A matter of honour

JAK LI, a predominant Kashmiri Muslim regiment, is doing the Indian army proud. It also remains a bulwark against youth turning to militancy. Mayank Singh reports from the valley. Photo: Sujan Singh

Lanky Peer Mohammed Ummer from Anantnag has succeeded in fulfilling his father’s ultimate dream. He has joined Indian Army’s Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry Regiment (JAK LI), a unit his father served with distinction for 26 years.

Soldier Ummer is the only brother among five sisters and despite his father’s death in 2000, the family was very keen he takes over the mantle of warrior. So when Ummer recently marched at the attestation parade at Srinagar’s JAK LI parade ground, his family including two sisters - one a teacher and the other pursuing a Master of Arts degree – were in attendance, proud of their ward.

Or Rifleman Ishfaq Ahmad Malik, 21, from Rajouri, who is first in the family to join the army. Son of a farmer, Malik says he is raring to go. ‘‘It is an honour to serve the Indian Army. My family is proud and I am very excited to go and serve in areas which are terrorist-infested.'' His father cannot stop smiling at his son's achievments.

This sentiment was shared by every parent present at the parade ground that day. In a state torn by militant violence and separatist politics, Ummer like other Kashmiri recruits, is prepared to take the risk of being targeted by militants by joining the Indian Army. For those questioning the loyalty of Kashmiris towards India, this is a story worth reading.

The JAK LI regiment that Ummer plans to serve, consists of volunteers from Jammu and Kashmir. It has 50 percent Muslims while the rest represent other ethnic groups from the state.The army has taken thoughtful steps to create and carry with them the rank and file of the regiment; among their most remarkable steps to accommodate all is a common ground of worship, a time-honoured tradition of the Indian Army.

The regiment is by no means new. It came into being between April and August, 1948, trying times for the state when it faced the prospect of plunder, loot and annexation at the hands of tribal marauders who walked across the Line of Control (LoC) sponsored by the Pakistan army. While the shadow of cessation and independence is not entirely removed, JAK LI remains a testimony of how much the people of Jammu and Kashmir are willing to keep violence out of their lives.

Former Colonel of the regiment Lieutenant General ML Chibber likens the JAK LI regiment to the state’s fabulous Chinar trees, which have majestically withstood one storm after the other without any apparent signs of wear and tear. JAK LI’s historical defence of the state with its overwhelming majority of Muslim troops is rightfully the new symbol of Kashmiriyat – away from the shenanigans of vote bank politicians and cynical naysayers.

The birth of JAK LI is entwined with India’s historic freedom struggle.It is the only regiment in the Indian Army which can take legitimate pride in the fact that it emerged out of volunteer citizens who spontaneously rose as a cohesive group to resist the tribal invasion launched by Pakistan to capture Jammu and Kashmir on October 22, 1947. These sons-of-the-soils organized themselves and were called Leh Militia in Leh, Border Defence Scouts and Bal Sena in Jammu, Poonch Scouts in Poonch and National Home Guards in the Kashmir valley.

Then they had fought shoulder to shoulder with the Indian Army, their motivation fired by a burning desire to not just save their family and friends but also the land widely acknowledged to be the ‘Paradise on Earth.’ They not only succeeded in warding off invaders but put into place a hoary tradition – the practice of standing up and being counted when the country needed it.

The militias conducted themselves with great distinction during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and earned three battle honours during the Bangladesh conflict of 1971. But these successes, far from lulling them into complacency, spurred them on to greater heights – quite literally.

In 1984, JAK LI was deployed to the Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest battle ground, to thwart Pakistan’s designs there. Christened Operation Meghdoot, the 8th battalion of JAK LI earned plaudits by capturing a Pakistani post at 21,000 feet on the Siachen Glacier in 1987.

Celebrated Naib Subedar Bana Singh of the regiment earned the country’s highest military honour, Param Vir Chakra, and that too in fine fettle! Steeped in true warrior tradition, Singh believes a regiment is like a nursery which turns boys into men inculcating the basics of battle. Bana Singh became a Subedar Major and was later conferred with honorary rank of Captain. Says the legendary warrior,“ Jammu and Kashmir has been continuously under enemy attack. The immediate reaction to crisis without losing one’s balance is in our genes.’’ He adds: ‘‘You talk of any state and there are malcontents there. But here every jawan is proud of his tradition and the army's honour.''

Subedar Major and Honorary Captain Mohammed Ashraf Bhat, who belongs to Tral in Abantipur district, concurs with Bana Singh and attributes the boys’ success in battlefronts to their natural strength, coming as they do from the mountains. ‘‘Since the boys belong to rugged mountainous terrain, fitness is never an issue. It provides them the edge in action. Also, our boys know the people from the other side (across the border) and they can easily read their body language. Their analysis comes in very handy during operations,’’ he says. Naturally, when it comes to regimental honour, the troops tend to surpass themselves.

Mountains are not JAK LI’s only forte. In 1987 they went to Sri Lanka as part of Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF)’s Operation Pawan and performed with distinction in the prevailing political circumstances. Its successes during the Kargil War where it earned distinguished awards for gallantry, was epitomized in 1999 with the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) making a special instant award of "Unit Citation" to the 12th Battalion of the Regiment for their exceptionally gallant and sterling performance in the Batalik Sector.

Their exploits in Kargil saw them win additional honours, the rise of another regiment carved out of the troops which fought the enemy as militia. Ladakh Regiment was carved out of eight companies taken from 7th Battalion which is now the 1st Ladakh Scouts and 14th Battalion became the second battalion of Ladakh Scouts.

Ladakh Scouts was raised on June 1, 1963, following the 1962 Indo-China war. Troops of Ladakh Regiment have also been at the forefront of various battles since 1965. During Operation Vijay at Kargil, Major Sonam Wangchuk, received the Maha Vir Chakra for Ladakh Scouts, displaying exemplary bravery in the face of non-stop enemy fire. The Ladakh Scouts was given the status of a full infantry regiment in 2000 and more battalions are planned to be raised.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Digital dharma

Social media could influence more than 150 of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies in 2014. Chandran Iyer examines the implications. 

Social Media is poised become the most potent weapon for political parties girdling their loins for the 2014 general elections. Apart from party propaganda work which appears to have already started in right earnest, there is the added promise of lampooning rivals, highlighting personal achievements and scoring brownie points in the fond hope that the voter will catch on.

To be sure, the days of dust-bowl election campaigns in India’s boondocks are not a thing of the past but the cutting edge to arguably the most explosive election campaign likely in 2014, is most certainly going to be provided by a proliferating social media.

Right on top of this list are two of India’s main candidates, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi and BJP strongman Narendra Modi whose recent Twitter monikers, ‘Pappu’ (naïve) and ‘Feku’ (boastful) respectively, have already acquired a life and logic of their own. As elections draw closer, many more such parallels may be thrown up, to the delight of the public, specially the social media-using public.

Political parties, quick to spot the potential of this newly-emerging bandwidth, are aware that an issue breaking out on Twitter or Facebook is more likely to catch eyeballs as compared to the mainstream media which is increasingly been seen as ‘compromised’ and ‘affiliated’ to one or the other political party. For the first time, social media is being seen as a direct connect with the people – without the well informed journalist and blue collared analyst coming in with his or her two penny bit.

Speaking at a debate on ‘Will Internet and social media be a game changer for the next general elections’, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari recently said, “Content agnostic new media platforms are definitely not something that any politician or political party can ignore. However, elections are a complex exercise where voting preferences depend more on local/regional variations. Therefore, one variable may not be a game changer.” May be.

Admits archrival, BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad, “the power of social media cannot be denied and political leaders will be forced to take the demands of young India into consideration.’’ By the looks of it, they probably, already are.

Just how significant is the scale of this social media outreach? According to a recent study, it is set to play a very vital and decisive role in influencing the outcome of general elections in at least 160 Lok Sabha constituencies. In other words, a significant portion of the urban vote. In a tight contest, such as the type being predicted in 2014, it can become anyones game.

Says a study conducted by IRIS Knowledge Foundation and Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI), “There are 160 high impact constituencies out of the total of 543 constituencies, which are likely be influenced by social media during the next general elections.’’ In such a situation, a little tweet or a throwaway line on the net could lead to a frenzy of talk shows, high decibel comment and seemingly endless controversies, all stirred in one direction - impending elections.

In situations such as these, the mainline media, particularly the 24x7 news matrix, on the look out for little tit bits to start a talking heads chat show, can ideally feed on the social media. In turn, both can feed on each other.

India has about 60 million-plus social media users and the numbers are continually increasing. The study categorises high impact constituencies as those where “Facebook users account for over 10 per cent of total voters in a constituency.’’ Even though, the country’s internet penetration is relatively low; about 150 million people out of a total population of 1.2 billion go online. According to the IRIS-IMAI survey, these numbers are poised to go up as D-Day approaches.

Away from dreary and cliched election speeches, a whole new world is opening up – a world where an issue can snowball out of proportion - like the Anna agitation or Kejriwal anti-corruption stir - to be lapped up by an adoring public. Social media's first impact were felt in the now celebrated Twitter spat between former IPL head honcho Lalit Modi and the Congress minister Shashi  Tharoor in 2010 over the equity pattern in the former IPL Kochi team. The seemingly minor exchange ballooned out of proportion and cost Tharoor his job as the junior minister for external affairs. It also made Lalit Modi scamper for cover in London. And guess what Modi is doing from London? Tweeting against the present management of BCCI of course and grabbing headlines!

According to a study on social media usage by The Nielsen Company conducted in collaboration with analytic and research company AbsolutData, nearly 30 million Indians who are online are members of social networking sites and about two-thirds of them spend time on the net on a daily basis.

More importantly, says the study, Indians spend more time on social media than they do using personal email. According to it, an equal number spend up to an hour on social networking and email. However, while just 8 percent spend between an hour and three hours on personal email, 20 percent spend the same time on social media sites.

The growth of social media has given rise to a new breed of entrepreneurs whose job it is to provide specialised election-related services to individual candidates or to political parties using the digital platform. In this, they are taking the help of software professionals. In some instances, political parties are outsourcing work to newly-cropped IT companies which provide niche information of the kind they require.

This novel experiment was witnessed during the 2012 Gujarat assembly elections, as well as the recently-concluded Karnataka assembly elections. Pune-based Xtech Infocom, an information technology-enabled service provider company, was given the task of managing Congress propaganda. Explains Riyaaz Sheikh, head business relations of Xtech Infocom, “We work for political campaigning through digital medium for individual politicians, regional and national parties. We have provided technological support for campaigning, propaganda, giving information to voters about the party’s policies through bulk SMS, Bulk Voice and cloud telephony”.

Sheikh’s company helped the Congress in Gujarat in the last assembly elections in implementing their election strategy. “We worked hand in hand with the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) in Ahmedabad.  Our boys worked with GPCC's IT cell. Our task was to reach out to maximum voters in the state through mobile telephony and internet and ensure that the party message reaches them. We helped the party in planning total electoral strategies”.

While this social networking may not have been enough to take Narendra Modi off his high pedestal, it certainly suggests the pattern of things to come. The methods employed by Sheikh’s company helped in deploying state-of -the art telephony system along with updated voting slip database and putting into place a call centre where voters phoned up for getting detailed voting slips on their mobile along with the name of their leader.

During the Karnataka assembly elections, political parties set up their own election cells with IT experts and professionals to propagate party agenda and to take liberal pot shots at the opposition.

In Karnataka, BJP became the first political party to set up a professional wing to take care of the social media, christened the Communication Cell. Points out Channamallikarjun B Patil, cell convener: “Our total campaign via the social media was designed by members of our Communication Cell. Our five-pronged strategy included letting the world know about the achievements of the first BJP government in south India through the social media. Second was the party manifesto and the party's future plans; third exposing UPA’s corruption - we released an online version of UPA 100 not out scams – a complete ready reconnoiter of the scam-infested of UPA in the last nine years. Fourth,was the voter awareness programmes via social media and the last, details of clean governance provided by Chief Minister Jagdish Shettar’s government.’’ To be candid, this is one case where even the social media could not help a beleaguered state government and party mired in graft but the general elections could throw up another picture.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

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China does a mini-Kargil

The objectives are big

China has sent a complement of 50 troops 19 km into Indian territory in the DBO sector in the middle of the strategically-significant Depsang Bulge. The sector is at an altitude of 17,000 feet. Protracted discussions have just begun. China claims the territory as its own; India is busy finding ways to secure a retreat of Chinese troops. The development reflects poorly on Indi's so-called China experts.

China has been frantically developing its national power with economic acitivity, expansive military infrastructure and technology build-up. On the contrary, India has been a meek reactionary hobbled by  lack of foresight and diffidence in the name of caution.

A comprehensive study done by the Eastern Command two years back had brought out that China was ready to initiate its conspiracy against India. The report clearly enunciates the Chinese ‘External Calm and Internal Intensity’ strategy that will not be aimed at achieving any military gains but to  to humiliate India, undermine its rise and dent its position.

The present local position held by the Chinese troops is 30 km south of Daulet Beg Oldi. Daulat Beg Oldi and its airstrip are located just south of the great Karakoram pass; it offers India a means to snap the road route between China and Pakistan and guard the eastern gates to the Siachen glacier. Thus it can, if China holds on, be interdicted.

Zorawar Daulet Singh, an expert on China-India military relationship, says, “The Ladakh incident has been provoked by the Chinese to bring about a new operating environment on the border and draw Delhi’s attention to the tactical level.” It sounds plausible when one analyses China's demands.

On one side, China is setting conditions to stop construction activities at Daulat Beg Oldi and at Chumar where a helipad is being built, and for some tin sheds at Fukche to be dismantled. What has miffed China is the Indian steps to better its infrastructure. Infrastructure development has been in the media for decades. It’s not that we are doing it secretly. Now, once China has completed its infrastructure build up it aims to hinder Indian side of infrastructure buildup.

Border patrols have increased from both sides as China increased its number every year. This is an extension of what was being tested for years. It can be termed as a mini Kargil. Although it was not an off-season intrusion, it was well planned and caliberated. There are clear signs that the Chinese are gradually adding up to the symbolic escalation as they started with tents, increased their numbers, added flags and they will keep waiting for Indian reactions and then will accordingly keep adding to the provocation. No country will throw its soldiers in and this is least possible from a country like China which plans its moves with great care.

If we draw a parallel with the war zone campaign, then this move by China is quite clearly akin to  ‘External Calm and Internal Intensity’. The primary aim here is to lull the adversary into lethargy and inactivity, exactly like it happened before 1962. The slogan ‘Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai’ sums it up the best. As in 1992, the army had drawn a precise analysis of 10 years of the Chinese plan ahead. In Indian army relocation plan and dual tasking official document of Indian Government had led to ending the posture taken during Operation Chequerboard. This operation was launched during General K Sundarji’s time when China had tried to grab a post in Sumdorong Chu. Gen Sundarji had deployed troops in an offensive posture and which had resulted in China backing off. But after the Army’s relocation plan this posture was discontinued. It might have been a wise decision then as it was based on operational information that China was not ready to fight a war for the next 10 years as it was to focus on building its economy and infrastructure. But the analysis that no fight would take place till 2002 also meant that China would be ready for action after 2002. What was our response apart from changing the posture? Did we engage in improving infrastructure and operational capacity? India has not bought artillery guns for two decades, Our air defence has holes, helicopters are lacking, tanks are night blind. Our field formations do not have proper practice ammunitions. The list is long even if we do not talk of the approved strategic roads after the Kargil Committee Report. We have awakened late and started proper allocation in 2010 which will take another 10 years to develop. So, since 1992 poor appreciation and bad military management have hobbled India. TSI, through its sources, has learnt that almost 30  to 40 per cent of the army’s vehicles do not have fuel to run them. In August 2012, an executive order was issued that no new vehicle would be bought.

Ironically the defence Budget increases every year but does not take cost escalation and inflation into account. A senior officer informed TSI that for nine years the utilization of Capital expenditure has been the maximum 9 percent of the allocation. “The first half of the year is wasted in delaying the files and then executive orders are issued and the allocations are blocked,” he adds.

From August the weather will make any troop movement impossible. China had tried the same strategy with Japan but met with strong resistance. It also used pressure tactics with Vietnam and the Philippines and is now doing the same with India. India not only needs to discuss issues with China in clear terms but also focus its priorities and build its national power in a synergized manner. Otherwise, it will only have to capitulate to the smart moves of the adversary.

Dr Dibyesh Anand, associate professor, Westminster University and an expert on China, believes there is relative paucity of neutral and non-nationalist scholarship from the mainstream Indian media, which prevents a dispassionate analysis and gives space to hawks who fit this event into the older lens of bad China/good India/impotent Indian government.  He says: “The way out is to temper down the tension, and ensure serious conversation between Beijing and Delhi without the media baying for each other’s blood,” says Dr. Anand.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Why the BJP was decimated

State assembly results show that voters will come out strongly against corruption

The voters of Karnataka have delivered a decisive mandate against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in the state. The Congress party looks all set to occupy the regal portals of the Vidhana Soudha, which is the seat of state legislature in Karnataka.

The results of the recent assembly polls have shocked even the most hard line poll pundits. While many had predicted that the Congress would fare well in these polls, very few had imagined that the BJP would be mauled so badly. The saffron party has been virtually decimated to the extent of being placed in the third position behind the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular), an ignominious situation for them indeed.

This assembly elections recorded the second highest voter turnout in 35 years with a polling percentage of 71.29. There were 2,940 candidates in 223 Assembly segments, with the election in Periyapatna constituency being put off due to the death of a candidate. What are the reasons for this dismal performance by the BJP?

Corruption seems to have been the main issue in this election. The infamous scandals involving the Bellary brothers related to mining issues, resignations of various ministers due to impropriety and the ouster of the then Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa who was indicted by the Lok Ayukta on charges of corruption, played a huge role in the decisive shift of public opinion against the BJP.

However one must inject a dose of caution before we credit the Congress for its victory. The Karnataka voter may have punished the BJP this time. However, they are also aware of the various corruption scandals that have plagued the Congress-led UPA government in New Delhi. They may be in an equally punishing mood during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, with the Congress being at the receiving end.

It is a dream gone sour for the BJP. Karnataka was the first south Indian state that the BJP won when Yeddyurappa became chief minister in 2008. While this was trumpeted as a great victory, there were some ominous signs even then. Certain shady individuals like the mining barons of Bellary district led by Janardhan Reddy had funded the BJP and this was well known to the central leadership of the party.

In many ways the BJP government was doomed at the very start of its tenure by its association with individuals of dubious repute. A plethora of corruption scandals followed, ranging from illegal mining to various instances of land grabbing by ministers. Yeddyurappa was relieved of the CM’s post and this caused an irreparable rift in the party. He formed the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP) with the help of many other BJP stalwarts like CM Udasi ,who left the party with him. Yeddyurappa always had a mass following among the Lingayats, who are a very powerful community in Karnataka and constitute a sizable proportion of the electorate.

This election has been largely lost in North Karnataka. This region accounts for 96 seats. In the 2008 elections, the BJP won a record 56 seats in a region once considered a Congress fortress. This was mainly due to the consolidation of Lingayat votes in favour of the BJP. North Karnataka has always been crucial in deciding the fate of political parties in the state. In the 1985 elections, Ramakrishna Hegde came to power with 139 MLA’s, of which 60 came from North Karnataka. In the 1989 elections, Veerendra Patil of the Congress became chief minister, largely due to the 68 seats the party won in North Karnataka. The loss of Lingayat support has proven very costly indeed for the BJP.

Once the excitement of the election results has subsided, the real challenging task of governance begins. Rural Karnataka has been severely neglected with reports of numerous farmer suicides. About 100 farmers have committed suicide this year alone, largely due to drought and ever increasing input costs. A total 2,986 farmers have committed suicide in Karnataka in the last decade. The new government has to remedy this immediately. Recent studies have shown that Karnataka is among the most corrupt states in India. Cities and towns in Karnataka are bursting at its seams and lack adequate infrastructure when it comes to transportation, community hygiene and health. These challenges are immense and one hopes that the electoral verdict against corruption and maladministration will resonate loudly in the ears of all political parties.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Book Review: Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo

A land torn asunder

Violence has become synonymous with Congo. Explosion of violence in Congo has been hitting headlines incessantly. Also, in recent times, Angelina Jolie has been visiting often as UNHCR goodwill ambassador to meet the women suffering due to war still ravaging. This is clearly indicative of the precarious situation in Congo. The situation was no less dangerous when in 2006 Anjan Sundaram had taken the decision to go to Congo to get something ‘to hold on to’ and work as a journalist. His transformation from a mathematics scholar under the tutelage of Serge Lang, a legend of mathematical theory, to a reporter on ground was encompassing.  He ‘broke with’ America. Congo ‘consumed’ him.

This book, Stringer- A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo, is all about Sundaram’s experience on the ground - replete with a journalist’s struggle to get a foothold in a place which was unpredictable. The way he has cloaked his personal experience with words is very smooth. The book begins with the lines, ‘I was already feeling perturbed.’ It initiates a reader into Sundarm’s run to save himself from the pitfalls ahead.

Family of Jose and Nana hosted Sundaram in Kinshasha and their house served as the anchor for him to explore the places around, consequently meeting the local people and his ‘aide’ Mossi. Mossi, as described by Sundaram, was like a close support and his description is that of a friend in need. ‘Mossi Mwassi was a refugee from South Africa. He had a short crop of grey hair.’ His face screwed up when he saw Nana. But Mossi was undeniably helpful: he knew all the journalists and also which stories were hot’. Sundaram’s way with words enbales him to capture every change of scene to perfection. When it begins to feel that the description of Congo is stretching somewhat, he shifts to Serge Lang. At other times, he gets back to America to make the reader understand the circumstances from which he reached the house of Jose and Nana. Annie was Sundaram’s bank teller and Jose and Nana were her in-laws.

The readers will enjoy the change of scene as they are at the right time. But the best is the way even the minute details have been put into words. This makes one travel to the very spot about which Sundaram is writing or become a part of the experience which Sundaram underwent.

Writing about his return to Jose and Nana’s house after he was forced to give away his phone and most importantly the numbers saved in it, Sundaram says, “People swelled towards us like a sea. We sat in an old Volkswagen whose twelve cushioned seats had been pulled out and replaced with wooden benches; soon we were more than thirty inside, cramped side by side, hands between our knees. We squeezed more for the women who brought in her drooling infant. The windows were sealed shut, so there was no breeze, and inside it was suffocating. The human smell engulfed us.”

Sundaram lived in a ‘dingy room’ but this had put him close to people and felt the ‘pulse of the people’. This, as Mossi had said, was good to ‘live cheap, move like the locals and discuss the issues that mattered to them.’

The book is about the way Sundaram managed to gain a little balance in a completely strange place and then moved around to find stories which led him to report about militias and their attacks. There are also people from India and Pakistan who are as important as the local citizens. Sundaram reported the violent events at a place called Fataki and he was helped by his Pakistani friend Ali who gave him the necessary details and where to go.

Apart from the way Sundaram has narrated the entire experience, it also brings to the fore the way he took initiatives and his friendship and approach of an ordinary man, but with strong mind, kept him going even to the most difficult places.

Thanks to the vivid first hand description that Sundaram provides of Congo, the reader is able to understand the ravages that Congo has faced simply in order to satiate the greed of the people who are hardly aware of the predicament of the land.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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A Toxic Tale

Animal Planet is crawling with them. So is Nat Geo Wild. It’s snakes and the modern day snake charmers, herpetologists with a penchant for one way conversations – folks like Austin Stevens, Jeff Corwin, Brady Barr, the man who started it all, the late great Steve ‘Crikey’ Irwin, and of course, our  home grown sweet talking snake wrangler – Gerry Martin, who seem to have taken over all the prime time slots on animal tv.

They make for wonderfully exciting viewing, I will give you that. Most folks, even those that love dogs and cats and birds, and find monkeys cute and white mice adorable, shudder at the thought of a snake slithering along their arm.

Snakes inspire revulsion and reverence in equal measure. The scales, the forked tongue, the unblinking eyes and the possibility of a lethal liquid flowing through their switchblade fangs elevates them to the status of a god for a few and the very devil for the rest.

So I can understand why it is like standing barefoot on the very edge of reality tv to watch a man as mortal as you and me, literally kiss death as his lips touch the raised hood of a king cobra. These men catch mambas by their tails, taipans by the neck and play with rattling rattlers like they were a child’s toy. The tiniest scratch from any one of these snakes could lead to a painful and hideous end for these experts.  Even with antivenom, the recovery process is uncertain, slow and very painful. So those men are risking a whole lot for good television. Should you try this at home? Sure, go ahead. If you’re as incredibly lucky as I once was, you will survive both the encounter and the feeling of having been monumentally stupid when the realization of how close you were to a grisly death has washed over you. And if you are not, you will be in that privileged ringside seat to the spectacle of watching the limb that suffered the hemotoxic bite disintegrate in front of your very eyes as you writhe in the kind of agony that might make getting impaled on a stake feel like a vacation. Or you could try guessing which of your organs is shutting down first as the neurotoxins motor along your arteries. Whichever the nature of the venom, it is unlikely to be a quiet death, I promise.  

Here’s my story that I might have shared in bits and pieces on earlier occasions but this time I present it to you in its entirety as a prelude to ‘what to do when the naughty one from Eden comes calling’.

A few springs ago, I was walking out of my office which was then sitting pretty near the green glades of Sanjay Van near Qutab Institutional Area, when I spotted the guards crowding around a pair of flower pots. I peered over their shoulders and saw them poking at a long slim snake with sticks. More than two feet long, a deep dirty brown with bands running rings around it. Some wanted to kill it with sticks, some suggested burning it while a few where of the opinion that it should either be left alone or carried outside the premises and released.

One of the men said that he had often seen these snakes around the area. Now that got me thinking. If this snake was common in the area, it was important to know whether this snake was venomous or not and what should one do if one of these snakes just pops up around a corner. So I suggested that they put the snake, unharmed and whole, in a container so I could take it to the zoo and get it identified and find suggestions for a viable protocol if this kind of an encounter was to happen again (mobile phone cameras weren’t really de rigueur in those days and so physically carrying the snake was the only way out).

A plastic bottle was procured and the snake, still sluggish in the cool of the morning was poked and picked and placed inside the bottle. One of the guards thought the snake might find the confines of the bottle claustrophobic and punched a few holes into the cap. But now the holes seemed big enough for the snake to escape through them and so he stuck a few twigs to plug the holes. Equipped thus I stuck the bottle between the seat and the door to keep the bottle upright and drove off to the zoo. A speed breaker later, the bottle keeled over and a forked tongue flickered out of the port window in the bottle cap. If the snake got out, it would be impossible to find in the folds of the car’s insides. I had to pull over and set things right. Like I said, it was a monumentally stupid decision to transport a potentially dangerous reptile in this fasion and then to drive with this distraction through Delhi’s notoriously hostile traffic.

Anyway, we both survived the trip to the zoo where I explained my situation to the folks manning the gate and I was ushered in to reptile house. I held out the bottle with the gaping holes in the cap (the twigs had given in to gravity and had fallen through. The little snake had climbed along the length of the twigs and was now poking its head out of the bottle). The man at the reptile house shrank back in horror. “Krait! It’s a Krait”, he whispered. My hands must have started shaking involuntarily at the exclamation for the bottle vibrated in my hand and the snake dropped down again to the bottom.

A krait?! I had been cradling a krait all this while? t krait in Re first time I came across those five dreaded letters was in Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, that unforgettable tale that pitted a pair of cobras against a brave and wily pet mongoose. In the story, Kipling’s krait was smaller but as venomous (as a matter of fact, ounce for ounce, krait venom is even more potent than cobra venom) and dangerous as those hooded emissaries of doom. “It is still a little chilly these days. This one got out a little too soon and that’s why you are still alive”, snapped the zoo ‘expert’. “Half an hour is all it will take for this little devil’s neurotoxins to take you to the brink of respiratory failure”, he added.

Read more....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Words, places and other friends...

You are one of those people to have followed their hearts. When did you realise that writing was your true love?
The discovery that I could write a novel was an accident. I had been reading a lot of novels when I was unemployed. As soon as I secured a job for myself, I was assigned a project. Not much work was coming in, so I began writing a novel. I had just read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens then and was very impressed with his writing. I realised that one could write a novel in an autobiographical narrative style. I enjoyed the entire writing process. It involves lot of reading. I have always enjoyed reading books. Reading is my real and true passion. Reading stimulates my imagination and writing exercises my imagination. This is ecstasy!

Was there ever any fear of your book not being appreciated?
I have never had any fears when it comes to becoming a writer. Of course I am very much concerned as to how my books would fare in the market and how readers would react to my writings. The outcome and results of one's efforts are the surprises of life. It’s my earnest desire to produce a work of genius. This quest to author a masterwork propels me to plunge into novel writing.

Do you think it was easier to venture out into writing because of your location? Would this have been possible had you been living in India?
I wrote my first novel in Delhi. I wrote my second novel during a rainy Thanksgiving weekend in Seattle. So the location does not matter. The most important factor is my ‘state of mind’ at that time. I am eternally grateful to the Indian system. In India, English Literature has a special place. This gives a window into Western civilisation. And the US has such a great County Library System. I took advantage of the Library Culture to write my second novel.

Your first book, An Adolescent Mind, is a semi autobiographical novel. How did the idea of the subject come to you?
I had the story idea of my first novel for a long time in my head. It is a slice of life story. It is written on the basis of experience. I wrote the novel by fusing real life experiences like first love, peer-pressure, political events, Indian society, the media and the imaginative. Also, I must admit that I have this tendency to mythologise myself. An auto-biographical novel gives me such a platform.

While writing, is there a method that you follow?
I do not have any method to writing. In many ways writing a novel is a mystery. Something inexplicable happens. And thoughts flow in the form of words. And my fingers tap on my computer keyboard. I believe divine inspiration comes into play. I am just a medium. A novel is a miracle.

It is very tough to play with fiction... what’s the inspiration behind your second book True Colors of Love?
I read Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is a brilliant short novel. I began toying with the idea of writing a book which had an off-beat narrative. True Colors of Love is an experiment in that sense. The narrative is in the second person. It is also based on certain real life experiences. I have depicted first love; the pathos and the urges of a young man and his fascination for a nymphet.

How do you tackle creative blocks?
Writing a second novel is a tougher call. All of us have a story to tell. There is one novel in all of us. Writing True Colors of Love was challenging. And I am glad that I accepted it. After I wrote the first chapter, I could not go forward. Oftentimes beginning a novel is easy. The middle game and the end-game present greater challenges. I was able to overcome the challenges by extensive reading and plunging into a dream world. Will power also played an important factor. There are times when the ink of the pen goes dry. At that time I feel exhausted. It is tiresome. There is no peace. Then later, when I stick to the task, it all comes up well. And the novel is complete! Perseverance is the key.

Read more.....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

What's Left ?

The Communists are becoming increasingly irrelevant in Indian politics. That's a tragedy, write Snehangshu Adhikari and Rajasekhara Panicker

Look back at the exhilarating yet chaotic scenes after Lok Sabha elections in 1996. The Congress had been handed a resounding defeat and a coalition headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the BJP lasted a mere 13 days. As non Congress and non BJP parties and leaders huddled together to form a government and nominate a prime minister, the name of the late Jyoti Basu kept cropping up frequently. After much debate, the party bosses at CPI (M) vetoed the idea of Jyoti Basu as a prime minister. Many party leaders , in hindsight, call it a historic blunder. That was perhaps the first and last time a Marxist came close to becoming the prime minister of India.

Now remember the tumultuous scenes after the Left withdrew support to the first UPA government in 2008 over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Prior to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the media was full of CPM party leaders Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yecchury. They were supposed to be kingpins and kingmakers in the aftermath of the elections. Nobody talked about Narendra Modi as a prime ministerial candidate. Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav were supposed to be serious contenders. Why, this magazine even had Sitaram Yecchury on the cover as a possible prime minister of the country.

Look at the political scenario in the country today as we approach yet another Lok Sabha election. Love him or hate him, you can't stop talking about Narendra Modi as a potential candidate for prime minister. Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav still nurture their ambitions. But who is talking about Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yecchury? It appears as if the mainstream media has completely written off the Left Front as players of any consequence in Indian politics. In fact, it is battling hard to retain its last bastion in Tripura, where campaigning for Assembly elections is on in full swing.

Says Amrito Maiti of the Revolutionary Socialist Party: "Yes the craziness towards our movement has decreased a lot, but it doesn't mean that people have totally banned Left ideology. It's really a posititive sign that just within two years of Mamata's, tenure we have already started getting responses from the mass."

The fall from the heady days of 1996 when Jyoti Basu was a serious contender for the top job has been quite precipitous. Most analysts are being compelled to ask: What's Left? If you go by how mainstream media deals with parties and issues, it is clear that the Left in India seems to be in terminal decline. The real shock for the Left came during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The CPM lost 27 seats and the CPI lost 6 seats. From controlling close to 60 Lok Sabha members, the Left was virtually reduced to a rump with control over barely 30 members. Then came even more electoral shocks. In Kerala, the Left lost narrowly to a coalition led by the Congress. Worse, the unchallenged 34 year old reign of the Left Front came to a humiliating end in West Bengal where it was decimated by Mamata Bannerjee. Now, Tripura is the last state in which the Left Front runs a government. This is indeed a far cry from the heady days after independence when the Left won the first democratically contested elections in the world in the 1950s. The Left has also steadily lost ground in its other bastion – the trade unions. There was a time when Left oriented trade unions were in complete command in the industrial heartland of Maharashtra. It is the Shiv Sena that has taken over there. Even at the national level, the Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh, which claims affiliation to the BJP, now claims to command more members and cadres than the Leftist trade unions.

What went wrong with the promise shown by the Left? After all, in a poor country like India, the Left, with its commitment to the poor and the working class should have held a natural advantage. It should have been a natural alternative to the Congress party since most Indian voters seemed to show hardly any liking for right wing Hindu parties like the Jan Sangh. In fact, the CPI was a far more 'national' party than the Jan Sangh. It had influence and electoral clout in states ranging from Bengal to Andhra Pradesh to Bihar to Punjab to Maharashtra to Kerala to Odisha to Tamil Nadu. It was the first non Congress political party to form a state government in Kerala. In fact, when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi adopted extreme Left economic policies like nationalisation, it looked as if the ultimate triumph of the Left in India was but a matter of time.

But those dreams and hopes look like a chimera in contemporary India. It would be a surprise for everybody if the Left manages to significantly improve its tally in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections. The obvious thing to ask is what exactly happened with the Left parties and the Left movement in the country.    Both in terms of ideological influence and electoral success. The first thing to note is that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a universal crisis of credibility for the Left throughout the world. As long as the Soviet Union stayed intact and appeared to be a formidable adversary to the United States, the Left always had a kind of romantic appeal. But the collapse of the Soviet Union revealed fundamental fault lines in the world of communism and Marxism, fault lines that could not be papered over by slogans and propaganda. Of course, as the accompanying article by colleague Saurabh Shahi shows, the Left still displays resilience and still attracts support across the world. But there can be no doubt that it is no longer considered to be a serious alternative to capitalism and capitalist democracy.

In India, the decline of the Left had started much before the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the key reasons was a kind of suicidal fragmentation of the Left parties and movement across India. Till the 1960s, the CPI was a monolith that dominated the Left movement and discourse in India, including electoral politics. But in the aftermath of India's humiliation by the Chinese military in 1962, the cleavages in communist India were very clear. Eventually, the CPI split and resulted in the formation of two parties – the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), better known nowadays as the CPM. Since the 1970s, it is the CPM that has been the dominant communist party in the country with the CPI playing second fiddle. This was not the only split. More ideologically aggressive factions formed their own versions of Marxist-Leninist parties and the Left no longer presented a united front. A large number of Marxists turned armed revolutionaries and launched the Naxalite movement. Naxalite movements and outfits have flourished in states like Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha. In fact, in many parts of central and eastern India, these armed Leftists virtually run parallel governments of their own. Ironically, even as the mainstream Left has lost ideological influence and electoral clout, it is the Naxalites that have proven to be more potent, more resilient and more durable. But then, even those romantically inclined towards the Left know that the Naxalite movement will not succeed in its aim of liberating the masses and overthrowing the Indian State.

The other big body blow to the fortunes of the Left was delivered about three decades ago when a series of events and policies led to the rise of communal politics in India. The year 1986 can be termed as the defining one in this process. In that year, the government headed by the late Rajiv Gandhi overturned a Supreme Court verdict that made it mandatory for Muslim men to pay maintenance to divorced wives. This is the now infamous Shah Bano case. This decision was seen as a meek and abject surrender to radical Muslim bodies and was taken despite strong objections from liberal Muslims. The same year, the government allowed hard line Hindu outfits to lay claim to the Babri Masjid as the birthplace of Lord Ram. This decision too was seen as a kind of surrender to hard line Hindu radicals and was taken despite strong objections from liberal Hindus. These two decisions sparked off a series of events that eventually led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the subsequent emergence of the BJP as a serious contender for power. In 1984, the BJP had managed to win barely 4 seats in the Lok Sabha. By 1996, the tally had gone well beyond 100 and the party actually formed a short lived 13 day government at the centre. The Left was no longer a natural alternative to a moth eaten Congress. The BJP had taken over that role even as it expanded its presence across India. The growing gap between the Left and the BJP was visible in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections when both were decisively rejected by the voters. The vote share of the BJP was close to 19 per cent while that of the CPM was a little above 5 per cent. More important, while the Left struggles to preserve its last bastion in Tripura, the BJP rules in states like Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and Punjab. Yet another irony is: firebrand socialists of yore with disrinctively left leanings, like George Fernandes, became part of a coalition led by the BJP. This was something that even the marxists couldnt have imagined back in their heydays in the 1970s.

Says Khsiti Goswami, RSP: "But the ground reality is not exactly the same so far. Rather, be it Left or others like Congress or BJP, nobody has that much capacity at least to have some control over such coalition tenure. For the time being, it's either Congress or BJP being considered as major party of the nation. But at state level the equation has always been different."

Read more.....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail
IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

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PAUL BRACKEN: PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, YALE UNIVERSITY

China, too, is shifting its nuclear forces to mobile missiles and submarines. These weapons can be put on alert in a way that would be highly visible to US satellites and the global media. Thus, the Chinese can easily “nuclearise” a crisis with US or anyone else. They do not have to detonate a nuclear weapon, but only alert adversaries to the dramatic increase in the political stakes and dangers of a showdown.

Russia, not wanting to be left out of the act, has recently staged the largest nuclear exercises in decades to remind everyone that it remains a serious nuclear player, too. These individual developments are troubling. But they cannot be understood in isolation from the larger multipolar system of major powers that is forming. To a great extent, this is a nuclear multipolar system: possessing nuclear weapons contributes to a country’s global status as a major power.

To see this, consider the following question: When was the last time that the US or anyone else seriously proposed that India sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – that is, that India give up the Bomb. Given America’s economic problems and looming defense cuts, as well as growing Chinese power, there is no longer even a remote possibility that this demand will be made. India has become an accepted, legitimate member of the nuclear club, the fiction of the NPT notwithstanding. It is even less likely that China or Russia would disarm for the sake of a nuclear-free world.

But the most urgent problem stems from the breakdown of major countries’ one-time nuclear monopoly and the empowerment of smaller countries like North Korea, Pakistan, Israel, and, quite possibly, Iran. A new set of rules for diplomacy, military strategy, and arms control is needed to stabilize this emerging nuclear order. Pretending that it does not exist is not a strategy.

Read more.....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

 

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Has Russia chosen the wrong guy once again?

With inflation cooling down to a post-Soviet record-low of 3.8% and real wage growth improving, some may wonder why is there an expectation of growing opposition to Putin during his upcoming Presidency? His reluctance to implement structural reforms coupled with his refusal to openly tackle rampant corruption in Russia could be contributing factors – but election fraud in the recent elections, surely not

Almost six months ago (on September 24, 2011), while addressing his party’s members at a congress, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed that his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, should stand for the presidency in 2012. Clearly, this wasn’t a bombshell by any quarters; in fact, the announcement was quite expected. But that day, post the announcement, two things were more or less certain – Putin would win the elections and the opposition would protest the results. The definiteness in the above certainties was not because Putin was expected to win the March 2012 Presidential elections through fraudulent practices, but ironically because he was expected to win despite such practices. In other words, Putin’s popularity had held strong at such high levels over the past few years and especially as of recent times, that even international observers had expected quite a reduced form of ballot fraud.

It isn’t that Putin himself wasn’t aware of his massive popularity. His decision to allow the installation of more than 182,000 web cameras at 91,000 odd polling stations and admittance of thousands of independent, international election observers during the March 2012 elections should have convinced even critics that the man was changing. This is not to say that irregularities did not occur – a Chechnya polling station even documented a 107% voter turnout – but Putin’s final overall vote tally of about 64% matches closely with exit polls conducted by multiple agencies (like Public Opinion Foundation and All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre) that forecasted that Putin would obtain around 58-59% of the polled votes. If at all Putin’s supporters abused the election process, to be fair, it couldn’t have mattered beyond a few handful of percentages in the final tally. And one really would be strongly given to believe that Putin would not have undertaken underhand election practices for such a puny advantage.

It’s abundantly clear that Russians en masse are supporting Putin’s candidature, more for the way he has stabilized the country from the pits it had reached in the 90s Yeltsin era, than for his dictatorial prances. Then why is there an expectation of growing angst in the upcoming Putin presidency? Like we said, election fraud surely can’t be the reason.

And even peddling Russia’s ‘impending economic downfall’ as the reason may, on the face of it, sound quite eccentric – while Russian real wage growth has returned to near double-digits (9% y-o-y in January 2012), inflationary pressures too have cooled down to a post-Soviet record-low of 3.8% in February. With 4.3% y-o-y increase in GDP in 2011, Russia’s economy has broadly even recovered from the global economic crisis. But a deeper look, and some questions around Russia’s remarkable growth, led clearly by ‘black gold’ (oil accounts for nearly 20% of Russia’s GDP, over 66% of its exports and 50% of its government revenues) surely start gaining locus standi.

Read more...

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

 

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year

BBA Management Education

“I want Chhattisgarh to scale new heights”

He claims that Chhattisgarh has been witnessing an unprecedented growth ever since he took over its reins in 2003. In this exclusive interaction with B&E’s Sray Agarwal, Chief Minister Raman Singh defends his claim apart from discussing what all is he doing to make Chhattisgarh the most developed state in India

B&E: It’s been over eight years since you took charge as Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh. How would you rate your governance when it comes to the economic development of the state?

Raman Singh (RS): There are certain norms to scale the growth of the state. You will be happy to know that we have been maintaining a double-digit growth rate for the last seven years. A remarkable growth rate was registered in FY2009-10. In that year, the Gross State Domestic Product Growth (GSDP) rate was 11.49%, which was the highest among all states. Even the average GSDP rate of the past seven years was around 11%. In FY2010-11, Chhattisgarh has again proved the strength of its vision, policies, programmes and schemes. Sustainable environment of development has increased the state’s GSDP rate in FY2010-11 over FY2009-10. In fact, as per a recently issued report, Chhattisgarh was among the three fastest growing states in the country – Bihar (14.79%), Tamil Nadu (11.74%) and Chhattisgarh (11.57%).

B&E: How is Chhattisgarh tackling the fiscal deficit?

RS: Initially, when the state came into being we faced the problem of fiscal deficit. But the whole scenario changed when I took over as Chief Minister. There has been a remarkable improvement in major financial indicators of the state. Our revenue deficit turned into revenue surplus. In compliance with the 12th Finance Commission recommendation, the state’s fiscal deficit has been within 3% of GSDP since FY2005-06. While plan expenditure has increased by around seven times, non-plan expenditure has risen less than three times. All targets mentioned in the FRBM Act have been achieved. In fact, Chhattisgarh has never resorted to ways and means advances (WMA) from RBI due to better financial management.

B&E: Chhattisgarh has been at the forefront when it comes to agriculture. How has it been possible?

RS: Right from the beginning we were clear that for the all-round development of Chhattisgarh condition of the farmers needs to be improved. We therefore took various practical measures to reduce the production cost. Firstly, we reduced the interest rate on farmers’ loan from 14-15% to just 1%. This automatically encouraged farmers to take loans. Earlier, farmers in the state used to avail loan worth Rs.100 crore in all. Now, our target is to distribute loan to the tune of Rs.1,700 crore. For the last 60 years, there were only 72,000 irrigation pump connections. Today the number has gone up to 2,90,000. In fact, we provide free electricity supply of 6,000 and 7,500 units for pumps up to 3 and 5 horsepower respectively. Farmers using these pumps are exempted from fix charges, meter rental and other fees. The paddy procurement at support price is also going on at large scale. Last year, we procured almost 60 lakh metric tonnes of paddy, and stood second in paddy procurement behind Punjab in the country.

B&E: About a decade ago, Chhattisgarh lacked quality roads and highways which are essential to development of any state. Even the power scenario wasn’t that good. What has your government done to improve the situation?

RS: Chhattisgarh has been a backward state for various historical and geographical reasons. We had crisis in electricity, road, drinking water, housing and other sectors. Breaking the deadlock of over two decades in the power sector, we established two thermal power plants of 500 MW capacity. Simultaneously, we decided to make Chhattisgarh a power hub. At the time of the state’s formation, the total power generation capacity was 1,360 MW, which went up to 1,925 MW by the end of 11th Five Year Plan. In fact, a couple of new power plants, with a collective capacity of 1,500 MW, are nearing completion. Moreover, some more power plants, having total capacity of 30,000 MW, would be installed during the 12th Five Year Plan. We have targeted to contribute more than 30% of the country’s total power generation by the end of the 12th Five Year Plan. The infrastructure is being developed accordingly for the distribution and transmission of the expected capacity of power generation. Through such initiatives, we have already become one of the few states in the country to have 24-hour power supply. Our per consumer electricity consumption has also gone up from 354 units to 1,547 units, which is the highest in the country. As far as roads are concerned, the situation is far better than what it was a decade ago. When the state was formed, the density of roads was 17.5 Kilometer per 100 sq. km., which has now increased to 21.40 km through various efforts. Apart from the general schemes, we have also launched special schemes for villages, which includes Chief Minister Gram Sadak Yojana for human habitats. This scheme does not come under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. About 4,100 km long roads have been proposed under this scheme an outlay of Rs.2,000 crore. We wish to touch the national average very soon in the area of road construction.

Read more......

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

 

IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman

ExecutiveMBA

Can India rise to the challen ge of its solar potenti al?

India’s National Solar Mission is helping create conditions for the rapid scale-up of solar capacity and technological innovation. But although it appears to be going great guns in some states like Rajasthan and Gujarat, it will need greater push and deployment across the country in order to meet its overall objective.

An hour’s drive from Amritsar, the border city between India and Pakistan, lies the small village of Awan. At first glance there is nothing that makes this village any different from the others in Punjab. But walk a little farther from the village and you come across the imposing gates of Azure Power Pvt. Ltd. This sprawling solar power plant is spread over almost 15 acres and its hundreds of installed solar panels feed the electricity needs of more than 20 neighbouring villages around. The plant produces 2 megawatts of electricity, which gets fed straightaway to the local grid and is then distributed to the villages all around. The chunk of land on which the plant sits has lost its fertility and has been obtained on a 20-year lease from the village panchayat. Besides paying the panchayat a one time fee for the land, Azure Power has also created a few employment opportunities in the village. In short, a win-win situation for all the stakeholders.

Another village also situated on the Indo-Pak boundry – Dhoodsar – in Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan plays host to one of the country’s biggest solar power generation plant. The 40-Mw photovoltaic plant, which spreads over an area of 140 hectares, is set up by Reliance Power Ltd. However, it is not the only attempt towards utilizing the immensely available solar energy in the state. There are projects worth about $19 billion to set up solar power generating capacity all around the country by the year 2020. The examples of Awan and Dhoodsar typify India’s growing strides in the field of solar energy generation. If one takes a closer look at the trends over the last 2-3 years, solar energy production has risen year on year. In the past two years, India’s solar power production has grown from 20 Mw to more than 1,000 Mw. Under the country’s ambitious solar program, the National Solar Mission (NSM) launched in January 2010, India has jumpstarted its solar energy industry, fostering growth in both photovoltaic (PV) projects and CSP, also known as solar thermal. Before the Mission began, CSP projects only provided 8.5 megawatts of energy. Two years later, the large-scale CSP projects now underway in India will provide a projected 500 Mw of clean, reliable energy under the NSM. Given the short time frame of the Mission, these numbers are impressive.

The objective of the Mission is to establish India as a global leader in solar energy, by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the country as quickly as possible and reduce the cost of solar energy. The Mission aims to install 20 million solar lights and 20 million square meters of solar thermal panel, generating 20,000 megawatts by 2022. With lots of untapped potential just around the corner, solar can contribute majorly to our energy security and power development. Consider the facts: The average intensity of solar radiation received over India is 200 Mw/km square (megawatt per kilometer square) with 250–325 sunny days in a year. India receives the solar energy equivalent of more than 5,000 trillion kWh/year. Depending on the location, the daily incidence ranges from 4 to 7 kWh/m2, with the hours of sunshine ranging from 2,300 to 3,200 per year. Recent research has shown that India has a vast potential for solar power generation since about 58% of the total land area (1.89 million km2) receives annual average global insolation (solar radiation) above 5 kWh/m2/day. The research adds that, given the present efficiency of 11 TW = 1012 watt or 1 trillion watt levels, 1% of land area is sufficient to meet the electricity needs of India till 2031, using current solar technology.
 

Read more.....

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

 

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

 

2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year

BBA Management Education