VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 223 Date: 16.10.2017
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 223 Date: 16.10.2017
1. Rathin Roy Needs To Change His LensesContents:
2. Think Simple, Think Basic, Think Proper
3. Jaitley Should Be More Diplomatic Even As Finance Minister
4. Get To The Bottom Of Jay Shah Co.'s Phenomenal Growth
5. On A PM Who Speaks
6. Modi Should Become More Rooted In Reality
7. Carelessness & Negligence At BHU Hospital
Rathin Roy Needs To Change His Lenses
Rathin Roy, a member of the PM's Economic Advisory Council has commented that the recent lowering of the projected India GDP figures to below 7% by both the IMF & the World Bank need not be given weight since they are mostly always wrong. Roy needs to remove his spectacles since used to seeing fudged figures all the time in India be it GDP, IIP, CPI, WPI etc., he is seeing independent agency figures like that of the IMF & the World Bank in the same way. The latest IIP figures show a spurt of 4% which one hopes is the reality since the country desperately needs a recovery. The tendency of people in senior positions these days like Roy to shore up their own credibility by undermining that of others as seen above is very common. Even Rajeev Kumar, the current Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog just prior to his appointment had been severely critical of this government's economic policies. But once appointed he is singing a completely different tune.
Think Simple, Think Basic, Think Proper
Think Simple, Think Basic, Think Proper
In Goa there seems to be an insistence towards gadget installations like CCTV etc. This inspite of the papers carrying the other day pictures of a non-functional CCTV camera installed in the Ponda municipality. Across Goa you will find umpteen public installations of CCTV that are not working and adding to it has no meaning. When it comes to gadgets that are being installed for public utility we should first check their ruggedness to withstand the environment in which they are to operate, whether indoor or outdoor, and also the level of education and training of the personnel who will operate the equipment. The next aspect is maintenance and its easy access for repair since you can install the most sophisticated of equipment but in the absence of service support, all your investment is going to go waste. CCTV as a means to record evidence in case of traffic offences/accidents is acceptable but we have to remember that it will not save lives. Thus in case of traffic issues, traffic signals are better since by controlling and regulating traffic they contribute more directly to saving lives.
Recently we had the fire at the Panjim bus stand which caused a lot of damage to public property. Here again there was talk of sprinkler systems, smoke detectors being installed which could have possibly limited the spread of and maybe extinguished the fire. But here also we have to relate this to another news report that the Fire Force during the Panjim bus stand fire found the fire hydrants not working. So if the equipments are there but not ensured regularly that they are properly working then there are of no use in an emergency. All this is fine but here again we should look at the basic fire fighting device and that is fire extinguishers. Were these available at the stores or in suitably prominently public places in the premises so that people could access these and use them to limit/extinguish the fire before the fire fighting force personnel arrive. One does not remember seeing any fire extinguishers at the Panjim bus stand or for that matter in any public building and n Goa. But in any case like in the report carried in today's papers that the fire extinguishers in the Secretariat have not been checked for the last one year, where is the chance of firstly, finding these equipment in public buildings in Goa and secondly, finding them functional.
So the idea is - Think Simple, Think Basic, Think Proper - when it comes to installing any equipment in public buildings and locations in Goa. This would save money and also save lives and property in the long run.
Recently we had the fire at the Panjim bus stand which caused a lot of damage to public property. Here again there was talk of sprinkler systems, smoke detectors being installed which could have possibly limited the spread of and maybe extinguished the fire. But here also we have to relate this to another news report that the Fire Force during the Panjim bus stand fire found the fire hydrants not working. So if the equipments are there but not ensured regularly that they are properly working then there are of no use in an emergency. All this is fine but here again we should look at the basic fire fighting device and that is fire extinguishers. Were these available at the stores or in suitably prominently public places in the premises so that people could access these and use them to limit/extinguish the fire before the fire fighting force personnel arrive. One does not remember seeing any fire extinguishers at the Panjim bus stand or for that matter in any public building and n Goa. But in any case like in the report carried in today's papers that the fire extinguishers in the Secretariat have not been checked for the last one year, where is the chance of firstly, finding these equipment in public buildings in Goa and secondly, finding them functional.
So the idea is - Think Simple, Think Basic, Think Proper - when it comes to installing any equipment in public buildings and locations in Goa. This would save money and also save lives and property in the long run.
Postscript: The above scenario is true anywhere in India as we have seen recently in the incident of the 23 people killed in the stampede at the foot overbridge at Elphinstone Station on the Mumbai suburban network. The high traffic of people over the bridge could have been assessed by the Railways traffic department and alternate arrangements to move people made. But the apathy of the authorities in persisting with a - chalta hai, chalne do - attitude resulted in the deaths of the unfortunate people left without choice but to use the doomed bridge. Similar is the story of roads being flooded in sequence during this monsoon at Mumbai, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru. Mumbai has a problem with the high tide issue which restricts evacuation of water into the sea but none of the other cities have any excuses for the flooding but the sheer negligence of authorities. Bengaluru being the worst since with a couple of inches of rains some of the localities are flooded and the authorities make an asinine statement that the 'city got more rain than it could handle'. Will the BBMP put out a map showing how many inches of rain at the maximum is each locality designed to handle for the information of the citizens.
Jaitley Should Be More Diplomatic Even As Finance Minister
Arun Jaitley while on his trip to the US of A is behaving as if he is the Finance Minister of the BJP and not the Finance Minister of India. By alluding to some political leaders that have been trying to derail the GST implementation, he is washing the family dirty linen in public. That too in the US which has a very active media. But then the US media lately has been busy with North Korea, Trump's antics and Weinstein's sexcapades. But even then trying to actively seek kudos at the cost of the country does not behove India's Finance Minister who has gone there on official duty for the World Bank & IMF meetings.
Get To The Bottom Of Jay Shah Co.'s Phenomenal Growth
Yeshwant Sinha is absolutely right the BJP moral fabric is slowly unwinding in the matter of the phenomenal growth of turnover of Jay Shah's Co. in just one year. Earlier there have been rumours of the Adani's being close to the top echelons of the BJP leadership but with Jay Shah, the strike is more direct. One cannot understand all this furore if the figures for Jay's Co. are legitimate. He should be actually be proud and thank Wire for catapulting him into the limelight. In this country where Income Tax raids are a badge of honour what was written about Jay's Co. was innocuous. Like they say 'dal me kuch kala hai' otherwise why does Jay Shah use heavy artillery both directly by filing a Rs. 100 crore defamation suit and then fire from the BJP & government shoulders with Ministers lining up to swear his innocence ranging from Piyush Goyal to Rajnath Singh. In all fairness the government should institute an enquiry into the matter to reveal the truth.
On A PM Who Speaks
Amit Shah while at Amethi y/day 10th Oct 2017 has said that we have now a PM who speaks. There is no doubt that there is truth in this comment. But the unfortunate part is that Narendra Modi sometimes speaks too much and on issues which are not convenient nothing at all. There are also times when he speaks without understanding and at most other times does not mean what he says. But given the three years or more that we have seen Modi as PM, it is maybe better to have a PM who does not speak but acts than a PM who speaks but does not act or acts wrongly.
Modi Should Become More Rooted In Reality
Amit Shah while at Amethi y/day 10th Oct 2017 has said that we have now a PM who speaks. There is no doubt that there is truth in this comment. But the unfortunate part is that Narendra Modi sometimes speaks too much and on issues which are not convenient nothing at all. There are also times when he speaks without understanding and at most other times does not mean what he says. But given the three years or more that we have seen Modi as PM, it is maybe better to have a PM who does not speak but acts than a PM who speaks but does not act or acts wrongly.
Modi Should Become More Rooted In Reality
Narendra Modi while rebutting that the there is nothing wrong with the Indian economy stated that under the previous UPA regimes the GDP went below 5.7% three times and now it has gone down only once. He has said this expecting that the bottoming out of the economy is going to happen very shortly and from now on if will be up and up for the GDP. He should have however added that we should be prepared for a hard landing at the time of bottoming out and that we should bring our cushions along to protect our bottom! Modi is back in election mode again with the upcoming prestige staking Gujarat elections and conveniently forgets that he got the massive mandate from the people in 2014 for precisely the reason that the UPA's performance was indifferent. And that he was voted into power with a strong enough mandate to set right the UPA's wrongs. But what did Modi do in the last three years but circumnavigated the globe three times, did not appoint an Economic Advisory Council except lately and showed the door to a reputed economist who was in the short-list for this year's Nobel Prize in Economics! Modi should have had the sense to at least focus on the economic growth of the country before moving on to other matters. The other distressing thing is that Modi and his government lives in denial since even the day before appointing the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) he was saying that there was nothing wrong with the economy then why did he need the EAC, he could as well have flown on his own. Then he quotes that electricity and coal production has boomed in the country and that is why he is offering the Saubhagya scheme of free electric connections to the poor and the very next day in the papers it is said that suburbs of Mumbai under the State Electricity Dept. which rarely had power interruptions are seeing 5-6 hours of load shedding and then in y/day's (9th) paper if was reported that Maharashtra had bought 1200mw of power to meet the shortfall. Similarly power plants in Karnataka and Andhra are having low stocks of coal ranging from a week to a few days and if coal supplies are not stepped up load shedding is the only recourse. So does Modi go only on the basis of figures given him on paper to announce his further schemes or does he insist that the ground situation needs to be surveyed to get him the real picture. Like in Goa where we live, power goes off throughout the day at least a dozen times for periods ranging from 5 minutes to an hour and this happens every day. So where is the surplus power and will Modi's plan to penalise the Discoms for load shedding but for technical faults really work? This government is great at making rules that sound good but are impossible to implement. And then there was the scam ridden LED lamp distribution purportedly to save power of which nothing more is heard of. Was this a one time scheme since LED lamps fail sometimes or given the quality of lamps supplied under the scheme , quite often? So it's time that Modi and his government take a reality check and verify facts before announcing any further schemes so that he remains credible. Modi also personally has to realise that he cannot continue to live in election mode all the time.
Carelessness & Negligence At BHU Hospital
At BHU hospital there are reports of deaths of some 20 persons during June 2017 because of industrial nitrous oxide instead of the medical grade given for anaesthasia. The firm that manufactures the gas and supplied it had no licence to manufacture the medical grade gases be it nitrous oxide or oxygen. Inspite of this the firm responding to the committee appointed to probe the incident has the audacity to point out that the deaths were not related to the gas supplied by them since the same industrial nitrous oxide was supplied by them to hospitals in Allahabad and Lucknow who have reported no deaths! Such situations can happen only in Uttar Pradesh one must say. What were the doctors and other surgery staff doing? Did they not look at the marking on the gas cylinders before using it for a surgical operation? This is a shame not only for the BHU hospital but India as a whole.
At BHU hospital there are reports of deaths of some 20 persons during June 2017 because of industrial nitrous oxide instead of the medical grade given for anaesthasia. The firm that manufactures the gas and supplied it had no licence to manufacture the medical grade gases be it nitrous oxide or oxygen. Inspite of this the firm responding to the committee appointed to probe the incident has the audacity to point out that the deaths were not related to the gas supplied by them since the same industrial nitrous oxide was supplied by them to hospitals in Allahabad and Lucknow who have reported no deaths! Such situations can happen only in Uttar Pradesh one must say. What were the doctors and other surgery staff doing? Did they not look at the marking on the gas cylinders before using it for a surgical operation? This is a shame not only for the BHU hospital but India as a whole.
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