My 2 cents – Page 4

Smart and right thing: My 2 cents

In all the drama over the Chief Minister (CM) position post-State election in Maharashtra last month one thing that is forgotten is that doing the right thing also tends to be the smart thing to do most times IMHO. Below is my attempt to explain.

Facts: No single party emerged with majority after last month’s State election in Maharashtra. It was a fractured verdict by the voters. Pre-poll alliance of of BJP and Shiv Sena (SS) did have a combined majority which would have allowed them to form the next Government if they could have come to an agreement on power sharing and who would assume the CM post. Sadly that did not happen.

What happened immediately after election?
BJP, by virtue of being the party with the most seats, got the first crack at proving they have majority support. Differences between BJP and SS simmered to the fore and turned irreconciliable. Each party went their separate ways trying to cobble together a majority with other parties.

Why was SS insistent on getting CM post and other major portfolios in the new Government?
SS essentially perceived BJP as an existential threat. Both parties tried to appeal to the same slice of voters, with BJP being the bigger party in the State in recent times and nationally too. The alliance was always strictly a business transaction as both parties on their own could not get majority support in the State. Reason SS decided this is the right time to strike is because BJP has gotten much bigger in the past few years and along with it their ambitions have grown too. This election pretty much would have been the last election both parties fought together before BJP decided to go it alone. SS feared getting subsumed by BJP and felt their future existence was threatened in the scenario their party members moved over to BJP if they sensed wind blowing in BJP direction. To put it in business context BJP is the equivalent of a big company trying to get a foothold in a local market by initially partnering with a smaller local player SS with plans to either buy the local company in future or competing directly with them.

What happened next?
BJP tried to get support of other parties to form Government. At first they appeared to be successful till the hastily pulled together agreement came apart with the result BJP not being able to prove majority support. SS meanwhile jumped into bed with other parties to stake a claim to form Government

What is the current situation?
SS has appeared to string together an alliance with majority of sorts and has formed a minority Government

Who is the biggest loser?
BJP undoubtedly. First their pre-poll alliance with SS comes under question for values and judgment. If they knew their core values did not match with SS and still continued with the alliance for ~ 30 years their values are suspect. If they did not know about capricious nature of SS and convinced themselves they could prevail upon SS it reflects poorly on their judgment.

What should have happened for BJP to come out with some positive?
After their failure to show majority support BJP should have chosen to sit in the opposition. This would have made them come across as a party with values and with some of their tarnished judgment restored after the fact. By trying to get their bean counters cobble together a majority with fair weather friends they have come across as just another opportunistic party. Potential practical gain of the SS post-poll alliance imploding on its own due to the incongruities of the parties involved has been lost for now as the new alliance will be determined to make it work at least for the near future. Opportunity to look principled has been lost too

Bottom line: Voters’ fractured mandate should have acted as a wake up call for all political parties, especially the BJP, that voters expect results and none of the parties were considered good enough to get majority support. Past few years BJP has been daring voters to vote for other parties and predicting gloom if they did so. It has been willed to existence by voters precisely doing that. At least now BJP should go back to the drawing board and try to come up with positive message about what they achieved and what they plan/planned to achieve. Avoid portraying anyone with different opinion as opposed to development, anti-national etc. Sitting in opposition by choice would have been the right thing. And a smart thing too. Most times doing the right thing is the smart thing too!

Remote control covers / cases

This is the age of ubiquitous remote controls and pretty much every appliance comes packaged with one. Nothing appeals to human beings as much as reclining on a couch and pushing the buttons on those controls. Especially men watching a game eating popcorn with their favorite sports team playing 😀 It’s one of the most prized possessions in every home 🙂 Few decades ago when I was growing up in India as TVs with remotes were introduced in the market they were objects treated with the most reverence. So much so one of the first buys after laying hands on a remote was buying a case/cover to protect those much treasured objects. If a case/cover was not readily available people used to go to great lengths covering the remote with ziploc like transparent plastic and taping it to fit it snugly with the remote. Personally those cases or covers never appealed to me much. Using remote control with cover on is like having protected sex, not quite the same experience as one without 😀 Only reason I can think of for buying those covers/cases is protection from liquid spills while using them. Even that reason doesn’t hold much water as one shouldn’t be handling remote controls and liquids at the same time. Finish with one before handling the other 😉 Another explanation is fear of the numbers or letters on those buttons wearing off. The doesn’t make sense too. Wear off suggests user is very much aware of the function of those buttons and can handle those buttons blindly. Besides if there is so much wear and tear it may be time to replace the remote at least (if not the appliance itself) 😀

Google and pretzel logic

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the pretzel and it couldn’t have come at a more fitting time!

https://www.cnet.com/news/google-welcomes-oktoberfest-with-pretzel-doodle/

“Pretzel logic” is the phrase that came to mind when I looked at the doodle.

Macmillan dictionary defines that phrase as “faulty or circular reasoning that does not stand up to scrutiny”. In other words reasoning that doesn’t have much truth or logic baked into it! Which is what the high and mighty do when they try to rationalize their actions 🙂

Nothing more fitting to describe the times we live in 😀

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus!

Men and women think and react different. Nothing like a real life example to prove it though, right? 😉 One example: While having a great meal me and son can tell crappy jokes or watch crime scenes in TV series replete with gore and still enjoy the meal thoroughly 😀 Wife’s instant reaction if that happens is “We are having a meal, can you guys stop please?” or “Switch off the TV, watch after we have had our meal” 😀 Looks like women find such sights, sounds or even thoughts quite disgusting and disturbing while eating but men can delink easily and nothing comes in the way of enjoying a good meal 😀

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Are_from_Mars,_Women_Are_from_Venus”
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” is title of book by John Gray.
There might have been gray areas when the book was originally written.
Experience tells the gray cells function differently and that’s a truism. What say?

I had a dream

Water is a precious natural resource most of us take for granted. But not everyone is blessed enough to get water by turning on a faucet. One of the indelible images in my mind is of women carrying pots of water on their head for long distances. Ideally no one should have to go through such hardship for the sake of drinking water. Few years ago as I was thinking about this problem I had a dream. It started with water as the main area of concern and expanded to include trees and connectivity, as in connecting remote places by road. I called it the WTC (Water, Trees, Connectivity) plan.

WTC Main objectives: Provide easy access to drinking water for majority of the population, combat deforestation by planting seeds and saplings, connect towns and villages by building proper roads.

Main benefits: Clean, drinking water reduces the risk of water borne illnesses and infections and it’s a basic human need. Trees help in keeping air cleaner, reduce climate change effect in addition to providing edible parts like fruits, leaves and shoots. Also act as first line of barrier for floods. With well connected roads smaller towns and villages become more accessible cutting down on travel time.

How to implement the plan: The basic premise of the solution is nations are built by citizens and solutions are more effective when the citizens are active participants with Government just setting up the rules and providing the necessary support and oversight. Three types of projects
1) Canal building to channel water from places where it is abundant to places where it is in dearth (within a State to start with)
2) Planting seeds and sapling for trees that are tough and do not suck up too much water from the soil (would probably rule out eucalyptus and almond trees)
3) Construction of roads

How to get human and financial resources for the project? Every fit male (and female if they wish to volunteer) in the age group 21-50 could help in one of the following ways:
1) Work fulltime in any of the 3 types of project
2) If holding a fulltime job, employer provides one week / year for this volunteering effort
3) If not able to volunteer, donate one week’s pay/year up to a maximum of Rs. 10,000/person that would be tax deductible and go directly to this effort
4) Donations from non-residents and non-citizens for WTC which would be tax deductible.

The more I thought the more appealing the idea became. Some of the additional benefits I visualized were farming becoming more viable due to water availability, decongestion of cities due to employment opportunities provided by the projects, increase in sale of equipment, plants and seeds needed for the projects, increased opportunities to service those working in the projects by providing food, tea/coffee and shelter and more than anything else chance for citizens of different castes, religion, social and economic groups to interact and work together in building something with their own hands. The idea seems simple and doable. Would be worthwhile to start on a small scale in specific places to see how it works and what potential problems one could run into. Challenge would be when scaling it into a nationwide project. That would involve city planners, architects, civil contractors in addition to subject matter experts relating to areas like water conservation, channeling, forestry, accounting etc.

Not knowing how and who to present it the idea remained in the back of mind. Lethargy also meant I kept postponing putting the idea on paper. The dream lives on, hopefully gets implemented in whatever form it is that helps people. While technology has brought a positive change in many people’s lives its impact has been felt only by a small % of the population. IMHO any solution that involves and helps a big % of population and prevents people moving just for the sake of employment is a better solution.