Traffic Chaos .. overlooked cause

After few years (includes my graduation time), I'm back as a driver in our dearest city, Hyderabad -- often left in frustration on the equally disturbed fellow commuters. I feel our govt. is ahead in formulating solutions like any other govt. But as you know, our development is hit hard at the implementation hurdle. I have no hopes in seeing a dramatical change, not even by Vision 2020 deadline, as we evidently see the untouchables, which according to me are these static set of problems:

 1) The narrow roads, which are left as is

 2) The traffic signals which pose as the signals of growth, by standing tall even in smaller towns, but useless, as most of them are either nonfunctional or not heeded to

 3) Traffic police, whose sole-hobby-turned-duty requires no mention and so a roll model for corruption and takes no second thought, in adding to this list. Low and unaccountable penalties are the root cause for this. 

 

But something more serious is the quality of roads, esp. at the cross roads or more popular as junctions , even just a 3 road one. Most of the traffic jams, I faced over the last 10 days are observed to be caused ONLY because of these unplanned speed-breakers, the crookedly uneven X roads. Of course, its simple to derive that as these junctions are common pathways for all the roads meeting, hence there is an increased usage of these sections. But unfortunately they are left with equal importance at the time of laying the roads. Even when the traffic is heavy on narrow roads, the traffic flow can be 2x smoother atleast, only with good quality roads at the junction ahead, which in many cities like hyderabad is not an issue of real priority. Who should care ? The Roads and Buildings Department? OR the Traffic department? Undoubtedly the traffic department should press this issue with the R&B. 

Professor, with purpose & Entrepreneurship, the buzz

Woww... thats just the fuel I wanted to brighten up the ignited.

I would start with thanking NIRMAAN/ CEL group for such an initiative (E-Week: Entrepreneurship Week), kicking off the fest with Mr. Sunil Handa's guest lecture. Sunil Handa is worth addressing to the core, as a professor with purpose. He talked about various issues of entrepreneurship, which we generally realize prior to his mention. But his words are too focused & knows the right way of imparting knowledge to the student. Examples given were heart touching & then the mind for entrepreneurial analysis. The motivation & positive opportunism, he has is just awesome. Forgetting about the economic melt down, listening to his speech will ignite the entrepreneurial spark in the students. Over it, recession of this kind is the right time for entrepreneurship and to be an employer rather than being an employee. Humour has been persisting in the lecture, so made none asleep, which is generally a sign of an interesting lecture :P. 

Impressive Examples:

Examples included his students' stories, which with persistent confidence in self, hard work and vision ended as successful ones. (More in his book: Stay Hungry Stay Foolish)

To show that persistent motivation has to be present, he took up this example.

His student in 1994 (from Handa's second batch), had the idea of a start up for manufacturing NEEM pesticide. And so took all the valuable suggestions. He in 1999 came back to this professor with a problem of customers (cotton growing farmers) not paying him the cost of the pesticide immediately. With a suitable marketing plan, he extended his idea to buy a sugar plant in AP. He shifted the entire infrastructure from AP to his base factory and improved the efficiency of the plant and so ended up in a profit of just more than 1700 crores.

Of course, it took him 7 years to see a feasibility of profit in the company and 10 years to see in such large numbers, but he proved Where there is a will, there is a way, coming from a poor family. 

Similarly examples of courage are given. We came to know that Bravery is not "Not having courage", but it is having the readiness to drive yourself to overcome courage.

Continued to talk on Social Entrepreneurship:

Best of all is the example of his own involvement in forming ADR (Association for Democratic Reforms, India), which is a team of 3 other IIM professors with him. ADR is the one, which filed a Public Interest Case, aiming at opening up the profiles of Criminal nominees of Politics. (Just to mention  even Govt Class IV jobs are not in reach of a person with a case on him, but he is eligible to become Chief Minister of a state !? How the.... !!!!! )

ADR's request: Compulsory mentioning of the court cases in the nomination application, so can be open to the public, how many murder cases, rape cases and others are filed against a particular nominee, helping the voter to judge.

ADR won the case in Supreme Court and immediately observed, the then Prime Minister sending a bill to Dr. Abdul Kalam, the then President, ruling out the statement (ADR's initiative) from Supreme court. ADR requested Kalam not to sign the bill, considering public interest. Then it is the first time in the INDIAN History, the President rejected a bill. Within next 48 hours, bill was again sent to the President from the then government, saying the Parliament re-thought about the same and so asking him to sign it. Constitution guides the President from not dodging for the second time.

ADR went on to persuade the Supreme Court that the act is unconstitutional and ended in success. So legally sending orders to list out the present running cases in the court against the respective nominees, which can be seen as THE UNIQUE INITIATION WE WANT TO KICK OFF THE CRIMINALS from our respected POLITICAL SYSTEM, the back bone of DEMOCRACY IN INDIA.

To be frank, I was thinking in similar lines (in ref. to my previous post) about such a reform in Political Nominations before it actually came. Now, I am happy to hear that there is an order of such kind from the Judicial system of India. Fortunate to be so close to one of the persons, with such heights of social responsibility. 

Every single student of all 260 students attended, loved the session, motivated themselves and I wish more will turn up for the second session tomorrow at 1.45 pm of his.

Waiting for an opportunity to talk to him face to face. If this is the quality of the professors at IIM Ahmadabad, I proudly endorse the lead role of IIMs in the country. This is the best of all the lectures, with my foot print.

Points of humour;

His asking the students in the back bench to come front without using a mic,

His snatching of a mobile phone from another guest of honour when it rang in the middle, 

His way of explaining how he is afraid of Chemistry (fear for COOH :) ) 

His language,

His body language are all a part of encouraging students' senses to be on their feet.

Points of interest:

 Read his book, Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

 Read Oberoi's Autobiography --Likho is the name of the book I suppose

 Read Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid - By C.K Prahlad

HATs OFF

 

Political System... out of our hands ?

India is a democratic country.
I am tired of telling this without any heart in it. As the system has learned to degrade itself with the current quality of political leaders. My anger on such politicians cant be proportional to the content I write abt them here, as I dont want to waste my energy and time on describing how discouraging the system is for upcoming trustworthy, self-righteous political leaders, rather dig for something useful to build on.
Why cant we come up with a strict jurisdiction on these political leaders? simple answer can be they have the jurisdiction in their own hands.. and they don't want to dig their own grave by amending laws which are against them. Great system.. it is like a infinite loop traversal without any breaks ! Need to control this and if possible stop this. No amendment is directed towards such goals. Most of the law amendments are for bigger 'for voting' group and most of them are socially irresponsible ones, atleast after several stages of implementation. Consider "reservation".... one hell of a topic to discuss... but I wish to make a point here... We can come up with a formula where economically backward students who cross 70 %(say) will have a reserved seat and will be equally weighed to a economically forward student with 90 %(say). That means a child with all the facilities scoring 90 % can be treated equal to one who is devoid of such facilities ( strict economic status consideration ) and scoring 70 %. Slowly we can go on decreasing this gap, by increasing the facilities. I am eager to say that this was the method recommended by Mr. Jayaprakash Narayan ( ex-collector, who resigned feeling that he cant work under these insincere, corrupt politicians and presently the coodrinator of the Lok sattha party of Andhra Pradesh). But no one had a ear for that. No matter how hard we try we cant change these politicians, so we should JUST PLUCK THEM OUT !

Even for a small job in a small company they care about the resume, they care about the attitude, they care about what not !? And for controlling states and so countries... election commission couldn't come up with proper rules to avoid rowdies and atleast the worst of all politicians. This is because they don't have the bill passed.. wow... again in the hands of the brutes... So this proves that jurisdiction for these power holders should be in hands of a responsible person atleast for once !.... may be the hon'ble President of the country....... but expectedly, if the president is given this power... then the next president will also be one of these corrupt power holders, as the choice of the president can be effected by money and power. So again the rules change...

So I feel I don't have a direct solution for this.

But I strongly feel atleast YOU can make a difference to the Indian politics atleast after reading this. CHOOSE THE WORTH. Drunkards in the villages wont be reading this, so do whatever you can to nullify their wrong (corrupt) decisions and spread the news of choosing the right candidate rather than temporary happiness.

Better faculty, the belittled issue

'India, a great country' considering everything. I am saying this with all my honesty and pride, but not satisfaction. Can be greater, much greater than expected. Realizing that, forever the master role privileged are the students of this country, I want to bring to you an issue of improving the faculty, the real vital designers of the country. Please presume that I am not into years of research in this.

Year by year, ......... no it should be...

Semester by semester, we are observing that most of the students are running for their interests or for more money/satisfaction when they choose a job. This is not a debatable one. I support this. I cant ask students reading this to just leave all the rewards they get by opting such jobs. And yes I can never ask students to go for teaching at the same time, for improving the standards of the faculty. HOW CAN I? HOW can students go for teaching? Why ?

Those who have interest will always choose such professions. And we must encourage them, than any other.
Simple answer can be, faculty amenities are not tempting the students to take up that profession. Most of the students initiate their interest basing on the financial status of their 'would be profession'. To be clear,
what if I am a doctor, I can come up with a hospital, I can live like this, etc etc
what if a comp sci student, I should join that company for the best pay and satisfaction, this language has the highest demand at this point.. I can learn this and grab the job, etc

So what we observe is students are just turning towards good offers (leaving out those with real interest). So what are the universities doing to attract students to take up the esteemed, but unheeded "Faculty" profession. I don't say, they do nothing but it has to do much more than just giving free education to the faculty children.

What should it do?...... that is too direct to answer, depends on the university and its innovation like the companies follow now a days. ONLY WHEN THERE IS A BOUNTIFUL TOUGH COMPETITION< RESULTS WILL BE WONDERFUL. THATS THE REASON BITS, PILANI, IITs, NITs stand aloof. Improvement in such universities will be a good benchmark
for the next realizers. We have to go back to the days when a pedagogue is envied the most, unlike any profession. When such a quality and comfort in the faculty profession is achieved, students stick to such hives.

And I am a student of BITS, Pilani ( where the promotion of faculty is much ahead of others but MUSSSTTTTTTTT be improved and spread(underlined).) Various campuses / colleges under each university can promote the faculty system, much like a corporate system of employees.
BITS succeeded in this. But not to mention, some disciplines are having their main courses' heads(CDCs - Compulsory Disciplinary Courses) as some M.Eites who just pass out, with not more than 2-3 years experience.( such cases exist in all universities ). Not over 50 % of faculty knowledge(including text book knowledge, generally nothing else... a point which must be improved) gets transferred to students. In such cases, an outgoing student has not more than 50 % of the knowledge of the tutor. So what is the level of a just passed out M.E ite with a little experience. What is the batch that passes out under his/her teaching. what next and WHAt NEXT !? This is so important that you can never neglect.

I know that I am talking this as a 20 yr old student. But experience is better than research in case of social aspects like this. More knowledgeable persons can actually start thinking about this for better results....A NEVER ENDING IMPROVEMENT HAS TO BE INITIATED.
Just a try from my side.

A child miseducated is a child lost.
By John F. Kennedy