Sunday, July 21, 2013

Mid day horror ..

When I remember my school days, I see a blur picture. I was educated in a school which had only one room where there were students of five different classes were taught. Every corner of the room occupied by one of the classes. I never felt bad about it as the teacher in the class always kept us occupied with teaching different subjects and assignment. We use to have a break for playtime which we use to enjoy a lot.
When I go to my hometown and see the same school, I see a different picture. Now students carry plates along with books when they go for school. I see there are cooks available in the school who are busy in cooking the so called Mid Day Meal. And in some of the schools i saw, students have their lunch on the road outside the school.

Now, lets start with how all these started. Around 10 to 12 years back, our government wanted to increase the literacy rate. So how do we do it. In india there is no definition of what is literacy means and who will be called as educated. A person who can read and write also treated as educated despite he/she never passed a 5th standard exam. And why more kids are not enrolled in the school. And there was a silly idea that, as the indians are poor and hungry, if government can provide some eatables in the school, then those hungry kids will be attracted to it and parents wont mind sending those kids to school as they will get a chance to read in the school. With this what an idea sir ji.. the mid day meal program was started.

Now, India is country with many possibilities. Every decision has an effect and also a side effect. Sometime you see more side effects than the actual effect. The sole decision had a tremendous impact on many things. No doubt the enroll of students has gone up in last 10 years but the big question was, did it really fulfill the purpose of education ??

Many question which cropped in my mind after seeing all these developments which compelled me to write this blog. What does a school means? A normal definition would be, a school is a place where student go for education where teachers have a role of educating the students. Now let's see what is the impact of this Mid Day meal scheme in our schools. Most of the schools does not have enough teachers, infrastructure for teaching and other basic amenities like toilet etc. But despite that, those school must carry out cooking food in the campus to feed those students. And this has to be done with no extra support staff. The teachers are completely responsible for running this mid day meal business. 

Assume a school with 100 students which has 3 to 4 teachers. If food is prepared for those 100 students, how large scale it would be! It is like running a hotel business inside the school. The fundamental issue with this scheme is, the government assumes that our school has enough number of teachers and infrastructure and teachers are capable of running this program. Should a teacher teach student or pay attention to run this virtual hotel in the school? Who should be blamed? 

Apart from it, teachers have to divert their attention from their core duty of teaching to running hotels in the school which in turn impact a student career and indirectly to our future of the nation. Are we going to build our nation on the foundation of this Mid day meal scheme? Why the focus is not building quality infrastructure  for school, hiring good teachers and building more school so that it can be accessible to all segment of students. Instead of fixing core issues which would encourage students for education, the mid day meal scheme has created more trouble and chaos. 

This also indirectly propelled corruption in the supply chain system. As this mid day meal scheme involves number of institution to work in parallel e.g.: Supplying rice and other grocery. Our supply chain system is very poor, in transition of the food items, there is a lot of leakage. And the government is wasting lot of tax payer money by just running hotels in the school. 

The recent incident in Bihar killing lot of innocent kids is an example of how the system works. Kids are fed with sub standard food. Teachers are forced to cook in the school. And after all this we expect to create a next gen youth with high education standard. If this is not stopped, Mid day meal will soon bring mid day horror ...

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Bharat Mata Ki ....

Once again the stupid common man in India faced the sharp sword of government in the form of steepest price hike of second most commonly used liquid after water that is Petrol. Though oil companies has its own rational behind price hike but I cant rule out the fact that there is no control on hike by the government. Its very simple, when there is an election going on, even there is a boom in crude oil cost or blah blah, you wont see any price rise until the election is over. So if the government says that the oil companies are independent to decide the price, it is just an eyewash. I am neither a big economist nor I have thorough knowledge of how our indian economy works but despite that using my common sense there are many question came to my mind which i could not find any answer for it. One of my good friend tried to justify the price hike with some facts, but let me pen down few of the question for which i am seeking some good rational answer. Also few days back, there was a little hike in railway fair, but it was rolled back due to blackmail by a certain leader citing that it is a burden on poor and hungry indians. The fare hike was minimum and was supported by million of indians and could have helped indian railway to breath little easy, but due to compulsion it was rolled back. But now the Rs. 7.50 hike in petrol per liter is not gonna kill anyone as per the government standard and it is not gonna effect any poor and hungry indians.

Let us step back to sometime back when petrol price was not deregulated. Government of india has started many scheme to benefit the stupid common man viz. Employment guaranty scheme (which guaranty minimum wage to the workers even though they are not working), Mid day meal scheme (to attract more children to school) and many such schemes. When the oil prices was not deregulated, lot of money from government use to go to the oil companies (to compensate the loss) and that money government use to get from public in the form of direct and indirect taxes mainly on petrol and other commodities. Now when the petrol price is deregulated (which means the oil companies are free to decide the price of petrol and government is no more liable to pay any loss occurred by the oil firms), but government still levied the same amount of tax on public and those money now used by government for other purpose instead of paying the oil firm for their loss. Now there is a situation here, a common man has to pay the tax as as well as oil firms are free to rise the price of petrol as a result of which we see the price hike in every quarter in petrol citing various reason.


 Now lets see how the other scheme has ruined india and also triggered rampant corruption. The schemes like rural employment guarantee scheme, mid day meal scheme are ambitious (This schemes are mostly run on the money which are collected in the form of taxes on petrol, and this tax money were paid to oil companies before to minimize their loss when the Petrol price was not deregulated as per our PM in one of the interview said indirectly) . But in India, when public get something for free, they simply forget the motive of it, and start abusing it. This is there in the blood of indian people and it cant be changed.

Let me start with Mid day meal program that has been started many years ago to woo childrens to join school. I really feel pity on the public and government which is trying to say indirectly, people of india are hungry, just feed them and they will come to school for study. No doubt it is able to attract many students to enroll for studies but the real purpose of it is not achieved. When I think about school, It comes to my mind a wonderful infrastructure where students are being taught by teacher. But contrary to that our government school are pathetic in shape. No rooms, no electricity, no sanitation, no toilets, no teacher. Government gives computer to the school which does not have room and electricity. They don't have qualified teachers to  teach computer. School are built at remote non reachable villages and it is expected that the teacher would go there daily and teach students at salary around Rs.1500 to 2000. In 21st century, no human would like to go to such place in the name of job where there is no communication, no water, no electricity for teaching students. Same is applied to doctors too. There will be health center inside a jungle and they expect a doctor   should go there and treat patient. The school are no more a place where education is being given to the students but it is a place where the teachers are more busy in preparing food for students. I was just speaking to one of the teacher recently, he was saying our school has 700 students to whom we have to serve mid day meal program on daily basis. We have only one cook who gets Rs.600 month and the teacher has to arrange for fuel and grocery to make sure students are being fed properly. Just imagine 700 students are fed in a school on daily basis and the whole thing has to be coordinated by the teachers. And it is expected that they should educate children. Recently there was a news covered at front page in bangalore, In one of the school near by bangalore,  students collect water from toilet for cooking their mid day meal, and there was no fuel that day to prepare food, so they have to use the wooden door of the class room as fuel after breaking it. This is india and bharat mata ki jai.

Only point here is, does it make any sense to have such programs wasting money? I know there is lot of corruption going on in these programs in the name of mid day meal. You want to educate students in school or want to run hotels to feed hungry children. Can education be given in this circumstances. It is a whole waste of money, food. Government wastes money in all these schemes but it does not have money to build cold storage to save food grain. Every year tons of food grain are being wasted due to lack of cold storage and our minister sharad pawar have enough explanations to justify the waste. Had this money and food grain been utilized properly, it would have controlled inflation to a large extent. And unnecessary taxes would have been reduced on fuel prices. If government really want to educate people, it can good infrastructure like roads to reach school, so that both students and teachers can reach the place. Provide better amenities in school like water, electricity, hiring good teachers, also support private educational institutes for provide better education to students instead of making the schools as a hotel in the name of mid day meal program.

This is one of the classic example in india how the tax payer money being wasted and how it is led to rampant corruption. I am sure there are many such scheme which is being run as a charity by government of india. The money should be utilized in creating jobs but not to distribute to public at free of cost. Tax payer money can be utilized to build roads, infrastructure to create job instead of giving pension to labors as employment guarantee scheme. You have to pay tax for all item you purchase also you have to pay toll tax on all the highway you travel. This is india, and how it runs.

Bharat mata ki .......

Thursday, May 19, 2011

No Country For Old Men

The reason to write this specific blog starts from second paragraph. But before that, let me have a little introduction of our country and what we are doing today. Indiaaah..  has more than one billion population and since several months, it has been hit by various cyclone, typhoon with name CWG Scam, 2G Scam, Adarsh Scam, WikiLeaks about the paying bribe to MP and the list continues. Plus someone has done witchcraft to our country, as a result of witch the country has been consistently facing inflation of more than 15% which has arm twisted the common man. Government has no clue how to tackle all these problems. The rate at which our country is growing, there are several needs which has to be fulfilled in near future. It seems our government is more into signing treaties and all, but there are some core issues which need to be addressed quickly which gonna have a really big impact with the growth of country.

Volume - I, Chapter 1 (Last June 2010)
In last one year couple of times i visited my hometown. I prefer train to reach my native place. So i am a frequent customer of Indian Railways. Thanks to British, they have given something precious (Remember Gollum in Lord Of the Ring) to indian people. It happened to visit a near by place (other town) which is near to my hometown by Indian constructed road. The place is very old (At least 100 years old) and is around 80Km from my hometown. It toolk almost 3 hours for just to reach the place using a private hired taxi. The entire road was bumpy, I could see big pits on the main road which is big enough to swallow a Jeep size vehicle. At a place the road is so narrow that the driver applied his special skill to cross the road. All the **** slang were in my mind for the authorities who has been assigned for the administration of the district (which has population even less than population of Bangalore city) while travelling on that road. Then I realized why Odisha (my state) is considered as such a backward. Until that I always avoided thinking something de-motivational talks about it (Odisha). Just few thoughts rolled in my mind, even though I was travelling in a private taxi  in that pathetic road, my backbone was already started giving problem. Just imagine the condition of a person using the public transport system with age old vehicle without any safety feature and other advanced technologies. How she must be suffering to cross this 80km. Also I get to know that because of this road condition, very few bus services is available between the towns. People hire cabs just to travel 80, 100kms as the bus service is so poor. This is not about comfort and luxury when someone hires taxi instead of using public transport, it became a need for a common traveler. As the transportation system is so pathetic, It is forcing others to use a private service which is burning pocket (also indirectly burning extra petrol which is burden on countries import of oil plus pollution in the environment which no-one thinks about it). This is the story of one man. Just think about thousand of traveler is doing the same, the scale of impact is quiet huge. This all could have been avoided if better roads and public transportation service had been available.

Volume I, Chapter 2 (1st January 2011)
We (me and 2 of my friends) hired a taxi and started on 1st January morning around 8'O clock from Bangalore city to have a blast at Pondicherry (Pondy). We left behind B'lore in few minutes after crossing electronic city flyover which is considered as one of the longest flyover in Asia. The journey was going smooth in national highway (B'lore to Chennai). We have paid more than Rs.200 as toll fees with in 80km of distance. (In every 20/30km there is a toll gate to collect money for the vehicle which is passing through). I just thought government is announcing thousand million rupees for just construction of highway which is a tax money collected from public. Again for using the road, they are collecting such a huge toll fees !!! After some distance we took a diversion to reach Pondy which happens to be not a national highway. The road was in pathetic state, pits all over, narrow, no direction and ..... It took almost 6 hours just to cross 200km distance which was a horrible experience. We were playing a circus inside the taxi as it was bumping and jumping in the road. Then I realized, it is not just odisha, but Tamil Nadu is equally poor. Be it Odisha or TN, the officers are equally corrupt when it comes to some developmental work. By the time we reached Pondy, we hardly had any energy to celebrate the new year. Thanks to all the responsible authority to make this journey so delightful.

Volume I, Chapter 3 (April 2011)
As i mentioned earlier, I prefer traveling in train rather than flight or buses. I managed to get a sleeper class ticket in tatkal on scorching summer of april 2011. Just before a day of my journey, it started raining heavily. I was happy as next day I have to travel through train and this rain would at least would help in balancing the temperature in my full day journey. I reached the station early morning to catch my train which was suppose to be starting at 8:30 AM. It was cloudy and i was happy for a cool journey in sleeper class in this pleasant climate. But whole happiness was ruined when i entered the bogie. It was filled with water (b'coz of last night rain). I went and asked one Rly police officer for a help (to call some railway cleaning people to get rid of water), but it was of no help. And in that water filled bogie I managed to park my luggage and went to the top berth and slept for 2 3 hours in the morning. It was almost 12 PM, I got up from my upper berth and came down to sit for sometime. I heard some noise of dog barking. I could not understand from where the noise is coming from in the moving train. When observed carefully,  I saw one person has packed four dogs in carton and kept under the lower berth. It was fun, non of the TTE observed. And the dogs were unaware of the fact that they have to make some 2000km travel in that closed carton. At night 12'O clock in the train, I was asleep, suddenly some cigar smoke woke me up. There was a noise, I was wondering whether the train is stationed in some station, but it was moving. I got up from my berth, and went towards the main door. I saw a   young guy was shouting with all possible D.K.Bose language in his phone with someone. He was in high voltage having a cigar in his hand whose smoke woke me up. From his loud conversation, I guessed some unknown person called his girlfriend over phone and told that this guy is double-crossing  her which led to some tension between them. This guy was upset over it and having all discussion over the phone. There were some old ladies were sitting near by in that smoke but no one was protesting. I checked for some guard who can help me out, but there was not even a single guard in the entire train carrying thousands of passenger. I went to toilet to relieve myself, it was so nasty, hard to explain. Thousands of such trains are there in india, where millions of passenger travels across the country. But there is no basic facilities is being properly provided by the railways. Our Didi (Ms.Mamta Banerjee) is busy in campaigning in West Bengal election for sonar manush, but she forgot her basic responsibility of railway ministry. As I have been travelling in train since a long time, the railway is at its worst service in Didi's regime. Didi wants both West Bengal and Railway ministry to be managed by her. Shame on such leaders who can't take the basic responsibility to manage such a huge ministry. I am not a big fan of Lalu, but yeah, he was the best Railway minister so far I have seen (talking in perspective of changes and facilities he had brought for the commuters) but Didi made no mistake to push the railway to 10 years back.

Volume 2, Chapter 1 (My Observations)
Indiaaah..  has more than one billion population, that means enormous power and also it means we need proper food security as well as energy security. There is no lack in food production, but the supply chain management has lot of problem which triggers artificial shortages. Last year we wasted lot of food grain as there was no proper storage facilities available. Roads are lifeline for any country to develop. If  compared with human body, if your blood supply lines are not proper then you are life becomes miserable. Similarly, the country needs proper roads to address many problems in one go. Its sad to say that even after 60 years of independence we even don't have roads which connects every districts. Only 2% of total road is highway in our country. Proper roads helps in reduction of fuel consumption by vehicles which indirectly benefits country economy as well as environment friendly. Goods can reach on time if there is proper roads available. It also reduces the journey time of individual from one place to other which otherwise is waste of time. If villages are connected to proper roads, then villagers can access better facilities which improvise the living standard and helps in bridging the gap between urban and rural life. Teachers can go to schools in villages which would boost literacy. 
Same is the case with food and energy security. Let me start with water, most of people in india does not have proper water to clean drinking water. Rivers are polluted big time. Billions of rupee being pumped to clean the rivers with zero outcome. We are no shortage of rain. Proper rain water harvesting plan, tough compliance for new infrastructure where loss can be minimized and boost to plantation. This would help in maintaining ground water level at optimum level to secure our future. Trees are important in many ways. It helps in solving many problem directly or indirectly. It maintains environment temperature at normal level, it also helps in reducing soil erosion, water level where trees exist seen to be at good. As mentioned we are not lacking in food production, but to cater the demand in coming days, we need to change the style. Farmers get water using age old canals techniques from rivers where there is a maximum loss of water occurs. It has properly built canals using pipes which minimizes the water loss. Advance technique need to be used all across the country. Also 40% of the electricity produced in India is lost in transmission. This could light lakhs of villages which are deprived of. We need smart management of electricity too.
Creating the very basic infrastructure instead of big master plans can be helpful in achieving big goals set by the government. As these basic infrastructure is the pillar for all other needs of a human being, making them as strong pillar would help in building strong and big house.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

A Saturday @ RTO Office

After a long time I had to go to a government office in an official work. I wanted to pay the road tax for my vehicle in Bangalore. After going there, In a few minutes I realized, its just not the government which is getting huge amount of money in terms of registration of vehicle or road tax from vehicles, but it helped many people around it to earn the livelihood. Just to describe, when i entered the office, I saw chaos all over. Bunch of files around. People are queued in front of officials to get their work done. After moving two to three counters, finally i found an officer who suppose to be doing my work. The first question I asked how much money I have to pay as tax for my vehicle. The answer was: Get your documents verified first, come with all the documents then only I'll tell you how much money you have to pay (What the hell !!!, why should i fill all the documents for just knowing how much money i need to pay ??). As there was no information on the wall also which i can use to calculate the tax myself, So I had to follow the instructions from the respected officer.
                                   Then I went to another officer for getting my docs verified, he gave me some forms and all those forms were in completely written in Kannada Language (local language), I just asked him, can i get a form which is in English, then he told me to go to a bookshop where I can get a form which is in written in English. I found the book shop, then i had to buy the same form again. I can infer that there is a collusion between those govt. official and bookshop owner as the guy is selling a govt form while the office does not have the same. There were some guys who were doing some typing job, as i did not want to make any mistake in the form, I just asked them whether they can type the form for me (as it is routine work for them), he said that to fill the forms, he need Rs. 50. I said thank you. 

                               After carefully filling the forms, I went to ask the amount of money which I have to pay as tax. Then the officer told me to get a file along with a tag and enclose all the documents in that. I again rushed to nearby book store and bought a file and some more xeroxed documents, and went to the officer. Then again asked the same question. The officer scanned the documents thrice (without any reason) as if I have written some suicide note in that. I was getting irritated for all these non sense, for just to know the amount I had to do all these drama. Rubbing salt to the wound, the officer is also clarifying doubts of other fellas who are in queue with me instead of telling me "HOW MUCH TAX SHOULD I PAY". Finally she took out her calculator, and did some math and science and arrived at a figure Rs.7000. Then I asked what should I do after paying this amount ??? Then she said, that person in cash counter will tell you what should you do. :) 

                                I thought, my vehicle is almost 3 years old. When I bought it, I had paid around 8000 registration cost and again after 3 years, I again have to pay 7K !!!! Some math and science was running in my mind. Then I went to cash counter. The counter was closed by 12:30 PM. I was late by just 10 minutes. And 2nd half is off as today is Saturday. I was so frustrated and irritated that I decided, I wont pay life time tax.  Then I went to near by HDFC Bank to request for change of my address. It was post 1'O clock on Saturday. They gave me a simple form and took my PAN card to get it xeroxed and my request was taken. I just filled the form and handed over to them. My work is done in 10 minutes as few customer were there ahead of mine. 
                              So to conclude, In a government office of one of the most hi-tech city in the world a person has struggle for 2 hours and still his work is not done. From this you can guess how the situation would be in other towns, villages. It does not matter you stay in Metros like Delhi, Bangalore or Mumbai. Government offices still rules in the same way.

Friday, September 24, 2010

We Lost the Opportunity ..

Few days left to start Common Wealth Games 2010 (CWG), there are lot of reports in media regarding India's capability in organizing the such a prestigious event. One good thing out of this was, It successfully able to show till what extent the corruption can occur in our country and I am very happy that this time the big shots of so called Indian VVIP'S are involved in this. But sadly, once the tournament is over everyone forgets about them. 

Actually the foundation for this event was started with corruption. There are reports which says that India Paid bribe to the officials of other counties to vote in favor New Delhi as the venue for CWG 2010. If your foundation stone started with a bribe, then you can imagine till what extent the root of it is extended. Around $2.5 billion is the estimated cost for organizing it, but now I started suspecting what is the actual money being used for construction of sub standard sports village, stadium and infrastructure of Delhi. Few examples are, recent collapsing of foot bridge near the main stadium, and roof ceiling are falling are good examples of quality of work being done.

When China hosted the Olympic in 2008, it invested more than $40 billion to organize the mega event and they have built world class stadium which is one of the engineering marvel and the infrastructure of Beijing was made to cater all the demands. This was an opportunity for China to showcase its strength and at the same time they used the money judiciously to improve the facility for sports by building world class stadiums, sports complex. It is like where you hit two target by using one arrow. China did it. They organized the game at the same time they built such a good stadiums and other infrastructure which would be helpful in a long term growth of the country. The rest is history, 2008 Olympics was the most successful game in the history. This was not just not the game, but it is the vision for them how they do the things in a proper way.

Contrary to it, In CWG 2010 everyone is busy in calculating how much one can get out of this game. Tax payers in India, pay almost 30% of the cost of any goods as tax to the government. And these corrupt official just eat all the money.Whatever might be the purpose, the first intention for them is to get profit out of it. I felt ashamed when I heard defending statements from the involved official regarding the arrangements. Once Sheela Dixit was said, the event is like Indian Marriages where preparation goes on  until the last moment. Another official was stating regarding sanitation that "Sanitation is a subjective and the places of CWG is good enough for Indian standard". So I thought this is the guy who decides what is the Indian standard. One common practice all these smart corrupt official follows at the last moment is "Patriotic Games". When things goes out of hand these corrupt officials, they just talk about national pride and all shits and try to get support of public. And I have seen people who start supporting them. But this is the opportunity for the common man to do the right thing. That is expose them all. I am just praying to make this event to be unsuccessful. Let the event be a national shame. This would be a true justice to all the tax payers whose money is being wasted and a tight slap on all the members of organizing committee. 

Some people say why people just criticize at last moment instead of doing something for it. The answer for it is, every  individual has their own role in the growth of the country. And there are people in the country who are doing things to make the country proud, there are people who pay lot of tax money for every item they purchase. This is another form of contribution. It just does not mean that they all have to contribute directly. If all the person who are responsible for something had done the thing correctly then there would not have been any scope of such huge mistake. This is just an example where billions of $ are just siphoned by these corrupt officials. I am sure that there will be number of such instances would come up where huge money are just being going to corrupt official pocket. But this time the corrupt officials got international acclaim. What a shame.

So now the question is, are we really capable of organizing such mega events. Well the answer is NO for it as long as we have corrupt mentality. It is not that we don't have potential, but the problem is about the mentality of the people who are getting involved for such responsible things. The day when every responsible person start doing the thing in right way, then that is the day when we should start bidding for such mega event. In Simple words, this time WE LOST THE OPPORTUNITY.....

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Census 2011

15th National Census 2011 already started in India. The first Census was held way back in 1872 and it has been continuing in every 10 years since then. So what is so special this time??? India is the second populous country in the world having nearly 1.2 billion population, So from this simple figure it can be guessed what could be the scale of operation it is gonna to be.
                    It is estimated to be there will more than 2.5 million people going to be part of this process and the estimated cost is around 22100 million rupees (Which comes from tax payers pocket). And to record the information, Around 12,000 Metric Tonnes of paper will be utilized for printing 64 crores Census Forms and 50 lakhs Instruction Manuals. (This indirectly promote global warming, Imagine how many tree will fell down for this :-) just a thought).
                        Interestingly this time, the information collected will be stored electronically and every citizen will be given the ID cards for it. The Unique ID project will be used to give every citizen a unique ID which will be containing photos, some bio metric identification (Fingerprint or retina scan blah blah, remember Tom Cruse in Minority Report). The information would contain all your details including telephone numbers, your Qualifications and many more thing. And this data will be kept confidential.
                          So the question is, What is the importance of Census information. I remember one line from a movie "Boys" where it was told that "Inpormation is Wealth" (Its Inpormation not Information in Tamil Accent). When you have information about all the citizen in the country, this helps in proper planning and finding problem in different geography. And distribution of Unique card will help in streamlining problems. Proper schemes can be launched after analyzing the data. This would finally help the common man in long term.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Challenges @ 60

Recently we have celebrated our 60th Republic day. I felt proud when there was showcase of our strength at the celebration in New Delhi. And why should not I, we have transformed our self as one of the powerful nation in last 60 years. Our economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. We are the largest democratic country. During the last recession which has made paralyzed most of the countries, we were successfully came out of it. So these are some of the facts which everyone Indian should be proud of.We have one of the largest armed force. We are one of the best in space and technology.
 
But at the same I felt there are more challenges ahead when I looked some of the facts. We have more than one billion population out of which most of the them are young crowd. This has potential to transform the country to a superpower. But there are some factor which is unable to tap the potential in right way. Most of the state governments are inefficient in bringing the transparency in the administration. Corruption is at its peak at ground level and this is basically stopping the progress of the country. And higher official just closed the eye. We are the superpower in IT industry. Most of the Indian IT firms ruling the whole world, but our offices does not have proper IT infrastructure. It's picking up though, but people are lazy enough to make sure these things are not implemented in a quick way.

More than 60% of the population lives in rural India. But most of the villages does not have concrete roads, power. Still rural India starving for electricity. Good thing is that telephone has reached most of the places in India, but we don't have proper power supply all over. More than 50% of electricity generated in india, are getting wasted while transmission itself. Had it been utilized in proper way, some of the villages would have got light bulb glowing 24*7. I remember one of the dialog of the movie 3 Idiots where the lady says we have a guaranty of delivering pizza in 30 minutes but there is no guaranty of reaching ambulance if any mishap happens which is true. This describes how the essentials are being neglected.

Let us take example of metros in India. It is estimated that in coming 30 to 40 years, half of the population will live in cities or urban areas. But the urban area does not have proper infrastructure to meet this demand. Lets say London, the sewage system for it was built 100 years ago is still functional but if it is compared with Mumbai, In every rainy season there is artificial flood occurs due to improper sewage system. Lack of proper public toilets messing up the cities. Recent studies says that, More than half of Mumbai’s 18 million residents live in slums, and the average ratio of people to toilets is 81:1. There is a requirement for 64,000 toilet seats in Mumbai city alone. There are 1,300 pay-and-use toilets catering to a population of 14 million. I guess same is the case with other metros too in India. China is building at an average of 20Km highway where our road construction is at average of 2Km Per day and some roads are laid are of sub standard. It is not that India lack of natural resources and man power, but it lacks the basic development. Poor health care system, poor education system are the retarding the growth of country. This has other side effects also, like we have around 200 district effected with Maoists out of around 640 districts which is a challenge for the internal security of the country.

One more fact is that, our food production is more or less in the same level in last few years. This is really not a good signal for food security. When the population is growing and per capita income is moving north, the demand for food is also going up. As our production remaining constant, this is causing to inflate the price of regular edible products. This builds a pressure on entire system.

Its not that there are not enough funding in some area. Lot of money flowing for the developmental work in
rural areas, health care system and education system. But these money are mostly utilized in wrong way. To tackle these people should be properly educated. 
More use of technology and transparency will bring down the corruption level. It will help in track the progress where the money is invested by the government. Corruption level will go down if proper electronic tracking system is in place and public will get good service. Nice example is Banks and Telecom sectors in India. Bank service has improved a lot in last 2 years due to proper automation. Hardly anyone goes to the bank these days, people sit in front of computer and most of their routine works are done. Same with telecom sector too. Bringing proper competition in the market and some decisions in public interest has made telephone reachable to most of the places in India.  Recent reports has shown that the influence of maoist has gone down in some district of Andhra Pradesh where there is better development, better connectivity, better educations and better schemes for empowering the public. This means by providing the basic needs to people, we can see the change in country. Not just focusing on big picture, but have to start with basics like Roads, Electricity, Education, Health care system will surely reduce the challenges as we grow old.