VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 245 Date: 20.08.2018
Contents:
1. Adieu All. R.I.P.
2. Traffic Problems At Zuari Bridge & Agacaim - Verna Stretch
3. Storing The Waters Of The Monsoon Otherwise Going Waste
4. India's English Tour: What's Going Wrong?
5. Banks Are Being Overly Protected & Charging Customers To The Death
Adieu All. R.I.P.
The last week has seen the death of many stalwarts around the world. From Atal Behari Vajpayee to Karunanidhi to Vidia Naipaul to Somnath Chatterjee to Kofi Annan to Ajit Wadekar. Each of them strode like a colossus in their fields touching the lives of many people. Poet, statesman and more importantly probably the last of the gentlemen in Indian politics was Vajpayee. His going releases the moorings of the final threads of rationality in the Bharatiya Janata Party. In Karunandhi's demise the last of the great regional party leaders - the DMK. Vidia Naipaul was an acerbic and outspoken person whose novels were widely admired. In Somnath Chatterjee you had a Parliamentarian who adorned the Speaker's chair in the Lok Sabha with grace and authority. Kofi Annan brought grace, dignity and rare authority to the office of the UN Secretary General coming from the Third World. And finally Ajit Wadekar, the man with the silken touch who with his willow wand could caress the ball to the boundary in cricket with his cuts on the offside. A man who gave India the confidence that they could win abroad and as captain and then manager nurtured a great bunch of competitive cricketers. Adieu all. R.I.P.
Traffic Problems At Zuari Bridge & Agacaim - Verna Stretch
Democracy was famously defined by Abraham Lincoln as of the people, by the people and for the people. However, in India it is more known as as of the politicians, by the politicians and for the politicians. Development as we have seen is being pursued at any cost affecting the day to day lives of the common people, trampling their interests and ignoring their problems. The traffic mess in the stretch between Agacaim and Verna particularly on the Zuari Bridge and at the Cortalim circle is a case in point which is the result of the careless and negligent attitude of our politicians. Where they should have learnt from the traffic jams and snarls at Porvorim which were there for everyone to see during the ongoing construction of the 3rd Mandovi Bridge. It seems our politicians and decision makers were blind, deaf or both to these problems? The same irresponsible approach is being adopted for the new Zuari Bridge which is the cause of the problems that are being seen on the Verna - Agacaim stretch. Imagine what will happen when the actual bridge construction starts. Just like at Porvorim the approach of this government was to let the traffic flow and to tackle any problems as they arose by handing out patchwork solutions. This attitude underlies the negligence of people's interests and shows no advance planning which would have alleviated the problems to a large extent. The expectation is that people will 'manage' and if you explain the larger picture of the new bridge then the people will suffer in silence. This will not do and it is time that our government takes stock of the issues for any development in advance and tackles them. Presentation of a plan after looking at issues that are likely to arise will give the people more confidence and get the government more cooperation to put through its development plans more easily and efficiently. The present modus operandi is to ride on people's backs until the limits of patience and tolerance are crossed. Postscript: One would have seen this situation across India where the administration does not think through a situation, puts people into problems and then the politician steps in to 'solve' the problem just for the sake of collecting brownie points. Nearer election times the politicians become more active on such matters.
Storing The Waters Of The Monsoon Otherwise Going Waste
Upon seeing our flood ravaged regions across the country, the waterfalls in our hilly regions and dams disgorging enormous volumes of water at tremendous pressures, one feels that the government needs to take measures across the country to store this water. The waters flowing at massive force can be stored in vertical (maybe 100 feet or even higher) silo farms near these sites allowing the rapidly flowing water to rise as much as it can in these silos. Then these can be pumped in sequence to the next level until the 100 feet silo is completely full and so on to the other silos in the farm. These silo water farms can be located at strategic places where the flood waters and waters released from dams are copious and along the flow of water near population centres like cities, towns and villages. This could alleviate not only the problem of flood damage to living habitats by water diversion but also serve as buffer water stocks to be used when the existing storage of reservoirs is not able to meet the water demand be it for potable use or irrigation. Since the monsoons are irregular, in years that the rains are deficient and once a pattern for that is reasonably established, the extra silos in these farms can be used to store grain which as we have seen in Punjab and Haryana in boom times of harvest is stored in the open to rot. These silos can be made of RCC or steel coated internally with plastic on a crash 5 year program which will lead to a fillip to the related industry and generate employment. Harnessing the forces of nature is a low cost source for energy and is relatively inexhaustible.
India's English Tour: What's Going Wrong?
India needs to buckle down in the ongoing cricket Test series in England. The first Test was close and one was happy that the series had started off with a bang. But in that Test were the portends of what was to follow. But let us remain with the first Test for a moment. The fact that Pujara was not taken in the team was a surprise. He has been doing a stint in county cricket and being more familiar with English playing conditions is clearly more qualified to be included than the other recognised batsmen. Rahul or Rahane had to make way for him even on counts of batting averages. Also in terms of technique one can easily say that at the present moment there cannot be an Indian Test cricket team without Pujara. Now let us come to the portends and that relates to our batsmen not able to play swing bowling. The first Test was a low scoring one but it showed up the deficiencies of Indian batsmen's technique to play quality swing bowling. Andersen, Broad, Stokes and newcomer Curran in the heavy English conditions can make the red cherry do magic which our batsmen failed to negotiate. The only exception was Virat Kohli with a magnificent century in the first innings followed by a 50 in the second. The second Test brought these home truths about our batsmen's weakness against swing bowling to roost with the first day's play lost due to rain and then India getting out cheaply with doubts whether they would even cross 100. The England batsmen did relatively better partly because India made their job easier. The lack of an additional pace bowler in Kohli's armoury was apparent. Why an additional spinner was chosen when the Lord's pitch was reported as a green top and with rain reported over the span of the match is something that only Shastri & Kohli can clarify? Not only that Kuldeep Yadav a novice at Test cricket compared to Ashwin was given the ball in the Lord's Test much before Ashwin. This despite Ashwin being among the wickets in both innings of the first Test. This is yet another strategic mistake that Kohli needs to explain. Your main strike bowlers you need to use when the batsmen are new at the crease. The other thing that Kohli and our bowling attack needs to ponder on is once the team gets 5/6 wickets then they let the opposing team off the hook and that is when a Bairstow scores big or a a Woakes gets an undeserving (in India's perspective) century. This happened in both the Tests in England and has happened in the past also. The desire to take wickets should be there in the bowlers and the captain should have the acumen to shuffle his bowlers effectively. These are areas in which Kohli's lack of maturity and experience is showing like being emotional in team selection and not being strategical on the field. It is not enough to be a great batsman to be a good captain and the above are more matters of the mind that needs to be tackled along with a lower back problem. Concluding, one cannot take away the credit from England in the last 2 Tests where from the pace bowlers we have seen great swing bowling after a long time. In any case there are still 3 Tests to go and all India expects from its batsmen is to show more application to match the brilliance of some individual performances like that of Kohli, Ashwin, Ishant and Shami. Postscript: Since this piece was written the 3rd Test at Trent Bridge has started and India is in a good position with all-round batting and bowling performances. Shows what happens when you put your head down and apply yourself to the task in hand.
Banks Are Being Overly Protected & Charging Customers To The Death
The other day at the Bank I saw a Notice about fine and imprisonment in event of abuse of bank officials by public. I must say that for the last 50 years or more that I have been going to Banks across the country I had not seen such a notice and that too prominently displayed. The Bank is a service organisation where its primary role is to deal with customers with courtesy and efficiency. Or at least that is the expectation. Therefore why a situation like abuse comes up in interaction between Bank officials and customers is something one finds difficult to fathom. However, to grant the Bank a certain amount of leeway, times may have changed and there could be a class of customers who resort to abuse. But here again one finds hard to believe that anything like this would happen in Goa. However since a notice of abuse has been put up by the Bank I will cite two instances that I personally experienced with Banks in the period Dec 2017 - June 2018. Based on these incidents which are fully documented I leave it to you to judge whether the Bank needs to be abused or not and if I do I would find myself in jail!
Anyway, the first instance was end Dec 2017 when I went to draw cash from an ATM and found that instead of cash I was given a printout saying - Unable to dispense cash. The ATM was housed next to the Bank premises and I showed them the printout assuming with that proof the cashier would give me the cash. But I was told that I need to go to my Bank where the Debit card was linked to an account and file a complaint. I promptly did as advised when my Bank told me that it would take 7 days for them to reverse the transaction and credit my account with the undisbursed money. Inspite of regular follow-ups with my Bank branch and the call-centre of my Bank, it took 24 days for the money to be refunded to me. What if I needed the money urgently? What if I was a student or person with no more money in my account? The personal travails of the individual are not taken into account while the Bank officials quote rule books which in any case they do not follow at least for timelines for redressal.
In another case in May 2018 I was travelling away from my home station to Bengaluru and upon incurring a small amount of expenditure of Rs. 250, I received an sms saying that my account had gone below minimum balance. I was surprised since at the time of leaving Goa I had enough in my account for at least Rs. 250. Upon returning to Goa with no facility to draw cash from my Debit Card at Bengaluru when I checked with my Bank, I found that an excessive amount had been deducted from my account for our Bank Locker. Upon querying them it was found that instead of debiting a single year's locker rent the Bank claimed that their software had debited my account for multiple years, wiping the account clean. For my comfort and satisfaction the Bank said it was not only me but other people have also faced a similar problem. For a software glitch a Senior Citizen like me had to be without cash while being out of station! This also at a time when the PM has been talking of a cashless society. In any case this issue was resolved after 50 days of my filing an application to rectify it. Why I have to file an application when it is the Bank's mistake is something I could not understand but nonetheless I made an application. But the matter had to go to the top of the Bank's local management before it could be resolved. On the plea of computer glitches the Banks are hiding sloth and inefficiency. This has been the downside of computerisation in banks.
Based on these two incidents, please tell me if the Bank officials concerned are not deserving of abuse. But if I abuse them, then they will send me to jail!
Why is the class of officials like bank and other public officials being singled out for preferential and soft treatment in the eye of the IPC etc.? A new caste system is being created in this country with IAS at the apex and followed by various categories of public officials to replace Manu's caste order.
Apart from this the banks are overcharging common customers. All banks in total made more than Rs. 5000 crores in the last financial year by way of penalties levied for not maintaining minimum balance in Bank accounts. Close to 50% of this amount went to SBI and they still report a loss in three consecutive quarters and some Rs 5000 crores recently for the A-J 2018 quarter. So even after making money out of common customers, the banks books are heavily balanced towards the loot of public money by a crony class of customers who are responsible for the NPA's in connivance with bank officials that reflect as losses. And remember that bank nationalisation was done in the interest of the common man and in about 50 years hence the banks are sitting squarely on the shoulders of the common man and riding him to his death.
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