Reality... Bites!!!

Scene I : Railways minister office:

Hmmm....Finally we got it, the long pending allocation for converting meter gauge trains in the city to broad gauge. What this means is that we will be able to take in more people than we do...

<< Really... If that's going to be true then I will use my car for just weekend trips and will start using trains for my office...

Scene II : Roadways department :

The condition of the roads seems to be very bad lets relay the most important ones. Wherever there are good roads, lets relay the medians, and plant some saplings in the median to make sure we go eco-friendly. Lets pick the important roads and cover them first.

<< Isn't that cool, thanks guys keep up the good work

Scene III : Bridges department [ don't know to which department it belongs ;) ] :

We have got sanctions from state government for another 6 to 7 bridges in the city to improve the traffic conditions, lets go all out and silence the opposition, and in the next elections we will use this as our trump card to woo the voters...

<< WOW, you know what, the railway junction near my house has been chosen for a bridge site, isn't that real cool...

Scene IV : Corporation Office :

We have done well to get some green gardens in most important traffic junctions, it is our responsibility to take care of these so that the next guy who is to take the seat doesn't blame us for swindling all the money and not taking proper care of these greenlands. Lets do one thing, even though there is water scarcity in the city, lets bring waters in big containers and spray waters for these flower/grass beds to make them bloom, let the people enjoy some green sites while they drive home/office.

<< mhmm, this doesn't sound too good, especially when people are struggling for a pot of water. But still this would help give back something to our dear green friends...its ok...may be it is required for a greener better future...

Climax : Monday morning....

It's monday morning, after a week long holiday in Kanyakumari (about which I will be writing shortly) getting back to work... 8:30AM... got to leave for office now....I took by vechicle, and off I went on my regular route...

OOPS... what is this?.. a huge crater... was there a missile attack or maritian invasion?. I came to know from a faint board lying near a fag end of the road declaring..."Roadways department...men at work". I just managed to apply brakes at the right moment, there were few more to follow me.. when the last guy saw us all he took an "About Turn" and to the next road, we all followed ...though a bumpy one finally managed to reach the main road.

This road is a high way, I have gone thru this many a times, the bike in front of my vechicle was growing impatient with the slow moving car in front of him. He tried to overtake the car by moving towards the center of the road. Suddenly, I heard a big skreeeech from the bike....all of us behind him applied our brakes...What on earth is this... there were loads of huge rocks all round the place and I could see another container offloading another hundred of these rocks few yards away...right in the middle of the road...O Boy are they crazy, what are they trying to do...Work in progress : Laying the median...

After crawling in single lane, an hour gone..., reached other junction...I saw some new buses and huge traffic ahead, all this was due to a traffic diversion because of a bridge work in progress...so until the bridge project completes these are my new friends with whom I will have to travel every morning... another half an hour gone...

Finally, I was some 200 meters away from my last traffic signal near my office...not again, strangly vechiles were moving very slow...I was wondering...did they forget to fill in gas?...are they trying to drive using wind energy?... Finally when I managed to reach near the junction found that there was a water carrier parked right in the middle of the road....They were trying to water...so called grass... and water was flowing all over the place...My goodness, is this the time (around 10:00AM) to water the plants?...

Reached office...and got back to normal...it became evening time to leave... just then I saw the flash news ... "Monsoon intensifies in southern parts of India", It started to rain....Somehow I managed to reach safely home that night...

Next day morning...it was still drizzling and during my 2 hr journey (what should have been just 30-40 mins drive) I saw only the boards "Men at work" no workers in the sight...reason it is water clogged and until rains stop work will not be resumed....O My...

+ Why on earth did all this happen at the same time?

+ Why doesn't railways department consult the roadways and other departments to phase out the projects?

+ Just because you have a feast in front of you, would anybody take a big bowl...put the starter in, mix the soup, add main course dishes in that, add two to three scoops of desserts...all in one and have them as single dish?

+ There are three main roads leading to backbone of the big city, How can work be in progress in all three at the same time? Needless to say that this was done when the entire railway line is down with a very low pulse rate...

Solution

I was reading a book called "The Fifth Discipline - The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization" by Peter M.Senge, a book on how systems thinking can help build a learning organization. The book explains beautifully, with good examples, on how systems thinking can help build effective organizations. Systems thinking means trying to go beyond your boundary and go and think how other participants in the entire system can affect the way you work...on what you work...on how you work...

The above, I wouldn't call it a story,"Reality", was because each of the government/non-government guys involved in such infrastructural activities did not care about what the other is doing. They need to communicate among them better and think beyond their boundary and see if work by some other guy needs to be considered before starting, not even strarting, even conceptualizing, a work...

I strongly believe, not just organizations, even if systems thinking is applied to "day to day" functioning of the various departments/organizations of the government, it will help everyone live a better life....

Olympics : Are we games...?

"Olympics", is ON, an event of the highest quality, where sports(wo)men compete, prove and win medals. India too participated, yes, "participated". We made the world realize that we are good at numbers, Indians turned in great numbers in filling up the empty seats and filling up those unclaimed last few points, last few positions in most of the competitions. Don't we deserve a gold for this, something that even china couldn't do, a bigger country in terms of size and number, may be even in terms of "politics". They still managed to come second in medals tally.

I happened to watch "We The People" in NDTV 24x7 this Sunday, good show, "business", where Indians are good at, "talking", as I am doing right now :). The subject was "Olympics and India's performance"..."Is Rathore the only silver lining?. There was a person from the "Sports Authority of India" trying to defend whatever happened, from poor performance to poor character from the contestants/coaches with regards to doping issues. Poor guy, he was so keen on covering up things and trying to put forward a rosy rosy picture, it was so obvious. When Barka asked for a Yes/No answer, he started off saying "let me explain..." ha ha, it was a real fun to watch. Yes it was so funny, the hand picked 80 odd legends, as they were portrayed in the media before the start of the games, failed to deliver. All sorts of issues were discussed from funding to managing to ability none seemed to me to be the core problem. Though they could be that salt on the wound, but the reason behind the wound could be something else...

Indians, do they lack the passion, to win, to deliver?.. Do the atheletes have a vision?... Let us try to analyze few things

How do we identify talent?

Probably this where we are making the first mistake. We search, pick and find people who want to take sports. But unfortunately these guys happen to take sports, just because they were not fit for anything else, and they could get a job if they are good at sports. Isn't that a big problem? Personally, I have come across people who take up a way of life because that could help them LIVE...I don't blame them, they are sometimes, rather most of the times, true to what they are doing, but just being true is not enough. You should have a passion, a fire within to catapult you to the next plane, that is important.

In India, people don't find what they are good at, rather they find out where they can go up the ladder soon, and try to get trained in that stream and move on. Results, we lack that bare minimum competancy. Fortunatly for us, we found a guy, Rathore, who passioned for gun, being in army, represented india and won us the lone silver medal, the best ever display in recent olympics by India, ONE SILVER MEDAL.

Lets take the case of USA, they seem to top the medal tallies in most of the competitions, Why?, I believe that, the guys find out what they are good at, they look at their physique, stamina and choose a sport that they can excel. Everyone from their basketball team is above 6ft and got a good physique, talk about 100m dash, boy, just by looking at the guy you will say, yes he will make it.

Solution : What is required, is a process to identify people who have passion and capability to excel, perform and give 200% to the sport.

How do we coach/train?

Once the sports(wo)men are identified, they fall into two categories

• The "Have's" - Those who have the money/sponsorship and influence to remain seeded no matter what their performance is
• The "Have not's"-Those unfortunate souls who just get to "flicker", capture the limelight and loose ground due of lack of the same, money/sponsorship and influence

Now once we get to a stable state to train people, we are just left with the "Have's", who happen to be really really difficult to train. The same grouping is applicable to coachs as well. People end up having a coach who wouldn't even have represented his/her state.

if we have good coach and a good talented sports(wo)men, next issue creeps up...

Solution : your comments here...:D

Where do we train?

We have big/small and beautiful stadiums, training centers, but unfortunately they happend to serve more as a landmark for reaching a friend's place or a bus terminus. Few to None are being used for the purpose they were built. Take for instance, the hockey stadium, players are refusing to play due the bad state of the turf, same case with the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, where the football ground has become the breeding place for frogs and reptiles. These are just instances, may be if I sit and think, there could be lots more to quote...but I will stop this list...hopefully point conveyed...

Reasons...could be lack of funds to lack of "intention" on the part of federations/officials. You will not be able to get a single person to answer the three letter question, "WHY?". You will end up getting a 1 hr cover up speech, if you dig further, you will unearth a few cases in court, probably few commissions looking into it.

Solution : Catch the next flight and fly out, get trained elsewhere. You just have to worry about only one thing, money. That's what most of the promising professionals like Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, yeah even Rathore happened to do. Perhaps, the only sport that we can provide a field to practice is for Vishwanathan Anand, a chess board, something that we could provide ;), even there we don't have the privilege of providing Big Blue machines for advanced practice and training.

Conclusion

If we end up implementing corrective measures, we could see lots of youngsters taking up professional sporting and will have more people, who could be blogging now.., to go out, play, represent and win medals for our country.