Crying Paragraph From A Novel Called ‘Services’

“Apne desh ka kuch nahi ho sakta!” (Nothing would happen to our country). The most popular, most common and proudly pronounced catch up line among almost every street corner debates. Whether they are fresh collegians, newly qualified graduates, highly skilled and established professionals or whitely attired politicians, dissatisfaction from the country comes out loud from every mouth. We certainly need to come over this lousy thought. We certainly need to look out of the window now. We need to know the facts by comparing.
I had this intense thought to address this issue while sitting in an underground train I just initiated at the same time. “I have lived in London for three years. Initially I was a foreigner for this country but now I am a lot into the things. I have earned experiences and learned the jobs. I have used from basic to leisure services in this country. I have enjoyed and I have endured. So this is what I need to address about. SERVICES! I have got mixed experiences with the service sector in United Kingdom.”
Starting with the first and essential basic service, Transport. Train service of London, London Underground as it is better known locally, is famous in all over the world. They have got these iconic red double deckers, splendid black cabs and trams as well running in all over the city. The fares of underground and buses have risen nearly 25% in only two years. But the service is getting worse every other day. Appearance is the only thing which differs from Ahmedabad’s AMTS or Mumbai’s well known BEST or Local trains. The commuters might look decent and clean in their cashmere overcoats and jackets in comparison of our ordinarily clad, smelly commuters. The allover external impression is that it is an organized transport system. Yes, we cannot deny the crystal infrastructure of the transport system. But trains remain in tunnels for minutes, buses get terminated anywhere on your way. Single cab journey can buy a second hand scooter in India which can live your purpose of commuting. Weekend refurbishments, planned engineering works, reduced services, severe delays, track replacement, signal failures, disruptions, faulty trains, unavailability of staff and replacement services are the common news at every single underground station chart. And still what you pay is 20% of your income to the dedicated underground. The rail boss stays an inch higher from the ground than everything else, “Don’t expect a seat while short journeys (30 minutes)”, he suggests. “Get off the train if you fill it is crowded”. These are the advisable answers from the responsible and authorized person of London Transport! Congestion charges soar like never before. The motorists have to pay daily congestion charge (£8 per day) if they enter in the designated area called congestion zone of the Central London. So you don’t drive and you pay for public transport and which is bone-breaking for a normal commuter. It is always frustrating for any routine commuter to be late at work or anywhere just on account of Trains and Buses. God bless Briton’s “Read anything! Read anywhere!” habit!
Let’s see what Mobile & Internet providers do. You will find the best offers, the best gadgets and many goodies when you start your services with mobile or internet. You would even get virtually free starter packs. Everything is contracted so once your contract terms are overshadowed by the wonderful offers and freebies, you would start to realize slowly that what you are into! You will surely end up paying more than you would have ever expected. The promises of relentless services would look blurred. A small or serious problem in service may make you suffer for life. To assist you with your problem, there are hundreds of outlets or so called customer service centers of the provider on streets and malls but in most cases you would get the answer, “you will have to talk with customer service advisor on phone”. A physical person cannot resolve anything in front of you, and security reasons are the explanations. More worse happens when you call to customer services. They now describe themselves as information providers only. They can empathize, they can understand your problems, they can listen to your shouting and swearing but at the end, they say, “There is nothing I really can do about it!” You would never be able to speak to the relevant person who can resolve something in real time. Everything works on automated systems, and you would be queuing up to get answered or responded. Problems do occur, technology has got flaws and it is human to accept the problems and to wait for them to get resolved. But you would be left in dark that what is going on, you will just have to wait. Most of the people get fooled with technical terms and they think there is something really serious happening, as serious as ‘launching a space shuttle’. Sales people do anything to sell a ‘bell’ to anyone and rest becomes an ordeal for the customer. We have to be extra careful to understand the services we are going hire.
However, I am back in Ahmedabad for good and I have had some interesting occurrences being a social entity, I will have my hands and mouthful for very long to keep bringing the issues in light

Sneh Bhavsar
London, July 2007

My First Ever Words – Notating Thoughts

“It’s been a year from the day I penned down my first proper piece of writing, 23rd June 2007! I would like to share this note on Global Warming. Mr Al Gore, former president of United States of America, has spent year researching on Global Warming and there is a short movie called ‘An inconvenient truth’. I strongly recommend watching this movie; you would find a great importance of every single human to this earth’s survival from global warming consequences. A quote from that movie, which is one of the best I have ever heard in my life, and I would like to mention it before to start to my first ever article.”
(Pointing to a little dot in a picture of universe taken from a satellite Al Gore says,)
“That little yellow dot is our planet, planet Earth, our only HOME! We have nowhere else to go and live from our lovely little home. So please we all, let us take care of it!”
Global Warming – A simple note…
Could the destruction of southern states of USA be linked with collapsing ice rocks in Greenland? Could the millions of dead fishes in Amazon linked with deforestation in Australia? Are these disasters are also related in any way with Europe’s recent ever hottest summer, which left 27,000 people dead!!?
It is the most serious issue that the World has ever faced, GLOBAL WARMING. The World scientists are collaborating to study Global Warming and its effect in forth coming decades. The most unprecedented changes in the climate have been observed after mid 20th century. Rising temperatures have been measured by a number of space stations.
The Sun is the source of warmth and light to us, but the intensity of the heat is different to the different parts of the Earth. Over the years, the earth has kept changing its orbit and moving pattern around the sun, and because of this the World has seen the significant changes in the climate during the last few centuries.
Let’s have a look at this…

Ideally, the rise in temperature over the years would have not been so momentous, but if we consider the greenhouse effects and the Earth’s orbital movements we can accept some changes or rise in temperature. Although at present, the actual situation of climate change is far more terrible; and human beings are responsible for this. Me, you and all of us.
As we study the numbers, it is only 0.6 degree of rise in planet’s average temperature. But this has already created so much havoc with the climate of the planet. Arctic is warmed by 3 degrees in last few centuries and the ice is melting unbelievably faster. Although, dirty snow has also played the part in this increase. The existing wild life on these continents is under threat. We might think that what if those animals die there in Arctic that is not going to affect us!!! But the whole Food chain would be disturbed by extinction of these animals. Of course, it is the later issue in this case but it is. In addition, rapidly melting ice is the biggest threat for the whole world not just north and south poles. Katrina, Hurricanes, Tsunami – most of the people was not aware of these words before a few decades. The rise in sea temperatures is the reason behind these destructive winds and storms. The rise has caused the average sea temperature to reach up to 26 degrees. In August 2005, Katrina struck New Orleans, Mississippi and parts of Mexico and we have also observed many destructive winds in last decade. It was the worst season of climate disasters in 2005 and it was also the alarm for the World to wake up and take significant action against this Global Warming and Climate change. Researchers say, “They can be more destructive and frequent in next few years!”
Before 160,000 years ago, the World’s average temperature was just 3 degrees less than it is now. But we human beings will make it rise (!) by 2-3 degrees higher within next 30,000 years and many cities near coasts will be flooded.
The choice is yours!

Sneh Bhavsar
London, 23 June 2007

Rude ‘Crude’

Bang! You must be burning with no visible flames because of the recent fuel price hike. Worse, if your ‘Roti’ is cooked on LPG gas stoves, then each one of them is becoming more expensive. Yes, we do have many reasons to criticize the outrageous price hike which has fumed the country all over. But we could also try at least to consider a few reasons for this move from the Government. I strongly recommend reading ‘Government’ as ‘The Government of India – Our Country’ not as the UPA or Congress government. Should we know the whole perception about this dark market of fuel and gases before we really conclude anything? How much is the Government is blamable for the price hike? Think, think and think.

 

Crude oil is the most ‘wanted’ commodity in the world today. Everyday 7.6 Crore barrel (approx 1200 crore litres) of oil is consumed by the whole world. Let’s see, who the top consumers are!

 

 

Country	Oil Consumption
United States of America	200 lacs barrels per day (not surprised at all!)
China	56 lacs barrels per day
Japan	54 lacs barrel per day
India	22 lacs barrel per day

                                                                                                                                                                                               

1 barrel = 158.98 litres

 

India consumes a fair amount of oil everyday and ranks among top 10 largest consumers of oil in the world. India does not have enough oil produced from within the country itself and hence we import 70% of our consumption. Although, country’s capacity to refine the necessary oil stock is quite adequate.

 

 

India has to largely rely on the imports for oil sources as the consumption (approx 35 crore litres per day) is significantly greater than the ability of production (approx 12.7 crore litres).

 

 

Indian government officially dismantled the Administered Pricing Mechanism (APM) in 2002. APM used to regulate the flow and the prices of oil. Oil companies were told how much to sell and at what price. It means there was a less influence of international market on the fuel prices in India. But an insistence for free market pricing and foreign competition made the government to loose APM completely. But they kept an indirect eye on some key fuels to keep regulating their prices. As a result since last few years, crude price is having high correlation with the international market price. 

India’s price regulation mechanism for crude oil came to an end and it is to encourage the foreign participation in oil exploration. Now the prices are highly correlated with the international market price.

 

Let us see the domestic price graph of petrol, diesel and international price of crude oil between the years 2003 and 2008.

 

The graph clearly represents the gradual increase in prices of petrol and diesel since 2003. Of course, it shows the prices getting increased on regular basis since 2003 and that is natural. The most interesting part resides between starting 2007 and mid 2008 (now). In this one and half year crude oil prices have risen from $55.80 per barrel to $138.14 per barrel (as on 7 June 2008). It comes to 150% of hike within just 18 months. As a fact, India is least capable to anything about these prices and hence we have to absorb this increase in price somehow.

 

Let us compare the petrol and diesel prices during these 18 months of time. Petrol has gone up from Rs. 42.85 (Jan 2007) to Rs. 56.52 (June 2008) and Diesel has crossed Rs. 38 (June 2008) mark in compare to Rs. 30.25 (Jan 2007). There is a 33% and 26% of rise in petrol and diesel respectively. Doesn’t it seem that we have reasonably regulated fuel prices despite of the madness running over crude oil price?

 

 

 

The government is bearing a huge financial burden to provide uninterrupted supply of petrol, diesel and LPG to common men. Looking at the unprecedented price hike in international crude oil prices, we have got to bear a fraction of it for our own oil companies and hence for our country.

Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has released the figures and they suggest that the government and oil PSUs have been trying to moderate the impact on the common man. At current prices government will bear a financial burden of Rs. 245,000 crore in 2008-09. It would be out of scope to understand crude oil international price market at the moment. We need to be concerned with the solutions we can derive by our own efforts to deal with the increasing prices of fuels. There is not doubt that the increase of Rs. 5 per litre in petrol price is significant for a common man but for now considering this difficult situation and to act accordingly is the only choice left. It could have been worse if we look at the over all growth in crude prices internationally.

 

As one of the main reasons is that we have a greater reliance on imports for the oil and that is because we consume more. How can we contribute our bit? It is by trying to optimize our consumption of fuels, whether it’s petrol, diesel or natural gases. Broadly, any kind of energy should be saved to minimize unexpected consequences. And at last, Indian government has put some suggestions in a public advertisement, which may help us controlling our own consumptions and hence the oil situations and prices in future.

 

 

 

Conserver Energy for Brighter Future

 

• Drive at optimum speed of 45-55 kms/hr
• Maintain correct tyre pressure
• Switch off engines at traffic signals
• While driving do not drive the clutch
• Keep your vehicle engine tuned
• Light your stove only after you have all ingredients within your reach
• Pressure cooking saves fuel and time
• Use optimum quantity of water while cooking
• Use higher efficiency ‘ISI’ marked LPG stove

 

Sneh Bhavsar

Ahmedabad | 9 June 2008