Author: admin

Poompuhar is planning to rope in graduates from NIFT and artisans to come up with new designs for making idols. It is also planning a design at its office here soon, a top official of the department said.

The corporation is in talks with four more airports — Tirupati, Tiruchi, Madurai and Coimbatore — for designing their premises on the lines of the Chennai airport, Santhosh Babu, Chairman and Managing Director, Poompuhar, told The Hindu.

“Most artisans make idols based on Agama Shastra and what has been passed on to them from earlier generations. They might make only very minor deviations. We hope to bring in new design ideas and expand the scope of work and the kind of market artisans can access,” he said.

Poompuhar is also toying with the idea of 3D printing of miniature models of idols. “Normally, it would take about 10 to 100 hours to make one wax mould manually, based on which the final bronze product is made. With 3D printing, we hope to reduce the time of making small idols on a large scale. We are very clear that we do not want to toy with or change the process of idol-making, especially large ones. But for small, miniature models, there is a huge market that can be tapped,” he said.

Mr. Babu said with 3D printing, artisans can get Intellectual Property rights for their creations. “We will teach them to use software and design idols. The artisans can get IP rights for these. But the modalities will have to be worked out as getting IP rights is expensive”.

Mr. Babu added that 3D printing would enable mass production of miniatures. “Anyone can buy such small-sized models, for example, at the airport when they are leaving after touring the State. We are also in talks with the Egmore Museum to make miniatures of the artefacts there that people can buy. This is a completely untapped market in India,” he added.

Cluster facilities

The corporation recently received funding of about Rs. 20 crore from the Centre and the State government to set up cluster facilities where artisans can do their work free of cost. These centres will have all necessary facilities for artisans, he said. About 30 such centres are set to come up across the State.
In talks with Tirupati, Tiruchi, Madurai and Coimbatore airports for designing their premises

It is a sad sight to see our policemen and women manning traffic in Chennai city. I understand that there are about 9000 such personnel who in addition to the fact that they stand under the severe heat of the beating sun, also have to inhale all the emissions from all vehicles plying on his/her route….. This is a pathetic state of affairs, where human beings are being put to use and abuse. This work can easily be supplanted by technology, not fully though, but substantially.  Imagine if these 9000 personnel are retrained and put on duties like, L&O, crime detection and investigation, management of traffic remotely etc., how much we would be extending their life spans? And her much more efficient, productive and useful they would be?

For this to happen there should be sufficient one time investment on traffic infrastructure; I mean,

1. Where there are footpaths that are not encroached
2. Where road geometrics are of international standards
3. Where pollution control norms for vehicles are strictly enforced
4. Where there are separate lanes for bicycles and other 2 wheelers
5. Where every junction is installed with automatic traffic signals
6. When a data center manages all the traffic remotely
7. When traffic cameras click the picture of the registration numbers of violating vehicles, and immediately generates an SMS to the violator, which means the vehicle database also captures the mobile number of the owner.
8. Three such violations should result in automatic cancellation of the license of the violator
9. The licensing software should be so developed as to capture the above requirement
10. Overtaking is strictly prohibited
11. Over speeding vehicles are immediately impounded on the basis of video grabs at traffic junctions.
12. If sufficient space is provided at select spots in the city for sticking posters and propaganda materials, instead of every bit of space along the city roads as is currently.
13. Arrangement of 2 wheelers, three wheelers etc. on spaces provisioned on roadsides in symmetric fashion.
14. All the above will be based on a robust IT infrastructure.

All the above can bring in the much needed road discipline…. for this to happen, the Traffic Police Department, Chennai Corporation, CMRL, IIT/Anna University, NGOs like Chennai City Connect etch have to collaborate and come out with an immediately implementable plan. Of course there is a cost involved, but then we will be incurring more costs if we don’t do it. What I am saying is nothing new…The world over this has been done, except probably in our cities…. Namma Chennai will look more beautiful if we do something just about the traffic alone…and Namma Policemen and women can breathe easy….

I keep wondering why our government offices, hospitals and everything connected with government should have a shabby look. Files littered on tables, unhelpful staff, corruption and a general feeling of demotivation. Why can’t it look swanky and clean? In fact government spends more money per-capita on upkeep of office than probably the privates sector does. Here, the question is one of leadership. Does the Chief Secretary ever go to his own sections and see for himself under what atmosphere our employees work? Never! In fact our government employees are the best in the world, because they work under trying office atmosphere and circumstances that can test the dignity of any person with some self-esteem!

My theory and practice has been that if the leadership can pay attention to three things, then we can make governance world-class; Attitude, ambience and technology. The Tamil Nadu Corporation for Development of Women LTD (TNCDW) in year 2000, Chief Ministers Special Cell in 2001, Krishnagiri Collectorate in 2008, ELCOT office in 2009, TNeGA (Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency) in 2009, Directorate of Horticulture and Plantation Crops in 2012, Directorate of Indian Medicine and Homeopathy in 2013, and Tamil Nadu Handicrafts Development Corporation in 2016, are the best examples of the above three coming together. What we get as a result is world-class administration. Why can’t we introduce the concept of electronic workflow in all government offices from the PMO right upto the VAO office? A large number of ERPs are available in the market today catering to all requirements of government offices. If one officer can do this, why can’t we make it a system than the exception?

When our files move fast at the speed of thought, then we can provide that much more faster services to our citizens without burdening them, by delaying decisions or asking them to come over many times. When our systems are online, we can provide online services to them, and corruption at least at the local level will be a thing of the past. There will come a time when this will be law.

www.baack2school.in (Krishnagiri district) 2006-2008

It was a huge team effort in bringing back and retaining about 10,000 OOSC (out of school children). But the process was simple. I created a force of volunteers called VVF (Village Volunteer Force) at the rate of one VVF per Village Panchayat with about 20 youths above the age of 18 constituting the VVF (boys and girls who otherwise populate the different manrams and the like). We trained them on three aspects: 1.Child labour and OOSC 2. Sanitation 3. First aid. UNICEF helped hugely with the training.

If we divide 10,000 OOSC by 337 panchayats, then the problem of OOSC become simple; on an average about 30 OOSC per panchayat, who can be easily identified, cajoled to come back to school etc. by the VVF. The incentive offered was anything under the sun that a Collector can give (under the rules of course!) A house, a loan, employment, crop loan, auto loan, pensions for widows, physically challenged, Government job as noon meal worker or cook etc…. Anything… the only condition being that the child should return and continue to be monitored on a monthly basis by the VVF who would feed the data online into an OOSC children tracking software built inside d website www.baack2school.in

The software allows the Collector or SSA to monitor each and every child whose photo and details are initially captured by the VVF.

In addition we created the Panchayat Level convergence Committee (PLCC) of all Government functionaries at the village level who otherwise never meet! For e.g. if the Village   Health Nurse (VHN) were to meet the VAO periodically, then the question of missing birth certificates wouldn’t ever arise. The PLCC used to be conducted simultaneously in all 337 Village Panchayats on the first Friday of every month for one hour. I would depute 337 observers for overseeing the meeting every month. Minutes (337 pages) would reach me the same day. The PLCC I understand continues to this day…

We could make it a people’s movement… Even 8 years after coming out of Krishnagiri, I still get on an average 3 to 6 calls from Krishnagiri everyday…. And also visitors… such were the impact. I miss that action and interaction…

There were numerous other initiatives around this which the website www.baack2school.in chronicles.

Actually if this methodology can be adopted and every collector monitored and rated on that basis, OOSC will become a thing of the past! Whenever I showed these live monitoring, everybody said it’s great! But nobody took it up for state level implementation!!!

Predecessor successor syndrome in the IAS

Very unfortunately, many of my innovations that have been transformational in scope and depth have not been continued by my successors. At the Harvard Kennedy School, I was taught by Mr.Mark Moore, that for am innovation to succeed, the following three conditions title the “Strategic triangle” have to be satisfied:

1. Is it administratively and operationally possible? (The authorizing environment)
2. Is it politically and legally possible? (Legitimacy)
3. Is the purpose publicly valuable? ( The public value proposition)

But during the concluding class of Mr.Mark Moore, I proved to him by  examples how an innovation is only as good as the successor. Even if the above three conditions are fully satisfied, still the innovation will not succeed, if the successor does not want it to..

Let me illustrate this… I succeeded Mr.Mangat Ram Sharma IAS as the District Collector of Krishnagiri in June 2006. As is the ‘dictum’ the ‘system’, meaning your PA, your officers etc will not say anything good or bad about your predecessor, till they kind of deduce from your behavior or words as to how you are disposed to your predecessor. They will then act accordingly. I am sure this is the experience of many a leader.

So, the ’system” didn’t tell me anything about the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ that my predecessor had done. But I was seeing a lot of english speaking young farmers who came to my first Monday grievance day in large numbers, who were saying what my predecessor had done for them and how it was now stuck. I could easily have ignored the petitions and the pleas of the youngsters, saying whatever my predecessor had done was bad, and only i could do any good, as is the wont in our Indian bureaucracy. But I called these boys separately for a meeting, and then realized that Mr.Mangat Ram Sharma had indeed done a great thing with these boys. He had made three clusters of rose cultivating farmers in Bairamangalam, Thally and Hosur, had got subsidy sanctioned from the Small Farmers Agricultural Consortium, Government of India, had tied up with the nationalized banks for loans etc for 1008 farmers who were desirous of putting up greenhouses for rose cultivation, including micro irrigation. So, then what was the problem? The problem was that not one rupee had been released as loan to any of the farmers against the subsidy sanctioned!

Naturally I was aghast to say the least! I went after the bankers and the rest is history! Today most of the farmers are income tax payers! Since 2008, come an Onam, they will come to my home in Chennai in a lorry full of flowers worth lakhs of rupees, against my plea that I require flowers worth only Rs.1000/- which in any case I would be purchasing from the Koyembedu market as I have always done since I landed at Chennai…

M worldview on this is that if you look at hotspots of the world ( I mean where conflicts are rife), one can always discern a pattern of subjugation of the girl child and the woman; the chances of her dreams of her flowering into womanhood with an equal chance to be part of society, and as an equal partner to a man when she marries looks remote…This pattern is universal…..it exists in India too, wherever the general level of standard of living is below par, there one can assume that the girl child and women are subjugated.

I dream of a society, where every girl child can not only achieve her dreams but also flower into a woman who can hope to live in harmony and dignity within the family, as an equal partner to her husband and be recognised for her contributions to societal well being. This can happen only if she is given the chance to pursue her dreams of completing schooling, completing college and getting a job, which will make her feel confident and strong. She should think of marrying only after she attains economic independence.

A series of policy approaches will enable dignity and position for women in our society

1. Age bar for being considered as a child should be raised to 18 years which is unfortunately 14 years in the Child Labour Act
2. No child, boy or girl shall be left out of school or allowed to drop out under any circumstance. The state shall ensure this through mechanisms that I have illustrated in my “out of school children tracking” intervention in Krishnagiri district, which enabled about 10,000 children to be brought back to school and retained.
3. Our marriage law should be amended to raise the minimum age for marriage of a girl from the present 18 years to 21 years.
4. Advocacy initiatives at the family level should be intensified to enlighten the family members of the importance of girls education.

All these and the yeoman services of veterans and inspirations in the field of women’s empowerment like Vandana Shiva, Malala, Kulandei Francis etc will one day catapult India as the first Country to have absolute equality between men and women. Boys and men should be brought up such that every girl or woman would feel safe in his company or safe in the company of men.

On 30.08.2015, when Mr.Lalu Prasad Yadav, spoke about the need to create Smart Villages as against Smart Cities, some memories of my work came flooding in. When I was District Collector Sivaganga in 2003 for a short stint of about 8 months, I started a campaign called 100% Village. If any Village Panchayat achieved 100% in 8 out of the 10 items of social change I had delineated, then that village would be nominated as a “100% Village Panchayat”. Obviously the question that arose was, as to what would be the incentives for the Panchayat President and others in Government to take up such a cause. Other than giving priority to such villages while taking up developmental projects and making them dream that these villages will be trendsetters for India, I had no other incentives to give!

The ten items were:

1. That 100% of children would go to school; dropouts from any standard would be reenrolled and monitored.

2. That every child would be immunized for all vaccine preventable diseases

3. That every home had a modern toilet, which will be used by every household member, and personal hygiene would be top priority in every family

4. That everybody in the Village Panchayat would be made literate

5. That every woman in the Village Panchayat would be part of a Self Help Group

6. That every deserving family was issued with a community certificate

7. That every family was issued with a bank account compulsorily

8. That every deserving villager was brought under the ambit of social pensions like OAP/WP/PCP

9. That every landholder was given a title to his/her house site or land

10. That every delivery in the village would be conducted at hospitals

One thought I always had and have is that, while we have a Directorate of Town and Country Planning to take care of our towns and municipalities, we haven’t extended the concept of physical planning to our Village Panchayat, so much so that these villages are haphazard and disorderly, from the point of view of providing common services, and also from the point of view of aesthetics, obviously because there is not much revenue that is forthcoming.

I could implement the first ideal when I was District Collector Krishnagiri in 2006-2009 through the www.baack2school.in initiative and the ideal of livelihoods creation was demonstrated through the creation of the rural BPO FOSTeRA

When Dr.Kalam visited our Rural BPO FOSTeRA (Fostering Technologies in Rural Areas), India’s first rural BPO, I had the audacity to propound my concept of PUORA (Providing Urban Opportunities in Rural Areas) to Dr.Kalam. This thought was ignited by Dr.Kalam’s as PURA concept (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas). Dr.Kalam being the great man he was, immediately approved of the idea.

I am of the firm opinion that in the life cycle of any product, a few processes can be outsourced to villages. For e.g. Titan watches are assembled and Tanishq jewelryvillage boys and girls in Krishnagiri district, through a partnership with MYRADA, a renowned NGO. When boys and girls start earning, the economy will grow and there will be demand for better services and natural growth will happen, and most importantly, migration to our already congested cities will slow down. Yes, I think it is time to think about Smart Villages!