A Big Bureaucrat Proposes and a Bigger One Disposes

The hulchul over reforms in tank irrigation is winding down - the outcome? Business as usual.

The seven month effort that went into designing a new delivery model running outside of regular government channels and enrolling expertise from the open market and the non-profit sector has come to nought.

If the analysis is to be believed the imperative for designing the new system is all because of the role a lowly minion in government known as the PAO plays. I dont even know what the expansion of that acronym stand for but apparently he is a person who can bring an IAS officer charging at full clip to a standstill through the inventiveness of the queries he can raise to delay payments endlessly. So all the systems that have been designed by creating 'societies' are apparently a tactic whereby the operational IAS head of a project retains financial control without reference to government systems. So much for what people wanted me to believe - that it is primarily a way officers with a strong 'social conscience' are able to bypass the inefficiencies and vested interests within government.

There may be some truth in the matter. There is surely a strong incentive within government financial systems to pass a small number of high value (multicrore) bills. A large number of smaller bills where the propensity of vendors to incentivise the payment may not be high or the incentives offered may not be attractive enough to hasten processes surely will recieve lower priority or even come up against some red-tape and bureaucratic harassment.

But is this sufficient cause to design a parallel system. Because, after all the guy causing all the hassle is someone who is way down the hierarchy of the very system these guys (IAS) are lording over. Interesting question.

Anyway the proposal of the Big Bureaucrat was shot down by the Bigger Bureaucrat - the reason? In his opinion 'societies' that have been set up in this manner hardly have a better track record in matters of financial probity.

What's one to make of all this. One thing is for sure - there is some redrafting we have to do of our report.

Traditional versus Modern

Another aspect within the theme of Urbanization that I think needs to be looked at is the bipolar divide between traditional/ Métis versus modern (corporate versus local) and how it is effecting our city.
This has been buzzing in my head after I heard a world bank economist speak. He said they were measuring literacy in India. The subjects they based the measure of literacy was on English and Maths. So if a student had studied in a non-English medium school and is real smart is still an illiterate by the world bank standards.
We need to retain and encourage traditional knowledge, language, industries, culture and not let urbanization impede it. It is sad how the irani cafes are being replaced by coffee chains, Telugu and Urdu by American English (training courtesy call centres), local industries by MNCs. I dont know about do-ability or funding prospects of this aspect but it is important.

Congratulations!

Our blog is a month old today. The statistics:

15 blogs in 31 days or an average of 1 every two days.

Frequency of posting: self 8, sarpvinash 1, diia 1, anita 2, lalitha iyer 1, vithal rajan 1 and lalita 1.

what say?

The Buzz of Fellowfeeling

a poem I came across that says it well


I have perceiv'd that to be with those I like is enough
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough

I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well.

All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

Brands and Missions

In a way 'thinksoft' was intended as an exercise in brand building. At the time the 'thinksoft' idea started the scene in hyderabad was that people would consult part of the year and spend most of their time working in the 'voluntary sector' (as it was then mostly known). So do some high paid work that would take care of expenses when doing low paid 'voluntary work' for most of the time. The only problem was that people had to do their own individual marketing to get work. So we thought let us build a 'brand' (thinksoft) that would do the marketing and a roster of people willing to take on consulting work for part of the year. Of course things really didnt turn out this way and we became a bunch of full time consultants with hardly any roster.

I dont rightly know if the reason was some kind of 'mission drift' or the model was in conflict with the 'objective reality'obtaining at that time.

The good thing of course is that we have ended up with a brand. Though how it stands in relation with the other well known social sector brands of Hyderabad is hard to tell. My own sense is that compared with the others we are fuzzy and hard to pigeonhole and that sometimes is a strength and sometimes/mostly a weakness.

Mapped!

Mapped!
This is not connected to the ongoing discussion on the barkatpura blog rather something which I got interested in ‘how mapping is an intrinsically political act’.
I was intrigued by maps when Sashi gave me this book ‘the map that changed the world’ (by the way I still have the book at home with me shall return it when I come) and then I read this book ‘seeing like a state’ which speaks about how maps were created to control people and tax them. Also how maps are made to claim and or appropriate land and resources and sometimes misread.

This is one of my favorite maps because unlike all the maps I learnt geography from America is not on top of the world and Europe is not magnified.
http://www.wall-maps.com/World/UpsideDownWorldMap.htm