Poompuhar to help artisans find access to larger market

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

Our Policemen and Policewomen on Traffic duty

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….

Government offices

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.

ERP at Secretariat

Fire at Mantralaya, Mumbai

The massive fire and deaths at the Maharashtra Secretariat in June 2012 is a grim reminder to all of us also, as to the under preparedness to deal with such a situation at our Secretariat in Chennai and also in all other Government offices. Incidentally we had our fire drill at our office only a few days earlier.

One of the major criticisms against Government would be that files have been destroyed, and many reasons will be attributed to that. But there is a way out, if we can adopt an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution at all our offices, on a cloud-based model. In fact the IT department in Secretariat Chennai went entirely paperless from November 3rd to December 3rd 2011, till my transfer from the post of Secretary IT. The application we developed along with NIC Delhi christened by us as ASSIST (Automated Software Suite for Integrated Secretariat Transactions) available at http://assist.tn.gov.in is a full fledged ERP for making all aspects of our daily work at Secretariat or for that matter in any Government office completely web based… One can clear files anytime anywhere. Our SDC (State Data Centre) is a state of the art Data Centre and can host the application and all departments can create their own partitions and start working on files online.

The application is being used in PMO, Cabinet Secretariat, and many other GOI departments. I am pleading with all our decision makers to adopt ASSIST or for that matter any other ERP and deploy the same at our SDC, making the work in Government transparent, fast, efficient, making services available to our Citizens that much faster, and most important, fireproof!

Is anybody listening?

Back 2 School

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!!!