Category Archives: people
Incredible India! Facts, Stats and the Effects of Corruption
Anna Hazare‘s anti-corruption movement has touched a chord with more people in India than any other movement in recent years. Ordinary citizens are tired of the country being looted by the very people voted into power to serve them.
India Gate, New Delhi - The National Monument of India
I wanted to understand more specifically just how wide-spread corruption was in the country.
Aside from recent huge scandals including CWG, 2G licenses and the Adarsh Housing scam that have brought to light the ugly disease plaguing this country and stunting its economic growth and credibility, I have discovered some incredible metrics.
Even a cursory look (which is all this is) reveals so much!
National Emblem of India; The motto Satyameva Jayate means "Truth Alone Triumphs" - does anyone remember?
See if any of these numbers astound you as much as they did me (btw, it’s a pretty safe assumption that these numbers underestimate the ground reality) –
1. More than 50% of people have first-hand experience of paying bribes to public officials in order to get their work done.
2. Inter-state transport: Truckers in India alone pay $5 billion (yes, US Dollars) in bribes annually.
3. The monetary value of petty corruption in 11 basic services in government (education, healthcare, judiciary, police) amounts to about $5 billion annually.
4. India’s telecom ministry apparently siphoned $30 billion from various projects over the past few years.
5. According to ex-IPS officer Kiran Bedi, about $16 billion is lost to corruption every year in India. Of Rs.100 meant to be spent on infrastructure, only about Rs.16 is used and Rs 84 is lost. Is it in any wonder the state of the infrastructure?
6. A recent report by World Bank showed that only 40% of grain handed out to the poor reaches its target. This report says that aid programs in India are beset by corruption, bad administration and under-payments. Yet another embarrassment for the ruling party.
7. The Bangalore-based website ipaidabribe.com, which encourages citizens to report bribes anonymously they have paid, has so far compiled 11300 reports with a total bribe value of about Rs. 295,000,000. While this is just a fraction of all bribes, the fact that people are taking the trouble to report them tells me how tired and angry they are with the situation. What is the tipping point?
8. Independent reports published through 1991 to 2011 calculated the financial net worth of India’s most powerful and traditionally ruling family to be anywhere between $9.41 billion to $18.66 billion, most of it in the form of illegal monies.
9. India tops the list for black money in the entire world with almost US$1456 billion in Swiss Banks – that is about $1.5 trillion. Staggering!
10. According to the data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006), India has more black money than the rest of the world combined. To put things in perspective, Indian-owned Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt.
Sickened yet?
No doubt about it, this is a debilitating cancer on the nation; it is an affliction of such epic proportion that it impacts everything and everyone. A recent report by KPMG states that “high-level corruption and scams are now threatening to derail the country’s credibility and [its] economic boom”.
Found on the web: Anna coin created as a tribute to Anna Hazare for leading the Anti-corruption campaign forcing the Government to bring the Lokpal Bill.
That’s minor compared to what this scourge is doing to, and cheating from, the citizens of this country.
Are you a citizen of India (past or present) or a descendant of one?
If you do nothing else after reading these sad facts, do check out the website of Anna Hazare, read about his anti-corruption movement and find a way – however small* – to support it.
This is the closest we have come to the tipping point.
There is a rage and fury that has built up against the cheating powers that be. It’s way past time for this country to fix itself.
Why not use the current high emotions and wide-spread wrath to start fixing these serious issues? Perhaps then India’s future really will be as bright as everyone says it can be.
The alternative – to let this built-up citizen outcry and ire just slip away into non-action – is much too unfortunate to contemplate. What a pity that would be and what a great missed opportunity!
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*Something really small that you can do to help: Get engaged – read what he’s about. And spread the word.
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Anna Coin: By Muditmittal (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
India Gate Photo: By just clicked [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
How much do you know about the Dabbawalas of Mumbai?
They have had a documentary produced by BBC and have been featured by, among others, The NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes magazine, Harvard Business Review (case study), IBS (case study), The Economist and Seth Godin to name a few, but how much do you really know about the Dabbawalas of Bombay?
I am merely one more of many fascinated onlookers and this is my attempt to bring together a bit of the best that I’ve learnt about the amazing dabbawalas of Mumbai. I am also one among many bloggers who have written on this topic – without even searching very far, I quickly found about 50+ blog posts that referred to Seth Godin’s blog about dabbawalas! What’s one more? Perhaps it will entice you to go to the source and read some more….So, here goes:
Dabbawala of Mumbai
First some facts –
A dabbawala in Mumbai carries freshly packed lunch in a box (dabba) from a person’s homes to his office.
5000 dabbawalas carry 200,000 lunch boxes every day (400,000 transactions: pick-up + drop-off), growing from a service that originated in 1890 with 100 dabbawalas.
The charge for this service is approximately $6.00. Per month!
Their error rate is an amazing 1 in 16 million transactions for which they have been recognized with Six Sigma performance (99.999999% error-free).
Their modes of transportation during their work day includes bicycles, push carts, and public trains.
They have a hub and spoke system (think Fedex) – a collecting dabbawala, and a local (delivering) dabbawala. They have a simple color coded system that determines the destination of each lunch box.
Their use of modern technology is almost non-existent although lately they have been using SMS for convenience.
The service is virtually uninterrupted even in severe monsoon weather.
When you consider that Mumbai is one of the most densely populated and large cities in the world with a complex transportation network and huge traffic flows, you can easily see why this service would be needed and in much demand. No one wants to brave the traffic or weather at lunch!
The alternative is a fresh, hot home cooked meal brought to your office at lunch time…yummy! So, yes, the demand for this service is easy to visualize. But what is more amazing is that this same over-crowded, overflowing city of Mumbai is also the hub of such well-coordinated activity and flawless delivery. In fact, “amazing” as a descriptor just doesn’t cut it!
Seth Godin says –
The reported error rate is one in six million.
How is this possible? How do you create and run a service with thousand of employees, no technology and a poorly-educated workforce and have better than six sigma quality?
Simple: the dabbawallas know their customers. If they rotated the people around, it would never work. There’s trust, and along with the trust is responsibility. By creating a flat organization and building relationships, the system even survives monsoon season.
According to The NY Times –
The precision and efficiency of the dabbawallas have been likened to the Internet, where packets identified by unique markers are ferried to their destination by means of a complex network.
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The secret of the system is in the colored codes painted on the side of the boxes, which tell the dabbawallas where the food comes from and which railway stations it must pass through on its way to a specific office in a specific building in downtown Mumbai.
The Economist writes –
… the 5,000-strong dabbawala collective has built up an extraordinary reputation for the speed and accuracy of its deliveries. Word of their legendary efficiency and almost flawless logistics is now spreading through the rarefied world of management consulting. Impressed by the dabbawalas’ “six-sigma” certified error rate—reportedly on the order of one mistake per 6m deliveries—management gurus and bosses are queuing up to find out how they do it.
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As I said, this is fascinating stuff! If you are too busy to check out any of these sources, take less than four minutes to see them in action in this short video or this even better longer one at 10 minutes. It will be worth your time, I promise!
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Photo: By Joe Zachs from Pune, India (The Bombay Dabawalla) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The Yin and Yang of Life Anywhere 