Debacle of Gyaneshwari Express: who is guilty?

Today when I sat down to write this blog after listening the news that already 104 dead bodies had been discovered amongst the 137 victims in the train accident of 2102 UP Lokmanya Tilak Gyaneswari Super Deluxe Express bound to Kurla from Howrah, few questions jumbled into my mind that every time why some innocent people are being killed, who are these brutal Maoists, why political parties are so eager to take an advantage out of this accident, why every now and then Maoist attacks help one political party specifically, why these so-called Maoists has targeted Indian Railway etc.….Unfortunately, questions are more in my mind than answers. This recent catastrophe has made so many families ruined, so many mothers have lost their children, so many wives have lost their husbands, several children has lost their parents, number of priceless lives have come to an end. And in the midst of this crisis situation the main two political parties are trying their best to emulate each other to reach the people before the civic poll which is on 30th May. I do not know whether it is so-called Maoists or anybody behind this blatant attack to play with human lives, but it is a “politically motivated” preplanned full proof operation. If we peep into this matter deeply then we will find few interesting ‘coincidences’ (if at all we are ready to believe as coincidences!!) which will back my words-“politically motivated”. Firstly, I find how CPI(M) started to take full advantage of this accident immediately; secondly, state government of West Bengal asked CID to investigate in this matter by apprehending that opposition will blame them for this massacre (though generally Railway ministry is supposed to take step for any investigation for any accident in Rail); thirdly, as all political big honchos of oppositions are forced to be busy in development of the recovery of the accident just 72 hours before the civic polls; fourthly, how Railway Minister, Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo, Ms Mamata Banerjee rushed to the accident place at night and announced hefty compensation plans for all the victims and their families…these four reasons forced me to think it as “politically motivated”. Coincidentally (!!), every time Maoists do something it directly or indirectly helps CPI(M). Still I remember, before Parliament Election, Maoists announced to boycott casting vote in Junglemahal and that helped CPI(M) to win in that place though they were defeated by opposition in almost all the places, attacking rail by Maoists in near past has been raised as a sign of Maoists protests (coincidentally again the TMC supremo is the rail minister), and again this attack happened 72 hrs ahead of civic polls which take away the time from opposition from their last round of announcements in their favor before the public cast their valuable votes. What a coincident!!! That is why I wrote “politically motivated”, because coincident cannot happen so regularly. In Bengali there is an age old adage “Rajai rajai yuddha kore, oolookhagrai pran dei” which means battles between kings take lives of innocents. War between aberrant Maoists, TMC and CPI(M) has taken lots of innocents’ lives in recent past. Being a responsible common citizen of India nay Bengal, I have just few questions to Maoists, TMC and CPI(M) why the hell do you play politics with common persons’ lives? If you are eager to show your muscle power, why don’t you show your muscle power to each other? Why do you all keep common persons’ lives at stake for your culpable politics? Were you unaware of the fact that none of your so-called enemies would be in that train? You knew!! You enemies do not travel by some common trains; and your motive was to vent out your political frustration by killing innocent common people!! Because you know you can not do any harm to big honchos of your so-called enemies, and as they roam with their high profile security it is much more cumbersome than to take the lives of common people. Before and during the time of election all the politicians with their folded hands look like slaves or beggars and they are happy to pose in this manner but once the election gets over their folded hands open up and become their biggest power to do all kinds of nasty things possible and we, the voters, start to fold our hands like slaves in front of them with the quest of our security and justice. Utter shame!! With every such accident happens the ruling government blames opposition for the accidents to create adverse situation and opposition blames government for their inability; if one wants to assess both these parties then he will find only one commonality in thousands of un-commonalities between them that is “political motive”. All are busy to take the maximum advantage out of a heart breaking dire situation. My take in this point is neither ruling party can cajole nor opposition can blame. No one can refuse their duties and responsibilities. Mr. Chief Minister, do not you think that being the ruler of this state you have some responsibility beyond blaming opposition? You have responsibility to take care of the security of your state people, do not forget that these are those people who voted for you to rule this state for long 33 years, you just cannot try to take political advantage before the civic poll, you should take a strong step to stop this type of sabotage. Ms Rail Minister, you cannot ask public only to take care of their lives, its under your ministry you should investigate the reason and take care of the lives of the public who travel by your train from one corner to another corner of the country and these are those public who had voted you to sit in that chair in Delhi, these are those people whom you are asking to vote for you in civic polls so that you can become chief minister of this state in next year 2011 assembly election; you should take security measure to take care of thousands of lives otherwise hefty compensation packages or dry consolation will not work; do not think every time blaming CPI(M) will give oxygen to your existence. Being a citizen, it is my humble request to all you politicians please, do not play politics with innocent lives, you are supposed to take care of our lives, as we take care of your vote bank in the time of election, yes I know this is the world’s hypothesis “give and take” and you are no exception and we do not expect also. As we give our valuable votes to you with the hope of development and security, so you do your duties. If you do your own duties you will see vote bank will eventually swell up without even giving pose by folded hands. Keep your shameless politics aside, ignore your nasty blame game, plunge into the rescue operation and investigation to find out real convicts behind this tragedy and give a robust verdict to those convicts so that before committing such brutality they think twice, then you need not think about your vote banks, you will see those are already filled with blessings of people.

HI, CEOs!!!

Do you want to chat with your CEO? Do you want to share your business idea with your CEO? Do you want to talk with your CEO regarding the vision that he has for the future? Wanna be a part of strategic group of your company? Yes!!! Then log on to your CEO’s blog or your company forum. The day is not too far when your CEO will chat with you everyday and will communicate virtually and will share his visions and plans with the company for future steps!! Few examples are excerpted from The Economic Times:
Piramal Healthcare has started a daily employee newspaper where it shares latest company and industry developments. Forums on Twitter and blogs run by Chairman Ajay Piramal have met with some success.
ICICI Prudential has formed an internal CEO blog which has become an instant hit among employees.
Shoppers Stop has set up an IT platform Spandan, which allows employees to freely interact with the top management. Recently, its CEO Govind Shrikhande had to field a tough question on industry attrition, which helped employees to gain confidence.
Spencer’s Retail, Maruti Suzuki and JSW Steel have used employee feedback to save more. Spencer’s used suggestions to implement a near 30% cut in operating expenses. JSW Steel managed to save around Rs 100 crores.
But why these companies have started interacting with its internal stakeholders? Even few years back we used to think that the CEOs and Chairmen of companies are species of different planets. Then why this change has been initiated in today’s modern business world? The reason is very simple, companies are moving from Lawler’s Proposition of old logic to new logic, and companies are seriously pondering on the point of contribution of all the employees, they are no more dependent only on the top management and technical employees; everybody is encouraged to add value to organization. They do not believe that bureaucracy is the most effective source of control but they have started to believe involvement is the most effective source of control. Companies have realized that involvement of all the employees will define company’s prosperity and overall growth. Companies are using their employees as the sources of all the ideas, because there is a new concept of “Idea bank” that has been started to evolve in the modern business world, there are few companies already practicing that their employees have to give a new business ideas in a regular interval and upon successful implementation of those ideas will eventually benefit the idea generator both in monetary and non-monetary forms. One of them is Google, where every fortnight employees are asked to give new ideas and their ideas are stored in “idea bank” and upon requirement ideas are withdrawn and executed. Now, employees will be mesmerized when they will directly interact with the CEO or Chairman. When today businesses are trying to downsize their workforces and taking lots of measures for cost cutting after this awful recession that world had seen in last 2 years and companies are still crawling to get out of this trauma, it is a great opportunity for the employees to prove their worth in the company directly to the CEO or Chairman. In this way, employees can save their jobs and also help companies to grow with colors. It is a good sign for the business world to become transparent and leverage its resources in positive direction to prosper in this competitive market. The biggest reason of rejoice is that Indian companies are taking a positive stand towards globalization of dot com and becoming tech savvy to keep in touch with their employees. Cheers Indian CEOs!!!!

Match Fixing,IPL & Gentle men Game,Cricket

I still remember the day when players like Md. Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Hansie Cronje, Harsel Gibbs were caught for match fixing and then they were exposed publicly by media, which once made these cricketers God by their exaggeration, and we, the aam janta of India became perplexed by the down fall of these media proclaimed God, it was in 1999. From then much water has flown by the Ganges, many has come in Indian cricket and many has gone too, but the trust, that used to have on the cricketers, got a massive hit. Now, whenever, we see anything eerie in any cricket match, we start to doubt on the integrity of the cricketers. And I can’t blame anybody for doing so, because the game of match fixing is still on and lots of money flowing in illegal way is taking place in the game of cricket. The new saga of IPL has made us one more time aware of this thing. It is no doubt bigger than 1999, because it is a total package of politics, bollywood, money, glamour, sex, night parties, cheerleaders and cricket, one can think of why have I put cricket at the last of this package, it is simply because I found cricket is a very meager part of this prolific package, something bigger than cricket is prevailing. The very first day when IPL was conceptualized by the ex-czar of IPL, the blue eyed guy, the innovative marketer of Indian Cricket, ex-commissioner of IPL Mr. Lalit Modi, it was evident that this show would be one of the biggest successes of this century; and Modi made it a grand success story. The very first day of IPL, the day of opening ceremony, it was clear that IPL is not just a mere cricket tournament, but a tournament of both sensual & sensational package where money flows like water. It is the tournament of cricket which will manage its place in page 3 rather in the sports page of newspapers. The gossips, masala news started to proliferate as the tournament grew bigger. The latest scandal of IPL-3, started with the stupid twitting of the then IPL commissioner Mr. Lalit Modi and spreaded with our ex-external affair minister Mr. Sashi Tharoor’s external affair with the Kashmiri beautician, 40 years old, widow, Ms. Sunanda Pushkar and her ‘sweat equity’ in the newly auctioned team of Kochi, owned by Rendezvous Sports, which eventually has become mammoth scandal with the lots of money laundering, benami transactions and many more. The scandal has become such goliath that Rs.18, 000 crores IPL is now David in front of it. As I started with the incident of 1999, so I will concentrate now on that incident, what happened after they were caught? Md. Azharuddin got a life ban from his international and national cricket career. Md. Azharuddin, who was already an irregular player of Indian national team that time and on the verge of finishing his career, was not much affected by the verdict of BCCI. Ajay Jadeja got five years exile from cricket, Hansie Cronje, who died in a plane crash after few months, was also banned by South African cricket board and Harsel Gibbs was suspended for few years, unfortunately none of them were treated with the law of the lands, because their offences are not considered as criminal offences, since no one can punish a batsman for getting out intentionally earlier in an innings, no fielder can be punished by the law for dropping a catch, no bowler can be barred for giving too much runs in an over. The players are well known of this fact and so they take match fixing as granted. The irony in India is the person who was banned in cricket for his dishonesty; he sits in the parliament as the elected Member of Parliament. But if we drill down more to that incident, we would find out that these players were only few sacrificial lambs in this catastrophe of cricket, there were bigger brains that are still behind the curtain and waiting to be exposed. These sacrificial lambs were no doubt convicts and got some verdicts but their god fathers are still walking with their erect spine shamelessly in front of our eyes. The IPL spat is any way bigger issue than that of 1999 and obviously the god fathers are much bigger than that of 1999, here sacrificial lambs are Mr. Lalit Modi & Mr. Sashi Tharoor, but here is not the end the tail of this scandal, this is much bigger and deeper than the Pacific ocean. But again like before we will wait for the day when the bigger faces will be exposed publicly, and eventually the day will never come as we have seen earlier. CBI officials and politicians will come and will give some consolidate cajolery that they will not spare anybody. Again one more time it will be an ardent example of centralization of power and money which can make media, law & order futile and impotent with their ecstatic audacity and will create new bubble of hope where bribe becomes the way and forgery becomes the means, discrepancy keeps people mum, guile with spectators becomes gospels, still we, the flabbergasted audiences, keep attach our sentiment with cricket, worship cricketers like God, cry with their sorrows and laugh with their successes, forget that the results of these matches are fixed in somewhere exotic locations abroad between few jokers of the game!!!Still we believe cricket is a gentle men game!!!Alas!!!