On Fiat in Public Procurement

One of the perils of being in the business of public procurement is the fact that everybody considers you easy and fair game. You are looked at with suspicion – and your every decision is seen from angles that you can never imagine while making them. The trouble is that the population at large has a rather low opinion of those entrusted with public procurement, and that translates into instances of vendors trying to cut huge corners, trying to mollify you with shavings from these cuts.

The problem is especially huge in items in which the functionality of the material is not impaired very significantly even on large departures from the specified parameters. Items like paper, stationery, garments, linen. The standard for photocopier paper (the ubiquitous ‘A4’) is 80 GSM, but my printer works fine with 58 GSM. And how does a passenger on board the Rajdhani Express know whether his sheets have 30 warps per cm or not. The unscrupulous vendors try to exploit this idea of functionality to pass on functional yet substandard products to you. This problem is especially acute in case of material shortage. The vendor knows the level of your desperation – and knows that you have little choice but to accept what he has to offer. The material is functional; you need the material desperately; the choice is between a.) turning a blind eye to the deficiencies and accepting the material, so that everybody is happy (even you can be happy, if you are willing to lower your morals) and b.) rejecting the material – functional material, that you need desperately, and earn the ire of your bosses and colleagues from the departments depending on you for the material. Someone has said that beggars cannot be choosers – this is very clear in such cases.

Such trouble can occur only in a public procurement process and not a private procurement deal. A private procurement manager can acknowledge that the firm has given them no choice, but for the next time, the vendor will not be considered. However, in public procurement, there is no grey area in acceptance. If accepted, material is deemed to be perfect, and hence the usual penal provisions of black listing such deviant forms can never be carried out – unless you have rejected the material.

Hence, public procurement needs to be strengthened in a way on public procurement can be – mandatory confiscation of substandard materials. Current practice is to let the vendors remove their defective materials and supply fresh ones in case of a rejction. Thus, a decision to reject is an order to starve yourself as much as it is an order to penalize the firm. However, if the government can give itself the power to confiscate and use such materials as it pleases, then the supply chain is not starved, and the vendor is penalized. It is a good countermeasure to the tolerance gaming that vendors do – they try to supply the material to the lower tolerance band – and in the effort dip even lower – and then try to convince the accepting authority of the ‘functionality’. In case of the confiscation rule, all this material can be used, at no cost to the government, and exemplary deterrent is given to the vendors. It also removes the pressure from the backs of honest and sincere officers, who are often forced to accept substandard materials only because the choice of starvation is much worse.

On Standardization

Eli Whitney started a big revolution in the industrial world, when his concept of interchangeable parts brought about the concept of standardization – how the life would be easier for everybody if the parts were made to standard specification and could be used interchangeably, so that one does not have to make specific mating parts. If that was a game changer, then the Engineers at Allout Mosquito Repellant have gone a step further. They have achieved what I would like to call a one way standardization. Here is a description. I had a Good Knight vaporizer machine, and I was shopping my stock of refills. The shop did not have Good Knight, so I accepted All-Out refills – a lot of them (my monthly stock). Only to discover, once home, that the darned things won’t fit in the vaporizer machine. That was strange – since till then I had only seen interchangeable refills vis-à-vis machines from any brand. Why would Allout do this suicidal thing? Then I saw that the empty Good Knight refill fit snugly in the Allout Cap ( a proxy for the Allout vaporizer cavity). Then it hit me – the geniuses at Allout had made some design change, so that while Good Knight machine will not fit their refills, the Allout machine would fit both its own as well as Good Knight. Effectively, it was an effort to make hapless people, who had bought Allout refills, in good faith, for their Good Knight machines, buy Allout machines. It was a gamble – either the customer can chuck the refill in the dustbin / return it and get a fresh Good Knight one, or he may go –‘Oh, what the hell’, and get an Allout Machine – which fits both refills. Or, he may be like me – I compared both the refills and noticed that the Allout guys had changed the stopper design a little bit. So I took my cork screw and changed the stopper on the refills – and I was still using the Allout refill with a Good Knight machine. This was mankind’s triumph over evil corporate designs to cheat hapless consumers

On Shopping

Shopping, for me, is a very harrowing experience. May be it is because I am looking for very specific functionalities in the goods I am going to spend my buck on. Like a good public procurement officer, I am very thorough in framing my specifications. Most people would buy a Levi’s or a Wrangler. I’d buy a pair of jeans – medium shade of blue – between navy and royal, that has lycra blended, is not tight fitting, and has straight pockets. Even the shopkeepers are exasperated when they hear my demands – they are so specific and ‘business like’ that their ‘consumer market’ stocks cannot keep a match.

Similar is my trouble in shopping in big cities. I currently live in Mumbai – the biggest city in the country, with all sorts of things being sold – if it is sold in India, it is sold in Mumbai. Yet, I do my shopping in the south Gujarat town of Vapi – whenever I am in the town for official work, and have some after hours to kill before the return train. Strange! No. As I have admitted, shopping is a chore for me. So I cannot shop in Mumbai. Here, it is like – you want elecronics – go to Dadar. You want clothes – go to Linking Road. You want provisions, go to Fort. I’d rather prefer I get all my things in within one walk. So, I prefer the markets of small towns, where one shoe shop stores all varieties, and it is next to a garments shop, which keeps all variety, which is next to the Pharmacy, which won’t ask you for a prescription to give you the drugs you need for your emergency stock. I would rather not repeat my experience of trying to buy a new pair of shoes in Bandra – no shoe store in Pali Hill area – go to Linking Road. On the Linking Road, all you get are weird sounding ( and obviously pricey like hell) exclusive stores – and no familiar comforting names like Bata, Action or Liberty. In fact, they check you out up and down if you ask for those stores! In the end, you spot a small Woodland store, the only familiar name in this jungle of brands, all waiting to classify you into matrices and S- curves and skim off your money! It is then one realizes – “once a small town shopper, always a small town shopper.”

On Hobbies - Reading

Well, it is that time of the year when the aspirants to the Services start brushing up on their ‘hobbies’, in the hopeful anticipation of getting a shot at the interview of a lifetime. As the venerable panel of high and mighties go down one’s history sheet, the entries under ‘hobbies’ provide a very vast and game changing field. More often than not, a few probing questions tear through the veneers of a hastily conjured up hobby, much to the detriment of a very uncomfortable guy sitting on the hot seat. However, if one has an expertise in one’s professed hobby, and that hobby interests the panel, chances are there that most of the interview would revolve around it, on one’s home turf, which will lead to those astronomical scores of 200 plus, which can get one the top jobs, or resuscitate those with borderline written scores. What was supposed to be a recreational pastime is indeed a very serious business.

In my two encounters with the Almighty ‘panels’, I was asked about my recent reading, and it usually was stuff like Freakonomics, False Economy, Superfreakonomics, the God Delusion, the Selfish Gene, etc. In my first interview, it got a simple response – ‘You must be good at economics’. And then nothing. In my second interview, the panel again stressed – ‘Have you read anything other than your textbooks!’ (Economics being one of my optionals) In both the interviews, I felt that they wanted to hear about the fiction I had read. However, I was not very comfortable going there. I mean, I am the biggest expert on all things Harry Potter, after Almighty JKR herself! But still, when the venerable panel asks about your reading habits, they expect you to be connoisseur of a whole genre, and not just a particular book, or author. Going with the HP line would have led to the fantasy genre, and the next biggest thing, LoTR, was totally off my radar. I mean, I could not even stand the movie 1, so I could never read those books anyway. Plus I had to have a balance between reading of foreign and Indian authors – that is the politically correct thing to do in the interview. So this February, to set the things right, I stepped to Bandra East on one of my commutes back home and purchased two books – ‘Revolution 2020’ by Chetan Bhagat, and ‘The Immortals of Meluha’ by Amish Tripathi. The reasons for the choices were very clear. R2020 (no, that’s not the name of a refrigerant, but an acronym used by Bhagat in his book) was a book that would complete my reading of CB’s books. I mean, I’m no high brow reader. In school I enjoyed Hardy Boys and Sidney Sheldon in my pre and post pubescent days. Hence, reading Chetan Bhagat was no big decline for me. In fact, I really enjoyed ‘Five Point Someone’, and ‘2 States’ and ‘3 mistakes’ were also good. ‘One night at a call centre’ may have been a true dud. So there was a 3 to 1 odd that I was in for some enjoyable reading. May be somewhat less than 3 is to 1 – lately Bhagat had taken to writing in the editorial pages of the Times of India (what else!), and his ideas, though loveable in the Bollywood potboiler novels, seemed very jarring in the holy columns of newspaper editorials. I mean, come on, we do like Singham’s and Chulbul Pandey’s on screen, but I would not like them in my actual neighbourhood, blowing away civilization to bits. I mean, Bhagat’s columns were one reason why I stopped reading ToI. Still, there is some thing about having read ‘all the novels of the author’ especially if you are claiming that reading is your hobby. I’ve done that for JKR. CB would have been the Indian counterweight. On the other hand, ‘Immortals of Meluha’ was a work of fantasy based loosely on the characters of Indian mythology, so it would have broadened my claim on the fantasy genre and would have brought in the much needed Indian touch. So, it was not without apprehension that I brought these books home – it was a conscious ‘career decision’, not a mere source of entertainment.

In the hindsight, I need not have worried. Both the books were enjoyable. Let’s begin with ‘Meluha’, since I read it first. Set in what is known to us as the Indus Valley Civilization, it is essentially a story about love and heroism, with good stretches of suspense. ‘Meluha’ was a name by which the Mesopotamians described some really advanced civilization that they were trading with. In all probability, it referred to the Harappa culture, and that seems to be the inspiration for the author. It is the story of Shiva – the Lord Shiva, Mahadev, Neelkanth, Shivshankar himself. It assumes that the destroyer arm of the holy trinity was actually a man, a Tibetan migrant, who, through his sheer bravery and heroism, came to be venerated as a God. The thing which is likeable about this novel is the broad way the story is moving – the portrayal of ‘the other’ as despicable at first, and simply different at the end, the whole rank and order of a fantasy world, with its own rules and stuff. However, the writing style is not so good. It’s, in places, like, in the immortal words of Berta the maid in the series ‘Two and a Half men’, boning Evelyn (like riding a bicycle over a railway track). Too many ‘damns’ and schoolboy curses. I think the book would have been better in a chaste language, perhaps in the Sanskritized Hindi. Also, some places where the author pauses to describe the cities, buildings and battle formations read like a Wikipedia entry. However, despite these very serious flaws, this was a good book, and I am definitely reading the whole trilogy now.

R2020 had no such glitches – it was finished in one straight night and day – the day being over a Vapi to Mumbai train journey. It read like the Bollywood drama it is supposed to be, with a grey hero – something I’ve like about this novel. A story of “dost dost na raha, payar pyar na raha”, variety, about falls and redemptions, somewhat like the movie ‘The State of play’. This one is highly recommended if you are not the nose in the sky types who would not touch anything that does not take a day to read a page.

The real twist and irony, however, came outside of the books. When I finally located my ‘personal summary’, I found that I had not written ‘Reading’ among my hobbies!! It was “blogging, online debating, trainspotting”. Take a guess why I am online!

My Two Castles

This piece is again a desperate attempt to ensure that I have at least one piece in every year, so that the “blogging” on my resume under the section “hobbies” is justified. Well, this is coming in a totally new setting. At work, I am, for the first time, doing something productive, and contributing to this huge economy. (At least I like to believe so!) At home, I am, for the first time, the master of a household. Not the master alone – I am also the cook, the dish boy, the sweeper, the butler, the works. In short, it is a perfect one man enterprise.

As far as work is concerned, Mumbai as one’s workplace poses its own troubles. There is no swanky (or even clunky) GoI ride for one. One has to travel the plebian way – the good old BEST and the Mumbai suburban rail network (may be First Class is not that plebian). There has not been any trouble with either as of yet, still, it does not feel like one has exactly ‘made it’! However, once one is inside one’s depot, it is all good. One is the master of all one surveys, even if it is not too much one surveys! This is one’s depot, these are one’s people. To these odd 300 people (and to the 10-20 odd ‘assistance’ seekers’), one is the boss. That is the power of the chair. I am not sure whether I have managed to inspire true respect till now, but I do get a lot of overt respect. I have given some good advice and some good suggestions around here, but I am still not exactly rocking the place with my genius – mostly, I am the learner. I have also been too credulous, and have been taken in to believe most strongly in the case of both parties in a number of disputes that have been brought to me.

To tell the truth I am not sure what I am doing here. A typical day is about surfing the web till an appreciable amount of the people is in, and most importantly, my clerical staff is present. Then I try to complete the task from the day’s checklist, and keep on noting the progress. By 11 or 12, both the desk phones and my official cell phone are ringing off the hook every 5 minutes. Then on, it is mostly a job of fire fighting – tickets exhausted, linen exhausted, oil exhausted, gases exhausted – and one has to find the supply – beg, borrow, steal (that would mean pressing a supplier due later). In the meanwhile, some odd ‘works’ are going on, and one has to ‘supervise’, even it’s just about moral support, since most of the guys handling the stuff are quite adept, certainly much more so than me. The lunch hour is an important marker of the day. It signifies the middle (or more than middle) of the working day. One is closer to getting home. One gets to leave the office (and the two desk phones – bless them) behind. One gets to discuss stuff with colleagues (who are much older in age) and the boss – that helps, but often ends up in more tasks piling up, because the boss is interested in a revamp of the Depot (and rightly so, this place looked like a dump). Then, one gets back to the office, the phones are again ringing off the hook, but mostly, it is about the wheels you set in motion earlier in the day. More often than not, there would be two or three thick piles of files and letters to sign – thanks to my indefatigable Progress section, and often to the Establishment section as well, since the APO has to be shared between the stores and the press. By 4:30, it is time to begin checking out the day’s task sheet, and to start writing the next day’s. Then we call out to the colleagues who are willing to walk to the station with us. The evening walk is more tiring, since it is uphill, that too in full sun. However, since it is about returning home, there is a spring to one’s steps. It is best to catch an Andheri bound train – Bandra bound trains end up on Platform 2 – not good, and Borivali and beyond bound trains are too crowded. Also, getting an auto is trickier in the evening – very few of these guys are interested in going to Carter Road. Once one is in, its 15 mins to the 2^nd gate of the Pali Hill Railway Colony. Home, sweet home.

Home time is also unlike what I’ve been having till last month. I mean, I return and I am off rolling paranthas and rotis as I change. Then I prepare the cheese sandwiches in the microwave and settle down to other more menial chores before getting settled to write the diary and read the newspaper along with nice melty sandwiches. By the time Express is fully read, it’s nearly 8 – time to start cooking – rice in the microwave – for precise 17 minutes, as I learnt from a blog – and the breads on the induction plate. Then comes the egg bhurji. Eggs are God’s gift to us bachelor working class. Cheap, easy to prepare, and always tasty. I have a weekly consumption of 28 eggs – you should see the jaws drop when I shop for them on the Shirley road shop. When all’s done, I put it all on a newspaper (no messy dishes later!), and get down to doing the dishes. Then, it’s time for fiesta - with something going on the lappie, may be a new episode of ‘Prison Break’. Post that, it’s promenade time.

The location of the Pali Hill Railway Colony is unlike any other railway colony – there is no railway line anywhere near it (nor was there, even in the past, unlike Badhwar Park). It is situated between the Carter Road, a broad, seaside, fast moving road, and the Pali Hill, the abode of film stars of the yesteryears. Both the gates are exciting walk throughs during the night. The Pali Hill is short enough to climb up and down in 15 minutes, and reminds one of nooks in Mussoorie or Shimla. Only dampener is the vehicular traffic – the roads are pretty narrow and winding, but the people are loaded, so there is a steady flow of Range Rovers and Audis, and even Hummers! Still, when the traffic is not so bad, the way is the most beautiful – it was a beautiful Christmas, to walk on, watching the candles lighting up the little churches, and listening to real carols being played / sung. However, the exit through the main gate promises much greater post prandial strolls, on the Carter Road promenade – a 1.25 km stretch of cobbled walkway along the Arabian Sea coast – the actual water being far out, except in the times of spring tides. One can put on some music and do the easiest 2.5 km in 20 -30 minutes, in the company of relaxed, beautiful and happy people. Having strolled for a week here, with my family, this evening ritual holds a special place for me. After that, it is time to retire – one or two episodes of “Prison Break” (I intend to replace that with reading – my other ‘hobby’, once I finish season 4), till 12:00 – time to doze off, to start another day.

I’ve never adjusted to the 6 day week – there is no weekend as such – I mean, now it starts, you watch some movies late in the night, wake up late on Sunday, and then you are already staring in the face of the Monday morning. Still, Sundays are special – for experimentation in the kitchen. Last week, I learnt that kneading the dough wasn’t a chemical reaction, but an advanced fine art. This week, I made myself pav-bhaji (looked the deal, but was not so palatable), and halwa (too runny, too lumpy). Well, it has been a big leap in my evolution – I now cook my own food from the basic grocery – I am not a Maggi kid any more (though I do appreciate a bowl now and then).

I guess that should be enough for the time being. Sundays are precious, and I can’t afford more than an hour on the blog! The work rolls on – I am not sure what I would show up at the COS inspection this month, and then at the year closing. I am not even sure that sticking to the IRSS and not joining the IDAS was actually a good idea. As the days roll on, to April, I am sure there will be more interesting things to write about. Till then, ciao.

the Media Revolution

If one believes the news channels, especially the private ones, India seems to be in the throes of revolution these days. Antics of some self appointed representatives of the society has been elevated to 'the second freedom struggle'!

I have always maintained that this one is a mere photo-op for many, and a political stage for some.The 'kewl' generation wants it's own 'revolution', and so would clutch at any straw. The anger of the nouveau riche, who believe that they should, by default, own the country, at finding themselves as equal as anybody in dealing with the state, has been dubbed as the people's grouse. What's essentially a nice, harmless way for this anger to be vented, has been conveniently termed a ‘revolution’!

Well, they are only belittling the word ‘revolution’. Revolutions are not everyday shows. Revolutions occur when the troubles faced by the large mass of people become so bad, that defying the state authority and suffering the consequences is better in an absolute way. Based on the last statement, nothing about the current freak show is a revolution – for one, it is not a large mass of the nation, just a lakh or two of glory hunters and political axe grinders in a nation of 1.2 Billion. For another, they are not actually defying the state, though they may have made the government pretty uneasy. Nor are they suffering any consequences for their efforts – ask these ‘twitter freedom fighters’ whether they would be able to stand it if our largely benevolent state also started to play its part in their ‘revolution’ and started behaving like the colonial state. Finally, their ‘problem’ is not so bad. In reality, their ‘problem’ is just about enjoying the thrill of “Revolution lite”. Even if we take their claims at face value (that they are fighting ‘corruption’), still, their troubles are not the worst in the country. Those crying over graft on the internet can never really feel the actual trouble of the large body of people eking out a subsistence very precariously, without any sort of security in life. It is their revolution that we need to fear, as their troubles are already past the consequential costs of an uprising.

Then what about this ‘second freedom struggle’. Well, they hold annual “Civil War Enactments” in the United States – although they do not have the audacity to name it the ‘second’ civil war – they actually respect the Civil War heroes enough to not try and place themselves on the same pedestal. So, we might say it is something of that sort. Given the ease of having such ‘struggles’ in an internet connected, media covered era, we might soon have third, fourth, fifteenth freedom struggle. Just switch on the TV, and relax with a tub of popcorn. Revolution is here in your parlour!

The price of transparency

A man’s social life is just a very well-orchestrated charade. As Shakespeare had so well said – all world is a stage. May be the bard did not mean it in the same way as I mean. I think that the way one pull’s oneself around in the presence of any other person is a just a well-played role in the charade mentioned above. The amount of time we spend in figuring out what to wear to work, what to say, and what to do, so as to create a ‘good impression’ can be explained only in this context. Recently it has been joined by questions of where one buys, where one dines and where one goes to movies, too!

Living the way one really is, at heart, requires no mental effort – it just comes naturally to us. Alas, very few are blessed with such a “presentable” real self. For most of us, this real self needs some sort of make-up before it can be paraded out. The amount of make-up is dependent on the level of closeness between the person (s) we are interacting with. For close members of the family, spouses, siblings, we might be putting on a very light make-up. Yet, who can, in all truthfulness, say that they reveal their all to anybody – their spouse, their kids, their parents, or even to the Almighty?

Is this bad? Speaking from a purely evolutionary perspective – anything that exists is not bad in itself. As I have already said, this play acting is merely a way to cover up our un-presentable self. If, god forbid, this ‘self’ was to emerge in all its glory, it can hurt many persons. Most individuals will have some clashes – they may be competitive (as in a business scenario), they may be related to tastes (one might not really like one’s spouses dressing style), they may be related to expectations (parents who might think their kids are losers) etc. Everyone aspires to be clash free; yet, the sad reality is that these clashes do exist. So, our playacting helps us avert the actual playing out of these clashes. So when a friend asks how well he played, you do have to say he played well. That’s the rule.

However, any play acting cannot, as a rule, be carried on for long. The difficulty of carrying on an act depends largely upon the amount of deviation from the real – the amount of ‘make-up’ we put on the real self. The really contorted displays of ‘self’ we put out to, say, business clients, cannot last more than the few hours of the presentation. The slightly modified ‘self’ we put out to school / college friends can last through the course. The minimal make-up ‘self’ we put out to spouses, kids, parents or siblings may well last a lifetime. Yet, for all these acts, we do need breaks, of ‘me-time’, where one’s true self can emerge, in the safety of complete privacy. Without these periodic ‘blow offs’, any act would be difficult to sustain, and we know how essential these acts are in keeping the social relations largely amicable.

So here comes the role of ‘transparency’. What ‘transparency’ actually does is to diminish the ‘me time’, and bring more and more part of our lives into public domain. People react by extending their ‘stage shifts’, working extra hours on their ‘self’; in other words, striving even harder to maintain the cover. All this while the supporting intervals of pure privacy are diminishing, and there is no opportunity to blow off the tension of the act. Ultimately, there is only one logical conclusion. The act breaks apart, and realities come out, to clash violently. No one is better off.

Anybody who has been noticing for the last few years would see that as a society, we seem to be more intolerant and more dissatisfied than ever before. So much of rioting and ‘protests’ were not so common earlier, and the rate of growth is alarming. There may be many reasons for that, but I think that the mushrooming of media is the main culprit. It has chipped away at all the act and left open the sores and wounds which pain us today. There are things one might tolerate, but one might not like to be seen tolerating – so put a camera this way, and you get the intolerance. There are things we might do, but would not like to be seen doing – put a camera this way, and you get inaction. There are stunts that we might not like to pull off, but we might not like to been shirking from it – put a camera this way, and you have 50 % of the rioting that is going on in this nation – ‘defending’ the faith, ‘defending ‘the language, the region, the nation, what have you. Many of these problems would have reached an amicable compromise, had they not been under the glare of spotlights. The society, unfortunately, does not have enough patience to play act 24 X 7.

The advocates of ‘transparency’ are very vocal. Unfortunately, this whole debate itself is subject to the laws of transparency – it is the ‘right thing’ to be seen supporting it. Well, the main point put forward in favoutr of transparency is that thit brings out the conflicts in the open, where the general pressure of the society helps their resolution. I would say that most of these conflicts are hidden by acts only because resolving them would exact a higher price and hiding them. then, there are some natural conflicts, that can never be resolved. The conflict of buyer and seller, the predator and the prey, and the like wise. Bringing out the truth of these relations will not solve the problem, but actually accentuate it by making it ever present. What is so sacrosanct about transparency itself, if all it leads to is conflict?

To conclude, we must say that there is a naturally ordained level of transparency in this world. What we show and what we hide is a blend perfected over millennia of human evolution. Let’s not disturb it in the name of some misplaced sense if ‘ideal’