Reform by a thousand cuts

Recently a friend called me up to ask if I though there was any real reform happening in India since the ascendancy of Shri Narendra Modi to the Chair of the Prime Minister. This friend, who is in the financial markets, said there is currently a view among many that the PM is only doing things which are  not good for the country such as giving bank accounts to poor people, freebies in the form of free insurance, loans and is not really doing anything substantial.

I thought about this and tried to make a list of things that have been done since he has come to the PM's post. Here is a list of which gives a flavour of the kind of things going on

1. Proposal to merge all hydroproject companies into one big company. This is the kind of decision usually a private corporate group takes. It is based on improving  economics, efficiency and reducing costs - all alien concepts to traditional management of PSUs.

2. Instructions to bureaucrats to reduce all forms to 1 page.

3. Proposal to accept citizens self attestation instead of notarized documents

4. Firing of all political appointees from board of PSUs of national strategic importance

5. Closing tax loophole in debt funds by which the ultra rich were not paying tax on their Fixed deposits and making the country lose thousands of crores.

6. Cleaning all government offices and making them organized . Incidentally this is one of the principles of Kaizen. When the Gemba (work place ) is clean, many problems become self evident.

7. Announcing policy to build toilets in all schools and giving clueless corporates a hint and a direction for their CSR programme.

8. Building relations with enemies of our enemies. Sending a clear message to China to decide if wants dhandha with India or territorial ambitions .

9. Fast tracking cases against MLAs and MPs. This changes the incentive to stand for elections completely. If you are a criminal, it would be best if you did not stand for elections in such a regime.

10. Proposal to release under trials who have already served more than half the maximum sentence possible for the crime of which are accused. This has the ability to reduce cases, decongest jails and speed up the judicial process.

11. Nuanced removal of retrospective judgement provision with  losing its teeth. Now the Junior assessing officers have to send their order to a central committee - who will study, vet the order and then issue it. This keeps flexibility to nab crooked companies while removing the powers of junior officers to ruin our nation's reputation by their vile acts/ignorance.

12. 100% FDI in Railway projects.

This is just a top of the mind list. I am sure daily readers of newspapers can write many many more.

None of these by themselves will be great but each of them are a cut on the old establishment. They are a clean break from the old style of doing things. They will have an impact. None of them can be called big-bang but each of them is a small step towards building a new India. 

No one improvement seems to be big but the total will provide massive change. This is very similar to the Japanese movement of Kai-zen - perfection in small steps.  Also most of these ideas have come from those who are working in the area and they have buy-in from those who have to implement the ideas and are not something thrust on them from the "high command". Finally each item is small so there is not much resistance to it.

This way of doing things is to keep making small and steady improvements in each and every activity as you come across them, while also working on the possibilities of the bigger things. In such a scenario there  may be no real big Bang which news anchors can discuss at length at 9 pm. These small changes and improvements  may work quietly and silently and perhaps the big bang may be heard only  during the next election results !

Till then, all we may see is change of the status quo by a thousand cuts.

Saving the cement industry from itself

The cement industry is in a peculiar situation. They are having almost 350MT of capacity. They are using only 220MT. Seen in a historic context, this is an alarming situation. Such a low capacity utilization should have led to the industry been in doldrums but somehow that has not happened.

Despite the low capacity utilization, they are adding capacity constantly - a truly unfathomable move especially by many players across the industry further adding pressure among them to keep cement prices high. In fact this low capacity utilizations, coupled with price hikes and new capacity additions itself may be proof that the industry is now working in an above board manner.

This phenomenon is causing high inflation in cement prices and waste of national capital. If one takes 85% to be a fair capacity utilization then  the industry is carrying almost 100MT extra capacity. This means about Rs 70000 cr of bank loans are being wasted.

 It is time the the government has a dialogue with the industry to make them understand that they are supposed to earn fair rate of return on assets at capacity utilizations of 80%+. Also since we have also enough capacity the RBI and Government of India should ban fresh loans  to cement industry until the capacity utilization reaches 80%.

Introducing Indian Cinemas Leading Villain ..

I was watching an interview with Mr. Arshad Warsi on TV. He said that despite Indian cinema doing the hard work it is not getting the recognition it deserves.

Indian cinema has operations of a global scale. More movies are made even in regional languages than perhaps in Hollywood. Yet Indian cinema has not become a global powerhouse. Why ? The answer to this came recently when I watched a movie of Arshad Warsi.

The reviews of the movie and the feedback of the fans on Arshad Warsi's twitter handle made me think I am living in two different planets. The fans loved it, the theatre was in splits but the reviews said something else. The review measured how good an idli was a cup of filter coffee. The movie was reviewed as though it was from some other genre. If you review a comedy as a method film, what would one expect ?

Who is the villain of the piece here ? Payola - (see FCC website) i.e, paying journalists to get a good review of their product. Payola is not a violation anymore. It is the business model of the big stars and business houses.

Further more, there is a dharma in indulging in unfair practices too. The big houses can get a good review for themselves and let an honest review be done for other films. I found that is not possible, The big houses insist on good review for themselves and trashing other films.

So small well made movies have very low real chance of making it unless

The domestic market is rigged and hence not competitive. So innovation and creativity is being stifled. Few production houses, stars and TV and print  journalists are holding the future of lakhs of cinema industry workers to ransom.

So I say, Payola is the leading villain of the Indian Cinema industry.

Are there any solutions ? Yes. We have reached the climax scene and in this movie you  the movie-goer and movie loving Aam fan is the  hero.  If you indeed find that the hype of the leading houses and actors too much and the reviews of movies do not match with your assessments, please consciously stop using these sources of information.

Use other sources of information such as Twitter handle of the stars, hashtags of the movies, friends who have watched the movie and whose taste matches yours.

If we fix this problem, there is an opportunity to create multi-billion dollar export industry from this.

I request  the Competition Commission of India to treat this as a little birds whisper and take this matter up suo-moto.

Cleaning Pune's voter role

The problem with Pune's voter rolls (and I guess Maharashtra's too)  is that it is made in such a way that the work of checking it cannot be delegated. Every voter has to check his name before every election.

For example in a building or society of say 200 voters, the Chairman or some enthusiastic volunteer can't check the voter roll as the voters are not registered under one building. As per Election Commission guidelines they are supposed to give a section number  to each building  and a Part number to the part of the constituency to which it belongs and register the voters under that Section no. This is not done.  I have seen that they register a voter under any section or sometimes in some other parts even if you write down the section and part number of your neighbour when you register. In Aundh Pune there is a building which is a bungalow plot conveted to a flat. It has 11flats and it has 1500 voters,

Our government servants are intelligent people.  The way the list is organized is worse than a 6 year old organizing his toys. This level of mistakes suggest that his design. If the section and part no were given correctly any citizen volunteer can scan the voter list and see where additional voters are not registered, locate those voters and make efforts to register them and make a perfect voter roll.

If it is done in the current way it is very difficult to do it,

For example, If I know the EPIC number of some one living in my building I should be able to reach that building's pdf files and check the names very easily if the database was right,

So given these problems how do we go about cleaning the voter roll ?

We should force the people making the roll to create a section for every building/ society. Then we should collect the EPIC  number of all the voters in that society and the Chairman should write a letter stating that there are errors in the roll and asking the EC to add his building into a separate section and add these voters into this Section and delete them from elsewhere. Once this is done for big buildings in each area, we can go on to the next level of buildings. In this manner the voter roll can be cleaned up.

If this is done politics in Maharashtra will change very quickly and Maharashtra will be on its way to becoming just  that - a Great State !

VSNL land : UPA leaves cash on the table for incoming government

The inefficiency of the outgoing government has created some opportunities for incoming Central government. One of them is the  excess land  which was part of VSNL at the time of the divestment by the government, At the time of the de-merged the land was to be returned by Tatas to the Government and the shareholders of VSNL by de-merging it into a separate company.

It was not visualized who will pay the stamp duty at the time of the de-merger. This issue was  not resolved and this land bank was lying idle, If the government can  resolve this issue and expedite the sale of the land/holding company it will be a source of funds.

The government could get funds to the tune of Rs 3000-5000 cr ( see here and here).

Oh these kids nowadays ...

Today's children have scant respect for elders, traditions and practices. From a traditional perspective It is really bad but there is a great blessing hidden in it. They take nothing at face value. They want an explanation. If you can find the explanation and give it to them they will become the greatest defenders of the same tradition. So the question we should ask ourselves is are we going to keep cribbing about the next gen or take up this as an opportunity and find out the scientific roots/ rationale of our culture and traditions and lay a very deep foundation for the future ?

Taking Indian Heritage to every corner of India

One of India’s unique advantages and great treasures is our cultural heritage consisting of music, dance and other art forms. Today this is not available to most of the youth in this country..

Many organizations like SPIC MACAY tried to do this by introducing the lecdem (lecturedemonstration) format to present Indian classical art forms in a comprehensive manner in front of today’s youth, who have little or no understanding of it. The meanings of the basic mudras and bhavas and the structure of the ragas had to be explained. This change in presentation has been instrumental in popularizing our art forms amongst the youth.

While  such organizations were successful in urban areas and towns, they have not been able to take our culture to every part of India – they have not been able to reach villages, smaller towns, and remote areas. A lot more that can be done to present this valuable national heritage to all citizens in every corner of India, if we can understand and overcome the contraints.

The constraints – The why?           

Our heritage is taken in the form of live performances by accomplished artistes. There are many constraints that prevent the scaling up of this activity.

·       The number of accomplished artistes is limited,

·       Many of them have hectic schedules and spend many months touring various parts of India and overeas.  Some of them live abroad for some part of the year.

·       Students don’t have the werewithal to pay for these live programs. Sponsorship is not easily available for this kind of activity.

·       Since the artistes also have to be economically sustained, the time they have available for giving programs for small honorariums is limited.

·       The population of India is increasing and we have great geographic spread.  Live performance limit performance to destinations with very good train or plane connectivity and good auditoriums – this immediately precludes most village schools.

·        Logistics and cost factors also severely limit the ability of any organization to take to the masses.

·       To have live performances at different places requires a large on-going organization at every location – a very difficult and costly affair.

·        In many of the cities, parents are working and with the weakening of the joint family concept, it is becoming difficult for children to attend these concerts and they hardly get to experience this national heritage. 

Due to these practical difficulties, India heritage and art form is not reaching areas beyond 300 towns – thus a large portion of India’s children are growing up without experiencing our rich heritage.  This is a very unfortunate situation and we as a society need to find a creative response to solve this problem and we need to universalize access to our Indian heritage and make it available to one and all. 

After much thinking, we believe there is a way out and perhaps it is the only way out–Technology.

The Concept – How?

Today’s communication technologies namely Radio, TV and internet offer an excellent opportunity to take this heritage to all corners of our country. We have done some blue sky thinking and believe that if we as a nation, use technology in the following manner – we can take the best of Indian heritage to each and corner of this country.

·       Create one National AM radio channel for Indian music and art forms:  This should be located centrally in a location like Nagpur with sufficient power to reach all parts of India. This will minimize management requirement of managing the channel.  It should be managed by All India Radio (AIR). This could be done simultaneous to the opening of national AM channels to other commercial broadcasters.

o   Why one channel? It will be very costly and difficult to have several channels across the country and manage them.

o   Why AM? AM channels are not favoured these days by commercial broadcasters as the music fidelity is low and most of demand is for FM channels which are used primarily for entertainment. Most of India’s AM bandwidth is unused and there is currently no opportunity cost of using AM channels.  This will also help in increasing penetration of AM across the nation.

o   Why AIR? AIR has adequate staff, studios, technology and infrastructure which could be used without any new expenditure or with marginal expenditures.  Protecting and spreading our national heritage is a national cause and the right and best entity to do it will be the National broadcaster.

o   Why simulaneous opening of commercial AM radio channels? Since infrastructure will need to be set, this will involve costs and fund outgo.   This tower infrastructure could be used to co-locate more AM channels and the tower costs could be shared by simutaneously auction of several national AM channels. The government has also set national goals for using ICT for education.  This will aid AIR economics and the running costs of this channel could come from the co-location costs and licence fees from the channels.

·        Create a TV Channel or Slot: A similar TV Channel or adequate slots on existing channels is also necessary because visual arts like Bharatnatyam, Kathak, and Kudiyattam among others require a visual medium. Since there may not be adequate content to fill the TV channels everyday, we could have a dedicated TV channel operating only a for limited hours or alternately we could take up time slots on existing TV channels. The TV channel should have very high reach thro terrestrial, cable and DTH platforms. This should be managed by Doordarshan as they can optimize on all resources such as studios, network and broadcast infrastructure.

·       Internet website: This could be used to reach areas which have signal problems or which have scheduling problems (different school schedules – dailiy timings and holidays, area with chronic power cuts).  Schools and colleges, parents could download this content and show them to their children.

Organization structure – How to do it?

In order to make it a success, this should be done is such a way that the entity which has experience take up the right task ie right man for the right task principle.  Thus the Government arms namely AIR and Doordarshan can fully manage the carriage and the network infrastructure for which they have the competence and the resources available readily.  

The government should outsource the task of creating content ( Like the program Satyameva Jayate ) to agencies  willing and able to take on the task of creating and providing the content for all the mediums. In today's age it is not enough to high quality content. Presentation has become very important especially for the youth. This is not the time to debate this issue. We have to accept it and use it constructively by creating world class presentation of these programmes.

These agencies will work closely with DD and AIR in the production of the content.  The management of the website could be given to a competent third party.

Benefits of this arrangement

Creation of national culture mission with low resources:   This will ensure that we have created a national culture mission at a very low cost without any duplication of effort or resources.  We will create a national culture mission without setting up any more studios, offices or hiring more management staff or creating more entities.

The assets created for National AM channel could be used for also increasing national AM penetration goals, raising revenues by auctioning more commercial AM channels which can be co-located on the infrastructure.  This move will bring in licence fees, auction fees, service taxes and will actually be revenue positive to the Government of India.

Meeting larger national goals and better use of resources: Currently AM is a vastly under-used medium and it is the only medium that reaches interior parts of the country. The citizens in leading towns and cities have access to numerous FM channels but those in interior areas have limited choice. If we set up a national AM channel under AIR, the network infrastructure set up can be easily used to also open up and auction more AM Channels and for Educational ICT goals.  This will also ensure that we as a nation have greater AM penetration – one of the goals of the Five year plans.

Better use of AIR and DD resources: The Government has adequate staff and technology and infrastructure which could be used more productively.  AIR and DD are also the right entity to manage the carriage infrastructure and all other managerial matters. With provision of news and entertainment by private entities, many issues are raised about rationale for a Public broadcaster. This move will create a clear rationale for a public broadcaster.

Outsourcing of expertise in managing content: In this day of outsourcing, where Government is  reaping the benefits of outsourcing through higher efficiency, effectiveness and lower cost ( Example: tasks such as PAN CARD processing (very senstitive),  Credit history maintenance, production of armanents of high national and strategic import   are being outsourced),  this partnership will ensure that this program can effectively run at a very small cost.This will be a highly productive and cost effective solution for the Government.  

Last but not the least: Almost 75% of India is Hindu. So the budget for this should be allocated based on the ratio of population of India belonging to each religion as per the last census. This is not to exclude anyone - the content of each community is available to all but merely to avoid certain sections of society from politicizing this  issue in terms of "communalism" and "secularism."