An Indecisive Indian

  There is a view that the top management cadres of Indian Railways (IR) are in a mess due to half-baked and unimplemented reforms initiated by the previous rail regime without much sense of purpose. A large number of top posts of IR, particularly those of Members of the Board and General Managers (GMs), lie vacant. In the middle of this chaos, came the announcement that all future induction of officers would be through a common examination and the successful candidates would join an integrated service called, Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS). As expected, there was more criticism than support for the move. I also wrote about it in Hindu BusinessLine, 10 th March 2022, with some reservations about the move to have a single cadre at the entry stage, although I had always opined that a unified cadre at top level was indeed a crying need.   No one can downplay the need for a positive resolution of the age-old problem of acute departmentalism and fragmentary working o...

  I read the following piece in India Today with interest: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/firms-penalised-bid-rigging-cartelisation-indian-railways-tenders-1960823-2022-06-10?fbclid=IwAR1WhuJJteF7305vzdy4NSTu5NFg_CrKqIcnmt_YBRWkJ2Tz33B5ShEiZdk The article reports that Competition Commission of India (CCI) found evidence of cartelization by seven firms in the supply of Protective Tubes to the Indian Railways (IR) in respect of allocating tenders and determining prices, directly or indirectly, coordinating and manipulating the bidding process and the bid prices and regulating supplies. The evidence in the matter included regular e-mail communications between the parties and the filing of bids from the same IP addresses by certain parties. Ten individuals of these seven entities were held liable for the anti-competitive conduct of their respective companies/firms. We keep hearing of such actions but the practice of allocating tenders and determining prices continues....

      That bloke Hamlet mistakenly clarified in the eponymous play of the bard that, "…I must be cruel, only to be kind Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.” The chap was basically trying to dissuade Gertrude , his mother, from having it off with Claudius , as that would be a betrayal of her previous husband, Hamlet’s father. He was certainly cruel, threatening her that her neck might break if she does not come to heel, but the intention was kind to keep her from going astray. I extract this gem, by now a bodacious idiom, from within a lot of other drivel that the mad prince utters, to heighten the paradox therein, as it suits my purpose today. My purpose being to denounce the whole caboodle of mankind who assail my senses on a daily basis by battering me with Whatsapp kindness , by manipulating the idiom a bit to say that they ‘be so kind that they are cruel.’   Whatsapp, individual, and even more so the groups, are like the quintessential wintertime r...

  The Minister of Railways, Government of India A petition by IRWAR cadre officers It is said that once a railway man, always a railway man. We, the members of Indian Railway Wiser After Retirement (IRWAR) cadre have excelled that maxim. We were not much of railway men when we were in service, as we were mostly emblematic members of departmental coteries. But post retirement, we have been bestowed with this great enlightenment that departmentalism is inimical to IR. We have, therefore, formed this unified cadre of IRWAR, with the sole aim of acting as a think tank to devise means, cutting across departmental fault lines, to help put the brakes on the progress of railways and restore its pristine glory of moving at a snail’s pace. Membership of this cadre is not automatic for the retired officers. Members are selected carefully with following entry conditions to ensure that only the supreme achievers in non-doer and (NK) ²D+CH categories , the latter being  the acronym of...