Austerity Drive

Guys,

I am sure many of you would have watched the program on Times Now on the government's austerity drive. For the first time in my life I saw people across party lines come together. I forgot the person from CPM, Manish Tewari from the Congress and Rudy Pratap from the BJP (who incidentally i had a lot of respect for)

All of them differed with Arnab and started pounding him for tainting MP's. Quite frankly do they have anything left to be tainted. From cash for votes to distributing money for votes to tying up with any party and every party, quite frankly the common Indian man has very little equity left with these bunch of wannabe's.

What is wrong in the press questioning them on spending too much? If you guys are paid by the tax payers of this country, then you are accountable to the people as well. The same party that talks about corporate houses and the need to make them more and more transparent has its spokesperson come on TV and say I will travel in cargo if my party lets me to :) Guess it goes without saying that the cargo he is talking about should be fitted with an AC, home theatre and so on.

Like how we have a system of Annual General Meeting, we should have an annual system of the council of ministers visiting each state capital once a year for a meeting with the people who pay them. This should not be stage managed and managed by an independent committee of eminent personalities with credibility.

These 3 parties could not get together to have a single face when we were being attacked by terrorists, they could never agree on ways to get out of recessionary times and can never agree on pretty much anything, but when it came to a simple question of why should they travel by business class, they got together and attacked the others. I am appalled and dismayed after that discussion on TV. If a corporate leader had spoken to aggressively and defensively on TV, I am pretty sure, he would have been fired or brought down heavily. But, these guys with important positions can just about get away with anything. And that is purely because we don't care as citizens to demand replies/action from them....

Just a quick ending comment from me- I really do think our council of ministers should travel by business or first class. Its a reflection of the country's prestige and values when they travel abroad. They could cut costs in a lot of ways, but we have got the methods totally wrong. Why dont you get a Consultant to review the cost patterns and come up with a clear recommendation that is followed instead of just going out and saying dont travel business. Is that the only expense that is un-called for? What about the parties? What about the unwanted get togethers for their leaders to self boast, what about the people who are over-staying in quarters? What about the statues of Madamji? The list never ends.....

I am using my pen to openly condemn the audacity and defensive attitude shown by the spokespersons of the so-called leading parties of our nation. Such defensive people can never listen or do any good for our country for they care about which class they travel in, than which classes of our society went to bed last night without a meal...

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Impartiality in politics- Myth personified…..

I read this piece in today’s newspaper, on Sushma Swaraj (Deputy Opposition leader) demanding the newly appointed speaker of the house (Parliament) to resign from her party membership in the name of being seen as an impartial head of the house. If any of you have seen how the helpless speakers of the past have tried in vain to control our so called Leaders, then you will know what the poor headmaster goes through. No surprises that some of them have been admitted to the hospital complaining of chest pain. Imagine managing a group of highly heterogeneous people- some highly educated, some hardly educated, some young, some forever young, some others with half their feet in a coffin, some progressive and many others extremely regressive…..I remember those college days…. When you don’t want to take up a test, you plan a class bunk en masse’ or plan a strike for a bus running in some other route not stopping for some class mate. All this in the name of not wanting to do what is expected of you- i.e. To study. Most times than not the last 5 years we have seen our elected members of the parliament run away from what is expected of them- discuss issues that concern the common man. Instead they ran towards the well (the central part of the parliament) at the drop of a hat to postpone or cancel the proposed debates on topics of national interest. What a waste of time and money to engage 600,000 people and USD 1.5-2 billion to elect 543 people who would represent people from all walks of life in the parliament. And what do they end up doing- bunk class en masse’ and not engage in any serious debates or contribute by way of their silence if not ideas.

Coming to the topic on impartiality in politics and related appointments, all I can say is that this is probably the biggest myth that I have ever heard of. How can someone who has supported a particular lineage or ideology or a party all his/her life, ever claim to be truly impartial overnight? In our country, we have several positions which are categorized as impartial and bi-partisan one’s, meant for people with proven capabilities. The latter part I don’t question as my great country is proud to have abundance of talent and I am proud of that fact. But the former (impartiality) I simply cannot digest? These positions include that of Government corporation heads, Governors, Speakers and finally the highest constitutional position with no executory powers, that of the President of India. (In India, The Prime Minister is the top most leader in India and the President is more of a non-executive head of India. Unlike the US Presidential system, we follow the British format)

No personal attacks here. But, how can Smt. Pratibha Patil (President of the country), SM Krishna (Ex. Governor of Maharashtra) or Miss. Meira Kumar (Speaker of the Parliament) be expected to function as impartial conductors of their function devoid of any party considerations. Ms. Kumar has been with the current ruling front for over 20 years plus the time her father was with the party, while Mrs. Patil and Mr. Krishna have been with the ruling party for over 30-40 years. Overnight they are rewarded for their administrative capabilities and party loyalty with plum posts which expect them to be impartial in every sense of the word. I can only think of one parallel- Most corporates do not allow “better halves” to work together for it’s near impossible to keep household loyalties and considerations away from work and be impartial in the true sense of the word.

When a state or central government comes to power and finds it hard to accommodate all of its regional leaders with considerable clout, they offer them Governor or positions as heads of Government corporations based on their negotiation powers within the ruling front. Heads of Government corporations are considered very highly and given more importance than that of the Governor of a state for the sheer kick-backs and miscellaneous revenues it brings to most political heads. No wonder why we have leaders who far outweigh any of the investment bankers or the benchmark index by reporting 550% and 1200% growth in their officially stated income records. Guess they should be the preferred choice as investment managers and not those who sit with dual monitors, statistical software’s and all. Surprisingly though, most of them cant manage our country’s ex-chequer and that needs a select few individuals. We have had 7 governments since 1991 on to 2009, but only 4 Finance ministers (Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, P.C.Chidambaram & Manmohan Singh)

If parties are really serious about being bi-partisan and appointing impartial leaders, then we need to look at some constitutional amendments for these key posts (That of a President, Speaker and Governor) that are critical to the functioning of our machinery. Like how we have one seat allotted for the Anglo-Indian community in the Parliament and needs no elections, we should reserve these 3 seats for people who have not belonged to any party and have headed key functions like the Reserve Bank of India, Indian Police, defense forces or Indian Space Research Organization. I can think of people like Mr.Rangarajan (ex RBI head) and Ms.Kiran Bedi (ex Police commissioner) on the top of my head. Analysts in the US have for long claimed that if US had a regulator as strong as India’s, then some of the recent US financial industry down turn would not have attained such measures of gigantic proportions.

The reason I suggest these names are for three main reasons:

They are bound to be more accountable for they have lead positions of high accountability

Having been at the receiving side of bureaucratic and governmental delays, they are bound to show more apathy towards the need for running these functions responsibly and efficiently

They have no parties and hence no inhibitions or un-learning that they have to put themselves through

The second suggestion I have is for any outgoing Parliament/Assembly to nominate people for these posts and for the common man to elect individuals from this list along with the normal central/state elections. This way we have new leaders who would manage, run and hopefully discipline the group of leaders we nominate from various parties.

The third suggestion I have is for introducing a compulsory cooling off period for all switches from positions held within a party to positions which require you to be completely impartial. 2 years seems to be a good starting point.

My fourth suggestion is for appointments to Government corporations to be purely based on the norms followed in appointing Chairman’s to Public sector companies and other government funded corporations. They could be experienced business leaders with proven records or people who have cleared IAS/IFS examinations. Appointing people who have missed plum government positions by a whisker or aren’t deemed to be fit enough to manage party posts is the worst nightmare for these government corporations. Many of whom are sick, while others are growingly becoming un-competitive and surviving on the back of constant capital infusion in the name of saving the jobs of thousands of Indian’s living in semi urban and rural areas. Talk about deploying tax payer’s money in the right area!!! The need of the hour is to strengthen these corporations to compete on their own strength and further fuel the economies growth and not to use these corporations to satisfy disgruntled party leaders.

The final suggestion I have is to give them powers equivalent to that of judiciary; both in terms of the independence of their functioning and their powers in taking decisions which have a legal standing.

Having said that, this needs more thought and debate to ensure that they don’t end up becoming larger than the group of people who are elected to lead our country. We don’t want another tussle like the one we see between the judicial system in our country and the government in many cases.

I invite suggestions from all…..

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Do we really need a gender discrimination bill?

As the train was thudding across the tracks, I heard a vegetarian pony-tailed 50’s something man with curd rice in his hands, talk about how admirably his wife has grown into a Director role in a Public enterprise. His wife epitomized what we call a typical “mami” down south. Clad in a saree long enough to dress a group of children who were playing cricket in the grounds we passed by, she was serving “puliyogarai” & “pickle” to a group of vegetarian erudites. She was as much a part of the group like any other typical stereotype traditional Indian house-wife would. All of them in the group were quite similar in their mannerisms- brash and loose talking, highly educated, traditional in values yet high-flying achievers in the contemporary world.
I was keenly watching 2 little kids with a clear western dialect listen to music through an I-POD. Their parents were engaged in an intense debate on how the lady’s boss never let woman grow. He was empathetically listening to his wife rant away at what might be. She was talking about the need for HR to ensure that Managers do not have too much control over selecting the next line. A pity that he did not get an I-POD to close his ears out; if it already wasn’t.
What is that old saying- “A man can be physically present while mentally elsewhere? And a woman really doesn’t care for she is present and that’s all that matters.”
“Thought stimulates action”….. this chuk-chuk ride made me introspect and dissect the words of the country’s new found “sister from the heartland”. For her, everything boiled down to reservations. Be it on the basis of caste, creed, community, gender or economic status. All that mattered was reservation and that she believed was the simple answer to life’s complicated issues. How can a reservation solve the fact that large corporations fudge balance sheets? How can a reservation solve the fact that India’s fiscal deficit has far crossed the parliament accepted threshold of 2.5%? But, still it all boils down to reservation for the new found “sister from the heartland”. Whether you’re rich or poor, whether you’re an upper or lower caste, whether you’re a man or woman really does not matter when it comes to managing the financials of our country or the people within it. What is needed is empathy towards its peoples cause, awareness and knowledge of how to manage systems and tools necessary to further people’s wishes and a leadership that empowers and directs resources to achieve this goal.
Someone told me a fascinating story of why Bangalore really ticked and why work really got Bangalored….. He said this growth had little to do with the policies of the state or the support provided within (for it was the same everywhere) and more to do with the fact the government did nothing about this growth. I quickly queried this IT achiever on what he meant by that. He went on to accentuate that the best thing that the then government did was to let the IT sector handle things on its own and grow independently, devoid of any unwanted interference from government officials barring a few press conferences to announce initiatives which have since been shelved….
And today, companies within the same IT & ITES sector are introspecting the need for a gender discrimination bill. Audacious of an industry that has enough worries ranging from recession (both dwindling volumes & spiraling costs) and offshore taxation, amongst others, to worry about arriving at a common code of employment with respect to gender discrimination.
However sexist I may sound, to me it’s suddenly making recruiters and the people involved in it, conscious of the curves an interviewee possesses as against the aptitude and attitude they posses. And what’s more? This is also means exposing yourself to a whole suite of reservation needs- ranging from caste, community to regionalism. Remember you have been pushing the Raj Thackeray’s and Vatal Nagaraj’s need for regional reservation away in the behest of maintaining an industry devoid of reservation and focused on rewarding genuine achievements and proven competencies. Being born a man or lady is no achievement and that is nature. You expose yourself to any degree of vulnerability and remember you are opening a pandoras box which has no boundaries.
If people within the industry feel that some quarters are denying people of their rightful opportunities, then they should be taken to task, as is the case with any troughs in performance. Such people need to be trained, equipped and tracked for behavioral changes and HR plays a critical role in facilitating the same. Solution does not lie in preparing a guidelines document which invariably remains in a HR Policies portal or in putting a number to it. Solution lies in the heart of it- If there is discrimination, why is it present? Because people within the system have not been necessarily gauged on how un-biased they are on various counts, before being empowered to decide the future of another individual with whom he has no pre-existing relationship (A father could always consider that at some level he does play a role in defining his daughter’s life. Hence, the clear distinction of pre-existing relationship). The issues faced in our rural areas are much more intrinsic and related to history and how our society was unscrupulously divided on the basis of caste. How can you ever expect someone who has been discriminated against for generations to vote for someone who was a part of it, albeight indirectly. That takes generations of education, empowerment and confidence to erase and re-draw.
Providing people with a higher tax exemption or lower insurance premiums because they were born woman or by running ad campaigns with the best actors have really not helped in reducing female feticide or in increasing social acceptance in select North Indian states. Education and literacy is the only solution and have proved to have a direct impact on social acceptance. India’s most literate state- Kerala with a 1,000+ female to male population is a testimony to this.
Fortunately, our industry is run by the educated. But, why they convert themselves into educated illiterates when they are stuck in a traffic signal in Bangalore or Mumbai is anybody’s guess. This educated lot has withered many a storm by maintaining their independence of thought and pushing towards competency based recruitments as against age-old reservation based systems or manager driven systems filled with bias.
To roll out a reservation system in our industry or to roll-out a 33% reservation system in the parliament would be the worst possible gift we can hand-over to a host of women achievers ranging from Condoleezza Rice to Indra Nooyi, Kiran Majumdar Shaw and a whole generation of middle class Indian woman like my sisters who have most admirably managed work and home without a battling an eye-lid.
These individuals never needed a reservation and grew on the back of their hard work and skills and not on the basis of the gender they were born into. This has inspired a generation of youngsters- both men and women to further their career graphs based on performances and not so much on being at a level within an organization structure because there was no one from that gender present at that level.

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