Just another ‘It’

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Indian Civil Services is one of the most prestigious public service examinations held in the Union of India. The exam dates, applications, roll numbers, preparation tips, results; subsequent screening rounds are all a matter of wide coverage in the print and electronic media. The fortunate few who are able to sustain the beatings of the selection committee go on to head important positions for civil services and utilities like public works, civic administration, municipal offices, road transport, electricity, infrastructure, etcetera.

The mechanism set up is very unique and a gift of the British Empire, as during that era, it was a sense of pride to be a Civil Servant and so it is now. But look around, actions speak louder than words. Almost every civic department, rather, every civic department is over burdened, stretched to its limit. The reason does not lie in staffing. There is a huge army of Head clerks, assistants, helpers, office boys, Gazette officers, that’s millions of workforce at a country’s disposal. But how much are we getting out of it?

The smart reader will try to get the point here, and the solution. The solution lies on a simple theory. What do you do when you have to get a File from a point A in the city to point B, let’s assume that the distance between them is couple of blocks. The Indian solution now is hiring a office boy who waits until the end of the day so that all such Files accumulate and pile up, and then at the end of the day, or perhaps, next day they all would be carried to their destination, where pending clearance, they will have to be sent back. This is how things work in almost every civic office, resulting in delays. And if there is miscarriage or loss in transit, as it happens quite often, there is no way to track what went wrong and where it went wrong.

There have been so many theories from eminent scholars, mathematicians and economists that mean  in layman’s term, “Everything is related.” Now based on that, let’s go back to our example of file transit. Let’s first ask, what is the File? What is it made up of? Is it bulky, sensitive, light, and urgent? Well in our case, it is a set of documents, an application for cooking gas or LPG connection. Now that means it could be a stack of papers, and there are hundreds of such stacks, several files, a lot of paper. The starting point A is a huge hall with a lot of crammed up people, fans, lights, clerks, desks, tables, and a huge commotion. Isn’t there another way, a workaround so that we can handle these Files in a more efficient manner? Well we can go online.

Setting up an online empire is not something that has to be done from scratch. There are platforms that are successfully operating, not only on a nationwide scale, but globally. The intelligent reader is by now wondering what it is that operates on such a biblical scale but still is untapped for its full potential. It handles the most sought after commodity, in millions, is trustworthy, private and at the same time public. Quite obviously it has to be a network, on a network; it has to be ATM. ATM for Automated Teller Machine or ATM for Asynchronous Transfer Mode, which is a means of digital communications that is capable of very high speeds; suitable for transmission of images or voice or video as well as data, both serve our purpose, are not very expensive. Of course, there needs to be a trained manpower that would provide support and maintenance.and yet at the same time it would not need a jet pilot to operate such a machine.

In a nation of IT giants, the world’s back office, certainly this isn’t an impossible feat. Terminals can be set up, software can be licensed and sold, that can be installed on home desktops, and portables, unique ID and password could be generated on the lines of UIN or SSN. Even the software or the firmware can be derived from most existing internet banking CRMs and tweaked further, tabs added for additional utilities like Electricity Bills, Water Bills, Taxes, Registrations.

What do we gain? The average reader now wonders what’s in it for me. Plain and direct, you are not a burden on the infrastructure, you wont waste paper, you wont waste fuel, you wont create commotion, you wont waste time, there would be lesser crowd and commotion, and most importantly, you might just wont even have to leave the comfort of your home. For those who are not so privileged to have a desktop and internet connection, we can set up ATM like terminals at prominent squares and localities just like existing ATM machines.

Implementing this or the challenge to do this is the next big ‘It’ and it is based on the simple theory of tackling a problem at its source.  




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Disclaimer: This blog post is an entry to Intel’s contest – My India App Story

Wish to slog for six months without being paid? Apply today!

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Make hay while the sun shines. Yes. You read it correct. Pawan Hans, claiming to be one of India’s leading helicopter transport company, has come up with an ingenious plan to make money. And they are minting it big time. On their web site, the public sector company has come up with a very brave and un-heard of example, at least in the public sector, to give practical training to students of Aircraft Maintenance Engineering (AME) for duration of six months on its fleet of helicopters. There is however a price and it is by no means fair.

Every student willing to train with the company has to pay 50,000 INR + service tax @10.3% totaling the amount to 55,150 INR. Also if the student wishes to have a single bachelor accommodation, he/she will have to shell out an additional 12,500 INR. The OJT document on Pawan Hans web site, available for download as PDF file, further states “Training will be exclusively at the risk of students and the company shall not own any obligation whatsoever and these students will not be offered employment in the company.”

While most airlines and maintenance organizations are known to charge certain amount as OJT fee, but an amount to the tune of 55,150 INR is certainly a first for students. Air India is said to charge 18,500 INR as fee for OJT for duration of six months. Air India too does not provide any job guarantee. While almost all major airlines, domestic and international, provide “On-job-training” to students of aircraft maintenance engineering, Pawan Hans is the only company to have a separate link under the banner “Practical On the Job Training for Students-unpaid” on its web site proving beyond doubt that there are indeed a sizable chunk of rich candidates willfully signing up for this gross exploitation, especially in the light of the fact that OJT candidates are a synonym for cheap and free labor. A typical OJT candidate slogs it out on the field just like any other permanent employee although in the role of a trainee/assistant/helper.

On another note, this is really disheartening for most aircraft maintenance students as most of them hail from working class families. Most AME institutes charge anywhere from 2,00,000 – 7,00,000 INR as fees for 2.5 years of classroom training in shabby facilities with old junk or discarded/crashed aircraft frames and engines. Most of these components had been out of service since more than a few decades ago. While the DGCA continues to grant approval to these institutes with little or no infrastructure, the number of these unemployed candidates is bound to rise exponentially with most of them seeking refuge in BPOs, that is after running from pillar to post and once they are left with nowhere to run.

The Wandering Apprentice.

Indian Aviation: Are you game ?

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The search string Indian Civil Aviation in Google yields some of the very dynamic results – typical of most highly sophisticated industrial and commercial sectors in the Indian subcontinent. In an April 2010 post, The India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), listed 454 as the total number of airports and airstrips “in place” in the country, out of which, 16 are designated as international airports. The article goes ahead to quote an Airport Service Quality passenger survey which ranks Hyderabad International Airport, managed by a public-private joint venture, amongst the world’s top five. From this and a few other examples, it is quite clear that the public-private partnership or PPP is a success story.

But this is just one aspect of the growth spree. Amidst the increasing passenger statistics, compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and revenue margins, there is one very vital statistic, which to our surprise, none of the surveys ever talked about - the growing number of young Indians, aircraft maintenance trainees or pilots, between the age of group of 19 – 30, jobless and hopeless. Amidst non-verified reports ranking Indian Civil Aviation amongst the top five markets in five years, it is an irony for the multitudes of these highly skilled citizens who face an uncertain future. There only hope – surveys and reports like these which serves as few more weeks of oxygen necessary to sustain life amidst rising costs of living. The question every one seems to ask or no one would wish to answer is: Is anybody concerned?

The Ministry of Civil Aviation clearly states it “is the nodal Ministry responsible for policy formulation, development and regulation of the Civil Aviation sector in India. “ The statement, on its web site, is complimented by a beaming portrait of the Minister for Civil Aviation, Praful Patel. Whether the ministry is aware or not, from the web site statement, the ministry clearly is responsible due to lapses in policies regulating manpower licensing and certification of training schools. Every year thousands of students, (The exact figure is unknown and uncharted) which some industry insiders put at anywhere from 10,000 - 15,000, add up to the job queue.

The shocker is that for most job hunt sites here, terms like aircraft maintenance engineer or aircraft technicians are terms they have never heard of. An aircraft maintenance engineering student has to settle for other shady alternatives like middlemen or opt for a non-conventional approach. The deeper the insight goes, darker the picture gets. The final blow to the crises is that every large aviation corporation in the country has no defined set of qualifications set as its eligibility criterion when it comes to hiring prospective staff for executive positions in Quality control, maintenance and flight operations. A typical “walk-in”, if at all - for maintenance personnel is attended not only by aircraft maintenance graduates but also by diploma holders in electronics and telecommunications, electrical or mechanical streams plus the regular army of unemployed engineers (B.E.) from premier institutions alike. Rightfully said – Unity in Diversity. This last but not the least piece of information brings into light another culprit, the Ministry of HRD – as they proudly call it on their national web site. Their sub-heading states “Details on national education policies, schemes, scholarships, statistics, and also malpractice alerts.” – copied and pasted here, verbatim, from the search listing in Google.

The Ministry of “HRD” and the Ministry of Civil Aviation, as the two pivotal regulatory authorities, quickly need to assess the damage already done and take precautionary measures. The dynamic times now need dynamic measures and pro-active governance, this is a lesson the Indians need to learn – and they need to learn fast, especially in the light of the fact that change – any change that is too critical, is always deferred to the next five year plan, five years later.