The Rail Budget

The rail budget introduced slew of measures for capacity expansion, infrastructure development, improving passenger service and safety of commuters.

Capacity expansion

While introducing around 58 new trains, it also proposes for special tanker train for transportation of milks and temperature controlled storage for transportation of agri products. While new trains will serve the populist motives, milk and agri transportation can help controlling inflation.

Infrastructure development

Introduction of bullet trains and diamond quadrilateral have long gestation period with huge investment. While diamond quadrilateral will cost 9 lakh crore, each bullet train will cost around 60,000 crore. While these plans require new infrastructure, high speed trains running at 150-200 kmph can operate at existing network with slight modification.  Connecting ports to main railway line can be achieved in short term if private players can be roped in successfully. PPP with domestic and international players is being envisaged. The investment through PPP model has been very low after it was started by UPA. In the absence of any concrete plan for bringing PPP, its success is still doubted by many and the same was reflected by market resulting in crashing of Sensex.

Expediting work on three DFCs (Dedicated Freight Corridor) ( Tori-Shivpur-Kathautia, Jharsuguda-Barpalli-Sardega, Bhupeopur-Raigadh-Mand ) will improve coal availability to coal based power plants. The fact that 47 out of 90 coal based power plants have critical level of fuel stock emphasizes the importance of this project. Besides, it can also help reduce import of coal.

Passenger service

After effecting increased passenger fare before the budget, the rail minister outlined services ranging from cleanliness in trains and station to providing wi-fi and workstation in major trains and stations. The outsourcing of cleanliness activity can help but people have to co-operate by not littering train floors and station platforms. Workstation and wi-fi on trains may be welcomed by business class especially by frequent travellers.  The next generation e-ticketing enhanced the capacity of e-booking to 7200 tickets/minutes from 2000 tickets/minutes and has the ability to keep 1.2 lakh used logged in at any point of time. Also, computerization of general tickets and platform tickets will help increase revenue as people won’t have to stand in a queue to get tickets.

Safety

Initiating a security helpline, employing 4000 women RPF and using ultrasonic flaw detecting system to detect rail and weld fracture are some of the safety related proposals. Replacing unmanned crossings with over-bridges or under bridges can definitely help railway reduce accidents as these are the sites for frequent accidents.

 In sum, this budget promises better and modern passenger services and safety and it will be remembered for introducing the idea of bullet train in India.  

Cartoon's row: Prejudicing children's mind?

Fig above is a cartoon from class 11th book of NCERT on which huge row has been has been erupted. Politicians across the party line has criticised it and successfully demanded its removal. it ensued resignation of two of the members of expert committee involved in making the book.

There is no denying the fact that Dr. Ambedkar was a Ved Vyas of indian constitution, as descibed by Pranab Mukharjee. It is also undisputed fact that they(Ambedkar & Nehru) were the greatest leaders this country has ever seen. But at the same time it is also undisputed fact that this cartoon was published in their lifetime and they never complained about it. For the record Pandit Nehru himself once said to the same cartoonist not to spare him.



Prejudicing children's view: No

Politician's best reason for this protest is that they don't have problem with the cartoon but by the fact that it appeared in "children's " textbook which can prejudice their views towards our founding fathers.

First, please tell them that it is the class seven book which encourages students to protest and teaches them the means to protest in democracy. Second, a sixteen year old mind is getting prejudiced by a cartoon appeared in the book but at 18 years he is able to vote. so, at 18 we can vote to choose MP but at 16 we are not able to think conclusively about politics. So, we want to create an electorate unaware of different sides of politics.

Third, everyone has its own viewpoint of interpreting a cartoon. And in my view the cartoon is actually explaining and defending delays in judicial and law making processes which is one of the major issue of criticism by people these days. it may be interpreted as democratic institutions, especially judiciary and legislative, take time to complete a proposal since even the best of our leaders took enough time to create a constitution and created an excellent one. So it is a comment on a slow system rather on individuals.

Since NCERT wants to strengthen democracy by involving people in it, it not only explains the ways and means of protest and criticism of the government but also by this cartoon it gives students enough proof that criticism of govt was there as early as in 1949.

The Sorry State of Bihar

March 1990: Lalu Yadav took the command of the state. His party ruled the state for fifteen year(10 year himself and 5 year his wife as a CM). During this tenure he did nothing for social development(needless to say). Instead, he promoted casteism, protected goons and indulged in corruption. Unemployment was huge,roads were full of potholes. 

November 2005: Nitish Kumar took the charge. People voted for him in desperation. It was anti-incumbency that gave him chair. First thing he did was deployment of "shikha mitra(friend of education)".His objective: improve the quantity of those getting education. He improved condition of roads(especially in PATNA),ornamented PATNA. Well, his development also percolated down the villages. Condition of electricity has improved. colleges are running their sessions almost on time. Development rate in current fiscal has reached 14%. 

Everything looked good. And then came Markandey Katju. In an open college visit he said "no press freedom in Nitish's Bihar". He also appointed three member committee to investigate the matte.

I am vindicated! Last summer when I was there, I saw newspapers(local) for almost ten days and I reached at the same conclusion. Even the bestseller dainik jagran seemed biased. I especially noted its inclination towards BJP-JD(U). 

so, finally here is the true picture: Nitish too involved itself in fooling biharis. What can be more worse than censuring the press?  Lalu promoted caste politics to be in power and Nitish is killing the very foundation on which democracy is standing for the same cause. 

Let me explain why i am saying he is killing the democracy. Media is involved in creating opinion.Journalists are opinion leaders of the day.So, their inclination towards any party or partiality will kill voices of opposition. with time it will create one party system and then an authoritative government. 

And thus people will again lose as happened in the past.  

People has a lot of expectations from Nitish. After his latest victory in election he told media that he asked people to elect him on the name of development and if people won't support him nobody will dare asking for vote in the name of development in comming time. People responded by giving him almost 85% seats in Bihar assembly. 

Now its his turn. And I request him not to fool Biharis again because people might not dare to cast for his party again. 

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social inequality

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2851359.ece
 In the home, one person's refuge from labour is another's site of labour, one person's space of privacy is another person's public arena. There is spatial intimacy yet vast social distance.

Does the root cause of corruption lie with the society or with the Government? How and why? What would make society not to acquiesce corruption?

All luxury corrupts either the morals or the state.             :Joubert

Corruption in human society has prevailed from time immemorial in one form or the other. In its simplest form, corruption can be defined as misuse of public position or power for the fulfilment of selfish motives to gain personal gratification. As long as India is concerned it is the third most corrupt nation in Asia. Everyone is affected by it in one form or the other. It is limiting our development. Billions of black money is stashed abroad. These are the money which should have used to reduce hunger and poverty in India. Layman no more believes in the system. Worst of all there are voices about considering other form of governance and democracy.

           Amidst all pervasive cynicism let’s try to focus on some of the root cause of corruption which in my view not only lie with society but also with the government has contributed immensely to it. Greed, luxury, reluctant to go in the process and above all illiteracy and unemployment are some reasons entrenched in society which helps corruption to spread. People have a great thrust for luxury. Anything we do, we do it to make our lives comfortable. That is what we want when we go in the system. We expect our work to be done without delay. If a officer says a man to come next day he tries to make his work done by unscrupulous means to avoid coming next day. Of course, the non availability of time to has worsened the matter. Illiteracy and unawareness are the major problem and origin of most of the problems of our democratic society. A democracy can successfully run only on the participation of its citizens. An illiterate person fails to exercise his franchise. His vote is very easy to buy. And this leads to the entry of criminals and use of black money in the society. Once these criminals and unethically rich people enter into the system, the problems of a democracy, especially corruption, gets aggravated. Needless to say those who win an election on money power, also try to recover at least double of their money after gaining power. And this is the root cause why a layman only gets 5 paisa out of 100 paisa spent to reach him. Also, an illiterate person can easily lose his/her entitlements. For example, it was easy to pay a MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Guarantee Act) worker less than his daily remuneration because of his unawareness (however, this has been sorted out by direct payment to their bank account ).

       Besides above societal deficiency, problems like little payment of salary to govt. employee than private employee and no fear of losing job of public servant gives a lot of push to corruption.

        Inaction, inadequate action and failure of government’s action is the major reason why societal problems still exist. Even after 63 year after being republic we failed to spread education to the extent it was needed. In order to make society not to acquiesce corruption first and foremost thing we can do is to educate them and make them aware of central and state’s schemes made for their development and make govt. functioning more transparent. RTI is an extraordinary tool which people should be encouraged to use. And finally an effective law to punish corrupt will make a big difference.

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (AMENDMENT) BILL 2010

So,now all eight new iits and IT BHU are included in the list of  institute of national importance. IT BHU is going to be called "Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi". ISM DHANBAD is still missing from the position what it deserve. Even after his huge efforts It has not succeeded to impress MHRD. Actually ismu dhanbad deserve to be in a row with iits. Students are among the most aggrieved there.Even after being selected through IIT JEE the are not called iitians.
                                      Problem arises because iits are seen as most prestigious institutes while ismu is not even known by most of Indians. No doubt ISMU is one of the finest institute of mining in India and it provides education even much better than some existing iits.
                               What i think is they should not linger over the issue but should be proud of being students of   ISMU dhanbad. After all it is the only institute of its type.