ART AND HOME INTERIOR

                                                             Bikash Choudhury

Odisha has remained the heavenly abode for Art, Craft and Architecture those are showcased abundantly in its temples and ubiquitous craft items that emanates from different corners of Odisha. In recent times interior decorations have eclipsed its presence in the contemporary fast paced life styles of metro-sexual living beings. While SMART Interiors brings convenience, utility and comfort inside our homes; the much needed embellishment of Art and Installations add the soul to a home that bring a few tired bodies and exhausted minds to live inside the confinements of four walls that is called sweet home; as art adds the fourth dimension to an environment which most of the time able to cool down the frayed nerves of a person at the fag end of a busy day just like a soul full music instantly connects with the inner being at a subconscious level. As we more often live from suitcase and hardly have time to spend with nature which is rejuvenating and meditative; alternatively, we can embellish our bed room walls with suitable art work on nature complete with sunshine, flowing water, thick foliages and people with cheerful demeanor starting their day; that would have a very soothing impact on the body and mind as we leave our bed. Because, the mind fresh from sleep would capture the positive vibrations of art work not just its colors and would create a feeling of contentment inside and that would linger through out the day. Again, while going for your morning ablution to the wash basin if eyes were treated with Small Art Work on vibrant and very colorful flowers then again your mind would be imbued with freshness, which flowers always stands for. Again, while sharing a cup of steaming tea with your spouse in your dinning area if you had a look on a Art Work depicting some ecstatic children at play; then, that would fill your heart with love for your kids who would have already left for the school. Further, while leaving for work, one glance on the art works with myriads of colors in the walls of living room would certainly uncork the stream of creativity in the start of a day full of appointments, tough negotiations and hard decisions.

                                                          But, it is very important for an individual to consult an expert while choosing art work for home or office; or else you could also rely on your instinct by examining the impact of Art work and its colors on your mind. If you carefully observe some Art Work would definitely start a conversation or you would be able to relate and feel happy spending time with it. The size of the Art Work would also matter while selecting for the different empty walls of your home. It would be ideal to go for a proportionate size of Art Work relative to the size of the wall you wish to decorate with.

                                                 The capital city of Bhubaneswar has seen a spurt of activity in the Art World as dime a dozen solo art exhibitions are screened in regular interval; prominent and much talked about art shows were conducted by Kumari Sonia titled Abyakta that dealt with  unexpressed emotions, thoughts and images of a hearing impaired girl with powerful brush strokes with equally provocative colors that would bring excitement and joy at the same time; and the other powerful art show belong to Sushmita Sahoo titled Puri: Era and Aura who has taken enormous courage to depict important images and events of Puri the seat of Jagatara Natha-Jagannath on water colors. Water color is the first love of the lady artist Ms. Sahoo and she plans to continue with this series for a few more years to cover rich repertoire of Puri and Jagannath culture. A lot of new Art Galleries have opened their doors for increasingly aesthetic conscious and upwardly mobile denizens. Biju Patnaik International Airport has now earmarked a space for an Art Gallery to show case the art works of young and enterprising artist of Odisha free of cost and Ila Panda Centre of Art (IPCA) is soon going to be launched in the city with its treasure of over 600 paintings collected over decades. However, Orissa Modern Art Gallery remains the oldest (uninterrupted display of art work for over thirteen years) with round the year display of varied and diverse genres of Artists and even Art works. Bhubaneswarites now wish to make a fashion statement about their respective lifestyles through their private Art Collections. Unfortunately, Artist community in the country are in deep fear to express themselves fully, clearly and boldly because of compelling and competing political environment prevalent in the country which at times unleashes violence at the doors of an artist for any provocative or controversial piece of Art Work. It is imperative to have creative freedom to produce World Class Art Work that would be sinecure of the Global audience to preserve and protect our rich heritage of art and our ancient civilization.     

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Odisha Budget 2016-17 Suggestions

Revenue Mobilization:

1. All street vendors with permanent or semi permanent structures to be covered under Self Assessment Minimum Value Added Tax to increase the tax base. This measure would add popular grocery and textile stores and street vendors who currently do not pay tax at all.
2. Green Tax on consumption of Water and Pollution of Air by Industry & Trade; keeping in view the higher incidence of Climate Change Natural Calamities.
3. Educational Cess on all levies to fund the intractable problems of Contractual Teachers Salary.
4. Non-Tax Measure for Revenue Mobilization---Govt. could explore the possibility of raising funds from the rich & powerful citizens by auctioning the City Roads/ State High Ways for Naming/Branding.
5. Consider additional VAT for Luxury Goods and Negative Goods, VAT on Residential Rental Income.
6. Higher Professional Taxes on Individuals.

7.   Exploring the possibility of bringing Rich Private Higher Education into the   

      Tax Net.

Cutting Cost:

1. Govt. could reduce its administrative cost by outsourcing the requirement of Automobiles to new Technology enabled logistic companies like Ola/Uber.
2. Substantially reduce Project cost by deploying Project Management Technology through timely completion of projects.
3. Govt. could substantially invest in Training of its personnel in modern technology and management practices at All Levels to enhance efficiency and reduce overall cost of delivery of Public Services.

  Non-Tax Revenue:

1. Govt. could consider monetizing its unused assets after taking its proper inventory.
2. Govt. could organize all its Public Sector Under Takings into a suitable Holding Company under a Competent Business Leader like Nandan Nilekeni/Suresh Senapati to unleash RoI on expensive Public Investment and Growth in GSDP.

 Proposal:

1. To address deep distress in the Agriculture Sector; Govt. could consider multi prong strategy apart from low cost credit and augmentation of Irrigation. Govt. could earmark Rs.100 Crore for cluster development in Oil Seeds & Cereals. Govt. needs to attract Modern Corporate Farming Companies to the State for speedy development of Farm sector in the State.
2. Govt. could attract Automobile & Auto Component Companies into our port cities like Paradeep, Dhamara and Gopalpur with suitable and long term incentives just like Tamil Nadu which is now considered the Detroit of India. Keeping in view of growing Traffic Congestions and Climate change compliance; Odisha could give priority to two wheeler manufacturer targeting South Asian Market. 

How the Youth can be involved in the process of Nation Building?

1. Identification of Youth Leaders in High School/College/University through Problem Solving Method: Our country has suffered in the domain of Innovation and Leadership because our Youth do not give importance to the ‘Idea’ of problem solving; neither our Institutions offer opportunity to apply Learning in solving Real Life Problems in the society and in their immediate Habitat. Govt. could design a program around the idea of problem solving and identification of young leaders.

1. Program could be designed to Identify interested students of High School/College/University with Aptitude for Leadership; in each District Head Quarter of the country.
2. Program could allow the selected students to Identify a Pressing Problem in the Society and find solution for the same and execute the project. In this method we can address the problems relating Open defecation (Swachha Bharat), Water Conservation, Atrocities on Women, Generation of Green Cover through Plantation, Female Feticide and Pollution Control and many others respective to the habitat.
3. Such projects should be continued in a sustainable manner through successive student leaders till that nails the problem in its entirety.
4. With this method we can identify most effective young leaders through the outcome of projects, incrementally solve social problems in an organic manner and top of all generate public awareness about relevant issues and finally we open the doors for Innovation and Enterprise at a very little cost to the Public Exchequer.

2. Catalyst Youth Leaders for Governance: Our bureaucratic system was designed in the laboratory of British Empire for their own benefit and we have inherited that archaic system after our Independence without much modification. Therefore, the DNA of our bureaucracy is Imperial in nature and that is generally against Innovation-Excellence-Enterprise. We now need Young Catalyst to change the Imperial nature and Feudalistic Culture of our Bureaucracy without creating upheaval or rancor.
1. Govt. could design a program to select Young Leaders in age group of 25-35 yrs with Education, Experience with interest in Governance, Public Service and Activism.
2. Govt. should deploy such leaders for 2 years in a group of 3-5 from Prime Minister’s office to the office of District Magistrate with a mandate to optimize the Bureaucratic System with their Innovative Approach, Excellence in Execution and Entrepreneurial Mindset; that would rub off on our bureaucracy over a period of time.
3. After 2 years Govt. could retain those found suitable for bureaucracy, Facilitate those who are interested in Social/Business Enterprise and encourage those who wish to join Political Leadership.
4. With this method we can enhance the bench strength of Young Leadership.   

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.                  

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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