IRCTC: We don't need no reservation ...

I vaguely remember a Reader's Digest joke in pre-IRCTC days, which was as follows: A foreigner goes to a railway reservation counter in India and said, "Excuse me if it is possible" ... Before he could finish the sentence the clerk interrupted, "In this world everything is possible". But when the foreigner asked for a ticket for a particular destination and date he said, "Oh on that date it is not possible."

A good number of train travellers may now be shunning the queues before railway booking counters, but their interface with IRCTC site no way makes their lives easier. The moment we log on to www.irctc.co.in the only icon that gets going is that of buffering with a message 'Connecting...'. During peak hours, especially when the Tatkal guys are hogging the bandwidth, it acts like the cyber world equivalent of Chinese torture.

The speed with which the IRCTC site loads makes me wonder whether the data packets are being transferred using Railway Parcel Service! Getting the 'plan my travel' page to load is not for the faint hearted. You should count yourself lucky if you attain your Abracadabra or khul-ja-sim-sim moment at 16th or 17th attempt.

But then it is not even half the battle. You need a nimble set of fingers to type in the station codes and passenger names. If the number of vacant seats is above hundred you stand some chance, otherwise its as likely as India winning world cup football.

After making the bookings the path through payment gateway to your bank account or credit card authentication is fraught with all kinds of dangers and you have to wait with baited breath and a prayer on your lips. Minefields such as 'service unavailable' and 'you have timed out' lie in wait to strike at the most unsuspecting and crucial moments.

Once you clear the payment getaway, take a hard look at the booked berths, whether they match with the preferences you had mentioned while booking. IRCTC often reserves its most lethal googlies at this step. If you have booked a berth for a senior citizen with lower berth as preference, chances are that he or she may get top or side upper berth! Or if you have booked for 4-5 persons, chances are that a couple of them may end in a different compartment.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Pollscape Lexicon

The high decibel nine-phase General elections is finally drawing to a close and over the period many political leaders and activists through their foot in mouth antics have enriched the political lexicon. In addition, the lengthening shadow of social media over our lives and the political hashtag jousts have only added another dimension to it.

ABCD: The baby steps taken by children as a prelude to rote learning is not all that simple and bland. In adept hands it could be loaded with vitriol.

Chanta lagaa..: In our notoriously unsafe-for-women public spaces some high-profile women Lok Sabha candidates had to sometimes take matters in their hands to avoid getting groped.

Empowerment: Though this ennobling term was used by Rahul Gandhi as a substitute for loss of words, the fact remains our society actually needs large doses of it.

Honeymoon: Coming from the mouth of a professed brahmachari and yoga guru who makes his followers rub nails to kill time and reduce anxiety over hair loss, it had a ugly fallout of rubbing the Dalit community wrong way.

RSVP: You might have heard about the term, but never bothered to know what it stood for, barring those who had French as their second language in college. But now this four-letter acronym is drawing acrimonious responses.

Selfie: This platform for narcissism was put to use by all and sundry to brag their 'inked' fingers. Suddenly it became cool to vote, whatever it takes. Wonder whether the citizenry will show the same zeal in acting against trespasses of elected representatives and incumbent government.

Slapgate: When any aam aadmi decides to have a go at the political leaders, especially those who had shunned SPG/NSG paraphernalia.

Wave: At present the definition is as varied as breakers on any sea coast and dependent on his or her political conviction. But May 16 will choose only one of them.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

My Tryst With EVM

Finally, after nearly a decade and half long hiatus I went ahead to exercise my franchise. Don’t remember when I actually last voted. Those were pre-EVM days and the shaky 90s - the days of Chandrashekhar, Deve Gowda and I K Gujral, when central governments were unsteady and elections used to happen even before the indelible ink on the fingers could fade away.

Later frequent relocation and sheer apathy to register myself as a voter in those cities kept me away from polling booths. However this time the numerous campaign to register as voters goaded me to get 'inked' for election. After many trips to the election office I managed to get a voter id card.

While on my way to the polling station I happened to come across some party helpdesks with lots of eager faces to assist me locate my serial number and booth number. Some of the desks even had laptops, quite a far cry from the 90s when they were not even heard of. But nowadays they seemed very discreet in displaying their party affiliations, thanks to more proactive election commission.

After finding my name and getting a slip mentioning the serial number and booth number, the guy said, "Sir please vote for BJP and Modi." Till then I had no idea as to which party's helpdesk it was. Moreover he didn't even bother to mention who the local BJP party candidate was. All got swept under NaMo frenzy!

For me this election was my first tryst with EVM, so it gave me a similar kind of thrill I had while using an ATM for the first time more than a decade ago. While approaching the polling station I saw a queue of about 25 persons but on reaching there it became apparent that it was not meant for me and the booth I was supposed to vote had no queue. The polling officials seemed relieved on seeing me.

Upon producing my voter's ID and signing a list the indelible ink was put on my left thumb. The polling official was too generous regarding ink and it soon cascaded all the way to the tip of my thumb. In short, it was no way photogenic enough to be flaunted as 'ink finger selfie' on Facebook. In fact I thought if I post the picture, I may invite 'get well soon' messages, as it looked more like a blood clot on a finger that got caught on the wrong end of a door!

Then I was asked to move to the enclosure where the EVM was placed. The list seemed quite long enough, had no idea there were so many candidates in fray, only two or three names seemed familiar. After spotting the candidate name I wanted to vote for I pressed the button next to it. It gave off a beep and later the polling official told me it was over.

Relieved of having done an onerous duty without delays and goof ups I went home and eagerly tracked the turnout in my city Bangalore with that of others. Sad to say that though it was an improvement from its 2009 tally, it may have disappointed the numerous NGOs and other organisations who worked tirelessly to boost voter turnout.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

India Post: Thinking Out of The Post Box

A visit to a post office may not exactly be going back in time, but provides a glimpse of an institution struggling to maintain its relevance in an era of giant tech leaps in communication such as email and WhatsApp. Often the post offices are housed in quaint old buildings of 1960s or 70s vintage and surrounded with trees and moss ridden exteriors. The austere internal decor reflects the bygone era of licence-permit raj, when all signs of opulence were frowned upon.

The paint is either faded or falling off thanks to seepage during rains, ceiling fans hooked to longish rods whirr vigorously with a rat-a-tat sound. The window panes may either have cracks or even have few shards missing and ventilators often double up as long term haunts of homing pigeons.

As for office furniture - steel almirahs and racks as old as the office building grace the background. Files with lavish toppings of dust, lying undisturbed for months or even years, adorn these cabinets. The papers too have mellowed with age to off white colour.

As a semblance of modernity the computers have made inroads into post offices, but they too look primitive with boxy monitors, which the greying workforce handles in an ill at ease manner.

These offices had seen much better days in the past with milling crowds and constant hustle and bustle. Those manning counters selling inland letters and post cards had a tough time handling the rush and acrimonious exchange with customers over loose change. The sale of postage stamps used to spike during festival seasons as usage of greeting cards was very much in vogue.

Services like money order and telegrams were lifeline for transfer of money and urgent news respectively. Lastly, postal employees used to enjoy huge clout and any threat of going on strike used to rattle the government of the day and communication ministry in particular.

The coming of private courier services began proving a threat to its mail and parcel services. The proliferation of world wide web and email inflicted a body blow to mail services. It was just a beginning - later a torrent of other web based services like messenger, and fall in mobile phone tariffs pushed mail services to museum piece status and acquired a derisive sobriquet - snail mail.

Some of its services like Telegram had to be shuttered as they were no longer viable. The ubiquitous post boxes have now dwindled drastically. There are few takers for Money Order service as there are far better and faster options for money transfer through banks and money transfer firms. For the i-Phone and i-Pad generation an inland letter or a postage stamp is something to be procured for a school project. It used to be essential stationery for nearly every literate middle class household in the country till 1990s.

However it will be naive to believe that this 150 year old institution is now terminally ill and counting its last days. With 150,000 post offices across the country it is now trying to reinvent itself as a quasi banking platform especially aimed at those residing in small towns and rural areas. It is even angling for a banking licence.

The post office deposit scheme still commands great trust among traditional risk-averse investors. And government is making efforts to make them more attractive. However if it wishes to become an aggressive contender, it needs to drastically overhaul its technologically challenged set up.

It will have to replicate the modernisation undertaken by its close cousins - the PSU banks. While some of the old timers may be content with passbooks and paper certificates of National Savings Scheme, it will have to network its post offices and issue smart cards and other easy interoperability facilities to attract new customers. Competitive interest rates may not be enough. 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat    

MH370: Flights of Fancy

The copywriters who penned the slogan and catch line of this advertisement may be ruing that their words have acquired an ominous Cassandra like ring for the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight number MH 370. It all happened on March 8 and this Beijing-bound plane with 238 on board and weighing more than 200 tons managed to fox the wired and wireless worlds and quite literally vanished in thin air. It continues to remain untraceable and like breakers hitting seashore, there is no end to conspiracy theories ranging from educated guesses to downright ludicrous yarns.

Broadly they can be categorised into two school of thoughts - mechanical failure and sabotage, with an overwhelming majority subscribing to the latter. After all who doesn't like some high voltage drama. Within the sabotage school there are two sub divisions. Those who believe that terrorist groups may have hijacked the plane to an unknown destination or carried out a suicidal mission. The others point their needle of suspicion towards the pilots' character.

The former group buttresses their argument by pointing out that the two Iranians with fake passports were present in the plane. However, the fact that Iranians have little sympathy for Al Qaeda, as they happen to be Shias, punctures this argument. Some say maybe it is the Hezbollah, but then this Shia militant group has little interest beyond Israel and the Arab world.

A tiny minority is floating the theory that the Chinese minority Uyghurs may be behind it. The theory seems plausible as most passengers were Chinese, but they have little wherewithal to carry out such audacious terror attacks outside the Chinese soil. Some even believe the aircraft may be lying tucked away in some Central Asian republic, though one wonders whether they have such long runways to land a Boeing 777.

All these theories fail to explain as to why no terrorist outfit has claimed credit or demanded ransom. Terrorist groups are as publicity crazy as politicians and hence it is inconceivable that they would let go such a temptingly high profile incident like this.

There are also legions of conspiracy theorists casting aspersions on the pilots. The fact that the transponder, which provides details regarding planes identity to radar operators on the ground, was switched off and the presence of a flight simulator at senior pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah's home has them in a tizzy. They think he had some sabotage plan up his sleeve and carrying out his homework, with many smelling terrorism link. The fact that he was a distant relative of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim added ample grist for them to chew upon.

Then there is this small minority which believes it was a straight forward accident and discounts all conspiracy theories. The proponent of this theory is a Canadian pilot who wrote in Wired.com that an electrical fire accident may be the culprit. He claims that would have made transponder dysfunctional and the pilot may have veered off the normal course to reach the nearest available airport. It may be noted that the plane was carrying highly flammable lithium batteries. For Boeing this is something they can ill-afford as they had barely recouped from bad publicity over heating Lithium batteries in its 787 Dreamliners.

Now for the ludicrous - lightning, asteroids, alien attack, god's wrath and the like. But what takes the piece of cake is an explanation given by 'soul healing' expert which was even telecast on a Kannada TV channel. He had two people sitting on airplane type seats and hypnotised them into believing they were aboard MH370 and they uttered what they ‘saw’! I guess nobody can beat that.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat