Road to Progress – 2

I was walking on the road (Yes. It is difficult to walk on the sidewalks or footpaths as they are called in India and we will talk about the reasons a little later) and suddenly I feel a light shower of droplets over my head and clothes.  I look up and see the sky is quite clear and the strong sun shining as if doing its business.  I was left wondering where did the droplets of water come from.  I looked around just as a public transport bus passed me at great speed and realised that some idiot sitting at the window side and eating PAAN had spitted out the juice and part of which had fallen on me.  Imagine, I had just showered, put on my clothes, perfumed myself and had left to go to work and this happens.  My clothes had been soiled and paan stains leave strong marks on your clothes.  So temporarily, these clothes would not be in circulation.  They would have to go to the laundry for dry cleaning and the launderer would also not guarantee a stain-free garment.  So that would be the first and the second casualty, first being the additional cost of laundry and second being the loss of one pair of clothes to wear out a set of clothes which I have maintained for routine wear.  With these stained clothes, forget going to office, there was no way I would be going to continue going where I was.  So I turned back to come home for a change of clothes.  Carrying on walking on the road with pan stains all over you would have been a huge challenge with people staring at you, thinking what kind of a moron you are, how did you get and it giggling away happily.  So I called for an autorickshaw (a three wheeled vehicle private transport available for hire) and headed home.  This was the third financial loss I incurred for no fault of mine and the only risk I took was to walk on the road.  I come home, shower (even usage of additional water is a loss), change in to a new set of clothes.  My wife is happy to ask me a barrage of questions – who was it, why didn’t you do something, etc. etc.) and I have absolutely no answers to those. 

I had to reach office by 10.00 a.m. and I am still at home at 11.30 a.m.  Since I am late to reach office, I again hire an autorickshaw (this is my fourth financial loss).  I reach office by 12.45 and my boss looks at me as if I am a citizen of Mars and hired ISROs Mission on Mar’s orbiter and landed up at his office.  He tells me that I am late, very late and that is unacceptable.  I try to explain to him the reason for being late which is completely unacceptable to him.  He shouts at the HR to mark me half a day’s casual leave in my leave records.  I am already running short of leave which I will require for the festivals and many occasions that will follow one after the other till the next year starts.  This means that any additional leaves that I will take will be marked as excess and pay will be deducted from my salary.  This is the fifth financial loss that I have incurred for no fault of mine.  The moron who threw caution to the wind and spat out like a carefree bird’s droppings must have reached his destination at no extra cost other than the cost of bus ticket and here I am in complete misery and incurring financial loss, one after the other.  I also don’t know how many other people he may have blessed from his window seat.  Just like the government has enforced no smoking in public places, why is there no restriction on consuming or chewing paan in public places and public vehicles.  It is such a pathetic site to even see the rich sitting in their expensive vehicles, their drivers happily spitting on the road side as if they have paid taxes and have a right to do so.  When will this stop?  Who will stop? How did it come to this state? Who is responsible for this mess?  Yes, the public is definitely responsible for this mess but is there anybody else who will take up responsibility for this? 

People are now sharing on WhatsApp with their names, taking a vow that they will not throw garbage on the road or spit on the road, etc.  Now this is very stupid.  All these people, okay I am sorry, most of these people who are using the latest technology are educated, qualified, mature, living in modern spaces, modern world, good apartments and colonies.  My taking a vow not to do so, they are admitting that they have been throwing garbage all around them carelessly.  Shouldn’t they be punished right away?  Shouldn’t they be sent for counselling?  Did their teachers and parents not do a good job of teaching them civic sense?  Technology brings culture of other countries and places into your home through television, mobile phones, internet, people who tell you stories about their visits abroad.  Didn’t you learn anything from them?  When you know it is a bad practice, why are you doing it?  Why wait for a Government to create awareness and then take action?  What does it tell us?  Where is the problem?  Interestingly, the magnitude of this problem is very huge, it is across the country.  It is so widespread that it will be difficult to eradicate it.  There have been transformations like people do not smoke in public places but the number of smokers is, by contrast, very small.  Here, every Indian is used to this habit and tantamount to not respecting the country, not respecting where you live and from where you earn your sustenance.  Our living spaces are precious to us.  We keep them clean so why have these double standards for your own private spaces and for public places?

Coming back to why I was walking on the footpath or sidewalk, there is reason to it.  In fact there are many reasons and I will list a few of them here.  The urban sidewalks, first of all, have become a thing of the past.  People are more used to walking on the streets than on the sidewalks.  Over the years, the local municipality has attempted to make the roads wider and therefore has reduced the width of the sidewalk.  This reduced sidewalk will full of hawkers and you have to literally wiggle out whilst walking. Stores extend the permissible size of their store to extend their counters for display leaving absolutely no space for walking.  I wonder if they want customers to walk on the sidewalks and then walk into their stores or to stay away from the store as much as possible by not leaving any space to pedestrians.  Yes, you sometimes see domestic animals squatting happily, encroaching upon the citizen’s space.  Third, you will find beggars occupying a large space of road.  Fourth, you will see key-makers, food stalls, bhelwala, pani-puriwala, shoe-repairer (mocha), the imitation jewelery seller selling his stuff, with people surrounding them, blocking the limited space on the sidewalk.  Businessmen who have stores and the outside road is earmarked as a No Parking zone, will have their motorcycles parked on the footpaths.  Then there are open manholes and with the modern day high level corruption on sidewalk tiling, you will see popped out interlocking tiles, some have just broken down, other have not been laid properly, other are just missing from their missing leaving large cavities.  At some places, there is just no footpath.  You have to walk on the road, whether you like it or not.  With children in tow, this becomes very difficult.  I could go on because the list is very long. 

When will the Municipal Authorities create good dedicated areas known as footpaths or sidewalks for citizen to be away from the burgeoning number of vehicles on the road?  Isn’t that a part of citizen facility?  Why are we so careless? Why are we accepting all this nonsense from a government which is expected to provide citizens with facilities that enhance their safety?  Why are the sidewalks not free from extended stores, encroachments, impediments and uneven surfaces?

Mumbai, the financial capital of India is now in a state of shame.

Road To Progress - 1

The Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi is giving what people were all the time desirous of.  He has given so many mantra’s and people are lapping it up.  He is showing people that there is hope.  There is hope for a better life, hope for a good environment to live in, hope for prosperity and economic progress.  People are fed up of living within financial constraints.  The world has become aspirational.  While the India’s rich have aspirations to conquer and dominate the world stage, the poor want to do more than just survive.

The Prime Minister’s mantras are not new but their coinage is effective.  It throws a spell and people are falling in awe.  But if you take a deep look, they have a lot of meaning attached to it.  Speed, Skill and Scale was one which describes the way India should go ahead if it has to, forget the outer world and become and economic superpower, help India’s population to prosper internally.  Even if they do business internally within India with this mission, they will achieve great heights.  This mission statement has lot of deeper meaning to it because we have now got very used to the “Chalta hai” (it’s ok, who cares) kind of attitude.  “Chalta hai”, interpreted could mean: 1) It’s ok, we will do it at our own pace; 2) let’s compromise on the materials; 3) Let’s compromise on the quality; 4) let’s compromise on the workmanship; 5) let’s do some additional cheating; 6) let’s not put more effort; 7) how will the customer know what we have not given him; 8) he is not going to be our repeat customer, so any poor quality product or service will do, and so on.  This Chalta Hai attitude has to change, and has to change fast.  If not, it will affect our image the global level.  People will seek products from abroad.  Earlier, people were crazy for Japanese, British and American products.  Then we saw a demand for Indian products and now Chinese products have conquered.  Name the product and you will see a Chinese product.

Combined with the “Make in India” Mantra, the “Speed, Skill and Scale” concept have to potential to take India to the next level in terms of its own economic progress.  The market in India is huge and products that are manufactured in India will be consumed here itself.  So market and consumption is not an issue.  Manufacturing has to pick up and for that to happen, the government must ease the norms for doing business.  In the coming days, it would be interesting to see how the plans unfold.  Much has been said about what should be done and what has not been done.  But now the time is for the government machinery to work together, iron out the differences, work in synergy with each other.  The Prime Minister must ensure that the Speed, Size and Scale mantra must start from the government departments first.  The scale is there in terms of the huge number of employees (here we will not question the performance), the format and structure is there.  They need to deliver things with SPEED.  How will the Prime Minister bring in accountability of these babu’s will be interesting to see.  The PM and his office may have control over the Central Government ministries and they may be able to drive it in mission mode, but when it comes to the machinery at the State and Municipal level, it will collapse completely.

I am left wondering as to why previous governments could not think of all these simple aspects all the while they were in office. India could have achieved so much progress.  These kind of activities do not require legislative procedures and the opposition would have been floored completely.  This gives rise to another point that creativity in political field also has become very important.  Creativity was the domain of artists in the field of fine arts, advertising and related field.  But just by being creative, so much can be achieved.  There is positivity in the environment, stock market is bullish, people are talking about it and there is energy flowing all around.  And the best part is nothing on the ground level has changed yet but people are hoping that it will, very soon.

Indians are looking up with hope for a better tomorrow.