RIDICULOUS TITLE

There is article in today's "The Hindu", Chennai edition titled "Fruitful day for Indians" commending the performance of four Indian cricketers playing the English county cricket. I was very happy that Indian cricketers have at last performed well at the English county. But I was astonished and anguished at how our sports media misguide us with their luring titles. They have listed the performance of the players as below :

1. Dinesh Mongia gave 19 runs of 4 overs and took a wicket, in addition scored 39 runs with the bat. Can be described as "Not a bad performance" at best.
2. Irfan Pathan took 3 wickets of 4 overs for 16 runs. A good performance and matches the title of the article.
3. Harbhajan Singh stated to have bowled very miserly giving just 22 runs in 4 overs. Even a person with modest cricketing knowledge would accept the word "miserly" to be a misnomer here and that this is at best a "deplorable" performance by the baller.
4. Our famous Sourav Ganguly scored 10 runs with the bat as opening batsman and gave 30 runs of 3 overs taking one wicket showcases his worst decline in cricketing standards and our super journalist calls this a fruitful outing.

Even considering it only 20 over matches, it cannot be said to be creditable enough to be called fruitful.

Is it that a great Newspaper like "The Hindu" does not have a quality sports reporter or is it that the definition of performance among the media has become synonymous to non-performance that even deplorable outings like the one above is termed fruitful.

Tomorrow if the media finds a two year old boy of an affluent father walking on his own, they might snap his photos and immediately portray him as the future "Jessy Owens" of India, a great athlete in the making.

In India, the media definitely uplifts and encourages the sportsmen, but to an extent that they kill the sports in them and make them at best a good model. Like they say "Amirtham" ( the divine nectar) beyond a certain levels becomes poison, so does media glare to the sportsmen.

The same thing is being done to Sanya Mirza in tennis. Her second round defeat to the Russian at Wimbledon is glorified like a Championship victory by the media, where in fact she had earlier defeated this same player in straight sets in Dubai Open. Her performance has in fact gone down. The player herself is misguided by the media glare and she too is happy with her deteriorating performance. I do not say media should have put down Sania, but they should have given her a cautious encouragement to an extent it does not make her complacent.

SHORT STORY

Short stories is definitely not my strength. It belongs to Ammani, the queen story teller. I wanted to do something different and so what if it is not an original idea. Let me try and take a leaf out of Ammani and now Thennavan too. So here it goes :

A boy without a mother meets a girl without a father and they fall in love.
Boy takes girl to his father and tells,
“She is your would-be daughter-in-law, but treat her like your daughter”
Father immediately obliges by making the would-be mother-in-law, his wife.

What’s the moral of the story ..eh?

MERCY KILLING – SOUNDS MORE MERCILESS

A staunch optimist that I am, I have never considered death to be a solution to any problem. The biggest loser in death is the person dying himself. I would say, in most cases in today’s world, even the person closest to the dying person, may only stand to gain either by inheriting some wealth or atleast an end to the agony of having a troubled person close to him.

So of what use is a solution which only leaves you a loser that too with no second chance.

But what about mercy killing. At first, I am not able to give a rational explanation either in favour or against it. I always believed that our life started with a single cell and we should strive to live till the last cell in our body is alive. This applies as much to the physically and mentally challenged too.

When I read this case in Kolkata, where a father has made an application to the West Bengal Government to put an end to the life of his physically challenged daughters because he is too old and there is nobody to take care of them after his death and except for breathing, they require his help for everything, the foundation of my concept of right to live shook badly. I was suddenly forced to think , that like every law, should the right to live also have an exception clause attached to it.

In this said case the father feels that life has become more a punishment than a right to his daughters, but the daughters are not in a position to give their opinion. The West Bengal Government is undecided, may be, because if mercy killing is granted it will become a precedent for people without the determination to live to opt this rule and more for inhuman parents and siblings who do not want to accept the responsibility of such not so lucky people, to put an end to their life, may be much against the very persons will.

The question is how to prove the killing was out of mercy and not merciless as there is a definite possibility of misuse of this rule worldwide and more so in our country. How to ascertain the feelings of the person on whom the said mercy is to be bestowed, if he or she is not in a position to express. I am sure nobody in this world would accept death with total happiness and contentment.

In view of the dangerous implications of misuse of mercy killings, I am of the opinion that the Government should not grant it even in the exception of exceptional cases, though I understand a lot of people who live the life of a vegetable and their caretakers may admonish me for this thought. In the end, though a bit shaken, I have come back to strongly believe that life, in whatever quantity and form it is available to us, has to be LIVED completely, what cannot be cured has to be endured and never censured.

BLOGGER'S PARK – AN ARTICLE IN "THE HINDU" TODAY

The Sunday Magazine of "The Hindu" today, the 12th, June, 2005 featured an article on Bloggers Meet scripted by none other than Ramya, the Glam Celeb Journo in the Blog world. This is another feather in the cap of the blogging community and please..please..please, this post is not meant to highlight that this humble blogger has also been mentioned in the article.

I feel undeservingly honoured to be mentioned in the article, to highlight the new concept of online bloggers meet, which was in fact the brainchild of Kaush and Princess, who organized the show fabulously. In fact they should have been mentioned in the article for introducing the concept and I feel extremely guilty to have been put in their place.

Kaush and Princess, all credit to you for pioneering this concept. Ramya was probing in the dark and found a candle in me to throw light in this concept, but that candle can never take away the brightness of the sunshine that is Kaush and Princess.

HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY CORRUPTION

A huge population making resources seemingly scarce, little time and lot of things to be done, economic inequality, affluent people with more ideas and money than time willing to take as well as pay bribes, more loopholes in laws than sections. With all these it is just impossible to eradicate corruption in our country.

Even the most uncorrupt among us does indulge in some corruption at some point of time due to one of the compulsions mentioned above. Believe me corruption is not just exchange of money. Even getting a Railway ticket in Emergency Quota or a Special darshan in Tirupathi without standing in the queue, to name a few, is as much corruption as anything else.

It is here that I wish to divide corruption into healthy and unhealthy corruption. Believe me you may at times find these corrupt people perform much better and productively than uncorrupt ones. And whereas I would recommend immediate eradication of unhealthy corruption, the healthy corruption, if not eradicated, must be properly regulated to put our country in a healthy growth mode.

An unhealthy corruption can be defined, at macro level, where the country is cheated or sold out cheaply for individual benefits and at micro level, where legitimate rights and necessities of citizens is robbed off for the benefit of certain individuals resulting in the civilization and development of our country taking a back seat.

Healthy corruption is one, if legitimized and regulated can lead to the Departments functioning more efficiently and support massively to the cause of fast track growth.

Recently I spoke to a high official of a private sector bank enquiring about the difference between the various categories of Credit Cards apart from their colour and fees. He told me that when it comes to the services available most of the categories are entitled to the same set of services, but what differentiates them is the promptness of the services. The person holding the premium card paying maximum fees gets his problem solved almost at home or immediately whereas the economy class cards would get the same complaint attended to in a week. So the extra fees are in a way bribe for prompt service but legitimized as fees for premium card.

Why not apply the same logic on all services where the officials can offer premium service or economy service depending on the pre-determined fees. The premium on the fees should go to the official. Its like a tatkal scheme on every service. This way I am sure you would find the officials on their toes always and working as efficiently as anybody.

Yes, there is a possibility that the people affording economy fees may not be able to get their work done at all on account of more people willing to pay premium. But that can be tackled by fixing targets to officials that for every premium service rendered a certain number of economy cases should be catered to and evaluation can be done by verifying the pending economy service applications at the month end.

This way the officials are happy with their earning commensurate to the efforts, the premium customers who are responsible of putting the country into fast track of growth receive the push and the layman or economy customers also gets his grievance attended to by virtue of target scheme.

Heart in Heart I would love to have a corruption free India, but till then we need a realistic approach to the problem and it is a choice between bad and worst.

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – A PROFITABLE VENTURE IN ITSELF

The inspiration to this blog is from latest post "Stand up comedy??" in Ravi’s blog on civic amenities in Bangalore and Chennai. He had made a mention therein that Corporates in Chennai are looking at profitability even in discharging their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) towards the society. I do agree with him that it only goes on to show the degenerating human values here.

But I for once feel there is definitely a lot of profitability even in discharging CSR in both tangible and intangible forms. It is just that some of the Corporate leaders in Chennai lack that lateral and indepth vision to realise the potential. It is wrong to use the word profit in CSR, but the fact remains that even with the profit motive the society stands to gain a lot.

It is a well known fact that today the human resource is the single most important asset of every company and every day a new concept and principle is being evolved to improve the efficiency of this resource. A lot of gimmicks and exercises are being done to remove the stress out of the human resource to make them more productive. The amount being spent on these exercises atleast in professional organisations is quite substantial.

Proper discharge of CSR by the all the Corporates as a unit would go a long way in removal of stress from the employees mind. For example if certain basic facilities like garden, super market, hospitals, bus shelters etc. are provided in every locality, the children would have pollution free playing facility resulting in a more healthy body one one side and reduction in accidents on account of playing in roads. This means the earning member has to spend lesser money and time on the safety and healthy upbringing of his child. Again the home maker would find it easier to get all the amenities for home without depending on the earning member to help out. All these would go a long way in the family responsibilities playing very minimal role in the minds of the employees and they getting more focussed on their office work. This would result in increase in efficiency, quality of output and lastly a huge reduction in expenditure on stress reduction, all tangible gains.

Again the employee will be more committed to the organisation, being aware of its contributions to the cause of his family in general and society in particular. This is an example of intangible gain and there is also a tangible gain in the sense of reduced labour turnover.

This is just an example. There are many other ways in which CSR efforts can be implemented for long term gain for both the society and the Corporate world, only that one needs to look at both as part of the same macro-system.