An Indecisive Indian

   The issue of our labour laws has come into focus recently. Revision in these laws has always been a crying need but successive governments only paid lip service to it. Any proposal for changes in these laws would be looked at with hawk’s eye not only by labour unions and allied interest groups but by the entire opposition as well. It is therefore, not surprising that the political will to address the issue is not easy to come by. The subject is in focus now-a-days as states try to woo investors in the industrial arena and somehow the Covid pandemic has acted as the catalyst to lead these states towards labour reforms. So far so good, just as Petruchio invokes in The Taming of The Shrew, “Come my sweet, Kate. Better once than never, for never too late ”. Indeed it would be better to be late than never and also i t is never too late to change. So, exactly on expected lines, the votaries of modifications in Labour Laws gave it an initial thumbs up just as the oppositi...

  This very emotive work, my favourite, was painted by P. Sampath Kumar during one of the four art camps organized at the Bangalore City station. He called it “Between the arrival and the departure” It has been two months since the lockdown was enforced in India. A lot has been debated about the timing and extent of the restrictions. Various assessments abound of the economic cost the nation has paid and is going to pay. It perhaps still is early days to start putting numbers to the damages. In any case, I am no expert in these matters. I do feel that the lockdown was necessary and even timely.  At the same time, I also maintain that the governments, all of them, whether central of state, failed to anticipate the issue of migrant labourers. It was the job of the governments to envisage the aftermath for they have all the means, machinery, information and the mandate to do so. The detractors of the government say that the central government has been absolutely callous a...

In the address to the nation on 12th May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an economic package worth Rs 20 lakh crore or 10 per cent of GDP, with a view to making India self-reliant and locating it in a strong position in the post Covid-19 world. He elaborated that the break-up of the package would help every section including workers, farmers, middle class and industrial units through various sops and measures. The response to the announcement has gone on the usual political lines. Those supporting it hailed it as a panacea for the ills that we face today. Those opposing it were obviously less charitable with their response varying from a qualified welcome calling it a delayed decision to deep disappointment and yet another failure to address woes of millions of migrant workers. The opposition, I must say, cut a sorrier figure as they could be seen opposing exactly what they had demanded days back. A great deal of dissection of the package would take place by experts...

The concept of providing all the equipment, not only for traction and braking but also for air-conditioning, ventilation and lighting, and indeed everything else, below the floor was working out. As Train18 neared completion, we could see that this would revolutionize the way we laid out equipment and sub-assemblies in our rolling stocks. We were certain that we had hit upon the right concept and that we must transfer it to other rolling stocks as far as possible. Back in early 2017, even as the Train 18 work had picked up speed, both Srinivas, and Vavre, approached me with a grandiose plan to equip all self-propelled trains with Train 18 clones for bogies and propulsion. Although the Train 18 project itself was in infancy, they were already brimming with confidence about the impact it would crate and change the way we designed rolling stock. It was music to my ears as it had been at the back of my mind too. I immediately gave them a go ahead, with a smile, saying touché with ...