Penny wise pound foolish!

Aren't we all pennywise and pound foolish, at least some of the time? So why blame anybody?

The austerity drive launched by the government is nothing more than mere tokenism as is quite apparant to anybody who cares to think. By shunning executive or first clss flights, the government personnel are expected to save the exchequer several hundred crores of rupees. Very commendable! The action also earns a lot of brownie points for the politicians, especially before elctions. The only thing is that, barring Maharashtra and Haryana, no other state has elections in the offing!!

So, the government saves several hundred crores of rupees. But it has also announced a 5% increase in dearness allowance (when corporates are freezing salaries and issuing pink slips in the wake of the economic slow-down!) which is estimated to increase its spend by 2300 crores of rupees!! Whoa!!

And what about the "damned elusive" administrative reforms? What is the price being paid for creating and maintaining the behemoths in the shape of ministries, government departments, commissions, etc, etc? How does travelling by train or flying economy class help in reducing this monstrous cost of inefficiency and imperfections that the nation (read us) is paying at the behest of the government? If the idea is to set an example then the question arises has it succeeded? Are all the politicians and bureaucrats, down to the state levels, cutting across all levels, even contemplating any such sacrifice?

The point is, easy as it is to nitpick on the government at the drop of a hat, one has to bear in mind that others are equally guilty of such "penny wise pound foolish" tokenism.

It brings to my mind the classic case of the transnational company, my earstwhile employer, whose dalliance with tokenism was not only legion but also severely detrimental to the organisation in the bad years. Invariably, when the chips were down and the moolah was not falling like manna from heaven, strict diktats would be issued to drastically cut expenses. However, the sacrificial lamb was always either marketing expenses or travelling costs or training costs, or all three!! Nobody looked into the question of productivity in the factories and retail stores, which, due to the years of appeasement of the trade unions, was a major cause of financial bleeding of the company. Nobody examined the lack of competence in the human capital caused by flawed HR policies which only succeeded in propagating populism and nepotism among the members of the management. This only resulted in the creation of a huge workforce of largely ineffective and unproductive people...at what a cost! Nobody even questioned the antediluvian practice of holding and maintaining enormous estates which, during the bad years, only sucked in the company's scarce funds for non-revenue earning purposes. The focus would rather be on reducing telephone calls, cutting down on travel and even freezing training programmes.

I would have imagined that, during lean periods, the marketing and sales people need to be more in touch with the customers than normal to boost sales. This would definitely lead to higher travel costs, for instance. They would need to step up on their marketing spends to push sales up. Also, it is sound policy to retrain the staff during downturns because that is when work pressure is lowest on them. The increased costs of business development is unavoidable during downturns. Otherwise, in the absence of promotional activities, how will the enhanced results come about? Economies need to come from other areas like advance buying, inventory management, waste management, reduction in imperfections in operations, higher human resource productivity, ensuring standard output from plant & machinery, etc

The tokenism that we encounter is perhaps the result of two forces that work in most organisations. Firstly, such actions catch the imagination of the people more easily. Secondly, the main issues are often difficult to tackle and are thus kept on the back-burner with the hope that, someday, someone else will be there to handle them.

In the meantime, the bad days pass, there is an upswing in activities, progress returns and the austerity measures are shelved without actually having achieved anything in the first place, except, perhaps, some amount of showmanship.

Hello, my friends!

Hello my friends! On the 11th of August 2009 I decided to let in my friends and relations into my little world of "Reflections", which is nothing but a sounding-off of the mind characterised by a steadily reducing occupation. My idea was that, having been pitchforked head first into the blogosphere by a zealous daughter, I would use this predicament to set up a regular chat or adda network. After all there is so much pleasure in exchanging bullshit, especially for people of my age! For the benefit of the uninitiated, the procrastinators and the geriatrics, I repeat that "Reflections" is my blog accessed by visiting esschatterjee.blogspot.com

Alas! Even after a month I have only two followers - admittedly two very good-looking young women! So what if one of them is my daughter and the other is a cousin! My son and daughter-in-law are busy traversing the world! And all the others, comprising my aged relatives and friends are doubtlessly finding it a challenge to grapple with the marvels of modern science which is involved in posting comments on the blog! Or is it that the mind is willing but the flesh is not, or vice versa???

I think I shall resign myself to the fact that Rupa and Sraboney will remain my faithful followers....and that the other relatives and all my friends, though they mean well I am sure, shall remain my ardent but silent backers. After all behind every great man there is a woman, or man, saying "I won't" !

The rains came!

Oh yes! It finally did happen. It rained. As a matter of fact, it is still raining and has been doing so since the late afternoon of Wednesday, i.e. 09.09.09. My class with the kids of Delhi School of Communication, scheduled for today from 8.30am , got duly postponed.

This kind of continuous rain is not very common in Delhi, although I must admit, it is not very strange either. The current weather is very reminiscent of Kolkata at its monsoon worst. I realise that there will be a large number of people who will be dismayed by my use of the word "worst". After all, isn't the monsoon the inspiration behind great prose, poetry and song? Isn't Tagore held in extreme reverence, by the cognoscenti, for his soul-uplifting compositions on the monsoons? Undeniably true. However, the fact remains that, though I genuinely admire and love Tagore's works, I do hate the monsoons! To me there is no romance in the drift of the dark clouds or music in the patter of raindrops (except in Jose Feliciano's unforfettable refrain). I do not get turned on by the "rhythm of drumbeats" that thunder claps are supposed to represent. To me monsoons are messy. Mud and slush abound. Roads are flooded. Shoes and trousers get wet. The body gets drenched. At times, even the umbrellas get upturned!!! Above all, there is no getting away from the all-pervading musty smell of poorly dried clothes. And worse, the neighbourhood press wala does not turn up to provide the little crispness that one craves for in an otherwise damp world! Thank you but no thank you. I can do without the monsoons. Only thing, in actual fact I really cannot, can I? Life's damp squib! One is stuck with it! DAMN!

School's in!

I share the horrors that exist in the mind of Mr. Kapil Sibal, as they indeed do in the minds of millions of our nation's children, about the very thought of "Board exams" for school children. I am not sure how my teacher friends will react to this. However, I believe that this is the way to go. I think that education has no option but to be "learning" oriented and NOT "exams" oriented. I am not going to state my case with cogent, or not so cogent, arguments. I think the world around us abounds with thinkers who are far superior in this domain than I am, with all due modesty. It is only fair that they have their own experienced and knowledgeable takes on this issue. What I shall do instead is to highlight the schooling system in which I had the privilege to study....the system that has shaped my thinking.

Although I am not going to talk about the Board Exams ( in any case,in our days, we had one and not two such exams for high school leaving! ) I shall share with you our school system of academics and leave you to decide whether the produce of the system, i.e. ex-students, are well rounded in their knowledge and personalities or are mere "crammers" who retain very little of what they were exposed to. In other words, whether we, the products, have gained adequate knowledge about the world and the environs in which we live or merely imbibed enough to pass the trauma of the board exams.

Our school had no annual exams. Instead, throughout the year, we had to appear for tests on Friday afternoons. Significantly, the tests were not called "examinations" but "competitions". Every Friday from 1.30pm to 3.30pm, we had to take a test in a designated subject. This was clearly mentioned in the class routine. At times, like in the winter sessionwhen the number of school days were limited, we would have a "comp" on Tuesday afternoon as well. This way, all the subjects were easily covered in the course of the term and none of the boys were pressurised to study like maniacs at term end to "prepare" for "exams", whether terminal or annual.

If I subscribe to the view that the boys, as a rule, finished school high up on the learning curve, it is because they had studied in a relaxed environment, without any pressure from the system. I must mention a couple of other features which made our school quite unique.

Firstly, school was shut on Thursdays. This offered an entire day to prepare for the comps, to those who were so inclined.

Secondly, homework was strictly limited to just one subject per day, albeit everyday. This too was fixed in the class routine. As a result a regular study habit, rather than a frenetic one, was enough to handle all the "competitions" that the school could throw at us! There was never a need to frantically indulge in last-minute heavy- duty cramming to pass the test.

Thirdly, out of the two study periods that we had every day, the second one from 1.00pm to 1.30pm was strictly for reading story books available from the exclusive library that each class had, within the classroom itself! I am confident that the reading habit that was inculcated in us by this system was responsible for not only improving our language skills in a most interesting manner, but it also broadened the horizons of our ganaral knowledge and awareness.

These systems, in addition to others, definitely made it easier for the students to assimilate whatever they were taught; since they learnt things in a relaxed atmosphere, never under pressure and not under duress. What our school taught us was that one could acquire knowledge, information and concepts without having the fun taken out of the process. If our Union HRD Minister is meaning to offer the nation's children a trauma-free system of education then I can confidently say "way to go Mr. Sibal!" I know it can happen.

I have been, of course, referring to St. Xavier's School, Kolkata! Nihil Ultra!