Reflections of Rajaram Bojji

What I find is humans are basically caught intheir own world of making, where greed and pelf and power rule. We ultimately become sub-humans. Recently after commenting on the way we govern ourselves, I realised, I have not understood their world. In their own world of value systems, they think and revel that they are doing fine. may be happy that way. How can you deny that the worm must be enjoying its own world of mud and filth. Different worlds co-exist even at this time as we can see-in the same space and time, and it is ultimately a matter of choice where we want to be. Taking judgmental views, hence, seems to be pointless. The karma phala chases and the consequences of actions inexorably drives the events. Certain kinds of joys one gets are so instantaneous and it is followed by deep depression. Again a matter of choice. Some keep doing the same thing to have that instantaneous gratification, suffer the depression and again hanker for the same state of instant bliss. Best is to ch...

Former RBI Governor : "PPP in the infrastructure area is private profit at the cost of public expenses" [News Reports] Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2010 In a one to one discussion almost 6 years ago when he was in Reserve bank, I argued the same thing and he agreed with me. Same thing about derivatives, and when Government allowed PSUs to also to indulge in interest rate swaps, I was unhappy and he too cautioned me. But dynamism in finance officers to realise the initial cash flow benefits to present a better balance sheet was difficult to rein in. With all precautions, after 4 years of such swaps, we found the going tough, but on longterm it all evened out and I sighed with relief. Reddy is one single person in the Government, who can be credited to have kept our finance system from a bankruptcy, even when he was goaded to become more relaxed and allow the unbridled derivative market to flourish. The current PPP projects actually are means to inflate capital costs and benefit...

Last fortnight was very hectic moving from one place to another every second day. Covered Kadapa, Mantralayam, Tirumala twice, Bengaluru, Hole Narsipur visiting relatives, friends, powerful soothing sacred divine presence, revered learned and highly respected Gurugalu, Moola Sri Rama Devaru, just to mention a few. It gave me great happiness to see the second generation youngsters taking life in stride and managing the tough competition of modern world with aplomb, cool and collected. It was so wonderful to meet the noble souls who are proactively promoting the new experiment in education by founding Poornapramathi School to give an allround developmental education, starting from lower KG. The tiny tots in the school look so cheerful and are devoid of fear. We pray for success of this novel experiment where spiritual, emotional development factoring in our ancient wisdom along with modern educational requirements are seamlessly getting integrated. I and my wife were happy to be taken ca...

Frankly I am a bit amused at the way so much debate is taking place on whether Sri Ram was born or whether there is historical proof for the same or whether any evidence to satisfy modern evidence act is available. A nation wide presence of Ram in the hearts of millions humans, and the literature and songs and love going back to time immemorial , gets dismissed as illiterates' illusion or make believe. Treta Yuga and Kaliyuga separated by more than a hundred thousands of years, should make one wonder , why we try to be happy to place a time frame of 6 to 7 thousand years ago for the Ramayana. Cyclical time periods and eras described by ancients are much beyond the concept of single arrow of time and of late only, multi-verse and multiple arrows of time are beginning to become acceptable for the westerners and so to our educated, who in the same breath dismiss our ancients' description of time. The evidences can only in the form of geological aberrations-- time has a way of des...

The weakness in pursuing clear cut paths and objectives is rampant in politics. It is the art of possible. So ethics, values and strong positions needed to be taken in war time crisis like situation will be thrown overboard when the going gets tough for the political party in power. Real war unites a nation and society. But the diabetic like disease, invisible, but deeply debilitating is deceptive and our financial system and economy are in the throes of such debilitating disease. It does not look like the black and white war situation which all can understand. But spreading hunger and depression with more and more joining the ranks of jobless, grievously hurts the society. But the enemy is invisible to the suffering population. If intellectuals and economists are able to unite and define the parameters in very scientific terms and indices and remedies too in as much clear cut terms, instead of leaving it to some long winding interpretations and widely differing approaches to attack ...

To my mind Sanskrit can be preserved more as as historical research facilitation language at some centers of excellence with the best of committed scholars provided with decent compensation and suitable environs with vistas of green and a quiet respectable campus with emphasis on learning and practicing daily the vedic practices. If it happens to be erudite brahmin families who have to do man this, our secular state should not mind. Support the same as an acivity to preserve an ancient culture and proper balanced true study of original vedic hymns. Advanced media storage of audio and video in an organised manner, with live webcasts to provide world wide networking among centers of such excellence, and also for on line learning for any one willing to learn, irrespective of caste or creed or nationality with award of diplomas must be planned. I would imagine India should have 5 such centers , each of about 1000 hectares area, a little away from bustle of urban areas, one in Himalayas, on...

What I find is we have crisis of leadership. If you start the serious probe too deep, like Adarsh Society and CWG case, almost every current leader and past leaders who held the positions to dispense favours, willl find places of honour in the list. The money trail will lead to homes of the backstage truly powerful leaders, who put up the puppet show of the so called Central/State Cabinets. Then we find that even the Supreme Court heads will find place on the honours list. CBI too having been only an extended arm of the PM, will find itself in compromised position. Over a period of time CAG was marginalised, and no one thought it was important to closely guard and control its functioning. In general perception management made them look like a negative force for dynamic executive style functioning for development. Actually that seemed to have allowed to work quietly and a person like Ms Rekha Gupta rose to important Dy CAG position. Such a courageous person normally the system tries to...

My friend Madhavan Nair who successfully launched our India's moon probe, visited Balaji before launching. His wife also accompanied. Religion is personal and let us leave it at that.Matters of faith be respected as the person's own private personality and mutually one may avoid treading on each other's feelings. Governor Narasimhan and his wife were photographed, doing full pranaamam on ground to Pedda Jiyyar Swamiji at Tirumala. There is a sense of humility and recognition of one's limitations as to what a human can do. It is not power that Satya Sai. shows.. it is love for humanity that pervades from him. Each human is capable of this love , if he is able to get own swarupa saashatkara. These are not matters of science which deals with material issues and concerns. The so called laws of science are getting modified or abandoned whenever some new fact is discovered. I feel science and religion are not to be confused with superstitious attitudes of certain practitione...

I studied in Loyola and loved the fathers who taught me well and never for once tried to influence me to change my habits of prayer. They were respectful and did not hesitate to declare and give me the Best Student award ; and it was not a Bible they gave me as present, but Gitanjali of Tagore. In my High School as well as in college I had my best friends Sherrif and Abdullah and never felt a religious color in our relationship. We ate together played together. Even in working life, I was hosted by a Islamic family in Jordan, being land lord of the house we were staying, invited to dine with their families including lady folk . The teenage girls had so many questions about our marriage customs and were continuously giggling. They respected my vegetarian food habits and made sure I get what I need. In Damascus and Baghdad as MD, too when I delivered my lecture/presentations more than once, the picture which comes on my laptop as the first Screen happens to me Lord Venkateswara used to ...

A case for TERA- Technology Evaluation & Rating Agency to allow intellectual capital to improve efficiency of our capital investments in logistics infrastructure . B.Rajaram FIE., FNAE Abstract: Mckenzie estimates $500 b as the funding needed for logistic infrastructure of India in next decade. Our PM mentions a figure of $ 1 trillion. The space of opportunity to innovate is huge. But surprisingly Mckenzie envisages the age old systems and solutions in use by other developed countries. When those countries created their infrastructure it was not from debt, but from capital free of any attached cost. Today we need debt to create. Old generation solutions remained mainly product centric and not based on totality of service. The modal splits and transfers queer the pitch. Individually each of the proucts like metro rail or high speed network, deliver well, but for the user the total point to point quick transit gets more often than not, denied. The intellectual capital and innovati...

But why people are acting so surprised? Three years ago a NGO pointed out the same scam of Adarsh Society. No one cared. This time an innocent journalist put it on TImes Now, and for some reason seems to have escaped the usual editorial scrutiny preventing such major exposure. The storm caught every one by surprise. It is common knowledge that we are not too serious about ethics in governance. Till caught and exposed badly, you can do anything. The secret is not to get caught. The punishment follows for getting caught. It is tiresome to to see the hypocrites writing all kinds of essays expressing great surprise and shock. Today even high school student wryly dismisses these empty words, as I find in my chat with an youngster. After a few weeks, the news value is over and people return back to their normal business, just like we do in railways after an accident and a few deaths, express shock and announce inquiries and promise remedial solutions, start running trains as usual and forget...

In my opinion , it is a matter of lack of respect in our society for the scientist. A junior IAS officer moves around with tremendous self-esteem well aware of his importance and proud to be an administrative officer who can make or break things. The awe with which he is treated as our"sarkar" is truly amazing. It is not just IAS but same is the story of all organised services like IPS, IRS, IRSE,IRTS,IRAS etc etc., A senior scientist by virtue of long hours of study and research, generally is shy and the archaic rules of control of expenditure and tyranny of the clerk holding out against the demands of a scientist , makes him suffer loss of self-esteem. Dr Bhabha helped set a different bench mark with the blessings of Pandit Nehru and a different world where scientist expresses a desire and the administrative issues are taken care of to satisfy the need, with due reverence. But today things have changed. The clerk simply makes it difficult and the IAS officer posted to make ...