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Showing posts from February, 2011

ACD : operation success but the pat(i)ent dead? Hope we will not score self-goal!

My mind started roaming, on hearing about MR's announcement in the Parliament. Insurmountable problems of different kind arise for bureaucracy to deliver now... Usually, it would take three months for the budget orders to be issued. Then generally the GMs of railways will have to call for offer of rates from the Konkan Railway or the Railway Board may fix a kind of rate contract like DGS & D rate contract type with Konkan Railway. Being a PSU, Ministry has the power and precedent to place such orders particullalry when the product is covered by patent rights and is a proprietary item. Even for construction works Raliway Ministry places single cost plus orders for projects worth Rs 5000 cr on IRCON. The J&K case is one. The idea is the PSU will follow similar processes as the government and is subject to CAG check. Mind you it is cost plus contract! But it is normal practice to help quick decisions and project progress. But in this case the unit rates get fixed before hand t...

Jerry Rao , Audit and Konkan Railway

Jerry Rao wrote very nicely about Audit and am glad to know about his father Shri Ranga. " Our tamper-resistant institutions.......Jaithirth Rao jerry.rao@expressindia.com Many of our independent institutions have been buffeted by crises, and survived. If only we let them" Very positive and re-assuring article of faith for us. The respect due to these constitutional institutions like CAG, for enforcing checks and balances in the system, is of late not given by the executives. More often than not they find ways of circumventing them and also find soft ways to seduce them too to turn a blind eye selectively to the executives' actions of commission and omission. When I was designing and implementing my own dream Railway Applications Package, in Konkan Railway, which has as its motto that every single data entry shall be done only once , but influences various algorithms where the data is required, that is train operation, real time control charts, instructions to station ...

Elected representatives and norms to be enforced to protect democracy.

I think we can do something about our elected representatives. Those who take the oath to protect the constitution must be made to sign an undertaking with minimum three cardinal norms to be observed: breaking any one should attract automatic disqualification of the member with a 6 year ban on standing for any election. To my mind the norms which are basic are: 1. I shall not obstruct the proceedings of the Legislative Assembly or the Parliament by disobeying the Speaker's directive or by leaving my allocated chair and rush out to physically gesture and shout down another member's expressing his views with Speaker's permission. 2. I shall not encourage or organise attacks on elected representatives nor peaceful citizens through inciting speeches or my groups loyal to me in case they have different views than mine, but commit to follow the due constitutional process to which I have taken oath to protect and follow. 3.I will only use civil and parliamentary language in expres...

I am confused and anguished with the current deteriorating quality of life for the common man..

When a foreign country or a military junta rules giving no right to have a say in the governance, the usual modes of fighting for liberation is through organised underground movements, armed commando sniper attacks on the authority figures, or coming out on streets and blocking the transportation and day to day life and go to jail or get killed by bullets. The killed become martyrs and they further fuel the movement. But when the country has been liberated, and they have universal voting rights, choose their governments and make their laws and have right to change the government through ballot, and a majority rule is to be gracefully accepted while minorities personal life style is protected, basic human rights are assured through a justice system, where is the place for the old style approaches for changing the governments? But that is what our leaders and professors and university students are promoting , adopting the methods of British era. Actually the majority is held to ransom by...

Egypt and India

Freedom carries responsibility and accountability. Democracy implying a knowledge based society, each individual sufficiently educated and can think to decide what is right and what is right, being capable of not falling into herd mentality, seem to be the minimum requirements. The internet and electronic media seems to have created a substantial group of populations young in age and who cannot think in more than 120 character sentences, just with superficial knowledge lacking maturity have started asserting them selves, and wily old foxes seem to be able manipulate this group to subvert standard democratic processes and insisting on instant result and a kind of belligerent, uncompromising insistence on immediate compliance with what they want. What next is of no concern, This is because their thought is limited by the 120 character requirement of Tweet. SO Egypt has gone back to Military Regime. They got out of it earlier,with much difficulty and got a constitution and an elected gove...