Corruption Kills

A factory operating out of a building with every exit locked and windows barred with iron grills caught fire killing its night-shift workers.

If corruption wasn't rampant in our nation, would the owners have dared to run a factory that flouted the most basic fire safety regulations and hadn't even got an NOC from the fire department? It is likely that the owners thought they could pay off the fire department official if he showed up to object; if he turned out to be scrupulous, there would be the friendly neighborhood politician to pressurize him into keeping quiet.

Is it also corruption at play that arrests the managers while making no mention of the owners? (Update: the article above has been updated to state that one of the managers is also the owner)

As this blog post by Jo Chopra McGowan points out, "Our health, our safety, our routines and our attitudes are all created, infected and reinforced by corruption."

Tragic. My heart goes out to the families that lost their loved ones...

Hatchet Therapy Indeed

The article Hatchet Therapy in Outlook news-magazine sums up the anti-Bhushan smear campaign while posing 10 unanswered questions:

• When Amar Singh says the CD is doctored, how come the CFSL concluded it is not?
• If CD isn’t doctored, how come Mulayam Singh’s 2006 lines match verbatim with 2011 CD?
• Which forensic reports can you trust when there are different CDs doing the rounds?
• Why is the Congress talking in two voices after relenting before the Jantar Mantar protest?
• Does Digvijay Singh’s attack on the Bhushans have the OK of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi?
• Was the Noida farmhouse land scam issue leaked because the CD story was losing steam?
• Are the Bhushans being attacked because they have stepped on too many toes?
• If the Bhushans are made to leave, will the smear campaign stop or will it go on?
• Could the relentless attacks result in a totally watered down Lokpal bill?
• Is the Congress endearing itself to voters with its tacit support to the attacks?

***
Other media houses show themselves in extremely poor light, with the Indian Express, which was once known to be a crusader for the truth, writing up just plain lies around land allotment to the Bhushans, mischievously ignoring the facts. The NOIDA Development Authority CEO is on record saying "We had about 160 applicants and 97 or 98 of those have got the plots so far and the Bhushans were among them. We are still interviewing the applicants and more applicants may get plots if they qualify".

Another individual who has been paraded by our "impartial media" is Vikas Singh who has been slandering the Bhushans from dubious, if not false, moral high ground.

Swapan Das Gupta sums up what the Congress is trying to do to anti-corruption legislation. It is no mystery why -- years and years of pillaging this nation along with their allies means that an effective anti-corruption law will have most (if not all of them) cooling their heels in prison for a long long time.

Satyamev Jayate.

Stop Corporal Punishment

A class 8 boy, who was recovering from a brain tumour, was hit on the head by his teacher because he was unable to stand up in class as punishment. It sent him back to hospital.

The teacher's excuse -- she didn't know he'd had surgery so thought he was free game to be smacked around. Irrespective of whether the boy was healthy or not, the teacher had no right to strike him. Our children are NOT free game for random teachers to exercise power over and use as punching bags to remove sundry frustration.

Also, while I am not aware whether corporal punishment in schools is banned by law, the Supreme Court's views are definitely on the record against it, thereby making it contempt of court to physically punish children in school.

This is not the first instance of corporal punishment being highlighted by the media. Which is why I am shocked that despite all the outrage that has been expressed against corporal punishment over the last few years, teachers still don't get the message.

Not only should the law come down strongly on teachers who practise corporal punishment AND principals and school administrators who hire them, what is also needed is a concerted effort to make educators aware that corporal punishment amounts to contempt of the highest court of the land and is therefore punishable by imprisonment.

Corporal punishment is also against our children and surely does not in any way help forward their education.

Stop corporal punishment now!

A Request to the Civil Society Activists of the Jan Lok Pal Bill panel

A sincere request to all the civil society participants of the Jan Lok Pal Bill panel. Please do not quit the panel.

We the people of India are watching a vicious smear campaign being unleashed against  you by govt and non-govt representatives (the Singhs Digvijay and Amar being at the forefront of it). The "free press" instead of practising journalism, has morphed into a mouthpiece of the corrupt with no intention of letting the truth triumph. Despite all the allegations being proved false *with* documentary evidence, the media is still attacking you in the hope of getting a sleazy soundbite (and maybe a generous scrap from the corrupt pie?)

• The CD has been verified to be doctored by two independent laboratories of impeccable repute
• The Noida Development Authority stand by the land allotment and has transparently explained the process
• Justice Santosh Hegde's integrity is above reproach  

Yet, the soundbite media continues to hold out the pail of mud so the lowest of the low have an easy time sloshing it around.

This kind of relentless mudslinging causes emotional trauma -- since each of you are personally people of high integrity and ethical standing. I understand that it is painful to see your character being tainted by lies and falsehood. Pain is what the corrupt want to cause -- enough pain so that you retreat from drafting the anti-corruption bill and let them continue to rule the roost.

Do not hand the corrupt a victory. For the sake of the nation -- I urge you to bear lies and smears and stay in the panel to help draft a strong Lok Pal Bill.

Satyamev Jayate.

What Happened to Investigative Journalism?

The Jan Lok Pal Bill movement is awash with mudslinging on the civil society participants of the drafting committee. Anonymous CD's claiming the Bhushans can fix sitting Supreme Court justices, land allotment "scams" created on the fly, stamp duty "evasion" discovered overnight, Santosh Hegde being told he's partial and politically motivated, and who knows what else yet to come.

What saddens me most is the role of the media. I don't see a single media house even *attempting* investigative journalism. Instead it's all about hurling microphones in the face of civil society activists and asking questions that range from irrelevant to downright stupid.

To elaborate, when the CD controversy emerged, the Bhushans got the CD verified by two independent and respectable laboratories in India and the US. Their findings were made public. Responsible journalism would have analyzed the track record of the laboratories, what the findings exactly stated, where else the laboratories had weighed in, the impact of their analyses in the past and therefore the probability of their analysis being correct (or otherwise) in this instance.

Instead, to date the media continues to say the Bhushans "claim" the CD is doctored, while harping about a government laboratory claiming the CD isn't doctored. The government laboratory, in a CYA measure, also stated that it needed further inputs to be sure. That of course has been lost in the noise.

It would, of course, be laughable to suggest that the media has done *any* investigation into the techniques and equipment used for analysis by the various laboratories. No one in the media has made ANY attempt to find out who is behind the CD either.

All of this makes me wonder whether the media is as uncomfortable with a strong Lok Pal Bill being implemented as are the corrupt who are clearly trying to scuttle it. Have the media denizens gotten so used being thrown generous scraps by the corrupt political class? We have heard of enough scandals that involve our media "stalwarts" who brazenly continue to be on air despite ample evidence indicting them. 

Now, to another point.

The Bhushans, Santosh Hegde, Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare are honest, upright people who are NOT personally corrupt.
 
Let's, for a hypothetical moment, assume that all of the civil society participants are indeed corrupt to the core. Why, then would they be trying to draft an anti-corruption bill against THEMSELVES? And -- isn't it then in the interest of the nation to have a strong Lok Pal Bill under which they can then be prosecuted?

I support the civil society activists and all their hard work in trying to make the Lok Pal Bill a reality. I trust that other fellow Indians are wise enough to not fall for mindless sound bites and give this nation a chance to move out of the quagmire of corruption it has descended into. The results of various polls conducted by diverse sources give me hope. We the people of India WANT a strong Jan Lok Pal Bill, support our civil society activists, and can see through the media shenanigans.

To conclude -- a word of advice to the media. Use the time until the Lok Pal Bill becomes reality to clean up your act instead of siding with the corrupt to try and scuttle it.

Satyamev Jayate.

PS: More about the Bhushans here.

Forty Percent Slower

HDFC bank advertises that one can withdraw cash at their ATM's upto ~40% faster using their FastCash option.

I did just that -- only to be treated to an Apply for Personal Loan screen where the only options were Yes and Ask me Later.

Now, withdrawing cash at an ATM (once you've reached the machine for your turn) is about a 2 minute job anyway -- the "40%" that FastCash saves you is about 30 seconds. Which gets eaten right away with irritating screens around Personal Loans (and credit cards?).

HDFC Bank needs to show just a *little* more respect for the IQ of its customers!

To express this in Twitterspeak: #HDFC Bank FastCash #Fail

Perfection Will Always Be Illusory

A seven year old girl underwent plastic surgery in order to avoid bullying. Apparently she was being teased because her ears stuck out, and her parents wanted to protect her from it.

To be honest -- my first reaction was to judge the parents harshly. We've all been teased while growing up; our children get teased too. The thing to do is to learn to stand up to it. An oft-reiterated message in my home is that you don't become what others call you -- you have to understand and internalize that fact and therefore deal with teasing accordingly. Also -- the more you react to a bully's words, the more pleasure he or she will derive out of saying them.

Then, as I thought about it some more -- I realized how lucky I am. I live in India where it *is* still possible to live without being completely depressed about one's "look" -- particularly at the age of seven. Most seven-year-olds I've seen don't really have strong opinions of what they (or others) should look like.

This little girl, on the other hand, lives in the US -- the land where the way you look matters above all else to most people. Body image is paramount and while cosmetic companies are making a killing already, cosmetic surgeons have decided to cash in too.

Having said that -- isn't it scary? Seven is hardly the age for a child to be worried about the way she looks. What's even scarier is *other* seven year olds with such strong opinions about what is or isn't the "right" look.

If we push children to believe that there is a "perfect" look, how much of their lives will they spend hating their natural look and striving for something that is an illusion?

Every child is beautiful and we ought to be able to let our children believe it as well...

I Support the Citizen Ombudsman

While civil society is mostly ecstatic about participation of the citizen sector in drafting the Jan Lok Pal (Citizen Ombudsman) Bill, intellectuals have an issue that this movement is "subversive of representative democracy", with others going on to accuse the civilian panelists of the committee of being power-hungry publicity seekers. 


Irrespective of the intellectual viewpoint, I believe what has happened is a positive step for a number of reasons.

• We send elected representatives to parliament to enact our will, and given that they are not experts, they consult subject matter experts to draft bills. Civil society has participated in the writing of other bills (such as the Maharashtra RTI Act to name one) in the past, so there is already a precedent. (At the time of the those other bills -- none of the intellectuals raised objections about their voter rights being trampled upon)
• This bill is unique in that it is asking thieves to police themselves. A tall (if not possible) ask of people who have already shown themselves to be of poor moral standing (viz., politicians). If, despite the scams, you need further proof, please read ex-Karnataka CM Kumaraswamy's statement.
• Left to the government alone, the Lok Pal Bill will be a waste of the paper it gets printed on, being advisory in nature and not having powers to either recover embezzled funds or send the guilty to prison.
• We need to give people the tools to fight corruption NOW, not in some uncertain future. For each day that the corrupt thrive and siphon off hard-earned taxpayer money, more and more children go naked, hungry and without an education to give them hope of escaping poverty. Each day that corruption goes unchecked further calcifies the "ovarian lottery effect" that Warren Buffet has spoken at length about.
• The Jan Lok Pal Bill will be passed (if at all) in Parliament by the "elected" representatives of the people, so if the intellectuals feel very strongly that we don't need an anti-corruption tool, they are free to lobby their MPs to vote against it.

This of course, is not the end. The bill has a long and arduous journey before it turns into law. It *will* get watered down in the drafting committee and may even get thrown out of parliament (every corrupt politician's secret hope).


Once enacted it will not lead to a magical end to all corruption. What it will do is provide the people of India with a powerful tool with which to attempt to fight corruption, in much the same way as the RTI. It will also give some semblance of hope to *other* bills like the RTE, in that the funds set aside might just end up getting used for their stated purpose.


I support the Jan Lok Pal Bill.


PS: An interesting counterpoint to the intellectual view is here.


PPS: A debate around whether the civil society should be drafting laws. Harish Salvi wonders why the masters (people) are faulted for telling the servant (elected representatives) who to do. Sandhya Jain claims Anna Hazare's fast was a hoax!

Educating Indian Children

The Minister for Education, Kapil Sibal, and Anna Hazare exchanged words over the Lok Pal Bill, with Mr. Sibal claiming that the bill would not educate a child, and had nothing to do with state sponsored education.

Actually Mr. Sibal, the Lok Pal Bill *will* help educate children. The current government expenditure on education makes its way into the pockets of your colleagues, and bureaucrats and contractors connected with the education ministry. A small fraction of what is put aside actually goes into building school infrastructure and educating children.

If there are checks and balances in place, the money is more likely to reach government schools to provide infrastructure and teacher salaries, thereby educating children.

Corporate Greed

I've just finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Although written more than a decade ago, not only does the book ring true even today, what's more -- it seems that conversion of skilled work to minimum wage jobs carried out by an unskilled workforce has become a pan-industry phenomenon.

Industry after industry is looking to "templatize" and "automate" work so that they can hire minimally skilled people at minimum wage (or less) in order to enjoy even bigger profit margins. While I will not get into the ethics or the social consequences of this approach, as a consumer, I can't help but notice how interaction with various businesses (ranging from cell phone providers to retail stores) is getting more and more dumbed down and therefore frustrating.

The following examples amply illustrate my view.

A few months ago, I complained to Airtel --  my cellphone service provider about receiving SMS spam despite being registered on DND. I duly received a complaint number and was told that the messages I was getting were from "another provider" who had been informed. The complaint was "Resolved" and therefore closed. The SMS spam continued unabated and I tweeted about it in frustration. The twitter arm of Airtel got involved and asked me to write to them -- which I did. A few days later, they wrote back saying that although I was being harassed by messages, statistically they were doing well at reducing spam. Duh? What kind of an idiot says that to a customer who has a genuine problem? An unskilled, minimum wage worker, no doubt. The SMS spam continues unabated till today, with tagged SMSes (presumably form Airtel) hitting my number with stunning regularity. Thanks to mobile number portability, I am actively shopping around for another provider.

***

I visited Total Mall and spent one horrifying hour trying to checkout. Smart managers would have hired extra hands for holidays; trained cashiers would have known how to unlock and operate tills. A skilled workforce would no doubt plan ahead for extra footfalls on public holidays, in addition to being quick at scanning, billing and bagging items. None of that was in any evidence at the store. Total was probably looking to maximize profits without a care to customer experience. I, for one, am never going back there. A little bit of googling revealed that neither are other disgruntled customers.

Which brings me to my point. When corporations try to maximize profit  at any and all costs, customer experience reduces to such an extent that customers begin to vote with their wallets and leave. This is a gradual process and therefore it is hard for a business who is focused on greed to the exclusion of all else to notice. (Total Mall did not take written feedback from me, despite my offering to give it). Only when it begins to hurt the bottom line, do they wake up. They pay exorbitant fees -- bring in management consultants who come in and state the obvious, while simultaneously laying off an already stretched and unskilled workforce.

By which time it is probably too late anyway.

Total Mall is a Total Flop

Although I usually avoid chain stores, I had the misfortune of visiting Total Mall at Madiwala in Bangalore today. Aside from the fact the layout was completely non-intuitive, fruits and vegetables were not too fresh, grocery shelves were partially and messily stocked, and fresh food counters weren't staffed, what was *most terrible* was the checkout experience.

Today, being Ugadi in Bangalore -- the store was reasonably crowded. You'd think that a "big" retailer would have projections about expected footfalls and customers and would have enough check-out counters open at 11.45 am. Wrong. There were *less than half* (about 4) of the check-out counters open, with serpentine queues haphazardly leading upto them.

After waiting at the same point for 15 minutes, the supervisor was approached to open extra checkouts. He responded by saying that it would take about 15 minutes and said something about staff not showing up. Twenty minutes later someone sauntered in to open *one* additional counter, but then couldn't get it working because it was locked. At that point, I told a checkout associate that I wanted to speak to the manager. She gave me a sullen look and refused to say anything. When I asked her if she was the store owner, she nodded. Only when I said that I would then give HER feedback did she point me to the supervisor, who again said things like people haven't come in, etc. I asked to speak to the manager and he immediately called the manager (Shankar) *who did not show up to speak to me at all*.

Instead a Mr. Mathew smilingly came along and asked what the problem was. At that point, I had already waited for *45 minutes* at checkout.

I gave a him a piece of my mind and he continued to make excuses and say how it was a holiday and people had worked till midnight the previous evening, etc. When I pointed out that we were practically packing our own groceries, he finally grasped how out-of-control the situation was and then began making phone calls to open tills and get additional help.

The total time I took to checkout -- 1 hour. That's right -- 60 minutes!

Which brings me to my point.

How is it that Total Mall fails to plan additional staff hands on a day that is a holiday and additional customers are likely to come in? How is it that the "Customer Care Associate" (Matthew) can say things like -- people worked till midnight that's why we don't have enough staff at 12.30 pm the next day? Whatever happened to hiring additional hands when needed? How is it that people working the tills aren't trained enough to even know how to unlock them to get started?

To summarize -- how is it that Total Mall really doesn't care about customer experience? Unless the management is arrogant enough to believe that an hour to checkout on a holiday is just dandy?

Time is the most precious resource in my life, and a business that has no respect for my time will not get my business. I'm never going back. Goodbye Total and Good Riddance.

(Just in case you are wondering where I do shop -- the answer is here.)