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Not through acrimony Flying at low cost |
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Pinning hopes on Putin
Sad times for Sonia
A notable milestone
FOLLOW UP Few takers for TV pay channel boxes
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Not through acrimony THE political corruption issue, whether it relates to Mr Dilip Singh Judeo, Mr Ajit Jogi or numerous lesser mortals, has occupied the centre-stage, so much so that it can perhaps be considered the most vital one facing the country. Sleaze at the top has a dangerous trickle-down effect which can corrode the very foundations of democracy. It is good that the whole nation is concerned about the impact it is going to have on the future of the country. It will be highlighted even further in the days to come as the Lok Sabha elections draw near, whether in Parliament or in corner tea-stalls. But there has to be some seriousness and sobriety about this kind of discussion. Again, just as the top leaders are expected to set an example by their conduct -which many a time they don't - the country expects Parliament, the highest seat of people's representatives to display model behaviour which others can emulate. Unfortunately, their way of debating the serious issues is not quite as mature and sober as it is ought to be. The acrimony that rocked Parliament on the Ajit Jogi tape controversy which led to two hours' adjournment of both Houses on Monday was particularly distasteful. Worse, the Elders almost came to blows. Senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee tendered an unqualified apology to the Chairman in the afternoon but the damage was already done. Sober reasoning is all the more necessary while discussing a distasteful episode, at least to prove that the irresponsible behaviour is confined to only a handful. If the MPs themselves stoop down to rowdyism, the public faith in the calibre of lawmakers is eroded. Moreover, this kind of unbecoming conduct sidelines the main issue, with the result that the persons responsible do not get the disapprobation they deserve. When the Tehelka controversy broke out, Parliament was paralysed for nearly 10 days. Instead of being treated as an aberration which would never be repeated, the ruckus is quoted by some as a sort of precedent which has to be replayed. Bickering among various parties must not degenerate to that level. All parties have level-headed persons in their ranks who should intervene.
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Flying at low cost THE air fares in the country can fall and civil aviation can become more competitive and efficient if Naresh Chandra committee recommendations are implemented. A shakeup of this lethargic, government-dominated sector has been long overdue. For years the travelling public has paid a high price for its inefficiency. Competition from the two private airlines, no doubt, has improved the services of Indian Airlines. Lack of funds has not allowed Air India to realise its full potential. The high cost of operating the airlines has, hitherto, kept air travel within the reach of a small minority. The Naresh Chandra committee hopes to make it more affordable and throw it open to a larger section of society. The committee’s roadmap for revving up civil aviation includes a sharp reduction of taxes. The total taxation, it says, should not exceed 5 per cent of the air fare. This means a cut in taxes like the inland air travel tax and foreign travel tax. The committee has suggested privatisation of not only the Delhi and Mumbai airports, but all airports. The scrapping of parking and landing charges for small aircraft will boost regional operations. The thrust on privatisation, specially the green signal to foreign airlines to invest in domestic airlines and permission for 49 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI), may not go down well with the opponents of liberalisation. The recommendation is likely to unnerve private operators as they may find it hard to compete with bigger airlines. But they can go in for international services. Besides, press reports show how smaller airlines like Southwest of the US, Ryanair of Europe and Malaysia-based AirAsia rake in more profits by offering low-cost, no-frills services than big airlines. A regulator will check unfair practices, if any. To survive and grow, the mantra for airlines is: cut the costs and fares to the minimum possible without compromising on efficiency. This is what the Naresh Chandra committee’s recommendations, in essence, hope to achieve. |
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Pinning hopes on Putin THE results of Sunday’s Russian State Duma (Lower House of parliament) elections have almost established that President Vladimir Putin will continue to be in power till at least 2008. The pro-Putin United Russia and its supporting parties have won a two-thirds majority whereas the Communist Party and other opposition groups have suffered a crushing defeat. This means a certain victory for Mr Putin in the March, 2004, presidential elections. The sharp decline in the vote share of the Communist Party — from 24 per cent in 1999 to 12.7 per cent in 2003 — is enough proof to believe that its leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, will not be able to put up a serious challenge to Mr Putin. The massive vote in favour of the pro-Kremlin groups is likely to encourage Mr Putin to function in an authoritarian manner. He has already been behaving like this for some time. It seems people see nothing wrong in his style of governance as they have reposed their faith in his leadership. The Russians, perhaps, do not want to follow in the footsteps of the liberal West. The failure of the two pro-West parties — the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko — to secure even 5 per cent of the votes polled to get any seat in the Duma is an indication of the Russians’ rejection of Western values. The results reflect a clear preference for socialist values despite the people’s rejection of the Communist Party. The pro-Putin forces have badly mauled the Communists by highjacking the latter’s agenda to a large extent. Thus, in the days to come the world may find President Putin “using the state as the main engine of growth”. He and his camp followers are of the opinion that this is how Russia can be a great power again. |
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It is an almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. — John Henry Newman |
Sad times for Sonia MRS SONIA GANDHI, an aspirant of Prime Ministership of India, is running out of luck these days. She is evoking sympathy, if not pity lately. Commenting on her party's performance in the Assembly elections, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in distant Abuja in Nigeria that she should not lose heart. May be Mr Vajpayee has natural sympathy for the underdog, may be he was sharing his vast experience of weathering ups and downs or he was just being avuncular. Ajit Ninan, however, had perhaps the most telling comment on the Congress party's performance in the Assembly elections when in his cartoon in The Times of India last week he showed a diminutive Sonia Gandhi profusely crying over Mrs Shiela Dixit's shoulder. Not that Mrs Shiela Dixit was shown patronising or gloating over her leader's embarrassment over the election results, but the point was well made. Delhi's Chief Minister was the only Congress Chief Minister to have returned to power with an anti-Congress mood sweeping away Mrs Gandhi's party from the crucial Hindi-speaking states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Mrs Dixit won the election in Delhi on her own despite Mrs Sonia Gandhi, perhaps. Other Congress Chief Ministers could not win Assembly elections despite her intensive campaigning in their states. Mrs Dixit won because of her performance as the Chief Minister of Delhi in the last five years. The voters acknowledged it and trusted her word that she would do more in the next term should they return her to power. Other Congress Chief Ministers' performance on the ground did not persuade the electorate to vote for them. Nor did the electorate get the assurance from Mrs Sonia Gandhi's campaign speeches that the party led by her could provide governments that could make a real difference to their lives. . They had already tested these governments -- Mr Digvijay Singh's for 10 long years and Mr Ashok Gehlot's for five years. Mr Ajit Jogi, a Sonia blue-eyed boy, who chose his own ways to govern Chhattisgarh, did not take long to show the kind of man he actually could be in power. Voters, illiterate or otherwise, read the polls better than the armchair pollsters who are good at statistical jugglery but have poor knowledge of ground realities. Pollsters - more honourable word is psephologists - have, however, a knack of explaining away their discomfiture over failed forecasts with why's and how's and multiplier effects and a kind of jargon which could be more of help to those who use astral movements for making predictions. Poor voters in our country know, instead, how to make the right choices for no other reason than that they have more at stake. They also know who to reward and who to punish. They rewarded Mrs Dixit for dedication to her duty, application and the dignified way with which she ran the affairs of Delhi, where voters are discerning. Voters in Madhya Pradesh were impressed by Mr Digvijay Singh's performance in his first five years but found that in his second term somehow he had lost his élan and perhaps his way. Pollsters and pundits sang praises of Mr Ashok Gehlot, but people like to judge the rulers on their experience with their administration and not because of their intentions or glib talk. The Assembly elections have clearly proved that the so-called Sonia effect or the Indira Gandhi-Rajiv Gandhi legacy the party likes to project no longer evokes the response she and her family are used to expecting. It is the ability to solve the people's problems that counts these days, as it should in a vibrant democracy, and not the illusions politicians create. Long years in power have distanced Congressmen from the people who will always be the source of power. That the weakened relationship with the people has made Congressmen's dependence on the Indira-Rajiv dynasty more acute is evident from the kind of noises that are already being heard from within the Congress party that if Mrs Sonia Gandhi's magic does not work, they will expect Ms Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to come to the aid of the party. Already responsible Congressmen are talking in whispers about the daughter's becoming "a mature leader", her "popularity" with the youth and the "decisive advice" she reportedly gives to her mother on many a ticklish question. A measured projection of Ms Priyanka Gandhi before the parliamentary elections cannot be ruled out. Rather than going to the people, Congressmen are again continuing to rush to 10 Janpath preparing the Congress party for the Lok Sabha elections. Congressmen even now are not realising from long years of experience that the more they depend on the dynasty, the weaker the party will be in the limbs. Servility of Congressmen to the family can easily be gauged from the fact that they are competing with one another — as courtiers often do — to proclaim that Mrs Sonia Gandhi has not done anything that has cost the Congress the loss of such vital states as Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. They are just blaming her advisers, forgetting that a leader, concentrating all political power in his or her hands, chooses the kind of advisers he or she would like to have. The advisers have not been thrust upon Mrs Sonia Gandhi. If the Congress had done better in the Assembly elections, all the credit would been given to Mrs Sonia Gandhi's leadership; now that it has lost vital states, advisers are being blamed. The leader does no wrong in the Congress party's faith. With the loss of three key states in the North, the Congress party's territorial influence has further shrunk. In the South, Tamil Nadu is governed by Ms Jayalalithaa's AIADMK and Andhra Pradesh by Mr Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam. In Kerala, the party's internal divisions, unless tackled, might lead to a split in the local unit. Only Mr S.M.Krishna's government in Karnataka is causing no worry to 10, Janpath -- for the time being. In the East, West Bengal remains with the CPM and Bihar with Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav. In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress party's own influence is marginal, considering that it is ready to have an understanding even with Ms Mayawati's BSP. Also, in most of the states, the party is divided among warring factions who continue to fight their battles. Many of these factions draw inspiration from different advisers, claiming proximity to Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Factional leaders who visit Delhi to have an audience with Mrs Sonia Gandhi go home after meeting only "people close to her", without knowing whether their grievance has reached her ears and to what effect. So much for the contact between the leader and the led. Factional fighting at the state level can intensify in the ticket-distribution year and those denied tickets can play havoc with the prospects of the party's official candidates in the Lok Sabha polls. Apart from a keenness to instal Mrs Sonia Gandhi as Prime Minister, the Congress party does not seem to have ideas, and a strategy or even energy to fight the next year's Lok Sabha elections. Its dream to return to power and perform its expected role in the country's politics can turn sour unless the Vajpayee government obliges it with a major blunder or two. "Pull up your socks" is Mrs Sonia Gandhi's word to her party. She hasn't yet come to realise that the party has got only feet of clay. |
A notable milestone IT is a matter of pride that the country has achieved near-total self-sufficiency in the manufacture of slogans. I hope the habitual India baiters will take note of this signal achievement. A senior official of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) has been informally chatting with newsmen about this notable milestone in India’s march towards progress and status as a developed country. “Western capitalistic countries were having a monopoly stranglehold on slogans, “he said,” the US with its ‘New Deal’ and ‘Great Frontier’ and the UK with its ‘Let’s put Britain, back to work’ and poor developing countries of the third world were denied means with which to con the common man.” “So, the Government of India in close consultations with the Planning Commission, state chief ministers and the National Development Council took a deliberate policy decision to achieve self-sufficiency in this vital sphere of national economic development and a crash, time-bound programme was launched as a national mission and the results became apparent in 1971 when the slogan ‘Garibi Hatao’ emerged. A mid-term appraisal of this slogan confirmed our belief that it was a runaway success with more people than ever before — 82.3 per cent for the benefit of the statistically minded. The PIB official continued, “Heartened by this success, the government adopted a bold and forward looking strategy for taking the country along the road to total self-reliance in the manufacture of hi-tech slogans capable of taking the maximum number of people for a deluxe ride with minimum capital investment — classic example of Keynesian macro-level development planning. The Prime Minister’s ‘New 20-Point Programme’ and ‘Swarna Jayanti’ are cases in point. More people are pinning their faith to a mirage than national planners ever imagined was possible”. “India is now in a happy position to provide proven and field-tested slogans for other friendly developing countries — a notable example of South-South cooperation. In fact, to the trigger-happy late General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, we provided a most satisfactory slogan: ‘Guided democracy’.” The PIB official concluded: “However, we’re not being complacent and resting on our laurels and our economic planners and administrators are constantly updating their in-house capabilities to manufacture state-of-the-art slogans, lest the gullible masses get wise to the fact that they are being taken in. In 1980, the country manufactured the slogan. ‘Government that works’ and in 1985, ‘the government that works faster’. This only indicates that the struggle to protect the hard-won self-sufficiency is unrelenting.” “Right now, the government has on the anvil a slogan that’s potential mega blockbuster — ‘New Delhi for 2008 Olympics’.”
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FOLLOW UP
SIMPLE, humble, with no hang-ups and down-to-earth, this man next door, Pritam Singh, today wears the crown for running the “best restaurant” of the famous fast-food chain, Denny’s, in the entire US. His 120-seater restaurant, run with 30 employees in Los Angeles, was declared the best for “exceptional service” after scoring a perfect 100 in 12 undercover tests conducted annually. Denny’s has a chain of 1,700 restaurants across the US. Pritam Singh was born at Bharthala Randhawa village, near Ludhiana, in a rather humble home. Brother to three sisters, he was very interested in his studies from day one. No wonder, that even when he passed out his matriculation from his village school, he bagged a national scholarship. From matriculation onward, his parents never had to pay for his education. He topped the pre-engineering examination while studying in Government College, Ludhiana. This earned him a seat, on merit, for mechanical engineering in Guru Nanak Engineering College, Ludhiana. With the B.E. degree in hand, in 1968 he sat for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) examination and got selected in the very first attempt to the IRS and predictably topped in his batch. He served the Income Tax Department till 1986, when this senior IT officer posted in Mumbai suddenly resigned the cushy and much glorified job. “The atmosphere in the job was too restricting. I was not happy, as the tag of the IT officer did not give job satisfaction. My wife, Sandeep, was working as a lecturer in Government Polytechnic, Chandigarh. But somehow, I was feeling a vacuum within me. I was increasingly feeling that there was nothing more to dream and achieve. This thought was very frustrating as well as frightening. So I decided to venture out in the world. I applied for emigration to the USA and, once it came through, I began looking forward to renewed dreams and targets”. After landing in the US, Pritam Singh decided to do MBA. He went on to join ‘Marshal School of Business. He not only topped the class of 31 executives but also created a record of finishing his MBA in one year, instead of two. No wonder, Eastern Review featured him for his extraordinary achievement. Pritam Singh took the franchise of Jiffy Lubrication, which is a famous chain in the US for preventive maintenance and service of cars. “Americans love cars like their babies. They maintain their cars with passion because life a defective vehicle is nothing short of chaos and nightmare. You know the USA is a huge country, where the car is the most popular mode of transport. And Los Angeles, where I was based, is a big geographical sprawl where there is no reliable public transportation. Hence, Jiffy Lubrication generates enormous opportunities of business. From 1989 to 1996, I ran this business and was able to earn sufficient money to buy Denny’s franchise. You see it is a prerequisite that for Denny’s franchise one has to have a minimum of one million dollars”. In the next seven years, Pritam Singh steadily inched toward national fame. He and his wife, Sandeep, worked hard on their Denny’s restaurant, which they had named as Morro Bay. They also opened another branch of Denny’s in Oxnard, near Santa Barbra. “From day one, we were aiming to excel at service. We simply wanted our customers to be fully satisfied. We serve beer within one minute of the arrival of a customer and food within 12 minutes of its order”. Restaurants in the USA have to follow a very strict set of rules. Every restaurant has to seek a certificate every month from the pest control company that their place is free from any cockroaches, rats or flies. Similarly, another prerequisite is the “serve-safe-certificate”, which is issued by the National Restaurants’ Association. This certificate ensures that the attendants in the restaurant are fully trained to serve food safely. “The US authorities are so strict about the food industry and the health of people that any violation, however small, means immediate closure of the restaurant. And they remain shut down until the violation is fully corrected”, comments Pritam Singh. Although Pritam Singh and Sandeep’s two children — daughter and son — are professionally qualified, they are not working in their parents’ business. “Unlike India business is rarely passed on to the next generation in the USA. Children enjoy complete freedom to follow their own dreams and not get burdened with any legacy of their parents, if their mind is not in it. Both my children are pursuing their own agenda and we our own, that is, we are going to open three more Denny’s restaurants within the next two years”. Pritam Singh did not make his parents sell their small land holding or small savings or even borrow from relatives to fulfil his own dreams. “The youth in Punjab today tend to emotionally exploit their parents and make them sell whatever little they have so that they could gain illegal entry into any foreign land. I think it is very selfish on their part to make their parents pay the last penny so that they could just gamble a chance. Such youth do not deserve any sympathy because with the kind of money they are giving to agents — Rs 7 lakh to Rs 15 lakh — much can be done here within India. “The youth in Punjab today are not only unemployed but also unemployable. They are under the misconception that everyone who goes abroad earns millions. If you do not have the skills or academic qualifications to back you, your earnings will be as meagre as in India”, observed Pritam Singh. |
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Few takers
for TV pay channel boxes COME December 15, and hundreds of thousands of television viewers in southern neighbourhoods of the Indian capital may not be able to watch their favourite soaps or sports events on cable television. With cable operators deciding to stop supplying pay TV signals without an addressable set top box from the midnight of December 14, most satellite TV households are likely to receive only a clutch of free-to-air channels. Out of an estimated 500,000 cable TV households in south Delhi, only 10,000 to 15,000 households are likely to opt for set-top boxes needed for implementation of the conditional access system (CAS), say industry representatives. “Although we have enough set-top boxes to cover the entire zone, we don’t expect more 15,000 cable households to go for the system,” said Vikki Choudhry, President of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA). “We will block the transmission of all pay channels without set-top boxes from December 15. We are absolutely determined to stick to our CAS implementation deadline this time,” Choudhry told IANS. Under CAS, television viewers will pay for an imported set-top box, a flat rate for a group of free-to-air channels and extra for pay channels. Currently cable viewers pay a flat fee ranging from Rs100 to Rs300 per month to watch 80-100 pay and free-to-air channels. Armed with a court order quashing the central government’s decision to postpone implementation of CAS, cable operators are working overtime to roll out CAS in south Delhi. The Delhi High Court had on December 4 quashed a central government notification issued in August deferring the implementation of CAS in the capital. The judgement came on a bunch of petitions filed by associations of cable operators here seeking the quashing. The court observed that the government had earlier said CAS would be implemented in New Delhi and three other metros because of which cable operators had bought all the needed equipment. Due to the deferment of implementation by the government, cable operators’ equipment remained idle for a long time. The government had earlier announced its intention to implement CAS in the four metros — New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai — by the middle of the current year. But till date only Chennai has implemented CAS, while Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata backed out citing political compulsions. Industry officials say even in Chennai, where CAS was implemented on September 1, only a small segment of satellite television households have opted for set-top boxes while most people are watching only free-to-air channels. “Only 10 per cent of the total television households in Chennai have opted for set-top boxes. I don’t expect the trend to be very different in south Delhi,” remarked Roop Sharma, President of the Cable Operators Federation of India. Price of a set-top box, depending on whether they are analogue or digital, will range from Rs1,500 to Rs4,000. The boxes will also be available on a fixed monthly rental from various operators, said Sharma. The free-to-air channels, numbering around 70, will be available for Rs72, excluding taxes, per month. The average price of pay channels, depending on the package, will come to around Rs 300. “I think most pay channels would be forced to go free-to-air if the demand for set-top boxes remains very low,” said Sharma. IANS
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Seekest thou God? Then see Him in man; His Divinity is manifest more in man than in any other object. Man is the greatest menifestation of God. — Sri Ramakrishna Always remember ri ramakrishna’s saying that money is at the root of all the disasters you see in the world. Money can lure one’s mind into other temptations. Beware. — Sarada Devi Man is like an infinite spring, coiled up in a small box, and that spring is trying to unfold itself; and all the social phenomena that we see are the result of this trying to unfold. — Swami Vivekananda One cannot find the right way without the grace and guidance of the True Guru. — Guru Nanak Jesus Christ is a God to whom we can approach without pride, and before whom we may abase ourselves without despair. — Pascal |
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