Social media is better at breaking things than at making things

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/opinion/social-media-destroyer-or-creator.html?_r=0

Anil Kakodkar Committee on Railway Safety and the Indore-Kanpur rail accident

A High level safety review committee was constituted under the Ministry of Railways headed by Dr Anil Kakodkar, the former Atomic Energy Commission chairman. It also had former managing director of Delhi Metro Rail corporation (DMRCL) E Sreedharan as one of its advisors. It was constituted in the year 2012 by the UPA-2 govt.

Some of the major recommendations of the committee:

• Setting up of an independent body like Railway Safety Authority under the ministry with chairman and experts members being taken from outside the Railways.
• A robust and powerful Safety Architecture to have a safety oversight on the operational mode of the Railways.
• The committee found that 65 per cent of the total deaths due to train accidents were at level crossings. To eliminate this it recommended elimination of both manned and unmanned level crossings within the next five years (i.e., withing 2017) as a measure of avoiding accidents and deaths. This would also improve the line capacity as trains get held up at busy LC gates st the same time save operation and maintenance costs incurred at the gates.
• Monitoring the bridges in terms of scientific measurements of deflections/displacements, water level and flow velocity on a continuous basis and sharing the data with the office of the concerned Chief Bridge Engineer.
• The committee notes that the Railways had already classified at least 3,000 bridges to be 100 years old or more and 32 bridges to be distressed structures, vulnerable bridges need to be fitted with water level gauges and turbine flow meters to measure flow which should be interlocked in a way to warn the driver of the approaching train.
• An advanced signalling system based on continuous track circuiting and cab signalling similar to European train control system Level-II on the entire trunk route of about 19,000 route kilometres at an estimated cost of Rs.20,000 crore within five years.This can be done by the customization to the Indian conditions of technologies like the Anti-Collision Detection Device and the Train Protection and Warning System. 
• If all the recommendations of the committee would be accepted then the total financial implication would be of Rs. 1lakh crore in five years. The fund requirement for doing away with level crossings was estimated at Rs.50,000 crore which is an investment that apart from saving lives could be recouped in about 8 years as the monetary saving due to phasing-out of level crossings would stand at Rs.7,000 crore per annum.
• The committee noted that, based on the data for the last 5 years the Indian Railways was spread across 64,000 route kilometres. The rail derailments accounted for nearly half the total accidents followed by accidents at unmanned level crossing gates (36 per cent). Level crossing incidents contributed to 59 per cent of the deaths and 42 per cent of casualties.
• The committee also recommended time-bound filling up of vacancies in Critical Safety Categories and Manpower Planning Issues.

The committee's recommendations are yet to be implemented completely. The recent Indore-Kanpur train derailment accident is a stark reminder of the risk factors involved in the operation and maintenance of the Indian Railways. Though India has started working on its ambitious Bullet Train and high speed railways for fast and better connectivity, the safety factors needs serious thought and investments. With the railway budget being merged with the general budget, the future of the largest transporter of India will only shine with more funds being allocated for its safety and maintenance along with creation of new rail lines and better facilities for travellers.

Sharia Banking and Indian scenario

Recently, the RBI has expressed its intention to introduce "Islamic Banking Windows" in Indian commercial banks and also proposed the same to the Central government. On reading abut this I decided to take a deeper look at what Islamic banking was all about and why RBI wanted it in Indian banks.

Islamic Banking/ Shariat Banking:
Islamic banking basically follows 2 main principles in consonance with the Shariat Law:

• Sharing both profit and loss 
• Ban on paying and receiving "interest" by borrowers as well as lenders alike, as interest or "Riga" is against the Shariat Law and believed to be exploitative.

The Islamic Banking owes its foundation to the Islamist doctrine of two people(in the present times)

• Indian-born Abul Ala Maududi of the Jamaat-e-Islami  
• Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

Muhammad Saleem a former president and CEO of Park Avenue Bank in New York and a critic of Islamic banking says "Proponents of Islamic banking say that Islam bans all interest. But an understanding of pre-Islamic and Islamic history and keeping in mind the context would lead one to conclude that what the Quran bans is usury, not interest. Usury can be defined as interest above the legal or socially acceptable rate. Phrased differently, usury is the exploitative, exorbitant interest rate."

Financial Inclusion:

RBI has quoted financial inclusion of a group of people who are in minority as one of the reasons for introduction of IB into Indian Commercial banks. 

But the need of the hour is to conduct a socio-economic survey and find out the number of people among the Muslims who are out of any kind of financial inclusion schemes of the GOI like the JAM trinity. If it is found that considerable number people from the community have voluntarily stayed out of the financial mechanism of the country due to lack of Islamic banking facilities, then introduction of Islamic banking in the commercial banks may be considered after consultation with experts and stakeholders.

Sec 377 and the constitutionality

I recently stumbled upon a piece of information (though much later than the actual event took place) which indicated that the Hon'ble PM of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel was a gay and also the only open gay leader in the world as of 2016. Trust me, I read it twice!!!Reason??? very simple...an average Indian that I am, my mind couldn't digest what my eyes read.

Demonetisation of HVC and its long term impact on the Indian economy

The Indira Gandhi Years- An administrative analysis

The DU Photocopy Case

The "Educational Mess"

"Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man"-Swami Vivekananda.


This quotation was part of a letter written to Singaravelu Mudaliyar (Kidi) from Chicago, United States in 1894. The letter was later published as a prose in the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda and was named "What we believe in". This is one of the most famous quotes related to education and expresses Swamiji's ideas related to it. He explained it in very simple terms that education is manifestation(reflection or symbol) of the perfection already in man and probably held that the teacher is the one who guides one towards acquiring that education.


Today in the 21st Century as life has ended up being just a show business, it has pulled education into its folds too. Education which was supposed to bring in modesty, compassion, simplicity, wisdom and above all morality into our lives has ended up being a fancy tool in the hands of the elitist crowd.


I remembered my first day at school very bleakly.Those were the early nineties, when going to a convent school was a privilege not many people could afford.My father dropped me to school and moved to his work. I neither cried nor wanted to run back home. I was enjoying the new atmosphere, where majority of the kids were crying.School for my generation was never a place to compete with our fellow companions. Rather a place which taught us equality. We never bothered if our bags had the most famous cartoon character's picture on it or the lunch box was of a particular color or brand.We never competed with our classmates to have the costlier bag or pencil pouch. We simply lived an innocent childhood. A generation more happy to be playing under a tree than indoors, happy to share our food than think of the hygiene taken care of by the others cook,happy to barter our notes for a day to a friend so that we can borrow their fancy pen.


Our education system taught us to mug up a lot of things but also taught us to respect our teachers. Most of us were not taught to swim or play tennis in our schools, but we were taught not to look down upon our fellow classmates.We were never taught to be judgemental based on the bags we carried our books to school. You may call us backward on several grounds.But life was easy then.At least for a child!!!We did not have to think about competing with our fellow classmates to impress our teachers with a branded shoe or a branded bag. We never bothered if our bags were wildcraft or chumbak or american tourister. We just saw them as bags and nothing else. We never discussed price tags of our clothes or the vehicles that our parents owned.We never bothered if somebody's mother was a divorcee or if their father had left them. The innocence of our childhood remained with us as long and in some cases longer than our childhood days.


But the scenes have changed now. The school going kids are no more the innocent ones.They question the teachers of their rights to preach them morality.They judge each other by the price of the cars they come to school in.They use abusive language at an early age. At times without knowing the exact meaning of the abuse!I agree that world is running fast today and the children have to run with it to catch up with the crowd. But is it enough if they run and win the competition without being morally and ethically sound?" The children of today are the future of tomorrow". So is this the kind of future we are setting up for ourselves?How would it be to have nuclear scientists excellently talented in their domain but morally and ethically poor?Would they not destroy the world to prove their expertise?


Are we teaching our children to respect every individual irrespective of the brand of clothes that they wear or the mode of transport that they use?Are we teaching them that money cannot buy everything by not buying them somethings? Are we teaching them to bond with people and nature without being judgemental.Are we teaching them the life that exists beyond our gated communities?We should! If not their minds would become just that..."A gated community". They would never be able to see the life and struggles beyond that gated community.Let us teach them that education is not synonymous with their degrees.Education is something which expands our rational horizons not restrict it to a subject specialization.


"Happy children's day". Let us continue to uphold the principles of chacha Nehru and be a versatile persona just like him.

Pradhan Mantri Krishi Bima Yojana