Times Are Changing Rapidly – Another COVID Blog

There is a lot of buzz about how the world is transforming itself in an exponential fashion to mitigate the effects of the deadly COVID-19. While the white-collar professions have quickly adopted transforming the workforce to remote workstations and online meetings, there are industries such as entertainment, hospitality, and administrative services that have seen enough havoc over the past few months. Microsoft hails, “2 years of digital transformation in 2 months”.

While those of us who are fortunate to keep our jobs, it is high time for us to practice austerity for the good of us and our dependents. Let us make sure we empathize with our coworkers. People who had indirect employment in office spaces through catering, transportation, security services, and housekeeping, have literally lost their jobs and are clearly helpless. The kind of emotional trauma, those people are going through to provide for their families is quite unimaginable. I am sure corporates are keeping the essential needs of their indirect employees’ funded. It is high time we contribute back to the people we used to know, the faces we saw in the cafeterias that served food, the smiles we exchanged at the security desks, the cab drivers who made sure we reached offices on time every time, the housekeeping staffs who cleared our coffee spillages before someone trips and the list is endless. While the policymakers and corporates doing their part, we need to be extremely sensible and sensitive to attend the needs of whoever we can to make the livelihoods up and running.

Humanity always thrives. We have seen the worst in the past – the manmade famines to feed the wealthy bellies, the wars to feed the egos of power-hungry nations, the inhuman acts of extreme intolerance against the races, classes, and the oppressed and so on. But in the end, humanity thrives. The tough times always gave room for innovations and inventions, say for instance the dissolution of the Soviet Union that has opened the doors for Globalization, The World War aftermaths have opened the doors for the United Nations and their subsidiaries such as WHO, the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF and so on to promote peace and prosperity around the globe. Having said that, I am quite optimistic about the new opportunities we can look forward to in the next few years.

The scale of the transformation is set to push the geographical, cultural, and economic boundaries. Yes, the times are extremely uncertain for everyone as the vaccine availability does not seem to be a reality at least until the early next year, as the clinical trials are still to show significant improvements. The post-COVID-19 times are compared to the post World War -II times, and I think they are not exaggerating when they say this. There will be changes in the way our businesses operate. Several businesses will diminish in scale or set to vanish altogether, and several businesses will see escalated growth, and several new businesses will emerge. Let us take a close watch to study the socio-political and economic changes. I think it is important for each and every one of us to adapt to the new norms sooner. After all, they say that the early bird catches the worm.

Why are management principles not followed in agriculture?

Answer by Sharmilli Priyadarsini:

Science and technology has done enough damages to agriculture and human health already, with inorganic fertilizers, genetically engineered crops and poultry, hybrid crops etc. We are still greedy to increase production by bringing the Engineering practices to agriculture amidst the fact that agricultural lands are destroyed due to the lack of the conditions to cultivate like unavailability of labour, lands turning barren, urbanization, poverty, water scarcity. Agriculture is an act of farming and Engineering is an act of building, the earth has been already facing the aftermaths of genetically engineered organic products.

Replying the edited question, If I understand right, your intention is to promote the management principles in agriculture to increase the production to meet the rising demands. Most agriculturists follow a set of proven strategies meticulously. They also revise their strategies periodically, implement risk management, get trained, provide employee benefits.

Strategies: They know when to sow to get the best harvest, They know what to cultivate in any season. They follow crop rotation to preserve the nutrients of the soil. In fact, they pay the salaries to the labourers in timely manner, even give periodic hikes and performance based benefits to encourage and retain them. They do provide loans and joining bonus (the so called “employee benefits”). Actually corporates do have a lot of things to learn from them on talent retention.

Risk Management: Who can do this better than agriculturists, If they have a labour problem to manage a portion of their land, they will outsource farming to someone who is capable of. If the monsoons fail, they look for alternative water sources like groundwater pumping, wells etc for irrigation.

Training: Do you know agriculturists get period training from the government of India on increasing the yield of the crops, preventing the diseases, educating on the soil nutrients and fertilizers etc and also introduces the new varieties of seeds and rotational crops suitable to the climatic conditions. Most importantly, they are educated on the machinery and tools that eases the work of the landlords that also cuts down the agricultural jobs. Governments do provide a fraction of investment as a subsidy and/or loan to the agriculturist for buying the devices but the problem is small farmers cannot afford to repay the loans due to poor returns.

Having heard enough of mass farmer suicides, government never cancelled the bank loans of dying poor farmers whereas it has been showing a lethargy on the “Big-Billion-Businessmen” who have committed frauds on large scale. The farmers do not need management practices, they also do not need corporate intervention in agriculture, that only will affect the livelihood of farmers sooner or later. All they need is enough awareness on the government schemes and support from the government.

Why do the management principles not followed  in agriculture?

How does the Right to Information Act work?

How does the Right to Information Act work?

Right To Information act was included in Article 19 in 2005, according to which every tax payer is having access to government information(State and Central). Whenever Information officers (PIOs) refuses to provide information requested against a particular application he/she will be penalized up to 25,000 INR.

Below are the key features of the RTI,
1. RTI works in all the states except in Jammu & Kashmir. Though the government has appointed information officers in J&K.
2. RTI covers the government departments listed in the following link.
Page on rti.gov.in . They also have the RTI links respective to each and every departments, among which some links are not working.
3. You can submit your RTI applications in a white sheet like a usual application letter, but for the state governments there may be a particular format for submitting the applications.  The applications should be addressing to Public Information Officer (PIO). You can find the names and details of PIOs in the following link : Central Public Information Officers (CPIOs) . Make sure you have the copy of the application.
4. There is application fee for requesting information through RTI and the fee vary with the central and state governments and it also depend on the formats the applicant is requesting information in. You can even apply for an electronic copy of information in CDs or pendrives for which they will charge extra.

The link below will get answers to almost all of your questions on RTI.
Page on conservationindia.org

Who is the cleverest politician in India?

Answer by Sharmilli Priyadarsini:

I would say, the cleverest politician in India is Ms.J.Jayalalitha. After the death of MGR, the party AIADMK had suffered severe groupism, Janaki front and Jayalalitha front. Even though Janaki Ramachandran, wife of MGR, succeeded him as the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, She could not last long in the post. Tamilnadu saw general elections in 1989 , which was a huge set back to AIADMK, the party that remained unbeatable until MGR's death. Ms.Jayalalitha, who chosen as the leader of opposition has been humiliated by DMK members (The Revenge Of Draupadi ) in the assembly during the budget session of 1989, challenged the ruling DMK that she will step into the Assembly only as the Chief minister and not otherwise. The assembly elections in 1991 gave Ms.Jayalalitha and her party a huge victory, this time the fissures in the party was fixed and she sworn in as the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu for the first time. Her first tenure from 1991-1996, was not very good in terms of administration and it costed her loose the assembly elections in 1996 to DMK, but She established herself as a powerful politician.

Although she was summoned by the courts on various cases and arrested in Dec 7 1996, the role played by her to dissolve Vajpayee's government in 1999 established her as an invincible icon in Indian politics. Her party did not do well in the Loksabha elections but managed to sweep the polls in the 2001 assembly elections ,which made her the Chief Minister again. Her administration during 2001 to 2006 is quiet laudable , in spite of the facts that she handled the government officials strike with the iron arms, that resulted in suspension and arrest of thousands of government officials under TESMA; During the same tenure, Mr.Karunanithi was arrested and later released for the controversy in building flyovers; She stepped down as Chief Minister for a term of six months due to the charges on her over inappropriate assets case. But she managed to nullify every barrier that came on her way. She has introduced many visionary schemes like rain water harvesting, free cycles for the students, Girl child protection scheme and other women welfare schemes during this tenure.

She has lost the assembly elections of 2006, but she made a huge come back in 2011 elections and her government successfully fulfilled its promises to the people by issuing free mixer, grinder and fans, laptop to the higher secondary students, 4 grams gold & 25000  to the newly marrying needy women etc. This tenure of her had a big villain to fight with, the scarcity of electricity in state, which she has managed to bring down for a notable scale. AIADMK has now emerged as the third largest party in the Lok sabha elections 2014.

After being convicted for inappropriate assets case , she stepped down as the Chief minister, succeeded by Mr.O.Panneerselvam. When the critics are on real high discussing the downfall Ms.Jayalalitha's political career, she managed to get the bail in historic 21 days time and released from the jail. The only good news for her opponents is that she cannot contest in assembly elections for the next 10 years unless she win over the charges against her. For this one question if she can win against her charges, only time has the answer.

Nevertheless, Ms.Jayalalitha, the actor turned politician has multiple talents, a multilingual personality who could fluently speak 5 languages, a straight forward, brave decision maker, an able administrator is the cleverest politician in India. Of course, she is the rare combination of beauty and intelligence. She has nullified so many charges against her and emerged victorious like a Phoenix from every failure.

Who is the cleverest politician in India?