FOR A HAPPY MARRIED LIFE—RESPONSIBLE PARENTING

Bikash Choudhury

After one and half decade of completely blissful married life; I wish to share a few secrets of this venture for the uninitiated or those young men who are having a tough time in adjusting to sharing their god gifted life for once with another young woman. The secret numbers one; never ever criticize or speak any thing negative about your in-laws in front of your better half even if you are in the side of truth & reality. The secret number two; always appreciate the parents, siblings of your wife and even their old mongrel even if there were no merit or very little substance. The secret number three; praise the beauty of your sweet heart profusely with all the adjectives available in the Chamber’s English dictionary from hair down wards and give compliments to her culinary skills even though some times you find it hard to swallow the food from your throat downwards and feign innocence about lack of appetite or hunger with equal intensity. Fourth one is for those who have natural skills with English words in conveying ‘ideas’ full time or freelance; write some thing good about your father-in-law and make an attempt to get it published in a news paper central column; in fact this author now makes an attempt in this direction to confirm the arrangement of receiving unrequited love and gastronomic delight for the rest of the life. My father-in-law is a very intelligent person who pursued his passion in sports to a career of life time and therefore kicked the engineering education in the middle and joined the prestigious Laxmibai National College for Physical Education, Gwalior. He completed his post graduation from the institute with distinction and joined Kendriya Vidyalya, GoI as a sports teacher. In between he married an ambitious and academically oriented rich girl and they had four daughters and one son; all of whom are now very successful in their respective field. One outstanding aspects of his personality was his attitude towards his four daughters in a social environment of unnecessary desire and concern for a male child. He did not give into such predominant social bias against girl child and left no stone unturned to give a good life and education to all her daughters, prodded them to excel in life and enjoy life to the full; which has eventually turned her daughters into loving and confident professionals on their own right with ability to take decisions about their family independently which is now recognized and respected by their spouses. This could be the result of years of conditioning and dispassionate grooming by the old man of his daughters not any different from a son. The moral of the story remains; that, if you groom your daughters without any gender bias; then, you are actually developing a few self confident adults; responsible & mature citizens for the country. Women constitute almost fifty percent our population and if majority of them become productive; then, our country could straight away become an economic super power. It is now all depends on responsible parenting.            

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LOVE-LY ENCOUNTERS

Bikash Choudhury

After graduation passing out ceremony enthusiasm and excitement was over from the recesses of mind; it hunted all our friends then, what next? Before, taking up post graduation studies; we decided to form a self help group for personality development in the grab of a debating society at Human Life Centre in Bhubaneswar. We would meet in the after noon on Sundays to discuss about National and International affairs and also about socio-economic issues. The debates were as passionate as it was electrifying some times with inputs from members from diverse fields stormed the venue of our meeting and kept us waiting for this confabulation next week end. With word of mouth of publicity, our group membership grew in leaps and bounds in following months and years. A couple of beauty with brains also joined our group which was by then aptly named ‘Quality Circle’. Some of our adventurous and dynamic members planed to organize a Quiz Competition in the foot steps of infamous Quiz Master Mr. Sidhartha Basu who much later conceptualized and broadcasted “Kon Banega Karod Pati”. Soon our group was able to rope in “Sun Times” the popular English news paper to sponsor the event and rest became history as this event caught the imagination of young students of Bhubaneswar city and also to an extent entire State of Orissa, as it was called then. Tides always followed by a lull; that did not escape our group as many of us could not keep up the tempo and temperament of organizing a State level event for long; though, some time later we were able to publish a magazine “Quality Reporter”. As luck would have it cupid struck our secretary and he could not resist the temptation of entering into matrimony at a very tender age; which was a grand spoiler for our group Quality Circle. If that was not bad enough, I was also taken in by a young and erudite member of our group from the opposite sex and able to drop a hint here and a glance there, to keep it discreet from the public eye. It is often said ‘isq and muska chupa ne se nehi chuupta’. Little later it occurred to some of our members that I am up to some thing in the sly; however, unfortunately by the time my efforts were bearing fruits at the other end; my mind was seized up with the concerns of career and future economic stability and prevented me from responding to a green field opportunity. This was not only one encounter that I lost; though it was the most memorable one to remember and even joyfully recall over a cup of cappuccino among friends and family. The other two were also equally interesting events in life of a man when he was ‘desired’—a lovely feeling to savor with Kebabs and a green dip. I was then working in Chennai with a educational consulting firm as its marketing manager and I was very impressed with the work of a young, dynamic and hard working instructor little less than half of my age from opposite sex; and, it is always hard for me to keep off my admiration for sterling qualities of this young girl in her early twenties. I later gifted her book ‘Algorithm of Enterprise’ in appreciation of her good work; which, she took it otherwise literally and send me a sms on a rainy day to enjoy nature with her. Unfortunately, my wife first saw that message and shown it to me for clarification; where none was needed or offered. But, even a secret desire or a fling if any for an adventure was terminated on that rainy morning in its bud. One more sms followed the next day “one must have some body to live and die for” which I responded with a curt message to terminate any scent of liaison like this “Mathematicians should better remain Mathematicians than turning a poet”. The message got across appropriately and she asked for a transfer to another location soon after bringing curtains to the second prospective liaison. And, third one was a chance encounter with a beautiful and wealthy architect in her office at Chennai and it could be termed as ‘love at first sight’. Those who have experienced could understand the feeling of such an encounter between two adults from opposite sex; none the less the feeling was great that would take your body, mind and soul in a trance; but, the situations in life remain unpredictable and at times melancholy. Again, unfortunately in a week’s time of such a sweet encounter; I had to take a flight back to Bhubaneswar for good to respond to an emergency of a sad and accidental demise in the family inking a final blow to love-ly encounters.                  

E-MAIL:streben.market@gmail.com/ forum4politicalunity@gmail.com MOBILE: 9853426657/7504106233 address: Plot No#3309 Adarsha Vihar Lane-2 Patia Bhubaneswar-751024

FIRST STEP TOWARDS DIGITAL INDIA

Bikash Choudhury

In 2014 people generally thought; if, we replace the corrupt, inefficient and indecisive fractitious UPA Govt. with a more decisive Govt. with majority support in parliament then our economic recovery could be just an instant noodle away. In the summers of 2014 2^nd NDA Govt. took office under the dynamic leadership of one of the most popular political leader of recent times, Sri Narendra Modi; and, his govt. did surprise many political analysts as he and his Govt. started ground running from the day-0 with his foreign policy master stroke of inviting the SAARC leaders to the swearing in ceremony; and, many others progressive socio-economic policies followed from his stable like Jandhan Yojana, Mudra Bank, Gold Monetization, Make in India, Namami Gange and Digital India. However, calling spade a spade; our economy has not bounced back as it should in spite of a very responsible and proactive govt. with much faster decision making at the political level. One popular argument was that the last decade under Manmohan Singh was so bad that our economic automobile is now making loud noise before actually starting up and marching with acceleration. And, other view point was the volatile Global economic condition is taking a heavy toll of bouncing back of Indian economy. Can we console ourselves with this hypothesis; while Indian Industry, Investors and Consumers do not display enthusiasm or optimism for so long? What is that our union and state government should do that would build a tempo in our economy with starting of a fresh investment cycle, employment growth and consumers returning to the markets for repeating the circular spin in the economy that could genuinely lift the spirits and momentum of our economy.

                 A simple policy prescription could be to cut cost, improve efficiency, leverage assets, mobilize the surplus in bottom of pyramid and the cycle should return a very vibrant economy in the short term—again, these are one of those ‘cetris paribus assumptions’ meaning other things remaining unchanged or equal, just a simple technique to let off the poor economist. However, this author would stand by his suggestions either way.     

          Digital India program alone has the capacity to make good with our economy in the short run. By one stroke we can change the way our bureaucracy functions, decisions and executions takes place in our Govt. system where discretions are abused, executions have plenty of time over runs with attendant cost escalations and valuable information stored in the silos which can’t be used effectively to create value for those on whose money our government system runs—that is our poor peoples money. World over is using Indian prowess for Software Development and IT infrastructure management that has seen an export of over $ 80 billion USD. However, our union or state govt. has not utilized our inherent strength to design and develop proprietary software for the use of our all State Govt. and the central Govt. so that all governmental transactions from Delhi to District Head Quarter could become paperless digital operation that could cut time, cost, leverage data bank for optimal decisions and manage the resources of Government that would create huge surplus for deployment at bottom of pyramid. For that to happen; our central govt. should out source the task of developing a “Government Resources Planning Software” to our private software services companies as National Informatics Centre (NIC) is not equal to the task. Further, each Govt. office from Delhi downwards could become part of one single computer network in just 18 months time if left to private hardware vendors of our country and govt. could pay the service providers on number of transactions or number of terminals for month that could save huge capital expenditure for the Government. This exercise need to be taken up in war footing to capture its benefits in its entirety. Once this task is completed; our Governmental system could use sophisticated technologies like Data Analytics, Project Management and many others that could bring huge improvement in efficiency at much less cost. It could also release 25-35% of Government personnel for redeployment or VRS while pruning the salary bill of all Governments in the country. This could be the first step towards “Digital India”.        

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BHUBANESWAR SMART CITY

BHUBANESWAR SMART CITY

                                                    

1. Bhubaneswar could be designed as a smart green city.

1. Roof top solar panels for energy production on each homes/offices/commercial structures of the city.
2. Rain Water Harvesting structures on each homes/offices/commercial structures of the city.
3. All roads in the city Rain Water Harvesting compliant.
4. Green Belt in both sides of the road and artificial forest on vacant Govt. lands supported with Bird Nests for smart ecological balance.
5. Private run urinals/toilets in each 500 meters of all such main and interior roads so as to completely prevent open urinals and defecation with severe penalty in cash and kind.
6. All swamp lands and water bodies protected and renovated for public use.
7. City should sport solar powered street lights and traffic signals.
8. City should proactively promote Kitchen Gardens in each home.
9. City should facilitate composting of Bio wastes originating from homes.
10. City should treat its sewerage discharge 100% by 2020.
11. City should preserve, protect, develop and promote its rivers to attract tourists. 

           

2. Bhubanswar could be a SMART CITY with a difference.

1. Scientifically designed and efficiently executed methods and systems to keep the city Clean and Hygienic 24x7.
2. Roads designed to drain out rain waters from the surface after the rains.
3. Technology enabled traffic management system with uniform traffic rules, practices, optimum traffic infrastructures and adequate road users’ awareness and education on a continuous basis.
4. Technology enabled public parking facility at all crowded locality/business areas and clearly demarcated places parking in all residential and commercial areas and road junctions.
5. Uniformity in road side vendors in all areas of the city in their structure and appearances.
6. Auto stands in all areas should be prominently demarcated with appropriate security and surveillance.
7. City should have a metro rail network by 2025