A Succinct Apology for all that Ails India

"I apologise for the Partition of India; for the lingering Jammu and Kashmir issue and for not resolving it at Simla in 1972; I apologise for India spurning the offer to join the Security Council as a permanent member when it was offered at the time of independence; for the defeat of India in the 1962 war with China and the vexed boundary problem; I apologise for the Hindu rate of growth of 3% for the first three decades of Independence and for all the poverty, deprivation and inequality; I apologise for the massacre of Sikhs in the country in 1984; I apologise for the more recent events like the Army Chief's age row; for the Antrix-Devas deal and for punishing scientists of the eminence of Madhavan Nair without giving them an opportunity for explanation; for the PMO not keeping the PM informed of the 2G scam; for the Supreme Court cancelling the 2G licences; for the CWG scam, the Air India scam, the KG Basin scam, the Adarsh Society scam and for all the other scams for which this government is being wrongly blamed. 

I apologise for the policy paralysis in the government, for the rising fiscal and current account deficits, for the slowing down of the economy. "

Source

The Sense of Service and the Civil Servant

Can the civil servant ever feel the sense of service that he is supposed to feel in serving the public?

From my modest experience and empirical knowledge, the answers seems to be an emphatic no.

In India the term "Public Servants" implies the way those not in the government (the public)  are viewed - (The) Public (are our) Servants and the two classes of humanity... those in the government, and their servants (the public).

Take the case of the Telecom Sector, MTNL/BSNL the pan-India telecom service providers run by the government.

Granted, there are some technological issues with Landlines with regards to -
1) Last mile connectivity - the copper wire to the home, long turn around times
2) The Analogue signal - No SMS or USSD services,  Prone to static noise

But the problem is exacerbated by the lack of transparency and customer-centricity of these Governmental  service providers.

Unfortunately, they are still stuck in the "Licence Raj" mindset of a couple of decades ago, when they had a monopoly and customers would stand in long queues, braving the hellish heat and rain to be able to communicate via AG Bell's 1876 invention

Till the advent of mobility very recently, this (and the public) served them well, but like Hosni Mubarak, their false sense of security has lulled them into complacency. With heightened competition, from the private sector one would have expected, some form of improvement in ATLEAST the attitude if not the QoS of these National Service Providers.

But that is just not to be, so the exodus continues unabated, with their employee's persistent time-warped perception which I experienced first hand, as I attempted in vain to have my landline rectified.

Winding my way through the maze of red tape and mind-numbing bureaucracy, these "Masters of all the Survey" are not willing to tell you their name, let alone help, or even do their assigned jobs.

It is easy to fool the blind, which is what the public was prior to private enterprise, we didn't know any better, so were satsified... but having experienced superior support from mobile phone companies, the appearance of the landline appears, torn, tattered and disheveled - definitely not something we want hanging around our homes.

This leads me to the much often heard phrase, governments should administrate corporates but Not run corporations.

Granted the government continues to make blustering attempts to improve the efficiency of these bodies (flogging dead horses), currently there are talks of a superfluous attempt to merge them into one entity.

For sure, this government run teleco will survive (thanks to your taxes), but not in the hyper competitivenes of the urban landscape, but on the fringes, the outskirts and inaccessible or economically unfeasible,  remote areas.

The million dollar question is ... how long will these areas remain remote?

End Note -  No wonder MTNL calls it "SURRENDERING" your connection... it's when you give up fighting with them! ROFLOL

Capitalism in Hinduism

Here is another plagiarized post.... for the simple reason that... I'm continually searching for positive spins on Capitalism and Mr. Nadkarni has given a credible theological  perspective

 Capitalist within

By VITHAL C NADKARNI

   On DHANTERAS wealth is worshipped. All that gold, silver and precious stuff is to be laid out, to entice the Goddess of Wealth to shower greater prosperity on the house as she supposedly flits in and out at night during the festival. 

Strange as it may seem, the ‘owl avatar’ of the Goddess is singled out for worship during Dhanteras along with traditional Lakshmi-puja.
   

She is the goddess who rides the great white owl (Ullukavahini),
which also signifies silent transience of wealth. The Goddess’s bird of the night also symbolises sleepless wisdom; it also accompanies the Goddess Athena in western tradition.
   

No one knows the transient, or some would say fickle, aspect of wealth as its devotees. In his recent study of capitalism, American Colossus, H W Brands highlights, for example, “the terrifying difficulty of remaining at the top once one has arrived”. The famous tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt was said to be a pucca ‘water man’; he was entirely devoted to the steamship even as railroads “threatened to relegate river transport to the status of the fax”.
   

Vanderbilt’s antipathy to trains was reported to be so deep that he chose to refer to them “as things that go on land” instead of naming them! But he couldn’t run away from looming obsolescence of river ways: he recovered his acquisitive wits just in time to grab the shares of the New York & Harlem Railroad in the 1860s and was thus able to delay the decline of his great fortune, albeit only by a few decades.
   

The one lesson that stands out from studies of wealth worshipping votaries of Mammon is that of capitalism as a force of creative destruction, a notion first introduced by the German sociologist Werner Sombart and later popularised by the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter. He used the term to describe the process of transformation
that accompanies radical innovation. To less savvy eyes, this can truly seem to be as whimsical or magical as the entry of the Goddess’s great white owl!
   

In the vision of capitalism evoked by Schumpeter, what sustains long-term economic growth is the entry of that economical creature, the entrepreneur, even as it destroyed the value of established companies and labourers that enjoyed older monopolistic advantage.
   

So on Dhanteras, we ought to worship the ‘entrepreneur within’ that sees every problem as an opportunity; even as he leverages catastrophes into capital.  

From The Cosmic Uplink in The Economic Times

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

* Permissum Lector Caveo

I may be naive in my simplicity …

Unfortunately the way I connect the dots… .. doesn’t discount the fact that the shortest route between two points is a straight line (let's not get into tesseracts, worm holes and Infinity loops).

My understanding of the economic meltdown was admittedly simplistic. ... but my portent on hyperinflation is unfortunately becoming a reality….

I similarly have written very simplistically about the Dantewada massacre & Naxal uprisings  ... but I still believe my prophecy on telecom and vernacular unicode driven internet are going to happen in the not so distant future.

But education in India remains a strange figment to us all. .. our system sucks. With focus on rote and memory rather than analysis and inference, 

Even the Rote is Rotten. ... India has no history post 1950 ... atleast no children are taught it … even in 2010.          

I intend on studying Ramachandra Guha's India after Gandhi. .. as soon as I can find fund & time to buy it….

Hope you didn’t mind all the dots…

Here’s hoping for a brighter tomorrow….

And another portend – Apples, Oranges, BlackBerries Beware …

Episode 4 :A New Hope…

The Android’s been awakened ....


http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/testing-the-android-waters/?src=mv

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Links in this post –

http://aseemseth.blogspot.com/2010/02/palpitations-by-pranab.html

http://aseemseth.blogspot.com/2010/04/voice-that-could-stop-another-dantewada.html

http://aseemseth.blogspot.com/2010/03/terrorism-success-of-stupidity.html

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/356824.India_After_Gandhi

http://aseemseth.blogspot.com/2010/06/should-i-be-eating-my-words-did-steve.html

Palpitations by Pranab

Kamada Kinkar Mukherjee, was improsined for over 10 years, for fighting for India’s freedom, while in Birbhum, West Bengal, his son was honing his skills in communication, writing for the Desher Dak Magazine. In 1969, little Pranab began his political career as a Member of the Rajya Sabha from the Congress Party, rose to become India’s Finance Minister in 1982, and was rated as one of the five best FMs in the world by Euro Money in 1984.

With the Union Budget for 2010-11 being announced on February 26, all eyes are on our venerated and wizened FM – Hon’ble Pranab Mukherjee, who has the unenviable task of What appears to be a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object - balancing the country’s economy, while keeping his party in political power.

The Hon’ble FM Pranab Mukherjee must control the aftermath of the global recession including -  

1)     Reigning in hyper-inflation – rising food prices, controlling petroleum hikes, etc. - basically to much printed paper currency running after reduced goods and services

2)     Boosting growth – Agricultural, Industrial, Infrastructural, Occupational… and all the other ‘al’s.

What I fear is that the FM will choose to take the path of least resistance, and wring the neck of the Fixed Middle Income Group, who form a small, insignificant & fragmented vote bank,  but are the easiest to tax & take from.

Kindly have a defibrillator ready for me - Here come my palpitations (courtesy of Pranab) –

I)                   Removal of ELSS

II)                Conversion of PF from EEE to EET

III)              Increased Home Loan Rates

IV)              Removal of Home Loan Interest Deductions

V)                 Increased Property Tax

VI)              Increased Petrol & LPG prices

VII)            Increased Essential Commodity Prices – Roti (Bread) & Kapda (Clothing) Expenses

VIII)         Increased General Cost of Living Expenses

IX)              Increase in Tax Saving u/s 80 from Rs. 100K to Rs. 300K

I hope and pray these palpitations, do not convert into a coronary heart attack!

What are you Grouses? Please post… Misery LOVES company!


--------------------

Update - Pranab's Speech Today-

While "IT returns forms for individual tax payers are to be further simplified", dunno how, we are going to welcome Hyper-Inflation (or HUGE Interest Rates) with -

"Income up to Rs.1.6 lakh per year exempt from income tax; up to Rs.5 lakh to be taxed at 10 percent; income of Rs.5-8 lakh to be taxed at 20 percent and income above Rs.8 lakh to be taxed at 30 percent" - more demand

&

Higher prices with immediate effect as "Petrol & Diesel up by 1 Rupee per Litre"

  

I hope that-

"GDP GROWTH SEEN AT 8.5 PCT, INFLATION AT 4 PCT IN FY11"

Here is a brief of the latest provisions on Direct tax under Budget proposals announced by Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee for the Year 2010-2011

Tax on Personal Income:

Income slab (in Rs.) and tax rates

During FY 09-10                                                 Proposed for 10 -11

0 – 1.60L           NIL tax                                      0 - 1.60L           NIL Tax

>1.60 – 3L         10%                                          >1.60 – 5L         10%

>3L – 5L           20%                                          >5L – 8L           20%

>5L                   30%                                          >8L                   30%

In addition to the above, benefit under 80C can be claimed for an amount upto Rs. 1.20L as against existing level of Rs. 1L, by investing an additional sum of Rs. 20000 (max permissible) in Infrastructure Bond to be announced by the Government in the near future.

IMPACT:

Above revision will give you Tax relief of Rs. 56000/- p.a . To this if you add 3% towards education cess, the total relief will be Rs. 57680/-

Proposals with negative impact on your pocket:

Petrol and Diesel prices will go up by Re. 1/- 

Excise duty on Large cars and SUVs (if you propose to buy one) – will go up by 2% (from 20% to 22%).

Direct Tax Proposals which impact Corporates:

Surcharge on domestic companies reduced from 10% to 7.5%

Minimum alternate Tax increased from 15% to 18%

Thankfully none of the other major palpitations seem to have been affected (YET) - status quo maintained.... Praying that I am wrong on Hyper-Inflation Front…