Monday, June 19, 2006

Something to learn from paneer tikka masala

An interesting thing happened yesterday (i.e. tonite). At dinner, paneer tikka masala was served in the mess. It was ok; not too good, not too bad. As usual, I got there late (at about 9.30) and very little paneer pieces were left. After the meal, I washed my hands and was leaving for my room. Now there is a white-board near the mess entrance. On that it was written:

"Mess contractor fined Rs. 1,500 for low quality of sabji"

I was shocked more than surprised. If this "model" was extrapolated to a larger setting like pwd being fined for potholes in the road, etc. how will our country be?

6 comments:

Parijat said...

1500 bucks for every pothole... India would be a rich country :D ... only that it would be the government paying the government with taxpayers money, so.... :p

Manas Pathak said...

The pvt construction company, which filed for the tender of building the roads will be fined. the money will go to the state exchequer.

Parijat said...

...and from the state exchquer to? :D Just being cynical. That's what happens when you're awake all night doing nothing useful :)

Manas Pathak said...

The state exchequer will use it to build better roads. But thats not the point. The contractor will be forced to construct pothole free roads.

Anonymous said...

finally .. all the money would go in booze... really, get some sleep. :D

Anonymous said...

Dear author
I think your inforamtion about the whole "Panner Tikka Masala" is hihgly superficial as you yourself have said that "it was ok; not too good, not too bad" and you also mention that you went late that means the less number of paneer pieces can be accounted for by your greedy friends who might have helped themselves more than required while serving the pieces. Morever as to why the quality of the sabji was not good has not been clearly mentioned by you nevertheless to say that it seems unfair to the contracter to shell out 1500 bucks, by what you have described here period

Now if we come to the second part of your blog about implementing this "model" to something like pwd which would be fined for potholes in the road etc. and you dare to ask how would the country be ? Let me tell how it would be. First of all most of the road constuction work is done by, as you know, the pwd arm of the Govt. so in this case the fine would only serve as a means of ammasing more tax from the people as one of my friend here has already said that it wud be just Govt. paying money to Govt from taxpayers fund. Secondly even if as you say that the fine be levied on private contractors doing this job do you know how harsh could be the out come. First of all let me tell you that the sole aim of a private enterprize is to earn profit no matter what. So if the private contractors are fined what will they do ? They intern will expolit the labor that much more. You must know that most of the labor for construction and road work is brought from states like Bihar,U.P.,West Bengal where there is no employment and labor is really really cheap. (cheap labor is the biggest brand India Inc has been selling to the whole world, not to mention that services make abt 35% of our GDP with the help of this cheap labor) This move could lead to a masive procurement of cheap labor from the above mentioned states and would obviously change the demography of the state in which the road workis going on. If you think that this is too hypothetical a statement to say then you really need to see what's happening in the north east region of our country. Take the case of Assam, which is known for its tea and natural resources (natural gas etc). This region has been chnged demographiclly over the years due to large scale labor import from west bengal as a result the ppl as assam still live in abject poverty n unemployement. This ppl have waged an armed struggle against the govt (ULFA et al). and you can surely ask Pranab Mukherjee or Manmohan Singh the headache and the Human Rights violation caused by this. No surprise India is ranked so low in the HR index.

So you really hav something to learn from paneer tikka masala !!!!

This does'nt mean that we should not try to imporve the situation of the infrastructure in India. Surely there are better ways but before the implementation of any the consequences should be well thought off.

Deep Blue