Beauty of Assam Bandh

What is ‘Assam Bandh’?


This is a kind of holidays , which are well signified in Assam. These holidays give sudden visits, without coming according to the calender, with maximum frequency in a year.


The biggest festival of Assam is Bihu…..which comes thrice in a year…. But Assam Bandh comes at least 10-15 times a year. It is a day for celebration for some, and a time for relaxation for others.

I visit Assam once or twice in a year, and this is a record, that I never missed an Assam Bandh during my visit. Lucky me! But, sometimes it becomes troublesome too.

Last year, I went to Assam for 20 days. I stayed couple of days at my in –Laws’s place and then went to my maternal place –Jorhat to stay few days there. My mom informed me beforehand that we would have to visit Grand-ma’s place at Sibsagarh to attend a family Puja, the very next day we would reach Jorhat.

We reached Jorhat at 8 pm as we drove from Guwahati to Jorhat, enjoying the natural beauty of Assam all the way. Reaching Jorhat, I called up my sister who used to stay in Agriculture University hostel, to ask her if she could accompany us. She replied me in a shocking way…. “How come will u go to Sibsagarh…? …Tomorrow is Saka (Wheel) Bandh!” We were not aware of that as no newspaper, we read, carried the news. The bandh was declared by Bodo student union.

We got worried. What to do now?

Bodo population is extremely thin in upper Assam. And, we did not want to miss the Puja at Grand ma’s place. We decided to start our voyage…became ready to face all the troubles, all the way to Sibsagarh. My Dad said that he would not accompany and wanted to take rest at home for the day. So, my mom, me and my son, my husband and my maid were the travelers.

Next day morning, at around 9am, while we were supposed to start our journey, we suddenly realized that we did not have enough petrol to drive whole the way. It was around 80 kms from Jorhat to our destination. In fact, we checked Dad’s car also, but it also had not enough petrol.

Thinking that may be some petrol pump would be open on the way, taking some risk, we started our journey. Checked all the Petrol pumps on the way…..all were closed. Roads were completely empty. We drove fast.

Suddenly after crossing around 20 kms, we saw two/three people sitting with 10/15 bottles with some raddish water….. They were sitting just opposite side of a closed Petrol Pump in the national high way. Oh…….those bottles were full of petrol! ……My husband immediately stopped the car….and went almost running as if he had got some diamonds!!!

I observed him from inside the car and could see the vivid transformation of his face from a tensed red face into a bright one. He bargained…and bought 10 bottles in four times higher than the petrol price. We were happy! And the sellers too…! Some good feelings also flowed out from our hearts for those people though we were in lose.

So, we reached Grand ma’s place… all uncles, aunties, relatives - all were present in the Puja, despite it was a working day – ‘Wednesday’. All were relaxed…..as it was public holiday – called ‘Assam Bandh’!

Few eLearning Models

Learning is a skill one can improve. But, how to learn is a key to its mastery.

Learning is the crucial determinant of personal and professional success in our ever-changing knowledge age. People and organizations that endeavor to succeed had better get good at it. Few learning models for example :


Game based learning :

Are your learners learning without getting bored? Are all the learners motivated enough to learn more and more? Do you have hard-to-engage learner group and do you need to motivate them?

In many situation, we see that learners loose connections with the course material during the training, be it instructor-led or electronic. They start engaging themselves in drawing something in their note pad, send sms to dear ones or else try to complete their pending tasks. Here, the challenge is to create such training module that engage the learners fully, as we realize that the more interactive the training be (without losing the main objective), the better understanding every learner will have of what we are trying to convey.

In this day and age, applications are the most prevalent medium, when it comes to entertainment. There are social apps, travel apps, photo apps, food apps etc. But the remarkable part of it all is that, gaming apps are still the ones preferred by the majority of the audience. We believe they are the ones that entertain the most. So, why shouldn’t we use their base to help people learn?

Game-based training can help learners acquire new knowledge or abilities in a fun, fast way, while being highly motivating and can generate real competition of people in a risk-free environment. Saying it sounds really simple, but the big challenge comes when trying to think about making it real.

So, first of all, we need to analyze putting ourselves into the end-users’ shoes and try to come up with what we would be interested in experiencing, seeing, listening and ultimately learning.

The objective of Game-based training should not be to entertain but to use entertainment to reinforce learning. The main focus when developing learning games should remain on :

 Change the dull content into interesting ones
 Create a virtual environment, but realistic and safe environments for the user
 Demand challenges but also make users satisfied
 Learners can learn with relaxed minds
 Learners get motivated as they get points or up-gradation marks
 Help develop side knowledge: build an assumption, solve problems, and develop strategies
 Have defined objectives for each problem
 Totally interactive.
 Covert knowledge heavy content into lighter and more effective
 Invite to think, develop, analyze, summarize, and conclude
 Have fun: keep continuous connection and interest of the learner with the course
 Meet industry standards



Simulation-based training :


There can be many situations like, sometimes, complex and heavy-weight equipments are hard to set-up in an educational institution or an organization for demonstration; it is not feasible for many educational institutes to set-up full-fledged laboratory facility for the students ; in some medical institutes, real dissections or operations are not possible for the practice sessions; in manufacturing companies, it is not possible that laborers learn or demonstrate the functionality and parts of a heavy machinery. Or, in many situations, some organization feel the need of testing some ideas or information analysis in virtual environments before actually implementing them.

In such kind of scenarios, Simulation-based training offers a user-friendly interface and a highly effective way of demonstration. A user can play in an interactive environment and discover the functions and constraints of a model. A real experiment scenario can be simulated on the user’s screen.

Simulation-based training gives the learners opportunity to make error. It allows the learners to practice in a risk- free –learning environment. The learner can also get real time grading, feedback, report etc.

Besides, ‘Break’ is very important in a training. Continuous textual, animation, graphics –based knowledge can drag distraction to the learners. So, to keep up the learner’s continuous interest and connection, hands on experience can be provided to the learner through simulation based training.

To take some example, in case of marketing management, marketing, operations, and strategy making are the closest to give a real-life experience. Here, simulations can be worked on in teams or individual. At the back-end of such training modules lies the master-mind of training creator, who provides numerous scenarios to test the capability of the participants.

In a corporate, simulation-based trainings can help enhance skill sets of new and existing employees in shortest amount of time, by customizing the training to the technology, processes, and functioning of the organization. Such trainings are highly effective to actively manage and analyse data in an organization. In fact, Simulation platforms offer an edge when it comes to testing ideas. Users can identify the possible outcomes, prepare an action plan, test the plan or idea in a simulated environment, and hence make an informed decision to introduce a positive change in the business.

Simulation-based trainings are ideal for Medical, Manufacturing, Marketing Management, Technical courses etc.


Collaborative Learning :

Traditionally, learning in organizations has consisted of structured courses, classroom training, elearning, seminars and on the job training etc. Information gets outdated today almost as fast as one blinks. Capturing the tacit knowledge of individuals is perhaps one of the biggest challenges in knowledge management. In their quest for growth and market dominance, even the best of organizations are facing unique challenges and struggling for solutions. These experiences, if shared with the entire team in real-time, on a platform that can organize such diverse information into structured content - can provide the advantage needed to excel in today’s global economy.

While mentoring is known to be one of the most successful ways to train people, mentoring large numbers of people is difficult, though not impossible. What if, the mentoring your team needs has to come from a diverse set of mentors? Across geographical boundaries? From experts in the field who are not part of your team? Can best practices be gleaned from contemporaries, colleagues, management, experts and mentors alike – simultaneously – in real time – without turning your best people into full time trainers or taking them away from their core competency, ever?

Gnosis provides such a platform. Gnosis provides a mechanism to not only structure such collaborative content from the experts, but also provides analytical tools to measure and reward such contributions.

Tap the Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge is the significant information that resides in an individual’s mind. Tacit knowledge is difficult to track and capture as it is not written down. It is simply the knowledge, someone has gathered from experience. It is unseen and thus often untapped. But it is a treasure pyramid of knowledge.

Much of the learning can happen by way of learning from the experts and experienced professionals. Organizations that can identify and connect experts, who can share their tacit knowledge benefit by providing higher quality solutions, grow faster. However, such tacit knowledge sharing is typically unstructured and does not provide ways to measure the expanse of the knowledge. Capturing the tacit knowledge of individuals is perhaps one of the biggest challenges in knowledge management.

So, how to tap the tacit knowledge?

Carrying informal discussions into a collaborative environment is an ideal way to begin. It replaces off-the-cuff interactions like shouting over the cubicle and blasting email threads with a single, well-structured place where people can collaborate, that may extend to customers and partners.

In a corporate scenario, where employees can come together, collaborate, share and learn from each other on job-related skills or product and service functions, collaboration with the experience and expert people who have been in the job function for several years is very important. Also, while a standard training program or on the job training does provide for the initial training that is required to perform a job function, the expertise of the experienced professionals in that function can enable one to learn the nuances associated with a job function. So, expertise management becomes a central ideology of tacit knowledge.

Organization should provide such a platform which should enable people to share information about a current issue, problem, or any relevant query with knowledge veterans. Organizations, by automatically capturing these interactions, can expand the scope of reusable knowledge to include various silos data, by recording, documenting, and storing for future reference.

In many situations, even, within a professional community or an organization, we see lack of motivation for the experts to spend time in sharing their knowledge with the inexperienced. So, it is also important to provide recognition and encouragement to the expert contributions by tracking and measuring such contributions, thereby motivating them to share their expertise.

Click at http://www.infoprolearning.com/gnosis/ to know more.

Dip into the pool of Social Learning

Social media technologies have ushered a new era in the learning industry. In recent years, organizations of all sizes have started using social media technologies both internally and externally. External usages are for marketing, customer support, and many other uses and internally social media technologies are used to increase collaboration, communication, informal learning, and ultimately, business success.

The technologies differ depending on business needs and availability, but usually include some combination of blogs, forums, social networking, micro-messaging, social bookmarking, podcasting, video-sharing etc.

There are many ways to leverage from the Social learning within an organization:

• Encourage collaborative learning by linking your social learning tool or platform with your intranet portals, your Learning Management System, and so on. Linking to and from related e-Learning courses can be a just right way to supplement your existing formal learning content.

• Persuade people to regularly visit, post, involve, discuss in the forum
• Get relevant leaders in the organization involve in promoting the forum by sharing their thoughts, speaking and advising from their experience and expertise. Encouraging Thought Leadership can help the organization tap into the tacit knowledge
• If there is a great discussion at the forum or if someone gives a real good idea or excellent answer to any question, let the senior management pick and highlight that to encourage people to use it
• Enable newcomers to learn together by collaborating with each other and asking questions to the key veterans, or the subject matter experts

So, translate Organizational Knowledge into Organized Wisdom through social collaborative learning.

Click at http://www.infoprolearning.com/gnosis/ to know more.

Collaborative Learning is superior

Learning is no longer memorizing what the teacher considers important. Today, we are in transition. It is now time to convert yourself from training pawns to proactive learning opportunists.

We do most of our learning during spontaneous, collaborative activities. We learn on-the-job, from other people like parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, teachers, playmates, cousins, roommates, teammates, classmates, coaches, study groups, mentors, bosses, colleagues, gossips, co-workers, neighbors, and even, our children.

We even learn more in the recreation room than in the classroom. We discover how to do our jobs through informal learning, e.g, observing others, asking the person in the next cubicle, discussing with the experienced and experts of the organization, calling the help desk, try and learn from mistakes, and simply working with people.

Research says that collaborative learning is three times more important in becoming proficient on the job than company-provided training. Most people developed many of their skills by modeling the behavior of their colleagues and peers. People, who are well connected or networked, make greater contributions than those who are not.

Informal learning is personal. The learner individually takes the responsibility. In formal or traditional learning environment, learning is imposed by someone else. In case of formal learning - classes and workshops and online events - is the source of only 10% to 20% of what we learn at work. While traditional learning helps establish a sound foundation, it frequently falls short in completely meeting expectations of a professional environment, where graduates are expected to acquire, interpret, and evaluate information to learn, reason, and solve problems.

We need to bring a collaborative, structured, community-based learning approach, which allows us discuss with others who help us define what is relevant, which provides the learners the freedom of place and time to access their online courses anywhere, anytime and through any device and which can bridge the gap and provide continuity between informal and formal learning.

Importance of Corporate Governance in an organization

In the recent times, there are many fraud cases, scams, corruption practices which came into the light. Scandals of Enron, 2G, Satyam, World cam are the example of the race. Inappropriate use of public money is happening every day worldwide in banks, financial institutions, stock market, various companies, government, where not!

But good part is -due to these scandals, organizations are adopting corporate governance as their practices.

Many people know the definition, but very few actually understand or implement the actual or good corporate governance. Good corporate governance is the balance of power among the directors, managers, employees and other stakeholders. Good corporate governance brings transparency and fairness into the system and discourages frauds. It protects the rights of all the stakeholders.

Corporate governance is a term that refers broadly to the rules, processes, or laws by which businesses are operated, regulated, and controlled. The term can refer to internal factors defined by the officers, stockholders or constitution of a corporation, as well as to external forces such as consumer groups, clients, and government regulations.

Many organizations spend good amount of money to create brand identity. Goodwill and reputation can be created through various approaches like marketing, CSR, strong relationship with stakeholders. Corporate Governance creates goodwill of the company over a period of time. It helps the organizations develop strong customer relationship, create brand reputation in the market and ultimately leads to brand loyalty, because these are imperative for the long term success of the organization.

Good corporate governance consists of a system of structuring, operating and controlling an organisation to achieve the followings:

- An organisational culture based on a foundation of sound business ethics
- Meeting the long-term strategic goal of the owner, while taking into account the expectations of all the key stakeholders, and in particular:
o think and care for the interests of employees, past, present and future
o work to maintain excellent relations with both customers and suppliers
o take account of the needs of the environment and the local community
- Maintaining proper compliance with all the applicable legal and regulatory requirements under which the company is carrying out its activities.

So, what good corporate governance can do?

- Support, measure and project integrity of the organization
- Encourage honest and transparent monitoring of each and every activity of the organization
- Assist training & development of the directors, empowering them in decision making
- Allow information sharing with all the stakeholders of the organization, be the employees, shareholders etc.
- Help attracting good talented workforce by creating good brand image
- Sharpen the human skills through regular training & development of the employees
- Investors are always attracted towards the transparent governance policies
- Protect and enhance the right of the individual investors and other market participants


So, I think that an organization must be structured in such a way that all the requirements are catered for and can be seen to be operating effectively by all the interest groups concerned.

***

Financial Exclusion to Financial Inclusion : A Big Challenge Ahead

Financial inclusion is perhaps the most debated topic in developing countries current times.

In this article, I will be gorging on some of the challenges of financial inclusion in India, its essential characteristics and some of the methods that should be adopted to conquer these complications. In India, where the population is diverse, more than 60% of the population are excluded from the financial systems. The diverse nature of population in an economic, cultural and multi-lingual society, with various levels of literacy warrants the adoption of a homogenous instrument which becomes omnipresent in the society.


The challenges of Financial Inclusion

India is significantly behind the curve in terms of access to financial services. For six lakhs villages, we have 30,000 bank branches. India has currently the second-highest number of financially excluded households in the world. Marginal farmers, landless labourers, self employed and unorganized sector enterprises, ethnic minorities and women, the so called marginalized in the minorities continue to be financially excluded class. Approximately, 40% of India’s population have bank accounts, and only about 10% have any kind of life insurance cover, while a meager 0.6% have non-life insurance cover.

Lack of legal identity like voter id, driving license, birth certificates, employment identity card etc, limited financial literacy and lack of basic education prevent people to have access from financial services. 80% of the children today in 2011 do not reach the 10th class, 50% drop out is up to the 5th and 6th and between 6 and 10 another 30%. These are the statistics. Besides, in India, low income people generally have the attitude of thinking that banks are only for rich. Many people voluntarily infact have excluded themselves due to psychological barriers and they think that they are excluded from accessing financial services.

Many commercial banks operate only in commercially profitable areas and they set up branches and main offices only in those areas. People who lived in under developed areas find it very difficult to go to those areas in which banks are generally reside. Apart from that, women are generally excluded from the national mainstream and more so when it comes to India. More women are under the poverty line compared to men.

In case of low-income households, the lack of access to bank accounts and other saving opportunities result in no savings, low investments, lack of financial planning and security for old age, difficulties in gaining access to credit or getting credit from informal sources at exorbitant rates, increased unemployment due to lack of self–employment opportunities, higher incidence of crime etc. This financial exclusion not only widens the ‘Rich-Poor divide’, it also leads to ‘Social Exclusion’.

In country like India, with diverse social and economic profiles, financial education is particularly more relevant for people who are resource poor and who operate at the margin and are vulnerable to persistent downward financial pressures. With no established banking relationship, the un-banked poor are pushed towards expensive alternatives.

Adopted methods around Financial Inclusion

Considering the importance of financial inclusion for the economy of the country the Government of India (Ministry of Finance), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and NABARD are adopting different measures for the financial inclusion. The target is to achieve the cent per cent financial inclusion in the country upto 2012.

The new branch authorization policy of RBI encourages banks to open branches in these under-banked states and under-banked areas in other states. The new policy also emphasizes for making efforts by the bank to achieve financial inclusion and other policy objectives. The RBI’s directive to all commercial banks to open no-frill accounts if a prospective customer fails to give at least identity proof/ verification and residential proof.

RBI is also emphasizing for branchless banking i.e., through Business correspondent and Business Facilitator model. Now RBI has also eased the restrictions for mobile banking. For effective operationalization of universal banking and proper development of modern banking, RBI encourages for the coverage of large segment of rural population for availing the National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT), ATM, Credit Card facilities etc. RBI has also made a plan to entrust the lead banks to provide banking services either through banking outlet or through technology in every village that has a population of 2000.

Ministry of Finance, Govt. of India is also playing a pivotal role for the greater financial inclusion in the country. In 2007-08 the Government had set up two Finds i.e., Financial Inclusion Fund (FIF)and Financial Inclusion Technology Fund (FITF) with a corpus of Rs. 500 crore each under NABARD in order to extend banking services to the unbanked areas. In the budget of 2009-10, the Government has further contributed Rs.100 crore to each of these funds in order to strengthen the pace of development of financial inclusion. The contributors to these funds are Government of India, RBI and NABARD.


Probable Solutions

After analyzing in depth the underpinning reasons of financial exclusion in India, we can feel that financial literacy is the need of the hour. The first step should be creating awareness and financial literacy among minorities and poor. Intensive awareness, education and promotion can create an in-depth impact on the masses.

Government should promote introduction of basic banking – relevance, services, merits as a topic in secondary and higher secondary classes in all education institutions. Banks should design and organize aggressive education and promotion campaigns in unbanked parts of urban, semi – urban and rural areas to enhance financial literacy and awareness, as well as to remove the doubts and apprehensions that the masses have towards the banking sector. Besides, government should extend financial assistance to students from poor families for school, college and professional studies.

The micro-credit and the Self Help Group movements are in their infancy. We need to promote formation of these groups among minorities, SCs, STs and the women who are discriminated against by financial institutions.

Innovation in the form of business facilitators and correspondents will be needed for banks to increase their outreach for banks to ensure financial inclusion. Banks should involve the knowledgeable and well-informed local inhabitants in such activities. This will help the banks to consolidate and ensure, prompt and extensive response from populace. Banks should gather support from the NGOs, retired bank personals, academic institutions, to reach the desired numbers within a limited span of time. Once the erroneous belief is removed from the minds of the general public, they automatically will join the mainstream. The all round awareness and education simulation will drive them to open savings and current accounts. This will mark the start of basic banking in actual sense.

There has been a burst of entrepreneurship across the country, spanning rural, semi-urban and urban areas. This has to be nurtured and financed. It is only through growth of enterprises across all sizes that competition will be fostered. We should teach entrepreneurial skills to women from poor households who have good skills but manufacture things on daily wages for middleman and extend the line of credit and technical skills to such women.

Government sponsored publicity campaigns through all medias – radio, television, newspapers, village panchayat, movies, local stage shows etc. can play a vital role in Financial inclusion.

The role of Smart Cards and Biometrics

Now we can see that we have to continue with our tireless endeavor to combat monsters like illiteracy, poverty, ignorance, cultural and psychological hurdles and simultaneously design innovative, lucrative and low cost banking products and services to lure public, to join the mainstream. Technology can be used to increase financial inclusion:

• Smart cards for opening bank accounts with biometric identification. For doing a transaction, the customer has to approach the Business Correspondent with his Bio Metric Smart Card. The Business Correspondent can confirm the identity of the customer with the help of the card and bio metrics and then initiate the transaction in the Hand Held Device. The Hand Held Device is capable of reading the Smart Card, scanning the finger prints and is also voice enabled in the local language
• Link to mobile or hand held connectivity devices ensure that the transactions are recorded in the bank’s books on real time basis
• Some State Governments are routing social security payments as also payments under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme through such smart cards. The same delivery channel can be used to provide other financial services like low cost remittances and insurance.
• The use of IT also enables banks to handle the enormous increase in the volume of transactions for millions of households for processing, credit scoring, credit record and follow up.


With these, we can hope that financial inclusion will lead to financial development in our country which will help to accelerate economic growth.

***

Ghostly Experience

Do you believe in ghost? I did…

After completion of my college, I took admission at Guwahati University (GU) for my masters. I was excited…for a new life…opening a new chapter. I was in hostel since my 11th. But, experience of University is perhaps unmatched!

GU has 8 girls’ hostels and 10 boys’ hostels with a beautiful green campus. I got admission in Hostel no.1 (R.C.C. -1). R.C.C. -1 has a capacity of 80 girls. It is a two-story building. All the rooms are connected with very long corridor in each floor. It is adjacent to a hill, for which our hostel was attacked by the monkeys all the day.

As freshers have to adjust in their accommodations, initially, I was placed in a hall of 8 girls. It was altogether a different experience of staying timidly being scared of the seniors, facing raggings etc. We used to go to the dinning hall all of us together silently, immediately the bell used to ring, and come back to the room before our senior batch girls used to go for dinner.

After a month, some of us got allocation of few rooms. I got the extreme corner twin sharing room in the first floor, which had a balcony. From the front door of the room, the bathroom section starts. And in between the basin area and the room, there was a store room, where some unused materials were kept. The store room used to be locked all the time. And there was a closed window from our room too. I and my roommate Barna were quite happy to get the room as the other girls of our batch got four seater rooms without balcony. All of them congratulated us.

On the first day itself, at around 8 pm, suddenly Barna came running to the room with a scary face. Myself and three of my classmates were discussing something interesting. Barna used to be our BBC news as she had good terms with one of the senior girls. Barna said, “Hey Madhu! This room is haunted! I am no gonna stay here…For long time the room was unoccupied!”
We all were blank….Didn’t know what to do…!!! Dinner bell rang. Both of us couldn’t have food properly. Ultimately, we decided that we will be staying in a different room with our other batch mates, sharing the beds.

Two days we stayed in other’s room. But what next?

The third day…with our brave hearts, decided to stay in our own room. Two other brave girls also agreed to sleep with us. Around 11 PM! Lights were on. We four were in the effort of getting asleep. Suddenly, we got to hear some sounds in the door. Not exactly the knocking, something like… “Hoooo..Hoooo..” as if somebody is trying to whistle through the door. It was winter season….We all put ourselves inside the heavy blankets…and slept somehow.

First night was over. Second night too, it was the repeat of the previous day. Barna could not resist herself. She got up from the bed. Took a knife and went into the door. Did some R & D. Put some papers in between the door panels. And then onwards, there was no sound…! And got to know that wind used to pass through the door for which those sound we used to get to hear.

Story does not finish here. Next day again, there was a heavy rain and storm in the evening. We were feeling cosy. We both were studying at our tables. Suddenly at around 8 PM, we got to hear some sounds of throwing utensils in the store room. It was locked from outside, so who will throw the utensils inside? Big question! We called our neighbours….all were sweating in the January cold atmosphere. What to do again….one problem we solved, another arised. This time, Barna was silent. We called our cook uncles. Two of them came….but were scared to open neither the door, nor the window from our room and go inside the dark room. So, when there is a problem with the good people, God always send some Angel to help! That’s happened with us too like Chetan Bhagat’s Call Centre book!

A senior batch girl - Chandana came forward to go through the window. Our two brave cook uncles also agreed to go behind her. So, expedition started. Chandana opened the window and went inside with a torch, both uncles also followed her. She found many utensils on the floor lying here and there and the window from the other side was open. The storm attacked the window badly and the lock was broken and the flaps were dancing then also with the breeze. So, Chandana detected the ghost!

After uncovering the ghost, Chandana became the Heroin in front of us! And we started a new chapter in that haunted room!

***

What 'I' connotes?

“I am highly educated person! Thus I have more knowledge than a normal person.”

“If I would not have been there, how come that task would have been done.”

“Nobody will be able to do this task except me!”

“This office, I am the most talented person, nobody is above me …”

“I am jack of all trades and master of all too..!”


These kinds of sentences usually rule our conscience or we get to listen….may be from colleagues, friends, relatives etc.

The word ‘I’ always chase us, or start dwelling in our mind …. whenever we receive expertise in some particular subject, or when people start appreciating us looking at our proficiency, we start feeling proud of own talent.

We don’t get that much of time, opportunity to see the sky with a free mind… which we used to get in our childhood. Neither we get enough time to introspect or understand ourselves… Now, do we have time to sit with our parents to enjoy the starry sky together ? I remember, me and my siblings usually used to sit with my parents at the moonlit nights and used to talk about various topics in our childhood times…plan about our futures…Once my mother told us pointing towards the galaxy… “See these are seven star –brothers. They always stay together…never fight with each other, share even a small sesame among them”. Since then, we three siblings share a small toffee even. Once, we used to dream, imagine looking at the open sky, and now, when we are growing, we are as if becoming machines day by day, narrowing our openness…

Sky does not have any limit…there are limitless solar systems…Don’t know which planet is going where! Which star is going where! Just we know about our 8 planets and then our very own ‘Earth’. In the following way, we can understand our position…
I was born at Bakata. Where is Bakata?

In Sibsagarh district. Where is Sibsagarh district?

Assam. So, where is Assam?

In India. Where is India?

In Asia. And where is Asia?

In Earth. Earth is situated in?

In eternal Sky. And the Sky is in?

……….Can we answer this question..?

If we engross in this question, we will understand the significance of the word ‘I’. If we compare ourselves with the sky…we will understand worth we are carrying.

In this world, nothing is dependable on any human being. Like, when Galilio was alive, people were unaware of most of his discoveries and inventions. So, he was not considered as vital personality during his life-time. But, now he is respected as the pioneer of a new era. In the same way, once independence of India could not be thought without Gandhiji. But after his death, India is moving, no matter what her speed is!

In various organizations, sometimes, many employees play very critical role, and we feel without them organization will stop growing, infact even stop working. But, does it happen in reality? If one key employee leaves, work may slow down for couple of weeks or months, but if some other responsible person picks those task, things speed up.

What say?

Can we remove Corruption from India?

“Yeh Hindustan Hai, Yaha Sab Chalta Hai”…A common statement in India!

Don’t you feel happy if you do a good bargain with a cop while you break any traffic rule? If you do a rafa-dafa right away in one fourth money of what the cop has asked for?

What will you prefer if some work could be done quickly without any visit or taking any tension by giving a bribe instead of going to a Government office for weeks and months for doing the same work in legal and clear way? Won’t you go to a deal maker if you can get a Car license, Passport or Pan Card in an hour by paying few hundreds or thousands rupee without making many to and fro visits to the respective offices? This happens even after government has taken steps to ease the application process for most of these.

We are proud of the diversity of culture, language and ethnicity of our country. But do not we still prefer the person from the same caste or same place in case of giving a job or doing a favor?

We all want to stop corruption from our country, but will we really be able to?
So, though I think and firmly believe that India never can come out of the corruption, I would say, instead of pointing our finger to others, we should do self- introspection first.

We all are corrupted in a way or the other. Corruption is infused in our Blood. The embryo of this corruption lies deep inside every Indian, regardless of any age-bar.

Even after 63 years of India's independence, whenever, a common man raises his voice for justice, he is silenced in various ways by the criminal nexus, including attempts to murder.

The last few months have been witnessing allegations of corruption amounting to over 3 lakh crores in 2G spectrum allotments, the Common Wealth Games (CWG) scam, the Adarsh Building Society scam, allotment of land and mines in Bangalore etc. We do wish but do we expect anyone to be convicted out of this?

Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has the power, but is entirely dependent on the government for permissions for investigations and prosecutions. CBI’s lawyers are appointed by the Law ministry and report to it as well, for which reason why everyone demands a Supreme Court monitored CBI investigation (as is the case in 2G spectrum).

In our political system, maximum of our top leaders are over 60 - 70 of their age. What we can expect actually from a politician whose one leg is already in cemetery?

Moreover, in the current time, technology is far-advanced. But, how many of the politicians know how to use a computer? What kind of strategy, a below-graduate or illiterate politician will make?

We can be hopeful that India can turn around a bit if she gets a total revamping of the political and anti-corruption delivery system. The country immediately needs a legal, efficient and independent investigating and prosecuting multidisciplinary agency led by independent professionals, to ward off political perplexity. And in political system too, there must be 60-70 % youths of below age 40, who can understand the demand of current century or the new generation. Apart from that, there should be a minimum education background for the politicians.

Whatever pledges we make or revamping we do, corruption will stay like this forever till the time we are ready to pay full money to a traffic police by taking the proper receipt, or getting a Car License or Passport by going through proper process without giving any bribe to the dalal. So, let’s optimism rule the thoughts..............

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