building awareness
At the instance of a friend, I have recently been taking lectures, as part of an awareness building programme, for 10th standard students of a school, on the outskirts of the city, comprising mostly children from the poorer sections of society.
After making a general assessment of their current awareness levels, I asked them to look at what their immediate problems, of a general nature, were, as also to think up what the possible solutions could be. Amongst the prominent ones listed out was BMTC’s poor services. As to the solutions, all they could come up with was that BMTC should improve.
I then asked them if they knew of the private service providers in the airlines services sector. They readily came up with names like ‘Kingfisher’, ‘Air Deccan’, etc. I then went on to tell them that until some ten years back, the government-owned IA (now Indian) had a monopoly over this sector, and that, as a result of the competition, IA is now beginning to lose its dominant position. But, overall, the services had improved considerably, and the fares had become a lot more affordable, even to the common man, resulting in a tremendous boost to the economy. So, I asked them if they would consider this a positive development. Many of them expressed reservations on account of the government player losing out to competition. I then went on to ask them if they would recommend reversal of the policy so that the government player could once again have the monopoly. It was then that the message went home to them, and one of them took bold to ask why the private sector was not there in the bus services sector also. I told them to raise the question with their elected representative.
Moral of the story: We have got so much used to the ‘mai-baap culture’ of government providing everything that we are not even prepared to look beyond to see what else can be. And, particularly in key infrastructure services sectors like airlines, public bus transport, power supply, etc, it is not the interest of a government player that is important. What is paramount, on the other hand, is what can take the sector to its fullest potential.
After making a general assessment of their current awareness levels, I asked them to look at what their immediate problems, of a general nature, were, as also to think up what the possible solutions could be. Amongst the prominent ones listed out was BMTC’s poor services. As to the solutions, all they could come up with was that BMTC should improve.
I then asked them if they knew of the private service providers in the airlines services sector. They readily came up with names like ‘Kingfisher’, ‘Air Deccan’, etc. I then went on to tell them that until some ten years back, the government-owned IA (now Indian) had a monopoly over this sector, and that, as a result of the competition, IA is now beginning to lose its dominant position. But, overall, the services had improved considerably, and the fares had become a lot more affordable, even to the common man, resulting in a tremendous boost to the economy. So, I asked them if they would consider this a positive development. Many of them expressed reservations on account of the government player losing out to competition. I then went on to ask them if they would recommend reversal of the policy so that the government player could once again have the monopoly. It was then that the message went home to them, and one of them took bold to ask why the private sector was not there in the bus services sector also. I told them to raise the question with their elected representative.
Moral of the story: We have got so much used to the ‘mai-baap culture’ of government providing everything that we are not even prepared to look beyond to see what else can be. And, particularly in key infrastructure services sectors like airlines, public bus transport, power supply, etc, it is not the interest of a government player that is important. What is paramount, on the other hand, is what can take the sector to its fullest potential.
posted by Muralidhar Rao at
9:31 PM
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