A Heart-Breaking & Shocking Truth - Sad Angle of Beggars

 

A Heart-Breaking & Shocking Truth

We keep reading / listening about the various stories of beggars. Beggars are not welcome anywhere in the world. Honestly, I feel no body becomes the beggar by choice. Situational circumstances compel a person to beg. But now-a day we also listen that many has opted this as a profession and even certain anti-social elements are running mafia; forces innocent children to beg. We always have sympathy about the beggars thinking that these peoples have no proper place to live and not able to afford two meals a day. But this doesn’t apply to all. Am sure, you must have heard about Mr. Bharat Jain, the richest beggar in the world from Mumbai. As per Aug 2021 data, Mr. Jain earns about 2500 INR per day by begging for 8 to 10 hours a day. No doubt, this is more than a average Indian earning. More shocking; Mr. Jain owns two 1 BHK apartments and one shop (rented out) in Mumbai. Income from rent is in addition to his begging income. Let’s stop here as have no intention to highlight or discuss this today. So, what I want to impress is that beggars are not unknown to India and one can always find them in plenty at crowded places such as railways stations, bus stands, temples, tourist place so on.

In June 2021, I went to Shri Kshetra Gangapur with family. This is very holy place and famous Dattatray Peeth, associated with Shri Narasimha Sarasvati Swami, an incarnation of Lord Dattatray. This is on the bank of the Bhima River in Azalpur taluka in Gulbarga district of Karnataka. This place is about 42 kms. from Gulbarga railway station, about 105 kms by road from Solapur (Maharashtra) and about 250 kms from Hyderabad (Telangana). One can find more details about this place from the below link.

Sri Kshetra Gangapur - Dattatreya Devsthan (dattatreyatemple-gangapur.org)

As we know, one can found beggars in abundant numbers at temples, places for worships and tourist spots. Shri Kshetra Gangapur is no exception. In fact, considering the popularity of this temples among devotees (very powerful shaktipeeth of Lord Dattatray), was expecting more beggars at this place. This was my first visit to this place and was stunned to see the number of beggars. Before we get down from the car in the paid car parking area, we were surrounded by about 8 – 10 beggars. This number further increased. From car parking till we enter the temple, we were surrounded, accompanied, escorted by about 12 to 15 beggars continuously begging for money. As we approached near the temple, these beggars were joined by the peoples eager to perform pooja, archana, abhishek on your behalf; of course, for the money. We were surrounded by so many peoples and believe by design; they formed a group of 4 to 5 beggars targeting each member of our family. We were unable to speak with each other’s. Was wondering number of beggars around us. Were very much annoyed by the time we enter the temple and started showing the signs of losing the temper, cool. This place is very powerful and full of positive energy but were so unfortunate, were not able to enjoy the peace and refill ourselves with the divine positive energy because of this nuisance. We came back feeling very sad and dejected. 

On 19^th Oct 2022, seen / heard a news that the dead body of a elderly woman has been eaten by stray dogs on 18^th Oct at Gangapur, the temple city. Who was this woman and what was she doing there? Immediately, remembered our experience of beggars at Gangapur and thought she might be one of the beggars which turn out to be correct. Once again started thinking; though will find beggars near any temple; why so many at this temple. After reading the news article further, was shocked for the life time.

Old woman who was died on 18^th Oct and was eaten by stray dogs, was actually abandoned at this pilgrimage place. With a great shock understand further devotees, mostly from Maharashtra and Karnataka, abandon aged and mentally ill family members at this place / temple. This practice is continued since many years with a belief that if these peoples stays few days / months at temple or temple town, they will be cured. Another possible reason (very difficult to digest) could be to get rid of elderly / aged family members / parents. It’s very simple; Visit the temple with aged family members; get misplaced / rid of (???) and return without aged family members. Because of old age, illness these peoples are not able to remember their home address, city or contact number. Even if somebody remember, they do not want to share simply because they were abandoned by these same close (?) relatives. What happens to the dead body? As these peoples has no family contact / trace, last rites of the dead are done by temple trust. Number of abandoned peoples must be very high; may be more than 100 persons.

Because of this incident administration will be in action for some time. They will try to keep a eye on the peoples who are abandoning the aged family members or will try to provide help / basic amenities to such peoples. But how many days government can do this? Why we should expect govt. to do this? We take a huge pride in our Indian culture, heritage, respect for elders / parents. We even perform the pooja of animals. Then can we not be responsible enough? Can we not effectively follow / adhere to our Indian culture and stop this shameful act. Instead of government, we need to held ourselves responsible for this and it’s our responsibility to correct ourselves and in turn our society. Let’s do it and let’s be proud of our Indian culture. 

Reality Shows – Real Or Dramas And What For?

 

Reality Shows – Real Or Dramas And What For?

Background of Reality Shows

In India, since about 15 to 20 years, Reality Shows has become very popular and is a buzz now-a-day. Reality shows are the television programmes of common peoples or celebrities or combination of both. Every television channel has the reality shows; it can be Singing, Dancing – individual or couples, Quiz, Game, Celebrity, Talent etc, etc. All reality shows tops in TRP among all the programmes; many thanks to its super creative producers and directors. Reality shows when started, were genuine, real. But to contrast, now a days most of the shows are scripted, unreal. Reality shows is not a very new concept. Reality shows started actually as Radio Show “Candid Microphone” in 1947 and first television reality show started in 1948 as “Candid Camera”. This was just a beginning, and those days shows were very close to reality. In the same year, even the concept of audience voting was also introduced.

Trend of New Generation or today’s Reality Shows started from 1970 and by end 90 / beginning of 2000 were a huge hit and started ruling the TRP, most important success parameter of television industry. Current Reality Shows are produced by specialists and master of creating or making sudden / shocking / surprising situations or series of incidents. “Big Brother” Reality Show first started in Netherlands in 1999 and immediately gained huge popularity all over the world. This was a sensation in about 70 countries. Indian licensed format version of this Show is “Big Boss”.  Indian Regional language version of this show are also ruling the TRP’s.

Why Reality Shows So Popular?

Watching the same family serial or daily soap week after week, month after month or for that matter year after year is very, very boring / annoying. Even though  audience is aware about scripted nature of the Reality Shows, it’s most preferred over the previous one simply because of well written drama, surprising mode of events, laughter’s, flavour of celebrities / talent and stunts. Joy of anticipation / prediction and subject for chatting with the friends makes audience happier.

Though we all know that these Reality Shows are fabricated / written by smart directors, we Indian still like to believe that theses are real ones. This is because of these are very close to normal daily life and we expect surprising events occurring (scripted) in the Reality Shows, to happen in our daily life or rather we dream about this.

 Before starting of any season of a Reality Show or during the season, must note the kind of advertisement, marketing by the TV channel, Show Producer. Big, big hoardings are displayed all over the cities. Making participants and / or celebrities to visit various shopping malls, public places to promote the Reality Show.

Whenever we watch Reality Shows, we like certain participants and don’t like certain participants. Reason could be anything such as from same region or religion, personality, content expertise, honesty, attitude and so on. Knowingly; unknowingly we develop a special bond with liked one and starts hating the others. We start praying for the liked ones and in India, some times we arrange special pooja for them. We enjoy immense in voting for them and takes a great pride in asking / requesting others to vote for our liked ones.  

We all are social and always prefer to be aware about the present affairs, news, trends in our world. Therefore, we must know what’s happening in the Reality Shows so that we can participate in the discussions / chat with our friends, peers or any social gathering.

Reality Talent Shows

These Shows are claimed to be live. In such shows, participants present their talent such as singing, dancing etc. in front of judges. Participants are eliminated from the show every week based on judges scoring and / or viewers voting till a winner is emerged. These shows are very popular as looks very authentic and participants enjoys a great emotional attachment with viewers.  

Celebrity Reality Shows

These Shows are where daily routine of celebrities is shown in may or may not be at a particular location. Some times celebrities are shown performing certain tasks. These shows are well written and directed by a hugely talented creative director.

Dark Side of Reality Shows

Foremost is that these shows are not Real but these are carefully written, crafted, performed, produced with a sole aim of to make masses emotional for profits. Many a times, these shows are not live even though it is claimed. In certain shows winner is pre decided in exchange of certain conditions to be followed by winner; it’s some kind of agreement.

Almost all the reality Shows are produced with one and only one motive i.e., PROFIT. Producers of these shows are bent upon making a profit whatever case may be. Do agree that they are also in business and producing the shows is their business but expect to draw line of constraint and do exercise self-control.

Various stories mostly unreal floated across all the medias. Fake love stories between participants or between host and judge or marriage rumors are hammered on the peoples. Participant family background (may be 10 years before) or parents’ profession is being telecasted very frequently in the Reality Shows to blackmail audience emotionally. Telecasting family background or parent profession while introducing the participant for first time or may be once or twice more is acceptable but not every now and then. Because of this, sometimes spectator forgets the subject or aim of the Reality Show.

Have the strong feeling that these shows are hugely wasting the time (mainly) and money of spectators / viewers. To some extent this is applicable to the participants also.

In a pre-decided approach, certain participants have continuous embarrassment. This may be with or without their consent. This continuous embarrassment of certain peoples makes masses happy. This is more true when such a embarrassments if being faced by the participants we don’t like. Please note that such incidents or situations are very carefully and skilfully written.

How To Restrict Reality Shows

Have a strong and very strict censor panel for examining and censoring the content of such shows.  Also, to ensure these shows are true to their main content, theme and mission of producing the show. Some peoples may say that this is against the freedom of expression. But feel some times; in some areas we need strict discipline just like services. Even one can argue or debate on banning such shows; but feel it’s very harsh.

We can expect to be more socially responsible to exercise the self-discipline in restricting / avoiding viewing such shows. Know its very difficult to avoid such temptation even though we know these are fake, not real.

Another measure though looks practically not possible is allocating late night time slot and / or removing the word “Reality” from these Shows’ titles. These shows will be just like other shows and will loose its main attraction once this word is removed. But in view of the money involved, to implement this seems to be very difficult. Even recording of the show by peoples for viewing later should be restricted / made not possible.

Conclusion

Almost all the reality Shows are produced with only one and one motive i.e. PROFIT. Producers and Directors of such shows are not bothered at all about growth / learning of participants, damage / spoiling of one’s reputation and polluting the mind set of masses. Do agree that these Shows Producers are also in business and producing the shows is their business but expect to draw a line of constraint and do exercise self-control.  All such shows after achieving required popularity must think and contribute toward society, participants improvement in content / personality and publishing / promoting the Indian Values and Culture.

Channel Service Partner – New Way of Cost Reduction – But for Whom???

 

Channel Service Partner – New Way of Cost Reduction   

                         – But for Whom???

“Channel Partner” is todays buzz word. If you call / tried to contact a company representative for any means, for any work or information, 99% of times you will be landed in contacting a Channel Partner. This Partner network is increasing and spreading in all areas of a business and across all the businesses. Doubt whether anybody evaluates the pros & cons of this concept before introducing in any new domain and that too particularly evaluating how all concerns / stake holders mainly the so called “KING – Customer” will be affected.

Earlier days, these Channel Partners were not on the horizon. Then why are now??? Due to shear pressure on the companies for offering more & more at the lesser & lesser cost is the root cause for this. This cutthroat competition and cost pressure, companies are compelled to outsource as many activities as possible. It becomes dangerous (mostly for end customers) if no proper / adequate system for customer voice is in place. In the absence of such important information / mechanism, this concept still is being widely used in many areas of a company. Recently, due to couple of shifting from a city to city; have faced this devil – named as “Channel Service Partner”. And trust me, experience with Channel Service Partners of most of the companies / corporates is horrifying and you get the feeling of why we have called the companies for service instead would have been better to get the work done from third party or freelancer service providers.  

First let’s find out the advantages / benefits for a company for outsourcing Service / Repair activity to Service Channel Partners. The foremost advantage or benefit for the company would be the Cost. Particularly in Service arm of any company, the major cost will be the Employee Cost. This will be in addition to other costs such as infrastructures cost, spares inventory cost, administrative cost and so on…. But to me, major cost involved remains to be the employee cost.

Big question for all companies is how to reduce these costs to gain advantage over the competitor, to remain in the business and most importantly to be in green.
Needless to mention that the Agency selected for Channel Service Partner has to be the L1, with the lowest cost. Let us not forget that agencies interested in to be Channel Partner are also do face stiff competition and forced to quote / offer the minimum / lowest cost offer to company and not surprised if they are offering or accepting at even less than their actual cost estimate. So how the Channel Service Partner agencies will survive???  

1.  Reduction in spares inventory cost. No system to ensure availability of all (or at least bare minimum required) spares. Spares will be procured as and when required and obviously making customer to wait for the arrival of spares. Reason given to customer for non-availability of spares could be anything such as shortage, obsolete, design change, no supply from company and so on. In short reason could be anything for which Channel Partner are not responsible.

2. Less availability of service personnel making customer to wait on the pretext of more leaves of employees or retaining manpower concern. Sometimes even depending / using freelancers there by increasing the wait time.

3. Most common is overcharging the customer by 
    a. charging higher rates than market on the pretext of stipulated by company.
    b. Charging for the work which though is not required and hence not done.
    c. Making an excuse of arranging the required (???) spares from market as procuring                 from the company will take a very long time and thus delay in the completion of task.
    d. Exaggerating the work to be done.
    e. Replacing the spare parts even though not required. Customer has no control on this             and of no use even brought to the notice of company. Now reason why company is             not bothered to take note of this and initiate action could be anything – to support             channel partner to justify their own decision of outsourcing or allowing channel                     partners to recover the shortages or ___???. 

4. After completion of service, attending technician will ask to make the service charges payment to his account and he will make the payment to company. Further he and supported by his superiors, will insist that this is the only procedure laid down by the company. One has no option but to make payment (whatever asked by technician) to his personal account or in cash as no possibility of escalating at that given time.

5. Once service is completed and payment made online or in cash, then its customers responsibility to follow for service invoice or bill. Channel partner will not be willing to provide the same for the obvious reason. Further, in all probabilities, manual invoice / bill will be provided by the Channel Partner and in many cases without taxes. Bill will be made for the amount customer has paid and if required, Company will maintain / confirm that the bill provided by the Channel Partner is correct, error free.

This list has to be kept as open and should be considered as developing story. Every now and then, above list is required to be updated as and when new ways and means are discovered.

Functioning of Channel Service Partners and in turn treatment offered to the end customers’ needs to be constantly monitored / reviewed by the company and should ensure that it’s not deviated from the predetermined goals, targets – both in quality & cost and seek frequent feedback from the customer. Merits and demerits of out sourcing of after sales service / repair needs to be argued / brainstormed by company before implementation and even at defined frequency after allocation of contract. Emphasis has to be only and only on end customer – quality, cost, delivery and satisfaction.

Telemarketer Calls – Rather than marketing, only harassing the potential customers….

 

Telemarketer Calls - Rather Than marketing, only Harassing the Potential Customers

Fine day morning, my mobile phone starts ringing. I pick up the phone & says “Hello, who’s this?” Get the answer from other side “Good morning, sir, I am Anitha from XYZ Real Estate. Sir, our estate is just about 10 kms. from the city central. The area is developing very fast. A software park under development is just 2 kms away. All the amenities such as shopping mall, school, multiplexes etc etc are in close vicinity of this estate……..”. There was no sign of that girl stopping the talking and giving me a chance to speak. Have no option but to interrupt forcibly “Hold on Hold on Madam, I am not looking for any real estate investment as being a retired person. Please do not call me again and please delete my number also from your data bank”.

Even after this still that girl was not willing to stop and I have no option but to disconnect the call and blocking the number. How many of us gets these types of calls???

I do get such calls at least 6 to 8 times a day. These calls are not only for real estate but it may be for real estate, personal loan / housing loan (from different, different banks), MBA courses, dinner invite from housing property developer, request to sell my car (don’t know how to sell a car if one don’t have), life / vehicle insurance, credit cards, saving plans mainly for retirement (though already retired), technician (ITI) course (after Mechanical engineering graduation), any type of survey and what not.

As per the Smart Phones these calls can be categorized as General Spam, Telemarketer, Robo caller, Fraud or Scam, Debt Collector, Survey, non-profit etc. Irrespective of the category, these calls are very disturbing (both times as well content) one will be bound to lose his control.  Imagine I am hurrying for attending a very urgent & critical meeting in which my contribution is very crucial and I get a call very much concerned about my bank balance and hence offering me personal loan or offer to sell my car? While I am enjoying a party with dear ones about my previous year success (promotion) and somebody is offering you to buy one more an especially tailor-made life insurance policy? There are many such situations, incidents. Most loving part is if we regret their offer, they will not stop and will ask just like our near & dear ones – “why you don’t want to sell the car?” or “why you don’t need real estate or personal loan?” Wonder whether they will be nudging this way to all the customers with the same amount of love and concern or soft-spoken peoples like me are special and exclusive?

One has to answer such call calmly (getting angry is you only spoiling your day) and like a disciplined, obedient employee, after disconnection blocking the number. But very quickly, realized that this also doesn’t work as keep receiving the calls from new numbers every time. When we go to purchase a new sim / number, we get so many questions from the service provider and need to submit the documents. But for certain special peoples it’s very easy to get the new number; particularly in India.

Now what’s the solution for this specially when your service provider is not supportive and willing to stop this. We have to keep blocking these numbers irrespective of response from service providers. Additionally, each of us to get registered for DND. Also suggest downloading and installing an app “TRAI DND” from app store and keep complaining every time get a such a call. This way we will be raising the complaint to TRAI and in turn they will make our service provider to take the action. If each of us starts taking actions against this, we can expect the reduction in such calls and can witness a significant improvement. But its high time that everyone has to participate and start taking the actions.