The Delhi economist types rated it 7.9 on 10. Bombay corporatewallas rated it 9 on 10 and immediately set about working new direct and indirect permutations and combinations. Markets reacted positively but the opposition walked out. Makings of a pot boiler. Union Budget of the Republic of India 2010-11.
Its an annual Feb fare. The Brazilians have their Carnival and we Indians have the Union Budget. Every year some chosen few from Polity, Business and the Media lobby, anticipate, participate, watch, analyze, criticize and politicize what is supposed to chart the destiny of a billion people. Or does it really? Does the budget actually matter to these billions. Increasingly the budget has become the playground for this nexus or troika of Politicians, Businessmen and Media. The union budget is of this troika, for this troika and by this troika.
I have been a party to this process. Infact I can honestly claim that my career was built on the platform of the Union Budget. My first honest job was to do an analysis of the Union Budget of 1994 as an equity analyst. The exercise so successful that the next year I did it for what was then the largest business magazine in India. But 16 years later as I watched Mr Mukherjee deliver his budget speech I first felt déjà vu and then I felt dejected. Cheated infact. Because all that has changed between the budget of 1994 and that of 2010 is numbers. Same speech, similar attempts at weak humour and the same opposition reaction, although this time they took it a little too far. So all this noise of the great Indian success story and all we have to show for it is numbers in the budget? And if it is about numbers, then there are some numbers that I want to discuss.
Very recently I was reading the UNDP report on Mumbai (has to be Mumbai as this is not the Bombay we know and dream). Fifty-five percent of the city’s population live in slums and everyone knows it. But there was a statement that shook me. In these slums, one toilet seat is shared between 81 people( I am not making this up. A minister of the Govt. has duly signed this report). I knew toilet seats are a problem, anyone who has travelled in a local train knows they are a problem, but didn’t know the problem is so grave, despite Slumdog Millionaire showing it in graphic detail. But what appalls me is this does not find any mention in the budget speech. Or the fact that India’s per capita water availability is one of the lowest in the world, or the fact that more than half of India’s women and children under 12 are anemic, or there are more homeless in India than Europe’s entire population and the list goes on.
These are not new numbers. These numbers are known to the mandarins of North/South or in whatever block the Finance Ministry sits. But they, or rather all of us have become completely or comfortably numb to these numbers. And it is this numbness that makes us prepare policy documents year on year that have absolutely no relevance to more than half the people they are meant to serve.
Once in my previous avatar as a journalist I had asked the then Finance Minister, the man who currently runs the Home Office, for a solution to this problem. And in his usual cocky way he responded by asking me to give a solution as he had had his share of problem-mongers. I was too naïve to answer then. But today I want to ask these questions and if prompted I even have answers. And very simple answers.
How about a simple budget speech. Leave the 2 rupee excise and the 3 rupee custom duty for those to whom it matters. The only thing the budget should touch on is:
- In 20 years every citizen of the country will get clean water, basic healthcare, basic education, food and shelter
- This will be monitored year on year and the goals for next year are XYZ
- The government will allocate PQZ amount on infrastructure which will be monitored quarterly henceforth
- Any item proposed in the budget and not completed by a committed time will result in the immediate removal of the secretary and the minister in-charge of that department
- By 2020 India will aim for 20 gold medals in the Olympics and progress will be measured quarterly
- The measure of the country’s success will be India’s standing in the UNDP rankings and the Government takes a responsibility to improve this by atleast 10 points by next budget.
The day we bring down the per capita toilet seat availability to a respectable number, we can go back to the Troika budgets. Till then, let’s have some honesty.
Any takers?
Sunday, 28 February 2010
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Indi(an)gnity of Labour
Mumbai Airport, Jan 21st, 1:30 PM. I was waiting for my domestic connection, and having travelled “cattle class” (is it politically incorrect for everyone or just ministers?) the previous night, was trying to position myself on the uncomfortable steel chair in a way that increased the probability of a nap and minimized the chances of my snores inducing a sonic boom. And there I saw him. All six feet 3 inches (don’t ask me how I know such details, not important in the present context) of him in that crisp white and blue uniform, aviator glasses and pilot written all over his gait.
It is this imagery more than anything else that inspires hundreds of young men, and increasing women, to spend millions in order to get their PPLs and CPLs. He walked as if he owned the airport, and maybe he did. Because right behind him walked a diminutive young man, in an airline attendant’s uniform, carrying, or rather pulling Mr Pilot’s Flight Case. And clarification, I am not talking of Mr Pilot the politician. Politicians in India, especially the born leader variety, have a right to have people carry their bags, shoes and more important their incompetence and lack of accountability on their shoulders without complaining. But here the person in question is the flying variety.
For those uninitiated in things aviation, a flight case is this leather bag that Pilots or sometimes Medical representatives, just kidding, carry. In airports around the world, if there is one thing that creates Pilot solidarity, its their Flight Case. That square leather boxy bag, the more worn out the better. No self respecting pilot, even if he is flying Aeroflot or its Indian avatar Air India, will be seen anywhere in the vicinity of an airport without their Flight Cases (I once made the mistake of comparing a Flight Case to a Ladies Purse. Still trying to figure out who got offended more, the Pilot or the lady).
So here is a strapping young man, having his bag carried by someone else. What’s wrong in that you might ask. Happens everywhere in India. Many CXOs have their laptops carried by assistants. Don’t we have maids or servants doing our chores? And the other argument is, in a country of a billion plus people, this is another way of employment generation.
Now hold your thought there. If Mr Pilot had personally employed someone to carry his bag around, I have no problems with that. His money, his life. Famous stand-up comic Lewis Black wanted to employ a private lady ball-washer once he had enough money. To each their own. But the Flight Case carrier in this case was directly or indirectly in the employment of Air India. And here I have a problem. And I hope you do too.
In my honest opinion, this problem is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with Air India, that shining example of Sarkari-Tarkari gone bad. Here is an airline struggling with flight delays, dirty aircrafts, pathetic service, the list goes on. But Mr Pilot can’t roll his own Flight Case. However I think this problem is deeper than bad governance, this highlights our feudal mindset. Any work, as long as we can afford to have it done by someone else, should be done by someone else.
In a rather heated discussion a client in London once told me Indians make great programmers but lousy Project Managers and Architects. I didn’t agree and like a true salesman told him how many do you want and what skill and rate. But in my heart I knew he was right. Management in India is not skill based, its tenure based. If you are not managing a team, you have not made it in life. Every programmer worth his salt should make it to Project Manager within six years. If not, he will command no respect from his peers. He wont even get married as no self respecting father will give his daughter to someone who is not a manager.
Individual excellence has often been sacrificed on the altar of a feudal notion of success that is measured by how many people one administers (manages is not the right word) rather than performance. In fact the entire country is run by people who spent years mugging up two subjects and did a crash course of Competition Success Review to pass the Administrative Services exams. And these guys then run Air India where the organization’s vision of flying in comfort seems to apply not to passengers but to the pilots and the crew.
I was once waiting at the aircraft door for my daughter’s stroller in Los Angeles. All other passengers had left and the pilot asked me what I was waiting for. When I told him, he put down his flight case (and they do carry their own), climbed down the stairs to the luggage hold, retrieved the stroller and brought it up for us. He not only had a happy passenger, he helped in turning around the aircraft faster, which in turn increases profitability. Between that and having the flight case carried by someone else, there is big chasm. And India’s success depends on how quickly we fill it.
It is this imagery more than anything else that inspires hundreds of young men, and increasing women, to spend millions in order to get their PPLs and CPLs. He walked as if he owned the airport, and maybe he did. Because right behind him walked a diminutive young man, in an airline attendant’s uniform, carrying, or rather pulling Mr Pilot’s Flight Case. And clarification, I am not talking of Mr Pilot the politician. Politicians in India, especially the born leader variety, have a right to have people carry their bags, shoes and more important their incompetence and lack of accountability on their shoulders without complaining. But here the person in question is the flying variety.
For those uninitiated in things aviation, a flight case is this leather bag that Pilots or sometimes Medical representatives, just kidding, carry. In airports around the world, if there is one thing that creates Pilot solidarity, its their Flight Case. That square leather boxy bag, the more worn out the better. No self respecting pilot, even if he is flying Aeroflot or its Indian avatar Air India, will be seen anywhere in the vicinity of an airport without their Flight Cases (I once made the mistake of comparing a Flight Case to a Ladies Purse. Still trying to figure out who got offended more, the Pilot or the lady).
So here is a strapping young man, having his bag carried by someone else. What’s wrong in that you might ask. Happens everywhere in India. Many CXOs have their laptops carried by assistants. Don’t we have maids or servants doing our chores? And the other argument is, in a country of a billion plus people, this is another way of employment generation.
Now hold your thought there. If Mr Pilot had personally employed someone to carry his bag around, I have no problems with that. His money, his life. Famous stand-up comic Lewis Black wanted to employ a private lady ball-washer once he had enough money. To each their own. But the Flight Case carrier in this case was directly or indirectly in the employment of Air India. And here I have a problem. And I hope you do too.
In my honest opinion, this problem is symptomatic of everything that is wrong with Air India, that shining example of Sarkari-Tarkari gone bad. Here is an airline struggling with flight delays, dirty aircrafts, pathetic service, the list goes on. But Mr Pilot can’t roll his own Flight Case. However I think this problem is deeper than bad governance, this highlights our feudal mindset. Any work, as long as we can afford to have it done by someone else, should be done by someone else.
In a rather heated discussion a client in London once told me Indians make great programmers but lousy Project Managers and Architects. I didn’t agree and like a true salesman told him how many do you want and what skill and rate. But in my heart I knew he was right. Management in India is not skill based, its tenure based. If you are not managing a team, you have not made it in life. Every programmer worth his salt should make it to Project Manager within six years. If not, he will command no respect from his peers. He wont even get married as no self respecting father will give his daughter to someone who is not a manager.
Individual excellence has often been sacrificed on the altar of a feudal notion of success that is measured by how many people one administers (manages is not the right word) rather than performance. In fact the entire country is run by people who spent years mugging up two subjects and did a crash course of Competition Success Review to pass the Administrative Services exams. And these guys then run Air India where the organization’s vision of flying in comfort seems to apply not to passengers but to the pilots and the crew.
I was once waiting at the aircraft door for my daughter’s stroller in Los Angeles. All other passengers had left and the pilot asked me what I was waiting for. When I told him, he put down his flight case (and they do carry their own), climbed down the stairs to the luggage hold, retrieved the stroller and brought it up for us. He not only had a happy passenger, he helped in turning around the aircraft faster, which in turn increases profitability. Between that and having the flight case carried by someone else, there is big chasm. And India’s success depends on how quickly we fill it.
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