Dear Mr. Banker,
Hello. This is one of your clients. I am appalled at what you have decided to do to banks. Oh, I’m not talking about your non-performing assets and your crony capitalism. If I had had a problem with that, I would have put my money in a sock and tucked it under my mattress. I get it. You probably thought the diamond merchant was a good idea. (Did a solitaire for wifey clinch the deal?) You probably thought the world needs one more mismanaged airline. (Were there some free tickets thrown in?) You probably had political pressure put on you to advance loans to the friends of those in power. (Things do not change because people do not change.)
What I am talking about is how you deal with those who are my age. I am in my fifties and I rather like to think that my money is my own and that you are only the custodian of it. I know also that we are living in the last golden age of interest; that some banks in developed nations charge their customers to keep their money. I know all this but I think it is rather much when you don’t deliver a cheque book after 10 days.
Gone are the days
Now in the old days, I would pop across the street with a piece of paper and sign on the dotted line and the bank clerk would nod and tell me to come back in two days. I would duly go back in two days and be told that he was on leave, could I come back in two days. When I went back in two days, he would be there and my cheque book would be handed over to me and all would be well again. He would ask after my health and I would ask whether his son had done well in the examinations. We had a relationship, he and I. It wasn’t the world’s best relationship but you’re trying to replace it with something poisonous and vile and inhuman because somewhere along the way everyone fell in love with the prefix e- as in e-banking and e-commerce and e-jiggerypokery.
So with your bank, I have to register a request. Some system records my request and then I get an sms saying that the cheque book is ready and it is to be delivered and then another sms saying that the cheque book is on its way — what is this dance of the seven veils? — and then… nothing.
So I call up the service centre where Aziz replies. Aziz is courteous and he informs me that this call will be recorded for the purpose of maintaining quality. That doesn’t fool me, you know. It is to stop me from abusing. Anyway, I don’t believe there is much point abusing Aziz who is a working stiff, trying to make a living. He is not in charge of your policies. He has no idea how much you don’t want to see me at the bank, how much you despise my warm body at the bank because it takes up real estate and costs the bank some more wages for tellers and the line. He has no idea that you want me to do my banking in a disembodied fashion so that all the big shots can earn some more free tickets. He only knows that I do not have a phone banking pin.
I say that I do not have a phone banking pin because I do not use phone banking.
He is slightly perturbed but he asks me to call back from my registered mobile number and answer some questions so he can give me back the phone banking pin that I do not use and will not use.
I do so.
Correct answers
Madhuri is on the line this time and she has several questions for me, all of which I answer correctly. She asks me what my problem is. I say that my cheque book has not turned up. She says she will check the system. This may take time, will I hold? I have long since understood that all service sector encounters in this nation are about waiting so I will wait while she plays me a series of advertisements for banking products in which lively people suggest I should entrust my money and my lifetime security to a bunch of people who cannot send me a cheque book in 10 days. I breathe deeply.
She is back on the phone and says that the cheque book has been returned to head office because my address is incomplete.
I point out that the address has worked for several spam letters delivered by the same bank, for two older cheque books and for several other pieces of paper that look portentous but are actually meaningless.
She says that this may be true but what to do.
I say that the delivery company is lying to them. They need to sort this out with the delivery company.
Madhuri says this may be true but what to do.
I say that I am being penalised for the failure of the delivery company.
Madhuri says this may be true but what to do.
I ask her what I should do. She perks up at this remarkably because it is now my turn to do.
Perhaps I could log on to the website and…
I do not use net banking, I tell her.
Why not? She seems perplexed as if I had said that I do not believe in human rights.
I take a page out of her book and go back to what to do.
She asks me why I don’t talk to my relationship manager.
I say that my relationship manager is but a wandering voice who is only interested in talking to me when my account crosses a certain mark and she thinks she can get me to plough some of it into her bonus.
She says I should take address proof and go to my nearest branch.
I begin to get angry. I say that I have nothing against her because she is doing a fine job but I do want to know why I should be penalised for the failure of their system.
She says that she has another solution. She will have my cheque book delivered to the nearest bank branch and I can pick it up from there.
I do not see that this is a solution since it means I must do the work but I am beaten. I agree.
Madhuri is relieved. She says I will get my cheque book in four working days.
I say that it is Friday, that means I will get it in six human days.
She says that this is true but what to do.
And finally…
I put down the phone. I get an email saying that I will receive my cheque book in eight working days.
I look at it and I think: this may even be true but what to do.
You see, Mr. Banker, there used to be a phrase: safe as banks. No one believes that any more. No one thinks that you’re trustworthy. No one thinks your institutions are trustworthy even if you have cleverly started putting ordinary people into your ads. Most people who have had anything to do with a bank know that it is run for the comfort and the convenience of the bank staff and for the wealth management of the big bosses.
Nothing we can do about that right now. But think about this for a moment. For decades, government-run telephony ruled our lives because we had no option. One day, the mobile phones came along and their monopoly ended. Think about the postal systems, they too had a monopoly and they’re dying now. Somewhere you’re going to tick off some young person; she will go home and create an institutional option, a system which puts the customer up, front and centre — it might be an app but I wouldn’t bet on it — and you’re all going to end up on the rubbish heap of economic history.
Or you could wake up and start thinking about the customer. What a revolutionary idea that would be.
Jerry Pinto
The writer tries to think and write and translate in the cacophony of Mumbai.
Natarajan
Embodiments of Love! The story of Rama is not an ancient one. It is eternal and ever new. It is full of auspiciousness. When you contemplate on Rama incessantly, you derive great joy and delight! Ramayana teaches the principles of righteousness (dharma) and the path of duty to every individual. Ramayana sets an ideal to parents, brothers, and sisters in every family and to humanity! It is to understand and assimilate the principle of Ramayana that we are celebrating the festival of Rama Navami today. It is not enough if the celebration is confined to merely partaking of sweet pudding and other delicious items. May you fill your heart with the sacred ideals of the Ramayana! Obey the commands of Lord Rama. Pain and pleasure, sorrow and happiness follow one another. One should treat them with equanimity. May you give up hatred and all differences. May you live in peace and harmony!
Source:::: http://media.radiosai.org/
Natarajan
If in each family the virtues illustrated in Ramayana are embodied, the Universe will be resplendent with joy and peace! All of you know, Dasaratha ruled Ayodhya and had four sons: Rama, Lakshmana, Bharata and Shatrughna. Well, if in some city called Ayodhya, there was once a ruler named Dasharatha and had a son called Rama, why should we celebrate Rama’s birth, at this time and age? Go a little deep into the story and you will realise that Dasharatha is not the ruler of a far-off land! Ayodhya means a city that is unconquerable, into which the enemy cannot penetrate, an impregnable fortress. It represents the Atma, the heart where the Lord resides, which is beyond temptations, the subtle foes of passion and emotion, impulse and instinct. And Dasharatha? The person who was in full control of his ratha (chariot) – the ten entities namely, the body with the five senses of action and the five senses of knowledge!
Source::::: http://media.radiosai.org/sai_inspires/
Natarajan
In December last year, Prof Lalji Singh, known as the Father of DNA Fingerprinting in India, died after he suffered a major heart attack while at the Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, Babatpur in Varanasi.
Death is inevitable. But nothing shocks us more than when a death, which could have been prevented or avoided, occurs due to sheer negligence. Human apathy makes death painful and stark, making us question everything – medical advances, the quality of healthcare, laws, regulations, and the value of life in our country.
In December last year, Prof Lalji Singh, known as the Father of DNA Fingerprinting in India, died after he suffered a major heart attack while at the Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, Babatpur in Varanasi.
The airport was not equipped to handle this medical emergency, and by the time he was taken to the hospital – a good few hours later – he had breathed his last. The doctors who examined him say that had he been provided with oxygen supply during the “Golden Hour”, he could have been saved.
What makes it even harsher is that precious time was lost in getting formalities like an “Exit Pass” organised for him due to security reasons. What good are processes that are supposedly put in place to keep people safe when they end up killing them?
My assumption was wrong.
If they did then perhaps Prof Lalji could have been saved.
Airports have become a place to shop and eat. They are all well equipped with restaurants serving a variety of cuisines, every brand that you can think of has a presence here, and liquor outlets thrive – and yet one of the most basic requirements of having a medical room with functional facilities is missing.
We, at the Better India, spoke to Late Prof Lalji’s son, Abhisekh Singh, who is asking some pertinent questions.
Abhishek is asking the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Airport Authority of India to mandate the availability of a doctor, ambulance, minimum medical support, trained medical personnel and standard operating procedures at all civilian airports in India.
You can support his cause by signing the petition here.
On December 10, 2017, Prof Lalji was travelling from Varanasi to Hyderabad on an Indigo flight. Hailing from a village in Varanasi, Prof Lalji started Genome Foundation, a non-profit organisation that aims to diagnose and treat genetic disorders affecting the underprivileged, especially from rural India.
Unfortunately, the staff at the airport told him that there was no request and they couldn’t provide him with one. Since he was travelling alone, he went in to the airport and checked in.
Abhisekh says, “Since I was not present there at that time, I have requested the airport to provide me with the CCTV footage from that day. However, so far I have not received it. I can only, therefore, corroborate what I am saying with what people present there have said to me.”
After he checked in, a wheelchair was provided. Abhisekh also mentions that around this time he called his father to check on him.
A little after that Prof Lalji faced some difficulty in breathing and went to the counter to ask for help. He was taken to the medical inspection room where the compounder after checking him insisted on having him taken to a hospital for immediate medical intervention.
“While the airport had a medical intervention room there was no doctor or medical supplies there. Looking back they did not even have an oxygen cylinder in the airport,” says Abhisekh.
An ambulance was asked for but since did not arrive Prof Lalji had to be taken in a private car to the nearest hospital which was also quite a distance away. Given the strict security, once a passenger enters the airport, they are not allowed to leave until an exit pass is shown.
The doctor who checked Prof Lalji mentioned how he could have been saved if he had been administered with oxygen during the ‘Golden Hour’. Prof Lalji was alive even after the heart attack, but the delay in getting him medical treatment cost him his life.
Here are some of the questions raised by Abhisekh:
1. While there is a medical intervention room, it is virtually of no use.
What is the point of having a designated room in the airport and calling it medical intervention room if there are no trained medical professionals there? In places like Varanasi where even the nearest hospital is quite a distance away, what happens in cases of medical emergencies?
Are these airports waiting for such incidents to occur to act?
2. Should airports not be equipped with basic medical infrastructure?
Unfortunately for us in India, heart disease is still the leading cause of death.
An oxygen cylinder, a defibrillator, an ambulance on call?
3. Is there a standard operating procedure in cases of medical emergencies?
Are our airports equipped to handle medical emergencies? Manuals like the Airports Authority of India, Terminal Management clearly states the need to have a well-equipped first aid box ready. This includes a small oxygen cylinder with delivery accessories and a facemask.
The manual also states that it is desirable that an updated list of Telephone numbers and addresses of the hospitals and nursing homes ( indicating the specialised Treatment rendered) in the vicinity of the Airport should always be available with the Terminal Manager.
If these are guidelines then why were none of them implemented on December 10, 2017? Are these guidelines just printed because they look good on paper? Does the DGCA ever audit the airports to ensure that all the norms are being followed?
So important questions for us all.
Abhishek is asking the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Airport Authority of India to mandate the availability of a doctor, ambulance, minimum medical support, trained medical personnel and standard operating procedures at all civilian airports in India.
You can support his cause by signing the petition here.
(Edited by Vinayak Hegde)
Source……. Vidya Raja in http://www.the better india .com
Natarajan
On Thursday morning, the Versova beach in Mumbai welcomed around 80 palm-sized turtles, making their way slowly but surely in the Arabian Sea.
Why is this event so special?
Well, for starters, the turtles in question are Olive Ridley Turtle, and their eggs hatched on a Mumbai beach after 20 years, and it was all thanks to the efforts of hundreds of Mumbaikars who have been cleaning the Versova beach for over two years now.
The Olive Ridley Turtle has been classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a vulnerable species, which is likely to become endangered unless the circumstances that are threatening its survival and reproduction improve.
According to WWF India, “Olive Ridley Turtles are the smallest and most abundant of all sea turtles found in the world” and live in the warm parts Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans.
However, for the past 20 years, these turtles had stopped visiting Mumbai, thanks to the number of pollutants and plastic on the beaches. Not only is the trash an unwelcoming home to lay eggs, but is also a threat to the lives of the tiny turtles who have to walk from their nesting site to the sea all by themselves.
Afroz Shah had taken the initiative to clean up Versova beaches and collect all the plastic dumped there. According to the Hindustan Times, in only 126 weeks, Afroz Shah and the Versova Residents Volunteers’ team has successfully cleared 13 million kg of garbage, which included plastic from the beach.
Speaking about the Olive Ridley Turtle hatchlings, Prashant Deshmukh, range forest officer, Mumbai Mangrove Conservation Unit said,
Week 127 .
Fantastic news for Mumbai .
We got back Olive Ridley Sea Turtle after 20 years. Historic moment
Nested and Hatched at our beach. We facilitate their journey to ocean.
Constant cleaning helps marine species.
Marine conservation centre needed at @versovabeach
Apart from Versova, these turtles are found on the beaches of Velas, Anjarle, Harihareshwar, Maral and Diveagar in Maharashtra.
The largest nesting site of the world is in Odisha along the coasts of the Bay of Bengal. Villagers in Odisha, too, have made attempts to save the nesting sites and ensure safety to the newborn turtles. You can read more about this story here.
Edited by Gayatri Mishra.
Source……. Tanvi Patel in http://www.the better india.com
Natarajan
In a recent report, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis(IEEFA), a US-based think tank, ranked Tamil Nadu as one of the top nine markets in the world for acquiring a high percentage of net energy needs from renewable energy sources.
The study was an assessment of the top 15 countries or power markets in the world, where the share of solar and wind energy in proportion to their total energy requirements is high. Denmark leads the way, with 53% of its energy coming from renewable sources in 2017, followed by Southern Australia and Uruguay.
In 2016-17, Tamil Nadu acquired 14.3% of its energy needs from wind and solar energy sources.
“Tamil Nadu also leads India in installed renewable energy capacity. Of the total 30 GW of installed capacity across the state as of March 2017, variable wind and solar power accounted for 9.6 GW or 32% of the total. Firm hydroelectricity added another 2.2 GW or 7%, nuclear 8% and biomass and run of river, 3%. As such, zero emissions capacity represents a leading 50% of Tamil Nadu’s total installed renewable energy. With much of Tamil Nadu’s renewable energy coming from end-of-life wind farms installed 15-25 years ago, average utilisation rates are a low 18%, making the contribution of variable renewables to total generation even more impressive,” says the IEEFA report.
Total installed renewable energy capacity for Tamil Nadu stands at approximately 10,800 megawatts (MW), of which 7870 MW comes from wind and 1,697 MW solar, while the rest comes from biomass and small hydro projects. Although it comes third in solar energy capacity behind Andhra Pradesh (2,010 MW) and Rajasthan (1,961 MW), the state tops the charts in wind power capacity ahead of Gujarat (5429 MW) and Maharashtra (4,752 MW). Tamil Nadu generates more wind energy than Sweden (6.7 GW) and Denmark (5.5 GW), the birthplace of wind energy.
“As of March 2017, the state had 1 GW of biomass and run-of-river small-scale hydro, 2.2 GW of conventional hydroelectricity, and 1 GW of gas fired power capacity operational (plus another 1 GW of gas under construction),” reports the IEEFA. In an interesting aside, it also hosts the second largest solar farm (Kamuthi) in the country with a capacity of 648 MW.
This is a heartening development as it comes a time when the Government of India has set a target of sourcing 175 gigawatts of energy from renewable sources by 2022.
When it comes to renewable energy in India, one could consider Tamil Nadu as a pioneer of sorts. Most of its wind farms, for example, were built approximately 25 years back.
The state’s sojourn into renewable energy began as an emergency attempt to fill the growing deficit between supply and demand of power.
Major industries like automotive parts, textiles, cement and leather-tanning, for example, demanded large amounts of power and consequently, the feed-in tariff (payments to ordinary energy users—people or businesses—for the renewable electricity they generate) for the wind energy sector was encouraging.
The price at which wind energy is sold to the people today is determined at an open auction for power utilities. Earlier, the state power regulators had a stranglehold on determining prices but changed to an auction system in 2016.
With the local textile sector first grabbing the bull by its horns, Tamil Nadu also became one of the first states to allow industrial units to establish their own wind power plants. These 20-year-old wind farms owned by the Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association (TASMA) generates a little less than 40% of the state’s total wind energy capacity (3000 MW). The Muppandal wind farm outside Madurai, for example, generates 1.5 GW of energy, making it the largest wind farm outside China.
With favourable tariff conditions, the state also made serious progress in the solar energy arena.
“In recent years, the government has also worked to improve its transmission infrastructure, encouraging firms to expand. Since renewable energy is infirm, managing the fluctuation in power generation is key. Tamil Nadu has begun forecasting the flow so that the grid is ready to handle things,” says this recent report in Quartz India.
Having said that, the IEEFA has argued in its report titled ‘Electricity Transformation in India: A Case Study of Tamil Nadu’, it argued how the state’s growth in wind and solar energy generation isn’t enough.
Instead, what the state is doing is looking to build 25,000 MW of thermal power projects. “Despite being a world leader in wind energy, Tamil Nadu’s wind farms have ageing and outdated technology. Upgrading the existing turbines alone could double the state’s leading wind energy capacity,” said Tim Buckley, IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies, Australia.
There are other concerns, as well. “Renewable energy assets in Tamil Nadu are facing significant back down (as state power utilities are buying little power from these plants). This adversely impacts their feasibility,” Kanika Chawla, a renewable energy expert at Delhi-based non-profit Council on Energy, Environment, and Water, told Quartz India.
Primarily, the major concerns stem from state regulation-related issues. For starters, the state-owned power utility Tangedco has proposed an additional imposition of taxes on rooftop solar plants, says this Times of India report.
Last July, Tamil Nadu was unable to use all the solar power it generated. In the wind energy sector, the government could stymie TASMA’s ability to drawing back the excess power it delivers to the power grid in the event of a shortage (wind banking). What one must understand is that TASMA generates and delivers excess wind energy to the power grid.
However, the biggest concern is the dire financial condition of the state power utility. In 2016-17, the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TANGEDCO) posted a loss of Rs 3,783 crore, besides year-long delays in the payment of dues to power-generating units.
As a result, these power generation units are unable to repay loans they had taken from the banks to install all the necessary equipment. The poor state of regulation in the state’s power sector is a real concern.
Source…. Rinchen Norbu Wangchuk
in http://www.the betterindia.com
Natarajan
Take off with Natarajan 