The Munshi Pulia Puzzle

Here is a puzzle set up by the traffic police of Lucknow.  As I do not have access to a helicopter for an aerial photograph, I have represented the puzzle diagrammatically.

For those who are not familiar with Lucknow, Munshi Pulia is a very busy road intersection on the Ring Road with a huge circle and lots of traffic.  The traffic also includes heavy vehicles passing through Lucknow.  There are no traffic signals at the chauraha.

The police have erected a barrier as shown in the diagram.  Because of it the traffic flows in crazy ways.  I have shown the patterns in the diagram.  I decided against drawing the remaining flow lines as the diagram was getting too crowded.

When you are at or near the point marked "battlefield", you tend to get disoriented as traffic seems to be coming towards you from all sides except from up above and down under.  You draw a huge sigh of relief every time you are able to safely make it to your chosen road on the other side of the intersection.

Traffic police normally doesn't intervene.  I think they are convinced of the futility of doing so.

Some friends have guessed that the barrier has been erected to force the traffic coming in from the road at the bottom of the drawing and turning right to go around the circle.  Do you agree?

The question posed to you, dear readers, is this - is it possible that there could be some other deep unfathomable reason for the police to have done what they have?  And has it resolved the traffic problems or magnified them?  It might help if you stood at or slowly walked past the "battle point" while deliberating.  Do I hear you saying that it will be dangerous to do so?  Pedestrians routinely do that!

Letter to Dr. Dinesh Sharma, Mayor of Lucknow

Dear Dr. Dinesh Sharma,

I am persisting with my letters in the hope of catching your attention for the causes that our Prime Minister is espousing and where municipalities have a big role to play.

The PM is espousing the cause of smart cities.  Without the basic infrastructure in place there is no way to realize this dream.  However the current state of infrastructure even in the capital city of Lucknow shows that we are continuing in decades / centuries old ways and that there is little application of thought towards smart infrastructure.

A very mundane case in point is that of open drains (naali) for storm water that runs alongside boundaries of houses.  Some people use a strip of the sidewalk adjoining their boundary for gardening and quite a few of them fill this drain up with mud.  In many cases the drains gradually get choked up on their own.  The drains are not maintained nor are the sidewalks.  Though, sometimes we do see the unpalatable sight of drains being cleaned and all the stinking trash left on the sidewalks to find its way back to the drains.  In fact, the sidewalks are merely muddy strips separating house boundaries from the road. Thus all the mud and dirt and litter from the sidewalks finds its way to the drain and chokes it.  Many citizens have created an inlet into the sewers for draining the water that accumulates in front of their houses.

Further, there is no standard design for the sidewalk and the driveway from a house to the road.  Since the corporation is not doing the sidewalks many people are having it paved at their own expense in front of their house.  Now the question arises whether the pavement should be sloping towards the road or towards the drain alongside the boundary.  Since the drain has disappeared in most places most house owners keep the slope towards the road.  This leads to accumulation of water on the road and its consequent erosion.  Also, as there are no standard designs for the driveway merging into the road, many people make it so massive and steep as to totally block the sidewalk.

This was about the residential areas.  In marketplaces, the sidewalks simply become extension of shops forcing pedestrians out on the road.  As sidewalks are occupied entirely by the merchants, half the road gets taken up by motorists and bikers for parking thereby choking the traffic.

We know that in most countries there are no open drains, not even for storm water.  We know that footpath and driveway too have been completely standardized in more developed parts of the world and this makes life easy for all.

I would like to ask you is there anything that LMC is planning to do in this direction?  And, if yes, what and by what time?  Paving the footpaths may also pave the way to a smart city!  And concealed storm water drains will add both aesthetics and smartness to the infrastructure.

Regards,

AK Upadhyaya
18/428 Indira Nagar
Lucknow - 16.

Mob: 9044275658

Letter to Dr. Dinesh Sharma, Mayor of Lucknow

Dear Dr. Sharma,

Earlier I had written to you about the menacing levels of pollution resulting from widespread practice of burning garbage on the streets.

The letter today is meant to draw your attention to the menace of stray animals on the road that, unfortunately, include cows too that are loved by all of us.  This love is sometimes overshadowed by trepidation when we find a whole cowherd headed our way with two of them fighting with their horns interlocked.  People do get pushed and hurt.  The herds also have one or two bulls whose presence itself is menacing.

It would seem that these cows are owned by people in the embedded villages in the colony and they have trained them to roam around for food and return to them for milking.  Religious minded people do keep on offering food to these cows reinforcing their behavior.  They are also attracted by the uncollected garbage that lies around at dumping centers as mentioned in my previous letter.

The bigger threat is from bulls that accompany the horde and are apparently not owned by anybody.  These must be those few male calves who could manage to escape the cattle smugglers or have been protected for reproduction purposes.  They are aggressive, look menacing and cause hurts to pedestrians.

Monkeys too have become a terror and are routinely visiting residential areas and doing substantial damages to gardens, cables, overhead tanks and also biting people.  Street dogs too are a menace.

If we want Lucknow to be a modern city, we must free the city of stray cattle, monkeys and dogs.  The LMC will do good to proactively comb the residential areas for stray cattle instead of waiting for a complaint.  Many a times these cattle come out after dusk when the offices are closed.

I am sure that the matter will receive your attention and lead to some action on the ground for making the city safe and clean.  This will also be a step towards making a smart city as visualized by our Prime Minister.

Regards,

AK Upadhyaya
18/428 Indira Nagar
Lucknow - 16.

Mob: 9044275658

A Letter to Dr. Dinesh Sharma, Mayor of Lucknow.

To:
      Dr. Dinesh Sharma,
      Mayor, Lucknow.


Dear Dr. Sharma,

I am writing this open letter to you for two reasons.  The first reason is the call by our Prime Minister for a Clean India.  The second is the ever diminishing space available to those who try to keep healthy by taking walks in the morning: I am a senior citizen and belong to this group.

I find Prime Minister's call for स्वच्छ भारत being interpreted merely as a call for not littering and for not peeing or defecating in the open.  However enlightened people like you would agree that it goes far beyond this.  I will illustrate this.  People in my locality are quite hygiene conscious and have engaged an agency, Chamaacham Lucknow, for garbage collection.  They come in a rickety thela rickshaw and take away the kitchen garbage and the recyclables.  Sometimes, if the garbage is voluminous, they protest and mumble about no or inadequate space allocated to them for dumping the garbage.  I do think that it is the municipal corporation that is finally responsible for processing and disposal of all garbage even if they don't collect it from each household.  Some open dumps used by these garbage collectors are in the residential areas itself.  There is one on the Picnic Spot Road leading to Kukrail forest too.  The garbage rots there giving off foul smell till municipal dumpsters collect them.  The garbage also attracts cows, pigs and dogs who feed off it.

But in this letter I would like to draw your attention to yet another class of garbage.  It is in the form of fallen leaves and plant trimmings and also littering on the road resulting from a habit that the PM is fighting against.  A contributing factor for such behavior is almost total lack of public trash cans too.

This last category of trash is swept into small mounds in the morning and then lighted up.  There is hardly any park in Indira Nagar where you will not find a smouldering garbage dump spewing dark smoke. This has made morning walk absolutely unhealthy and many people are thinking of either giving up morning walk, or to go for a walk before dawn and arrival of the sweepers, or drive to a faraway park like Lohia or Janeshwar Park.  These mounds of garbage emitting smoke can been seen throughout the city including the market areas.

The sweepers maintain that this is the only possible way of disposing this class of garbage and that even if they were to carry cartloads there is no place to dispose it off.

I wish to underscore that if the PMs Swachchh Bharat mission is to succeed, municipalities have to gear up and put in place arrangement for efficient collection and disposal / processing of garbage.  Without this arrangement in place, it is but bound to fail.

As the mayor of the capital city of UP and as a political figure who is loved by the citizens, you are just the right person to take a lead and blaze the trail for all other municipalities to follow.

We look forward to your initiatives to galvanize Lucknow Municipal Corporation into becoming a model for attaining the cleanliness visualized by our beloved PM.

Regards,

AK Upadhyaya
18/428 Indira Nagar
Lucknow - 226016.

Mobile: 9044275658.

The Era Of Wireless And The Wiry Household

These days we are much worried about electromagnetic pollution around us emanating from all kind of wireless devices.  And, yet, search an average household and you are very likely to find a basket or box full of a variety of wires.  Most of these will be chargers for various devices.  Then you will have earphones and headphones.  You will also find data cables for connecting portable devices to a bulkier computer or laptop.

Apart from these, there are those well known wires coming in from the external world too.  Apart from the electricity power cable there is one for broadband internet-cum-telephone cable and one for the TV (unless you have IP TV.)  While a complete wiring schema for distributing the electrical power throughout the house has been around for quite some time, that for the other two cables is yet to become mainstream.

For telephones, the problem has been mitigated by cordless phones with multiple handsets.  Similarly wired LANs have disappeared from households with the advent of wireless routers (though the issue of relocating your router remains.)  I wonder if something similar can be done for the TV too, so that you could be free to move your TV to any location in your house with the requirement of just a power point.

With the current state of technology, the most entanglement is found near the TV installation in the house.  Though these days TVs in many homes have a decorative wooden mounting which also serves to conceal this entanglement, if you look carefully you will find the following:

• Power cable for the TV.
• Power cable for the STB.
• The incoming TV cable.
• The cable(s) connecting TV and STB.
• If you have a DVD player too, power and data cables for the same.
• If you have a Chromecast, Roku or a similar device, a power cable and a connector for the same.
• An extension board and its lead.
• Wires going out to the home theater system.

The next jumble will be found close to the router.  Here you will find the following:

• Incoming cable for internet and telephone connected to a splitter.
• Two cables coming out from the splitter, one for the telephone and the other for the router.
• A power cable for the cordless telephone.
• A power cable for the router.

And then it is very likely that there will be a charging station with an extension board which can accommodate one charger for devices with mini-USB, one for Apple devices and one for the laptop.

Some people bring their devices from abroad where the plugs are different.  Hence you are also likely to find a collection of adapters or universal plugtops.

Needless to say that this paraphernalia does require some time for management and proper stock taking.  The management includes straightening out tangled leads and earphone wires as also finding a few missing cables and chargers.

This state of affairs is calling out for some more innovations, the foremost being a self charging battery like the self winding watches of the yesteryear.  Technologists should also ponder if is it possible to transmit energy through narrow laserlike beams and have reflectors and beam-seeking receptors. To start with this transmission could be for low power requirements like charging mobiles and tablets.  

It is heartening to note that these days many gadgets are coming with power adapters that accept input from 100 to 240 volts.  This has eliminated the need for step-up and step-down adapters.  Bluetooth too is a big help as it eliminates the need for a connector cable in many cases.

Ideas are invited for the least wiry household set up.

Poor Fishermen And The Mighty Navy

The TV images of exercises carried out by our mighty navy dazzle us with the display of navy's might.  The same media also brings to us the news of hapless fishermen being caught by Pakistan and Sri Lanka on the grounds of tresspass and then rotting in their jails.  We also know of terror attempts that find the sea route an easy option for infiltration.

We have fenced our land borders with Pakistan and have deployed the BSF to check infiltration as well as prevent our own citizens from walking into alien territory.  Can something similar not be done on our sea boundaries with the said two countries?

The idea is to guard the entire maritime boundary and not merely the coasts.  Can some kind of markers be put in the waters to help fishermen know where one country's jurisdiction ends?  Can we also have a strip of no man's waters as a guard band?  With our maritime might it should not be too difficult.

Comments from those with better knowledge of maritime affairs are welcome.

NJAC - A Citizen's Views

Today the legislature and the executive are elected by the public while the top judiciary appoints itself.  The executive and the legislature are seen by the long suffering public as going berserk and having no intentions of correcting their course.  The judiciary, especially the lower one, too is seen suffering from similar ills.

However in many cases the self-appointed top judiciary is the only institution that is able to exercise some check on the legislature and the executive. And hence any attempt by the executive to insinuate itself into the process of appointments in the judiciary must be opposed tooth and nail.

And, yet, it cannot be gainsaid that an institution as important as the judiciary cannot be left to its own devices for appointments without any external controls.  After all, we are opposing any role for the government in the appointment of judiciary on the grounds of checks and balances only.

Under these circumstances I feel that instead of giving the government any role in selection of judges for High and Supreme courts, the role should be given to the public itself.  A list of desirous and eligible persons may be prepared and their CV and achievements put on a website.  Thereafter the concerned public, state or the whole country, should vote for them.  Any campaigning must be through the website, national TV, SMS and electronic messengers only.  The voting must be done through mobiles only to cut down on all the hassles associated with setting up voting booths.  Now that voter id cards are being linked to Aadhaar, voter ids are automatically getting linked to voters' mobile numbers.  This would be a far better alternative to any meddling by the government.

Do you agree?

The Long Ignored Underpaid Banker Succumbs!

(This post is, unfortunately, prompted by the recently reported money laundering by a leading public sector bank.)

I had joined a nationalized bank as a DRO a little over four decades ago.  At that time, it was the best paying job in the public and most coveted next only to the administrative services.  Though, the reasons were not entirely monetary.  A bank DRO's total salary in those days exceeded that of a new IAS recruit!  Of course, for the latter salary was and remains only one of the many benefits that they enjoy.  Yet this shows that bankers were very well paid in those days.  They also had access to loans at much softer terms.  A good financial package was considered mandatory for the banker.  After all, you cannot have a hungry person guarding your food supplies.

In those days of fully manual working a bank officer had to slog a good deal.  We had jokes about dogs barking in the midnight signaling the return to home of a bank employee.  Yet, the job was considered prestigious and succeeded in attracting the best talent.  The minimum qualification for a bank officer was "first class graduate" and the competition was intense.

Of course, directly recruited officers, formed a minuscule percentage of the total workforce in the banking industry and their lateral entry was resented by clerks and promotee officers.  But it were these DROs who rose to higher echelons and played a very significant role in transformation of the industry through application of technology and modern management principles and methods.

It was 1973, 4 years after the first round of nationalization, when I joined the industry.  The second round came in 1980.  The new masters of the industry and the old players of one-up-man-ship, the bureaucrats must have been quite upset with the bankers' pay scales.  So they set up a committee called the Pillai committee which put in motion the task of turning bankers into underdogs (pillas in Hindi.)  The cunning and conniving leaders of trade unions in banking industry seem to have colluded with the bureaucracy and ensured in each successive wage negotiations a constant decline in the wage parity of bankers vis-a-vis government employees.

Today things have come to a pass where public sector bankers have probably the worst pay scales in any industry.  A bank officer starts at a salary which is much lower than what an IAS or PCS recruit draws.  It is perhaps the same as that of a school teacher recruited by state governments.  Even officers in higher echelons get a much lower salary, perhaps half of their counterparts in the government.  The public may find it hard to believe because the fact seldom receives any publicity.  The reason could be that any publicity about low wages of bankers will erode public's confidence in banks themselves.  But when the reality becomes too harsh for a group it finds its own ways to creep into public conscience.

With the vertically rising costs of education and housing and the prospect of a grossly inadequate pension and medical cover after superannuation, it is no wonder that some of the unfortunate bankers have finally succumbed to a temptation which they were able to ignore or resist earlier.  I am not trying to defend their actions in any way or to condone what they have done.  Yet, this is what happens when you systematically and persistently starve a class that is supposed to manage and guard humongous amounts of  public money.

Bank of Baroda, my employer, used to pride itself on the fact that during its 100+ years of existence, it was never found involved in any scandal.  It is painful to see that claim falling flat on its face and yet this was becoming inevitable and the industry should have seen this coming.

I am afraid that things are only going to get worse in the coming days.  The pathetic pay scales have ensured that banks are no more able to attract the best manpower but only those who are not even able to become a teacher in a school or a clerk in the government.  The recruitment process too is getting vitiated.  I shudder to think of what happens as these recruits make their way to the top.  And yet, the bankers and the government continue to play deaf to the travails of bankers.  Will this incident serve to wake them up?  I join in ringing the alarm because my own pension, howsoever low, is at stake.