Smart City – Smarter City Fathers

Smart City – Smarter City Fathers    

The Government has just selected 20 cities which will become “smart” cities if all goes well within a few years. Probably learning from the past experience Government has refrained from setting a time limit for the cities to get smart, leaving already extra - smart politicians and bureaucrats with every opportunity to carry on in their own inimitable fashion appearing  busy doing important things. Business as usual.

I foresee each of these “smart city” candidates sending delegations to all corners of the world, developed, developing and  undeveloped countries to study some aspect of “smartness” that they want to introduce in their smart city. As a rule the city fathers may well be uneducated but their thirst for knowledge is remarkable and they take their study tours very seriously, not missing on a single opportunity to further the frontiers of their knowledge and further those places are from the frontiers of India more keen they are for these study tours.       

I rushed to meet Netajee to congratulate him since his city was soon to become a smart city under his able leadership.  I had met him a couple of times earlier. Netajee is a man of letters. I mean he can identify A, B C, D right up to Z with may be an error or two here and there. But overall a street-smart guy like all others of his ilk. I expected to find the normal cheery Netajee all gung-ho about the future, busy shuttling from meeting of town-planners to meeting a delegate of real estate developers to negotiating with a group of farmers for acquiring their lands. But the man in front of me was just a pale shadow of his energetic self. He seemed to have a whole load of weight on his shoulders. If you can picture Atlas with the World resting on his shoulders, you would just about begin to get an idea of how Netajee looked. I carried on nevertheless.

I : “Congratulations Netajee.   You must be happy that your city has been chosen for the Smart City program.”

Netajee :  “Uh! Happy?” he seemed to be lost in his own misery.

I : “I am sure you must be happy having been selected for this honour.”  

Netajee : “ Yes, but with this honour comes a great responsibility.”

I : “Yes Netajee. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and all that. So how do you propose to go ahead with the smart city project?”

Netajee : “ You see we want to develop a green-field city so that the existing infrastructure is not an impediment to development.”

I : “That’s good thinking.” I nodded. “Too many problems about resettlement of existing occupants of land. Look at MHADA and all the SRA projects.”

Netajee : “But the land which is available to us is all barren, far from the existing city limits  and has no vegetation nor any underground water.”

I: “Hmm. I see your problem.”

Netajee : “We need to have some “anchor ” industry which will attract other businesses and residents to locate there and visitors to visit which will develop a complete city. Moreover we want to create new jobs for young men and women especially women. You see woman empowerment is what everybody keeps on talking about.”

I was impressed. Netajee seemed to have thought deeply into the situation.

I: “So how do you propose to proceed?”

Netajee said “Well, we have been giving it a lot of thought and we feel we have been able to identify a model city which has grown in similar wilderness and has thrived over the years creating a whole new industry and generated substantial employment. We want to create a partnership with this city and learn from it.”

I : “That’s excellent!. I must say you are on the right track.”

Netajee : “I am happy you appreciate our thought processes. We are planning an extensive study program which will go deep into each and every aspect of the working of our partner city. Common folk like you are always under misconception that we are not using the public funds judiciously. Never does the media project a correct picture of all the hardships we undergo to conceive and execute projects like these.”

All I could do was to gaze upon this wonderful man with his lofty but so pragmatic ideas who was doing so much for upliftment of common man and the country.  An unsung hero indeed!

I : “So now all you need to do is to send a team there to study the situation first hand and you will be able to replicate those conditions here, maybe with some jugaads  as usual to fit the local conditions.

Netajee sighed glumly. “Wish that was so simple. Budget could be a big constraint. A deal-breaker.”

I : “Surely Netajee with Rs 500 crores being allocated to every smart city, budget should not be a constraint. A few lakhs spent on such study tour will be well worth.”

Netajee snorted. “A few lakhs? A few lakhs you say? All my City Councilors, Commissioners, Ward Officers and everybody’s PAs have already packed their bags. Nobody wants to get left out of such an epoch defining project. Everyone is keen to be a part of the important and educative study tour in spite of the strenuous work it would entail for everyone. We will have to tell the Centre to up the ante. Our back-of-the-envelop calculations  suggest that the entire estimated project cost could be consumed on the study tour alone.”

I was flabbergasted. “So Netajee which is this partner city you have identified?”

Netajee : “Las Vegas”

LazyBee

30^th Jan 2016

How To Beat The Food Inflation

How To Beat The Food Inflation

It was a typical winter day in the great city. The air outside was crisp with the northerly winds which had been blowing through the night but the scent of roses which wafted in through the windows and the faint sounds of a cuckoo serenading somewhere in the gardens brought in a sense of tranquility. If one were to look out of the large picture frame windows, one would have surely found a few butterflies flitting about doing all that a good butterfly ought to do to earn its living, but no one in the group assembled in the room within was in any mood to gaze upon the butterflies nor emulate them in any way.   

There was a distinct pall of gloom over the congregation. It was probably thicker than the smog which enveloped the great city outside. The sense of doom that seemed to pervade in the room would have made the dinosaurs in Yucatan look positively ebullient as they felt the first tremors from impact of  the meteorite.

“This inflation is going to kill us,” moaned a member of the group, flicking an imaginary piece of dust from his designer kurta.

“Yes. Looks like we are all going to starve to our death. And that too, pretty soon” groaned another maneuvering his 120kg frame into the nearest chair. The chair, too, groaned but it was used to such heavy-weights for past so many years.

“Imagine. Almost 25% price increase in chicken dishes. And a whopping 60% increase in mutton dishes” exclaimed another who prided himself as a sort of finance wizard.

“How are we going to get our nutrition right?  Proteins and all that?” lamented the health expert.

“This is all a conspiracy against vegetarians” screamed another. “Look at this! 150% increase in the prices of dal and 100% for rotis!!  Far more than the increase in prices of the non-veg dishes” wailed another.

“Preposterous!” thundered a militant one. “This will hurt poor people like us. I pray to God that we are spared the calamity of foregoing our lunches.”

“We must do something,” roared a firebrand among them.

“Yes, yes” the group was unanimous in its support to the firebrand. After all it was all for common good. Nothing galvanized the group more than something which was for the common good. They may fight their turf battles among themselves, some in all seriousness, some more for the benefit of the audience and some make-believe too. But as far as the common good was concerned, this group whole-heartedly believed in the motto of the Musketeers of the Guard in the court of Louis XIII, “One for all and all for one”.  

 “Let’s all go on a hunger strike” suggested someone from the back.

“No!” everyone pounced on him. Hunger strikes were a no-no. They were only for poor people like the farmers and students who didn’t have a clue about anything and were hungry half the time anyway. No hunger strikes. Not for this group which was used to two square meals a day and that too king-sized squares duly rounded off by not-so-skimpy elevenses and high teas.     

“I have a better idea,” declared the firebrand. “This price increase is clearly unpalatable. This food inflation needs to be countered and countered quickly. We must turn the tables on whoever has dished this ghastly increase on our plate.”

Everyone nodded in unison. Even those who normally found it difficult to follow the discussions understood the mention of food counters, tables, dishes and plates from firebrand’s speech.

“Tell us. Tell us what to do.” The Musketeers of the Guard were in a sabre-rattling frenzy.   

“Let’s sanction another pay revision for ourselves. If we can’t get such a small straight forward bill passed quickly, how can we be expected get complex bills like GST and the Finance Bills passed?”

 LazyBee 

22^nd  Jan 2016

PARLIAMENT CANTEEN RATES
	2015	2016
Mutton Biryani	50	80
Chicken Curry	37	45
Mutton Curry	20	32
Dal	02	05
Tea	02	03
Roti	01	02
Salad	03	05
Courtesy : hindustantimes.com

The Great Highway Robbery

The Great Highway Robbery   

And for another week-end, a few stray thoughts and a few general observations and a few points of view (some of it my own work and some as reported by media):

The term ‘highwayman’ conjures up an image of a masked bandit riding his horses waylaying lone travelers and stage coaches.  Almost all regions of the world have had their versions of these bandits, including the folklore heroes like Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest  and closer to home Phoolan Devi and Veerappan. Euphemistically called ‘the gentlemen of the road’ or ‘knights of the road’ and revered by general populace as heroes who robbed the rich and distributed their earnings to the poor, their stories have regaled or sometimes traumatized generations of small children.  ( Remember Gabbar?)

But for all their daredevilry and swagger they were just ‘blue-collared workers’ of the world of crime destined to eke out their daily bread by shedding blood and sweat.  Their acts must pale in insignificance when compared to the ‘white-collared lords’ of crime who have taken the art of highway robbery to far greater heights and made a living for generations by just a few strokes of pen proving yet again that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Long ago I had heard a story about Calcutta to Diamond Harbour highway (and my friends from Kolkata can correct me if my memory is not right). It seems during the good old days of Company sircar, a  highway was built to connect Calcutta to Diamond Harbour  and the length of the highway was entered in the record books as some 100 odd miles. In the following decades a goodly sum must have been spent on construction and upkeep of the road; all properly budgeted and approved on the basis of the length of the road documented in the Record Office. Sometime after a few decades, a survey was taken up (by an independent agency) which, however, threw up an astonishing fact. The distance between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour had somehow shrunk by some 30 – 40 miles !!! 

The original crime I suppose must have been committed by a Clive or a Bentick, out to make the most out of his posting. But somehow the heist ran on for a long time. I am not aware what exactly transpired after the feline was let out of the bag but a few babus in Writers’ Building must have found that their source of income had suddenly dried up or at least diminished considerably.

One would feel that in this day of satellite coverage etc such daylight highway robbery would be a thing of past. But think again. Here is another story, this time out of Russia.  A State official, by the name of Alexander Protopopov, was held for ‘stealing’ a public road of about 50 kms.  He managed to cut up a concrete road and sell the slabs. The news report does not say where the stolen goods were to be used. But I suspect it must have been for building some other road somewhere else.  Apparently Protopopov was in charge of a prison and employed the interns for some additional roubles.

My friend Guy Wise says that he doesn’t know about the path to Hell but the path to the prison gate must be paved with concrete slabs.

Cheers   

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

16^th Jan 2016

Food For Thought

Food For Thought 

And for another week-end, a few stray thoughts and a few general observations and a few points of view (some of it my own work and some as reported by media):

Research into anything and everything seems to be mantra of this era. Quite often the end results appear funny or even bizarre.  Readers are normally stumped as to why anyone would sponsor some of the research, apart from the obviously “sponsored” research where the sponsor has a very clear idea of what findings he would like to get pronounced at the end of the study. Reader can form his / her own conclusions about the ones which are presented below :

Does the weight or size of waiter determine your bill in a restaurant? One would have thought that if at all a waiter affects the overall bill, it would be due to his courteous manner or his recommending of house  specialities or chef’s favourite but  it turns out that the girth of the gent (or lady) waiting at your table may very well affect the bottom line when the bill is ultimately presented to you. 

A set of researchers have found a positive correlation between the amount of food ordered by the customers (especially alcohol and desserts) and the weight of the waiter or waitress.  One doesn't know if this is due to subconscious connection that customers make assuming that more well-fed the waiters are, better must be the food at the eatery. One should now expect more gravitationally challenged among the hospitality sector to ask for a “fat” salary or commissions for bringing in more business.

Everyone I am sure would like to be healthy but most of us cringe at the thought of a diet which restricts our calorific intake to bare subsistence level or an exercise regime which transcends us to the level of a Navy Seal. But what if someone promised to make you as fit as a fiddle on a diet of, hold your breath, chocolate and wine!!! I am not joking, ‘sirt diet’, the next rage to hit the health industry, is just that. Dark chocolate and red wine.  I don’t know if the research was conducted in Utopia or Valhalla or our own Swargalok, but I am not complaining.

The researchers claim that ‘sirt rich foods’ work by producing a set of proteins called ‘sirtuins’. These sirtuins regulate the biological processes such as aging, cellular death, inflammation etc. Sirtfoods are claimed to mimic the effects of fasting and exercise thus speeding up weight loss. True, apart from dark chocolates and red wine, there are other foods which have these sirtuins e.g. blueberries, parsley, walnut, turmeric, soy, green tea, celery, chilly and a few more but surely given a choice I know what most (sane) people will choose.

Thank God this research has come up now when my children have grown up. I shudder to imagine what would have been.  Dining table discussions would have been something on these lines : 

“Mummy, can I have second helping of Bournville please. I am feeling fairly weak today?”

Or “Dad, I would rather have a glass of red wine instead of milk. I don’t have time for my gym session today.”  

Now, I am just looking at the brighter side. I can snack the whole day on dark chocolates and sip red wine whenever I feel thirsty. I am sure the doctor’s bills will be a thing of past. The money I would save on financing my doctor’s son’s education at Harvard will pay for all the chocolates and wine. This diet is most sirtuin to be a hit.  I am packing my bags for Napa Valley. Robert Mondavi and Ghiardelli here I come. 

Cheers   

LazyBee aka Shirish Potnis

9^th Jan 2016

Land of Milk & Honey

Land of Milk & Honey

Not all people, we must admit, are waiting with breath for the achhe din, some as we saw last week are already in the achhe din zone; a few others are already salivating at the prospect of a clear indication that achhe din are but a daybreak away.

Take the case of Ram Prasad Yadav, a Class X student studying in Patna. He is sure that achhe din have arrived. His father has promised him a brand new motorcycle of his choice, if he manages to pass his board exams which are coming up in a couple of months.  You might be tempted to question why Ram Prasad Yadav, an extremely mediocre student who can barely write his own name either in English or Hindi, is so certain about passing his board exams. But then you don’t know Bihar, do you? He has already made jugaad that he will get all the right answers duly supplied to him in the required answer books right through the window of his examination hall, leaving him the onerous task of substituting the answer books. You must be thinking that his father must be very well off to afford such jugaad and the ensuing prize.  Well, think again; he is just a constable in the police force but then with (part) prohibition coming up as promised by Mahagatbandhan it is time for achhe din to arrive with a bang at least for the Yadav family and many more who find themselves in a spot as sweet as he does.

Take the case of Pascal, no friend of mine, but I am sure you would know a Pascal somewhere around you wherever you are. A very enterprising guy who is in the business of upliftment of people’s spirits by, you guessed it, providing them with “spiritual” assistance. True to the honoured tradition of “simple thinking and high living” he has made it his  vocation to help simple people achieve ‘high’ in life which they can otherwise only  dream of.  Of course Pascal has never worried about such mundane things like licenses and taxes etc, but he has always prided himself on the quality of his products. He is now planning to take a trip to Bihar to scout around for suitable joint venture partners who can brew the stuff as per his tried and tested recipes. His elder son Paolo is already looking after the Gujarat franchise and now he has the opportunity to settle his second son Anton in Bihar. What more achhe din can one expect!!!

But then achhe din for some can become burey din for others. Check it out with the liquor shop guys. They feel that life has brought them down by a peg or two. Some of them even felt that they have been properly quartered. The promised achhe din seem to have evaporated into thin air, rather like the contents of their stock-in-trade. So they approached the ‘gubermint’ to sort out the matter. End result was that the liquor shops will now be allowed to sell milk. While this opens up new pastures for dairy industry, the liquor shop owners are sure relieved that they have not been entirely put to grass by Mahagatbandhan.  

One doesn’t know the precise reason for this milk policy, but some may argue that that it has been dictated by the second-in-command in the state cabinet who is probably still sporting his milk-teeth. Or maybe this is a way to get rid of loads and loads of fodder which must still be in the godowns of the first family of Bihar - a legacy of the fodder scam.

My friend Guy Wise, who is also an ardent devotee of Bacchus, feels this stratagem of having both milk and alcohol available at the same counter is nothing but a master stroke to turn Bihar into land of ‘Milk and Honey’ which is precisely the name of a cocktail with exactly the same ingredients.

Cheers. Wish you a Merry Christmas and achhe din in 2016 and may you find your own land of Milk and Honey.

 LazyBee

22nd December 2015.

Of Fables And Fabled Court Cases

Of Fables And Fabled Court Cases

And for another week-end, a few stray thoughts and a few general observations and a few points of view (some of it my own work and some as reported by media):

From Russia comes this tale of love right out of Aesop’s fables. In Vladivastok zoo, Timur, a goat, was pushed into the enclosure of Amur, a tiger, as a live prey for the latter’s mid-day lunch or maybe a mid-night snack (the report is silent on these salient features of Amur’s dietary habits).  Timur, the goat, managed to make friends with Amur. End result? Timur, the timorous, has been sharing his dwellings with Amur who has become a bit amorous towards Timur. One is not aware whether Timur convinced Amur to give up his flesh-eating habits forever or if Timur has developed a sudden distaste for goat meat or if Amur decided that that since Thanksgiving was just over, he should reserve Timur for Christmas or New Year.  

Unfortunately, the news papers which are first to jump on stories like this, tend to keep the reader in complete darkness about the next episodes detailing the progress in such cases. I am sure readers will be keen to know how and when the of love affair between Amur and Timur would end; whether the end comes by zoo authorities granting a reprieve to Timur and removing him from Amur’s enclosure or if finally Timur would get Amur’s goat resulting in Amur finally claiming his goat. Our position is rather like that of Reader A, who finds at the end of page 228 that pages numbering 229 onwards have been maliciously torn away by some sadistic reader, let’s call him B, who happened to have laid his hands on the whodunit under question prior to A’s having done so, leaving A wondering forever if it was indeed the butler who did it or was it the butler’s lookalike second footman who did in the cook in the scullery.    

Elsewhere in the Land of The Setting Son, Master, the bête noir of the Grand Old Party, pulled out another skeleton out of the rickety old cupboard of the erstwhile ruling party heralding another joust of a national battleground. Old Empress and the Prince (both now in wilderness) immediately invoked superwoman powers of Prince’s daadi maa  to fight the evil magic unleashed by the wicked wicked opponents who think nothing about starting a fight over small change of Rs 5,000 crores. Well, now if daadi maa jab yaad aa gayee hai to shayad jaldi hi Prince ko apni naani bhi yaad aa jayegee.

Long awaited judgement in Salman Khan case has come out and against all expectations of people like you and me, the main accused has helped in doing  a Houdini in the “water-tight” case that Mumbai police had claimed they had built up. By popular consensus it has been decided that:

1. The car Salman was traveling in was a proto-type of Google driverless car under beta testing.

2. The car got drunk when it was parked in the parking lot of Marriot.

3. The car wanted to have something to eat (not having been invited by Salman to chai-coffee in the Rainbow Bar, it was obviously very very hungry), so finding American Express Bakery in its sight, the car tried to gatecrash and grab some buns.

QED.  

Now that the case is mort judice (dead in the court, dead by the court and dead for the 

court), my only comment is:  XXXX XXXX XXX.

My friend Guy Wise says, if the judgement had turned out to be anything other than “Not Guilty” he would have lost all faith in power of money. 

It may just be better if we, as a society, decide not to waste our time and energy on frivolous litigations like these dragging on for dozens of years and wasting tax-payers money. I am sure we can utilize these resources better by pursuing cases against ticket-less travellers or some Gram Panchayat officials caught while taking bribes of 10 rupees.  

LazyBee

12^th Dec 2015

Achhe Din - AAP ki Meherbaani

Achhe Din  - AAP ki Meherbaani

It is true that the whole country is still waiting for achhe din. Now, you can either passively wait for the achhe din to arrive or do something which will force achhe din to visit your quarters. The aam aadmi may or may not be in a position to bring home achhe din for himself but Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership is surely full of capable guys who can do something about it if they make up their mind. And made up their mind they have. The Delhi State MLAs have unanimously decided that “enough is not enough” and have taken the matters into their hand.

Now AAP leaders are humans like you and me and they feel like all of us that their salaries and perks need a revision (upward, obviously).  Well, honestly nothing wrong with that. Show me anyone who doesn’t feel that he / she is (grossly) underpaid, right from the Class IV employees to the Cabinet Secretary to the Government of India in the babu-land and from trainees on shop-floor to the (professional) Managing Directors in private sector. But not all of us are lucky enough to get our way. Even the mighty Cabinet Secretary has to wait for Pay Commission to recommend revision of pay, something which happens once in 10 long years. He may make his suggestions regarding the revisions that he would like to see, but finally he has to accept whatever decisions are taken.

But all this is for billions of mere mortals like you and me, the Chosen Ones (and who chooses them, mere mortals like you and me) choose to tread a different path. No Pay Commissions for them and no ungainly haggling over rate of inflation and Dearness Allowance for them. Just appoint some “independent committee” headed by a retired bureaucrat who knows which side of the slice of baked dough has a thick layer of golden yellow fat applied to it and who is only too happy to echo His Masters’ Voice.   

MLAs of Delhi Assembly have by an overwhelming majority decided to rectify their penurious status and given themselves a raise which shall hopefully pull them above the poverty line. The MLAs will henceforth get Rs 2.35 lakh per month instead of paltry Rs 88,000 they were getting earlier and thereby maybe just keep the wolf off their doorsteps. Phew. Thank God.

AAP which enjoys a strength of 67 in a house of 70 was expecting that the bill ratifying the proposed amendments to their pay-packets would sail through without any opposition. But the spoilsport BJP MLAs (numbering two) tried to oppose the bill and had to be shouted down. Looks BJP guys themselves don’t believe that achhe din aanewaale hai.  

My friend, Guy Wise, says all this gives a different twist to the classic Lakhnawi tale of two nawabs missing their train in their time-honored protocol, “Pehle aap” ,”Pehle aap” . Here we have a bunch of modern-day nawabs clamouring “Pehle AAP”, “Pehle AAP” as they all jump on the gravy train.

LazyBee

4th December 2015.