BSNL, nearing the end of the story ..

Nearing the end of the story .

It was painful yesterday when I read in the newspapers that almost 78000 employees of BSNL across the country were retiring on 31st of January 2020 as part of a voluntary retirement scheme from Government of India to prune loss making public sector organisations from making further dents in the government coffers.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited which was once a mini-ratna of the Goverment of India in terms of it's resources and employee base over the years has grown to be a big loss making concern, lagging in technology upgrades and adoption na d failing to reach the scale of operations of private sector telecom firms.

The collapse of Department of Telecom (BSNL) is an interesting management case on how

1. excess bureaucratic controls

2. late adoption of cutting edge technology in telecommunications and

3. the burden of a large less productive and less efficient employee base (who enjoyed complete monopoly and thus engaged in deep, stinking corruption)

4. poor employee development initiatives

combinedly resulted in BSNL getting wiped out losing considerable customer base and public goodwill, unable to raise finances for technology adoption, facing stiff competition from private players in the country.

The employees were misled to believe that the Government would continue inject tax player's money to help sustain their inefficient and regressive non-customer centric policies .. 😳😳

Economic Times reports : Public sector carrier Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is expected to post losses of over Rs 14,000 crore for the financial year 2018-19, while its revenue is slated to be around Rs 19,308 crore.Jul 3, 2019

How long can state use public tax payer's money to finance and support such
inefficient organizations ?? Though I feel pained at the predicament of the employees, I am sure they will be able to come out of this temporary setback and bounce through other private sector organisations to make a mark in the global  telecommunications field.

There cannot be an extended free lunch. Some day it has to stop ..

George 

Making life productive with AI in old age..

Artificial Intelligence is bound to change our life in myriad ways in the coming years. One of the greatest impact will be on ways AI will influence the ways people will lead comfortable lives in old age.

AI is set to be all-pervading ..

The present days we find computers and Information Technology with the Internet has made life comfortable as regards shopping, banking, communication, learning, etc. Regarding healthcare, computers and IT has made telemedicine a reality and medicine delivery possible. For maintaining health we still have to do physical exercises and exercise diet control.

In the coming days because of IT systems and Internet people have become more independent and self-relaint. This trndency will be more pronounced in the AI era. We will find processes that have been optimised as regards physical engagement have been optimised with respect to physical activities by making use of Internet apps and so on. The mind still needs to work.

We can expect in the coming days AI playing an important role in relieving the mind of many of the routine chores and be freed to carry out more creative activities.

Some examples are given here

1. AI daily planner

2. AI weekly planner

3. AI social activity planner

4. AI powered MOOCS for more effective knowledge collection and dissemination

5. AI enabled elder hand-holding program

6. AI powered apps like REPLIKA will help remove boredom, loneliness and monotony in daily chores,

As is evident from some of the programs and applications listed above as Computers, Informaton Technology and the Internet made life easier for the modern generation, AI and AI apps will make life easy, interesting and creative for us humans in the coming 50 years removing mundane activities and helping us experience higher cognitive senses of human intelligence and interaction ..

Let us wait for those days.

George.

Are Christian arms bloodied too ??

It is known that 16% of the people in this world are either agnostics or atheists.

While atheism argues that there is no God, agnosticism is the view that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. Agnostic atheism is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. - wikipedia.org

84% of world population believe in God, ie. 6.3 billion people. The concept of religion and God actually came only around 4000 BC after man settled at one place and started using metals and did agriculture around 6000 BC.

World major religions ..

When we go through world history of religions we find Hinduism at 6000 years is the oldest, followed by Zoroastrianism 4000 years, Judaism 3500 years,  Jainism 2700 years,  Budhism 2600 years and Confucianism at 2500 years existed before Christ. All of these beliefs have been older to Christian beliefs. - wikipedia.org

Let us not forget that Christianity too had its patch of violent, forcible conversions and annexation starting from the time of Constantine, the Roman emperor in the 4th century AD and later forcibly the Crusades between 11th and 17th century AD in the Iberian peninsula, the Ottoman empire of Turkey and with Islamic followers. 

We Christians too have a share of blood on our hands 😢

Click here for a video of the growth of world religions..

If we go through world history,  we find most of all religions from birth have had a violent patch of growing up (adolescence I would say), before settling down to sensible peaceful ways, accepting other faiths as equal and just ..

Christianity has been no exception as explained in the above blog. Christians were violent at some point in history but has understood the futility of violence over time and have embraced peaceful ways.

Islam being the youngest kid of global religions at 1300 years age (second youngest is Christianity), is passing through its adolesent phase and possibly will settle down for peace soon, maybe in 300 - 400 years after realizing futility of trying to establish it's superiority over the rest of humanity.

Many of the people from my state Kerala make a living serving in the occasionally violent but tolerant theocracies of the middle east and have no qualms about it. Indeed, at times, ignorance is bliss ..

This is my understanding of evolution of global religions .. please prove me  wrong ..

George 

What has driven famous people around the world in history ?

Homo sapiens started walking on planet earth around 50,000 BC. Click here for the Discover magazine article ..

Of the world population of 300 million in 1 AD global population is presently around 7.4 billion people. Throughout all of human history it is fairly estimated by historians that almost 108 billion have ever lived and perished on planet earth, 108,000,000,000 ..

McGraw Hill has come up with an Encyclopedia of Biographies which covers the biographies of 10,000 of the greatest of these 108 billion people, some of them are living today.

Four traits that have been found common for all these ten thousand people are given below. (based on a video talk on Youtube by Dr Alexander Jacob IPS in malayalam)

• Vision - a deep desire of what they wanted to achieve
• Planning process -  a deep and accurate plan of hos to go about achieving their vision
• Hard work -  where to concentrate and how much to work
• Spiritual guidance - belief in the supreme guiding power of the earth

I found the talk interesting. Even though there were factual inconsistencies in the numbers mentioned by Alexander Jacob, he has done a great job to present these four points. All these 10,000 great people have meticulously followed these points and have excelled in life.

George

Kejriwalji, we adore you ..

Kejriwal continues to surprise each and every one of us. How an initial 2 month  internship with the Saint of the gutters, Mother Teresa changed the outlook of this young, dynamic, resourceful IIT Kharagpur engineer, central govt. revenue official turned CM of Delhi. It was the similar stint with Mother Teresa, an opportunity to treat her, that changed the life of the famous global heart surgeon, Dr. Devi Shetty of Narayana Hrudayala in Bangalore.

India's future Prime Minister

Kejriwal, as a potential future Prime Minister of the country, should seriously consider conducting a 2 day workshop for all politicians of the country on how a politician can effectively and selflessly serve the people who voted them to power..

Just last week, Kejriwal's Delhi government has embarked on a proactive move to wean away dropouts from unproductive pursuits, to give meaning and direction to their lives and to help their families. Delhi govt. is to conduct 100 hrs FREE tuition classes each for more than 30,000 students who failed the Maths exam in the recent Class X board exams. What a great way to help the unfortunate and give back to society !!

The 2006 Magsaysay award winner Arvind Kejriwal shows the nation and the world at large, on how to serve the people of the country.

In Delhi he shows how the citizen's tax money can be used to benefit the citizens itself in numerous ways, be it 

• free education, 
• free healthcare, 
• free electricity, 
• free wate
• free metro ride for women
• free tuitions .... 🙏🙏

Click here for news update ..

The citizens in return are very regular in paying their taxes because they know they get it all back .. After all these philanthropic moves, the Delhi government finds it has almost Rs. 200 crores extra cash in it's coffers .. How an ideal government - citizen system should be !

The big challenge now is to get other politicians with different ideologies from the right, left and centre adopt these initiatives of Kejriwal to make a difference in the lives of at least 600 million people of India. Hope the Nobel peace prize committee in Oslo, Sweden is watching all these developments !!

George..