admired in the world . I dont have words to describe him , He is my Hero !