Drivers Side

Ever Imagined the life of a truck driver ;
We all curse trucks as a Devil of the highways the death crawlers connecting with some incidents of our own lives or of some one in the neighbourhood where one such dare devil truck killed some life or did some fiery accident. Here I wont be writing about the stories instead i am going to write something about the other side.
Life of a Truck Driver.

A lonely highway with overloaded truck, untimely food, paucity of sleep, distance from family, Lower wages , Pressure for running load in time a simple way to explain life of Indian Truck Driver.

Indian Trucks design wise have been the same since world war 2, no respective change same heated compartment with grunting sound of diesel engine roaring with every shift in gears , same wooden hard seats and state of the art music player which reminds of old recorders . As cities growing faster the need to flushing goods from one place to others and buttressing supplier have increased many a times. Today the transport companies have major task in there hand every time they get orders ; to give most prompt service this tends the drivers to stay awake all night and drive and the result of this is on their health . To curb sleep they eat opium which keeps them awake for hours and it is been observed 95% of the truck driver consume opium and all addict of bidi/ cigarettes and alcohol.The same figure goes for the drivers having multiple partners. These drivers take refute there irritation and stress by sexually gratifying themselves from the sources roadside with women , men and some times with the third sex also signifying the state of there mental peace which any one can figure out is at the lowest. Whats more there are unending sagas highway loot, police harassment and official confiscating there permits, goods etc.

Here all this living soul is always on the brim of getting killed by its own daemons some times sleep some times road or some natural calamity . The families of these drivers suffer the same , Children don't have father to look for months , wives have there unending wait for their husbands but when they come home they bring in AIDS.

AIDS /HIV/Hepatitis like thousands of evils chase these drivers all the time who knows next turn when they meet up with some prostitute they will be gifted with it. Te tendency of not to use condoms is most in these drivers as they consider that if they pay they should get the way they wanted and henceforth the HIV virus is travelling places and no doubt within 8 years our country will have 20 million AIDS patient.the lifestyle of these souls is so gruesome that they don't even think of there enemies to join this profession , wages are low , life is dull , love is lost. These lives are worse then animals . It is believed that truck drivers in India soliciting commercial sex work while on the road are spreading HIV throughout their routes. Around 70 percent of India's population lives in rural areas once thought to be relatively immune to the epidemic. So there is another evil to fight for .

from the drivers side this life is no less than death .

Winter morning at Airport

Recently I experienced what most of the early winter morning travellers experience fog impact
I was supposed to catch a flight from Delhi to Chennai at around 8:30 PM it was to depart but what was in store on was different story: passengers were loaded on to the plane and all the necessary drill was excercised and slowly the aircraft was waiting for the ATC clearance . As i was watching through the window i could see the distant Halo- Lamp getting hazy and fog coming over the air stips so what more can one expect the captain honking on the microphone saying we are getting delayed due to fog and as soon it goes off we will fly but then i am a veteran in analysing such stuffs and I was sure we aint flying ..
then the attendants were handing some samosa and sandwitch to all the passengers and later the announced that the flight is halted and delayed for further weather clearance .
Then all were ferried again to the terminal where we again caught up with luggage and here started and episodes of shouting and brunts of angry passengers all of them surrounding the Airline official . that time I realised that public is really fiery if they dont get proper answers . The employees were all facing the brunt of people they were triying to pacify the irked passesngers but it did less .
Finally we were told that the plane is reschedule to 10:30 next morning . and rest all passesngers were fighinting for the cause that where will they stay or not few fortunate called homes to get pickup few took taxis .
but whole ordeal is one of a kind where you see disdained people all around and every one has there obvious motives .
NExt day the airport was again full of people asif whole country is travlling most of the airline desk were seen people blowing up there problems and making them responsible for each of the problems in their lives . Long ques for checkin and finally i was again loadd on to the aircraft where again i had my free samosa because there were further delay due to the bottle neck of other airlines . Finally when the plane left the ground almost after 2 hours of drills excercises everyone clapped as if just columbia climbed up to moon.

In some senses i would appreciate the airline official that they dealt well and to all my fellow mates travellers , you may not see those problems in advanced countries by now because of there systems but then my country's airport are getting chocked because of us only so pressure is obvious . Keep the patience running .

Finally my Delhi airport will see some changes from next year as the fog CAT system use will be in place but till then it will see some more days like this .

India's nuclear power

We all hear the buzz, Nuclear treaty with USA for peaceful usage . India and USA has formally Agreed to exchange technology and know how of the nuclear energy for domestic use that is 'generation of power' ,how will it affect both the countries well to take a cue USA is already the upper hand interms of technology the country is power rich on the other hand India is undergoing a power hunger since decades . The growth in Industrialisation creation of office spaces , residential complexes have left the power grid less power to manipulate with .

Currently India has follwing power plants in - Narora, Kalpakkam, Tarapur, Kaiga, Kakrapar, kota, but these are all govt. controlled establishement according to CN rao report that private establishment should be allowed has fueled the interest of corporate houses in this area- Tata Group, Vedanta group, R- ADAE has shown keen interest to venture in this domain .Even MNC like GE , Alstom, Siemens are looking forward to supply equipments to this sector incase it opens up .
Today India generates around 3000 mega watt of power from these plants and has plans to do it ten times in 20 years . Growth in nuclear power has been slow because of limited supply of uranium .


See the gargantuan requirement - Today the country generates 160,000 MW of power and by 2030 it will require 80,0000 MW of power our generation is mostly dependent on coal and this signifies we will need 2 billion tonnes/ annum of coal to support that type of generation. This figure is all according to planning commission report

Nuclear power has to be there to support the energy needs hence it makes sense to persue the agreement in positive will to support us

A dark hole of Credit

India is fast paced becoming a credit economy every where today credits are readily available. Credit for business, credit for professionals, credit for artisians, credit for car, house . you can get credit for almost everything -except for death rituals.
Well as economist have predicted before hand that India is going to be credit taker. Budding tribe of wage earners , high consumption rate insatiable desire for consumption is fueling to the cause . Take example of living space in Metro cities the prices of 1000 sq ft which is considered to be enough for the family of 4+1 is no longer a sensible figure. The prices of flats and residential spaces have reached to peaks months after month, either people are buying places after places or this is a mirage. The increasing habit of living in credit is becoming a catch 22 situation, People work so that they can earn but today they earn so that they can spend and with credit on there back they work to repay the credits .
Increasing number of people succumbing to the cycle of credit month after month , they are all plugged to something they cant even come out of dark hole of credit.

The cycle goes on and on , if you look from a birds eye view this becomes a ritual - One spends ina month throug a credit card and next month pay the last months bill or most of the earning goes in getting reliecved from the surmountable interst of credit .

Only solution is Control, Discipline in ones spending. Ancestorial concept still hols peace of mind and relieves stress, they used to hate credit and loathe the habit of it . Saving was the mantra but who follows this . Its one life one time you wont be young for ever so why stop... well i guess there are always going to be justification to this . Its up to people to choose what they want from life .

Indian telecom Party

SO here we have another news, Hutchison selling its stakes in Hutch - Essar in India. WEll Indian telecom story has won accolades around the world with many turnaround stories . AS one of the biggest growing telecom market is witnessing new avtars of services the industry is ready to go for a shakeup. The dynamics of the Industry had a pradigm shift whree vendors were asked to take on the services of network operation instead of operator. Today the operator is mere spectator and the vendors have found a new avenue to penetrate .
3G is knocking on the doors , almost all the players have tested and others like Aircel are going other step by taking there shots on Wi- Max.
Reliance Infocomm looking to get a Momentus push and is running to get for hold in GSM business . It is ready to shift to GSM and has already got presence in states like MP, WB etc. So what is the next here , will players like Singtel, Vodafone, Sprint etc start there operations on there own or they will wait for someone to sell off.
All eyes on IDEA, SPICE but as Aditya birla group ( the promoters of IDEA) has said no to the bids SPICE telecom will be a prey to watch out for .

Derisking Risk

Risk is a part of ever venture , whenever anyone takes a step ahead from the ordinary risk is associated like shadows to a body .
Enterprises across the globe fight more and more to captivate this risk and control the venture to its sustainablility limits. Right from taking on a new market, making a new product, starting a new service, every thing has its risk associated with it . There are many tools available in market to monitor risks- various business suites like ( entetrprise risk managemetn portals), Performance management programs, ERP dashboards to minitor the key business facts, BI softwares and packages etc.
But all these come to rest at some juncture. Project viability can be studied and analysed but it cannot be predicted with its response.

Man has fought battles after battles to derisk the risk, but some how things crop up . In business when some product is launched it is suplemented with series of advertisement, Sales strategies, branding excercises etc. millions of dollars spent to derisk the risk and when the strategy fails there are more risks which come up - customer loss, fincncial loss etc.

Can there be a fool proof model which says Risk can be derisked? The best part of the risk is its "presence" without that certainity wil crop in and this will hamper the quest of excellence .