Butterflies

Butterflies Butterflies, don't wink on my eyes,
the wink of my eyes send shivers down my spine
the shiver down my spine makes me go weak in my knees
when I go week in my knees, I tend to bend down
when I bend down, I tend to sit on ground
when I sit on ground, I love to pick you
when I pick you, you again make me wink
when you make me wink, my cheeks go pink
Butterflies Butterflies, don't wink on my eyes

Govt's facelift plan leaves Pushkar without a lake

Times of India article on the Good Intentions of Government resulting in almost a Disaster...Yeah that is what I would term it as.

It is almost like a nightmare to imagine Pushkar Lake Without Water. I have my own memories of taking a Dip in that Lake every time I have visited Pushkar. I certainly was shocked to read the article on Times of India. I was slated to be in Pushkar this time around, but could not, may be the Lord Brahma residing in Pushkar didn't want me to be the witness of Disaster that the Administration Work inflicted.

Seems the over ambitious project did not take into account the amount of protection the silt provides for Water to stay in the Ponds. Seems the over enthusiastic administration forgot to study the ill effects of desilting beyond a specific limit. Generally the level of ground water and the rainfall is supposed to maintain the balance for the level of water in the Ponds and Lakes. However it so seems that the level of ground water is not sufficient enough to let the pond hold the water and there we see the lake all dried up.

What has government and administration now to say and explain the situation?? Hope they do not say what has been discussed here as that would be a lame excuse of a blunder!!!

Fwd: Interesting Facts on Religion..

The interesting Facts of Religion, that I would love to share with all.  This indeed is something which we need to and must look at.

After reading this, certainly we should be proud of our religion, which is not just a religion but is full of traditions and culture to follow and it would be called as a Way of Life.

Our religion has the history of accepting good deeds and things from across the world including the Invaders to our land.  We even hugged them and made them feel comfortable and at home with the generosity we have.  Its time to relook at our history and culture to help establish peace.

Cheers and read-on

Interesting Facts on Religion Very Interesting facts!   1.  Christianity …. One Christ, One Bible Religion… Right, now let us see the facts:   You know the Latin Catholic will not enter Syrian Catholic Church. These two will not enter Marthoma Church . These three will not enter Pentecost Church . These four will not enter Salvation Army Church. These five will not enter Seventh Day Adventist Church . These six will not enter Orthodox Church. These seven will not enter Jacobite church.   Like this there are 146 castes in Kerala alone for Christianity, Each will never share their churches for fellow Christians. . !   Wonderful... ! One Christ, One Bible, One Jehova... ..What a unity!     2.  Now Muslims..!  One Allah, One Quran, One Nabi....! Great unity! Now let us see the facts:   Among Muslims, Shia and Sunni kill each other in all the Muslim countries. The religious riot in most Muslim countries is always between these two sects. The Shia will not go to Sunni Mosque.. These two will not go to Ahamadiya Mosque. These three will not go to Sufi Mosque. These four will not go to Mujahiddin mosque. Like this it appears there are 13 castes in Muslims. Killing / bombing/conquering/ massacring/. .. each  other !   The American attack to 20th Muslim land of Iraq is fully supported by all the Muslim countries surrounding  Iraq !   One Allah, One Quran, One Nabi....! What great unity !   All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. 60% of all victims of Muslim terrorism are Muslims themselves. In the Mujahdeen bomb attack in the Friday prayers in Khyber, all the hundred odd victims were Muslims, killed by a Muslim.    3. Hindus    1,280 Religious Books, 10,000 Commentaries,  more than one lakh sub-commentaries for these foundation books, 330 million gods, variety of Aacharyas, thousands of Rishis, hundreds of languages... still everyone goes to the SAME TEMPLE ...whether unity is for Hindus or others…?   Hindus never quarreled each other for the last ten thousand years in the name of religion. Only politicians had tried to divide and rule… Keep religion out of politics and India will be the most peaceful place on earth.

Pak police accuse India after 5 terror attacks in a day - Indiatimes

Was just reading the news Pak police accuse India after 5 terror attacks in a day on Indiatimes and noted that the Politicians and the Government Officials on both the side have made it a habit to speculate things a lot. I remember one Quote from some Pakistani Official or spokes person "Even if a Cracker Bursts in India, they try to see if there is a Foreign (read Pakistan)Hand behind it". So now in this case, when a Government Official is pointing a finger, ain't it just a baseless accusation from them? (too) as if we going by the quote above.

I am just getting a little expressive with my viewpoint that "What you sow is what you reap" is what bearing these attacks on Pakistani Soil. Evil you sow, Evil you reap is happening with them

Re: AIR INDIA - JRD - MORARJI DESAI.......AND THE MESS THAT FOLLOWED

What Vir Sanghvi proposed is instead something that would be very practical way to handle the issues with Air India, something that would be considered a drastic step by the babus and the staff too. The netas and the babus have certainly initiated in the downgrading of the Once Maharaja, but I would bring it down to the Staff who has lost itself to the babudom and netagiri to get accustomed to the shades and music of those netas and babus. Yes the downfall of Air India is not just the act of netas and babus, but also to be blamed is the Staff.

The mail below as a reply to the article that has been forwarded expresses the views of another Learned Indian. But, again is that going to help in a Mass Civil Movement, i guess not because We the Indians have become too lazy and in a way suppressed class of breed of human beings to even raise our hand to say "Aye I Agree to the change that is required". Most of us would read these mails, consider them as a forwards and simply move them to the trash folder. The maximum they would do is forward to other friends, talk it over the phone saying "Shame on the Government" or "Shame on AI Management" or similar other stuff and then go have their Lunch / Dinner cares their own tummy and forget this stuff with a post meal burp / fart.

Yeah the issues like this are often spoken and then vented out from mind with a burp or fart and the issues die their death over a period of time for the load of burps and farts bury them deep unless someone like Vir writes again.

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 8:10 AM, <snipped> wrote:

How can you think of what Vir Sanghvi proposes, when there are the 'educated' elite leave aside the masses, who want to perpetuate a 'maa baap sarcar'?
At best they give the excuse by participating in the voting sham by casting their 'valuable' vote, more as a duty and responsibility in choosing the lesser of-the-evils.

Today afternoon Murli Deora was quite unabashed in saying, 'The Congress party will rule again in Maharashtra'. The operative word is 'rule'. What a feudal concept, when in a democracy, we the people are supposed to be the rulers.

With no party having the gumption to enact a constitution amendment mandating an unambiguous choice to a voter who does not approve of any of the rascals (besides the sons, grandsons, nephews and nieces of the same crooks) made to stand by all parties, it might just come to pass through a massive civil movement demanding just that, when you are again faced with the dismal turnout in today's elections.

At least, the media should have a radical re-think on their policy of having debates and columns on why the polity is faced with low voter turnout without injecting a fresh criteria in their discussions, that is this not a way of rejecting all candidates in the present scenario?

The Maharashtra (or the Central) government, after enacting a semi-Orwellian diktat of declaring the voting day a holiday, will still not wake up to the fact that there is systemic failure in the present election process, even if the overall voter turnout falls to 20%. Maybe 0% is what they are waiting for?

Aarmin

AIR INDIA - JRD - MORARJI DESAI.......AND THE MESS THAT FOLLOWED

Though I dislike email forwards a lot, but there is a friend who has always forwarded mails to be irrespective of me not liking the forwards and well I have become accustomed to see his mail forwards, as they have brought some bonding between us. Today when in the morning I got up and checked my mail, I found this mail from him and could not stop sharing it with all of you as it presents a glaring hole and one of the most ridiculous mistake by any government till date. Please read on -

Privatise Air India before it’s too late

I don’t really blame Air India’s pilots for last week’s strike. I don’t blame the civil aviation ministry. I don’t blame Praful Patel. And I don’t even blame the Air India management which tried to slash the remuneration paid to pilots.

I blame Morarji Desai.

Readers of a certain age will remember the circumstances in which Morarji Desai lit a match to a slow fuse that was certain to destroy Air India. It happened this way:

In 1977, when the Janata government took office after the end of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency, it sought to punish those it regarded as collaborators with the Emergency regime. For reasons that are still not clear, Morarji Desai regarded J.R.D. Tata as one such collaborator.

Being Morarji Desai — by which I mean, a bit of a crank and a nutcase — he chose not just to punish JRD but also to punish Air India. So, he sacked JRD as Chairman of Air India.

By 1977, Air India had already been a public sector undertaking for many years. But it had retained its cachet as one of the world’s best airlines largely because the government had been content to let JRD oversee its operations as non-executive Chairman.

The chairmanship of Air India was a labour of love for JRD. The Tatas stood to gain nothing from Air India’s success (and indeed, many Tata grandees complained that JRD spent too much time on Air India) and JRD himself accepted only Re 1 a year as salary.

But the best kind of management is the kind that emerges out of love and passion. JRD was obsessed with Air India. He regarded it as his own child and in an interview in the early 70s said that of all the many things he had achieved in his life, the one he was proudest of was Air India.

Morarji Desai was more vindictive than he was perceptive. It never occurred to him that while the loss of the Air India chairmanship might break JRD Tata’s heart, it made no difference to the fortunes of the Tatas.

On the other hand, it destroyed Air India.

Once JRD went, the babus moved in. Air India became the plaything of the civil aviation ministry and the handmaiden of the government, used and abused by ministers and bureaucrats.

Even when Indira Gandhi returned to power, in 1980, there was no concerted effort to restore Air India to its old position of functional autonomy. The choice of chairman was left to R.K. Dhawan and he chose Raghu Raj, a former banker who had wanted to be Governor of the Reserve Bank but was given Air India as a consolation prize.

If the Chairman of Air India owes his job to the Prime Minister’s private secretary, then that tells you all you need to know about the equation between the government and the airline. And soon, ministers worked out that Air India could be their personal piggy bank. Every aeroplane purchased yielded a kickback of many crores; every Airbus leased guaranteed some bureaucrat’s fortune; and every general sales agent appointed meant suitcases full of lakhs.

There were some bright spots and some good appointments (Yogi Deveshwar, for instance) but the rules were clear. Whereas once the Chairman of Air India had been the mighty JRD Tata, all future chairmen would report, in effect, to some joint secretary in Delhi. When chief executives tried to assert their independence, the ministry encouraged politics within the airline. And in one scandalous instance, one of Air India’s brightest Managing Directors, Michael Mascarenhas, was victimised and persecuted by the civil aviation minister.

Almost every thing that has gone wrong with Air India in the last few decades can be traced back to that disastrous act of vindictiveness on Morarji Desai’s part. If you run your country’s flag carrier like a government department, a decline is inevitable.

There are other consequences too. JRD believed — to his cost — that he would run Air India forever. So every decision he took was made on a long-term basis. He cared less for short-term profit (and nothing for kickbacks) and more for building the brand and establishing Air India’s reputation. Ministers, on the other hand, knew that they had the job for two or three years at the most. So, they had no interest in the long term. They just bled the airline dry while they could.

As the rot set in and decline continued, the vast majority of Air India staff decided that they didn’t really care what happened to the airline either. As far as they were concerned, they had done their best and given it everything they had. But still, the airline continued to lose money because of inept management, political interference and plain old corruption. In such a situation, why should they continue to work their butts off when their efforts would come to nothing?

That change in mindset and collapse in morale have ensured that even when a few well-intentioned ministers (including Praful Patel) and chief executives have attempted to turn the airline around, these initiatives have always failed. You cannot run a company in the service sector if your staff no longer believes in service or in the long-term prospects of the airline.

That’s the problem the present management faces. When the new Chairman tells the staff that their airline is bankrupt and that it is up to them to make sacrifices, their response is succinct: Air India is bankrupt because chief executives and politicians have robbed it blind; why should we be the ones to make sacrifices?

It is a question to which no chief executive or minister can give a satisfactory answer. Why should a pilot agree to take half his salary when he knows that the airline’s problems have nothing to do with him? Why should staff give up their perks when they know where the money has gone?

As somebody who loves Air India and who believes that the airline still has a core of dedicated and outstanding (if increasingly disillusioned) professionals, I find the situation deeply tragic..

I wish Praful Patel and the new Chairman luck but the truth is that nothing they do will amount to much more than putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. As long as the government runs Air India, it will continue to strangle it.

So, what’s to be done?

It’s obvious really: privatise Air India.

It should have been done a long time ago. The BJP government was too obsessed with trying to prevent Naresh Goyal from buying it. And then, it refused to sell it to the Tatas who were interested. This government — allegedly a government of reformers — has, to its eternal shame, not made any moves towards privatisation.

So, yes, I blame Morarji Desai. But I blame other Prime Ministers too.

It is almost too late for Air India. Let’s try and save it before it dies. And the only way to save it is for the government to finally let go.

VIR SANGHVI

HINDUSTAN TIMES

4TH OCTOBER 2009

The views expressed by the author are personal