Chanakya's Chant

"Chanakya Chants" has two parallel story running in different ages. One is a historic fiction describing how Chanakya achieved a united 'Bharat' for his protege Chandragupta Maurya. The other parallel story is from modern India, 60 years after independence, and how Gangasar made his protege Chandini the Prime Minister.

In the historical fiction, some of the events are facts which we have read during our school years, and then there are lots of fiction to make the reading interesting.

Where as, reading the current times had a mixed feeling that it was not entirely fictional either. Rather all that has been described has actually occurred over the 60 years since independence.

Just to give you some examples. We had lady prime minister (Indira Gandhi), she was endorsed and placed in power by a famous kingmaker in the Congress party, named K. Kamaraj.

Then there is a mention of how a trader profits from the licence raj implemented in the country. The trick described in the book is similar to what Dhirubhai Ambani was accused of doing.

On the whole the concept of the entire story is that corrupt and vile nature of human beings are not new. The only thing that has changed is the form and how different people try to achieve it. Assassination was a more common way of eliminating enemies during Chanakya's time, and in the new age 'character assasination' is more preferred.

The life of both the protagonist's across the  both the eras' show that to attain power takes a lot of sacrifices of various emotions and also of conscience.

It does give an impression that at certain times achieving goals are more important than the means used to attain them. And on other occasions no matter what decisions one takes, it will be deemed as wrong. Like, is it right to allow two kings to go to war and let thousands kill each other or is it correct to use deceit and let the  two kings decide through a dual and then kill the surviving king using an assassin!

In short, Aswini Sanghi's second novel should be read by those who have keen interest in either politics or fictional history, it will be worth the time. The novel has a crude language, even the choice of words is not eloquent. It feels very disconnected when on occasions the characters of the novel are using the famous quotes that are attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde and Mao Zedong  then on other occasions these characters blurt clumsy lines used in colloquial language.

A policy error on Maruti's part

There is continuous problem that has been cropping up at the Maruti's plant. Every now and then they are shutting it down for fairly long period.

But no one, it seems is actually trying to solve the underlying problems they are just playing the immediate game.

To start with the main problem is that temporary workers are paid less and have less amenities but companies prefer them because its easy to issue them pink slips (in other words fire them) when there is a slow down.

This is definitely a skewed system.

The solution would be to pay higher wages (i.e. cash in hand) to temporary workers.

The easiest I could think of was to pay 20% more to temporary workers than the permanent workers. That should even out the playing field between temporary and permanent workers.

Permanent workers get less cash in hand and more benefits plus firing them would be difficult. Meanwhile temporary workers will be paid more because they will have more risk, the risk of losing the job.

Why is the state government not suggesting such simple solution or coming up with a solution that is (a) practical (b) solves the real problem?  A policy problem cannot be solved by signing agreement and playing strikes and suspension.