Is The Indian Farmer , Karna- Sacrificing Warrior? - Impact of corporate health care on farmers Effect of Corporate Health Care on Rural India:   Corporate Education acts as slow poison on farmers, whereas corporate health care is instant killer. Successive Governments created reasonably good infrastructure in villages with primary health centres, Hospitals. Striking imbalances will be there in terms of coverage. The  roadside villages, constituencies represented by heavy weights will be over saturated and still find uncovered villages in remote & backward areas. If the top down approach is followed, the country could have reached saturation point and budget can be better utilized for maintenance. Similar gaps will be observed in staffing. RTI tool shall be used to balance these imbalances rather than focusing on individual transfers, pay scales etc. Like in education, corporates entered health sector in big way and multispecialty hospitals mushroomed initially

Is The Indian Farmer , Karna- impact of corporate education on farmer Effect of Corporate Education on Rural India:   Till early 90s the primary & high school education in villages was very good and no way inferior to convent education. It fact the rural students used to do well in mathematics & science in comparison to city schools.  Cutting across all castes & class, everyone used to study in  same schools.  The village school infrastructure is good with large play grounds. The credit goes to committed teachers, philanthropists &  initial base created by progressive thinking  panchayat raj  political system. The cost of education is almost free. Early 90s convent schools got inroads first into few villages & slowly spread their base everywhere. In fact these village convent teachers are less qualified than Government schools, but the catch is non telugus, spoken English & attractive school dress. In no time convents in villages became status

  Is Indian Farmer - Karna, Sacrificing Warrior?- External factors influencing the farmers present situation It is not utterly butterly great tasting buttery spread. Unfortunately it is utterly bitterly  catch 22 situation the Indian farmer is in. With families shifting to towns in search of education, the family labour component including the farmer has come down drastically. This results into increased cost of production, low productivity & inconsistent quality of produce, resulting in lower realization.     With incomes not matching with expenditure, both for Agriculture & running the family, many of the farmers are getting into debt trap.  Gold loans,  crop loans, Baniya loans, crop advances, input loans  what not, they are desperate. Certainly this was not the situation of farmers till early 90s. CASE STUDY: I come from a family owned two acres of land. We are two siblings studied in village school till 10th standard, my brother did gradu

Is Indian Farmer , Karna - Sacrificing Worrier? - Farmer issues As published by GOI, total crop area sown in 2015-16 is 693.83 as against 550.42 Lakh hectares in 2014-15. Is it good news for farmers? Intellectual opinions reinstate that contribution of Agriculture to GDP is coming down in percentage terms & it's not  remunerative profession. Even so called progressive thinking policy makers are talking about need for shifting to alternative professions  like service sector, production etc. If these think tank policies are under implementation, how the population depending on Agriculture & area sown are going up? Are the figures quoted above are inconsistent or the shift from Agriculture is really not happening? The problems of farmers increase many fold, with increased acreage under cultivation, increase in number of small & marginal farmers, fragmented land holdings, increased % of lease cultivation, doubtable quality inputs in markets, erratic or n

Liquor Shops on National & State Highways- Potential Death Traps. The quality of roads & road network drastically improved. People are able to maintain average speed of 70 to 90 KMs and able to save on time.  Recently when I travelled on NH , in a stretch of  300 Kms,  I could see seven  Liquor shopping literally abutting the Highway. Lorry drivers, car travelers on Puskaram eve  were stopping on road side and serving themselves. It was given to understand that in Rajasthan & Tamil Nadu, the courts directed the state to remove or relocate over 1400 shops in each state.  Still the Governments are taking the court direction seriously. As we hear daily, there are few severe road accidents causing deaths and severe injuries.   How can Governments promote liquor sales & liquor hoardings on Highways and at the same time conduct  drives to catch drunken drivers ?  Is it not against the principles of Governance?  Is revenues more important than people's lives?

Swachh  Bharath - How Effective The Program Is? Urban sanitation came to stand still in Telangana & AP for last 6 to 8 days due to sanitation workers noncooperation. It is observed in Hyderabad that the drainages are overflowing, trash is spreading on roads and making the city unhygienic & from few areas spread of diseases is reported. The situation will be more dangerous if it rains.  Two months back, GOT took up Swachh Hyderabad as a flagship program & 3 days drive with tall claims of few thousand MT of waste cleared & repair of potholes etc. Senior officers were made in charges of each ward.  About 160 crores budget allotted for the program. GOT & respective state Governments honored celebrities and popular citizens  as brand ambassadors. Yesterday I interacted with two sanitation workers who are on strike. They have a feeling that the " Swachh  Hyderabad " drive was planned only for officers/politicians/celebrities photo sessions & re

Making farming an attractive profession-  Focus on self pollinated seeds Seed is very important input in Agriculture & any negligence  will reduce productivity and quality of produce even if you follow all other practices perfectly. In case of self pollinated crops  like paddy, Groundnut, Pulses, farmers can do seed selection on their own and reduce seed cost drastically & also sue of seed quality.  The seed requirement for acre of land are paddy-30 Kgs, Groundnut kernels - 80 to 120 Kgs, Green Gram - 6 Kgs, Black Gram- 8 Kgs, Chickpea - 20-25 Kgs, Red Gram- 4 Kgs. GOAP came out with seed village program with an objective of saturating villages with introduction of high yielding varieties in self pollinated crops. The program did not create impact due to influence of vested interest seed companies on field staff, lack of transparency etc. The annual requirement of breeder seed in Telugu states of all self pollinated crops is estimated as 3500 MT & Agri Unive

Can we afford to neglect agriculture???  It's largely debated that the agriculture is becoming unviable & it's contribution to GDP is declining in % terms. The factors of influence include increased input costs, abnormal climatic changes, erratic rainfall patterns, increased manpower cost etc. The increase in yields are not proportionate to increase in cost of cultivation, hence poor ROI. So what is the solution? Can we neglect the sector as it is not profitable? How will we meet our growing food needs? Where do you accommodate the large sections of people living in villages? Answers are very complex and any sensible person will not even think of neglecting Agriculture. How do we address these complex issues? Is it not the responsibility starting from farmer to the policy maker (entire food chain) to take it as challenge and crack it? The factors in farmer's  control are  productivity of manpower, low cost but appropriate technological interventions, inn

Collective action in Agriculture operations - Can it be revived? The major strength of our country is collective action. With the western influence, we too started looking things more from commercials & converting our strengths into weaknesses.   The farming operations in our village till mid 80s is the best example of collective action.. Mostly agricultural operations are seasonal & more so in delta areas like ours. It is very difficult to get wage laborers, more so for small farmers particularly during transplantation & harvesting operations. Our family & another 3 families in our neighborhood used to form as group and collectively handle all the operations with minimum engagement of  wage laborers. The traditional family Dhobi, Barber, Cobbler etc used join the operations and get produce in kind. The food being prepared at farm, rice mixed with pickle, curd in a bamboo basket, served to everyone by hand is still  mouth watering experience. The econo

Community participation & Collective action- Why is it disappearing? I hail  from a coastal village on the right bank of Krishna river, downstream of Vijayawada. Floods was a common phenomena for the villages on both left & right banks (Prakasam Barrage at Vijayawada to Avanigadda, river joining Bay of Bengal) till Nagarjuna Sagar dam coming into existence in 1965. Karakattas (raised earthen dams) are existing to protect the villages from floods. The floods were very frequent and almost severe floods atleast once in three years. The villagers used to gather on Karakatta with gaslights, sand bags, crowbars etc. Any signals of breach used to be attended immediately and protect villages. It used to be 24x 7 operation and community cooking was common. Sometimes it used to take 10 to 15 days for the river waters to recede. As a child it used to be big fun for us and used to look forward for more such occasions, as we did not know the seriousness.  There used to be mi

Housing issues of urban poor- How to address? Successive Governments are making tall claims like housing for all, bigger & comfortable housing etc & keeping on promising. Can Government alone can address these growing needs of housing? MY ANSWER IS BIG NO. With migration of poor to meet growing demand of service sector , increasing population growth among poor, nuclear families, change in social status due to inflation , the demand for urban housing for poor is growing at faster phase. Growing demand for land in prime areas, hunger for large bungalows etc is making land as a scarce commodity in cities and becoming as major hurdle to fulfill the dream housing. Quality of housing undertaken particularly verticals proved to be unfit for living in two to three years time. Domestic help, drivers etc are becoming a must for urban middle class and unless until their housing needs are addressed the services will become expensive and will lead to unrest among those sec

How transparent our decision makers are? A senior officer's wife want to buy sugar in bulk,  to prepare sweets for a special occasion.  She insisted sir je to join for shopping, they explored high end shopping mall, supermarkets, hypermarket, begumbazar and found huge variation in price. As madam insisted for a better deal, he could manage even a better deal getting direct delivery from the unit. The savings is around 40 % & its huge even for upper middle class family.   Next day, Sir Je  was to decide on a tender to buy sugar for distribution to poor people and he has to buy few hundred tons every month involving crores of rupees. He finalized on a quote 30% higher than what he paid for his own transaction. System is so loose ended and it may not pinpoint him as guilty.  If someone  point fingers towards him, he may pass the blame on political system. Let him be honest to himself, If he want to take an appropriate decision within the powers vested with the positi

Do we have options to choose? 65 Years after Independence- Azaad Bharatha Maatha.  Still struggling to solve basic issues like ROTI, KAPDA, MAKAAN ( FOOD, CLOTHING & SHELTER) . Are the basic needs are  really being addressed & how effectively? Despite tall claims on  world's largest public distribution system, food for work program etc, why poverty is not been addressed properly.  Where is this money going? Is the pilferage worse than the famous quote of Late Rajiv Gandhi? Are these funds being recycled into political system of AAYA RAM- GAYA RAM   (popularly known as political horse trading , note for vote etc) and intruding into our democracy like cancer. What is the solution? We have very limited political options. The available quality of the fabric is same. We are cutting the pieces from same fabric and designing, redesigning, altering etc to suit the requirements at that point of time. Immediately the new design may look good,  but in long run all de

Health care- Relevance to Society Thanks to advancements and R&D in healthcare.  So many innovations in health care and cosmetic care, is not only increased the life expectancy but also making one look young & fit. Do not forget the fact that if you want to live long with ease and comforts, you need to have good support systems like driver, secretary, domestic servants etc. Like you offered to spent on health care, they cannot. If their life expectancy is not nearer to yours, there will be huge shortage of manpower in support systems. In such scenario, the services will become expensive and unaffordable.  West is facing the same situation. It's not far in India. DONATE LIBERALLY TO NATIONAL HEALTH MISSION. IMPROVEMENTS IN QUALITY OF  HEALTHCARE   FOR  POOR WILL CONTRIBUTE TO QUALITY OF YOUR OWN LIFE. BGR  

Roles & Responsibilities of citizens - Effectiveness of system We have constitution & its related  bodies and guiding principles to protect the rights of citizens of our country. We have well oiled mechanism of bureaucracy & systems to implement the programs within the framework of constitution. We have world's largest democracy - People's elected representatives having presence from Nation to Village Panchayat level. These are the watchdogs on bureaucracy & systems to ensure people's interests are protected and function within the constitutional framework. Why things are not moving in right direction? There is very thin line between policy & implementation, but it's very important line. If policy makers get into execution, obviously the vested interests will prevail. It is the reason for present situation of rampant corruption etc. Public has to wake up & keep questionin

Indian Temples- Are they  safe? Again one more sad incident of public stampede.  This time it is at Rajahmundry- Godavari Puskar Ghat. 35 or more common public died, hue and cry from political parties, media, religious leaders etc. People forget about it after few days. Again it may repeat in another form somewhere & the action starts again.  Mecca, kumbamela, jallikattu & many previous experiences. Have we really learned anything good from the history?  In a country with so many temples, rivers, religious affiliations, is it not appropriate to have preventive strategy in place. Most of our temples are very old and the designs are suited to the prevailing situations at that time. Also the very few important spots are developed to suite the commercial interests prevailing during those days (centralized religious activity). Those days only few sections were allowed into temples.  With population growth, transparent temples policy, religious promotions (hope the intentio

Lessons to learn from stampede at Godavari Pushkar Ghat It is very sad that when the entire state is in festive mood of " GODAVARI PUSKARAM " eve, this very unfortunate incident of stampede happened. No doubt, everyone has right to demand for enquiry, punishing the guilty, rise quality issues etc., and certainly Government is accountable and answerable. There is time to score political differences within the framework of democracy. Therefore considering the grave situation, all parties keep aside the political differences and extend support to Government in handling the situation and ensure that confidence of the people is restored, so that the sanctity attached to Pushkar and festivity which comes once in 12 years is fully enjoyed by everyone.  It is known 12 years back itself, that Godavari Puskaram will come in 2015 with tentative dates also. Even for constructing a small house, one will take 2 to 3 years time frame to complete it to his satisfaction. For such a

Separation of Andhra Pradesh – Issues pertaining to state Capital Role of Congress: It is very unfortunate that the Congress party took such a hasty step of declaring the separation of Telengana from Andhra Pradesh. It is clearly visible & obvious that the step was taken to get political gains over BJP in Centre & YSRCP, TRS & TDP in AP & Telangana. The logical steps such as deliberations on Srikrishna committee report, formation of SRC, intellectual brain storming on possible repercussions, water distribution, and issues related to nervous centre of united AP i.e., Hyderabad, many such issues are being completely ignored.   Illogical approach: We cannot compare Telangana separation issue with previous states separation happened in the year 2000. At that time Jharkhand was separated from Bihar, Chhattisgarh from Madhya Pradesh & Uttaranchal from Uttar Pradesh. Unfortunately this was also done in a hasty manner as it was suiting all political parties rele

AP State Separation - Property Rights Issues Andhra Pradesh  got  separated  into  two states on 2nd June, 2014. Even after one year of the separation,  the issues related to assets and its allocation etc is not clear and ambiguous. A sort of unpleasant  situation is being developed and things are not very clear for both states.  GOI who was instrumental in the separation of the state, has to get into the depth of the state reorganization bill and ensure that equal justice is done . As it was clearly stated in reorganization bill, Hyderabad will be the integral part of Telangana & AP have to look for suitable place for capital and GOI will suitably support AP in capital building exercise. AP is given the opportunity of having their capital in Hyderabad for a period of 10 years & GHMC jurisdiction is declared as common capital area. Andhra Pradesh  was established as a new state in the year 1956 by combining Hyderabad state with another part separated from Madras s