The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : At the receiving end

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Tuesday, Jul 08, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

At the receiving end

All agencies dealing with public utilities are at the receiving end. The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board is no different. It is used to complaints and dharnas from the irate consumers. But the other day the staff and officers were in for a pleasant surprise. A few residents of Marutinagar in Kothapet dropped in at the Board’s office not with a list of complaints but a sweet box. They were expressing their gratitude to the managing director, G. Asok Kumar, for laying of pipelines in the colony. No wonder Mr. Kumar was the happiest man – grinning from ear to ear.

With the advent of a slew of new television news channels and many more in the pipeline, organisations conducting press conferences and meetings are learning the tricks of the trade on how to address TV channels, rather quickly.

The level of fine tuning, for the TV channels, is such that recently at a press conference organised by a voluntary organisation, one of the speakers even before expressing his version to the cameramen, quickly asked him -- What is the time limit you are giving to me - one minute or two minutes!

Not confining to this, the speaker even went ahead to inform other speakers to complete their ‘talk’ in just two minutes. “If you talk more than two minutes, it will be simply deleted by the editors. So speak about the important points and avoid lengthy speeches,” he warned and it was duly adhered to by everyone!

College days are indeed the best days in one’s life. Small comical incidents that occur during those years become memories for a lifetime. Students of engineering colleges of Osmania University, at a particular protest, sat in front of the administration building, holding up placards and raising slogans. A few members of a student union were also backing up the protest.

While shouting slogans, it came out that for many of them it was the first such participation in a protest.

As some students shouted out with expertise, there were a few who hid their faces and giggled, which got others laughing as well.

It was appalling to notice at a recent press conference how insensitive even the media persons could be when it comes to the rights of the physically-challenged. The press conference held by an association for the physically-challenged saw a cameraman of a news channel forcing organisers, who themselves were physically-challenged, to shift the press meet from the first floor to the second of the Press Club.

The reason given by him was ‘insufficient’ lighting. And this, when all the tube lights in the hall were glowing. The reporter of the same channel then claimed that the society was insensitive to the needs of the physically-challenged. A perfect case of the ‘pot calling the kettle black.’

It gets amusing at times to note how social conditioning takes its toll even on hardcore intellectuals. Well known writer Kancha Ilaiah, while arguing for Dalitisation of culture recently, explained in interesting terms how cultural conditioning takes place right since childhood through classroom teaching.

Grammar for instance, he said, would be taught by way of examples such as ‘Rama killed Ravana’ and ‘Lord Krishna stole butter’.

“Why can’t we have sentences like Pochamma cooked food or Ramulamma swept the floor?” he questioned, failing to notice that he too was falling into the trap of conditioning albeit in the context of gender.

However, Dr. Ilaiah made immediate amends to his statement, either consciously or unconsciously we do not know, by adding ‘Ilaiah cleaned toilets’. Noble gesture indeed!

It virtually turned out to be a slanging match between metro rail officials and non-governmental groups during a presentation organised by the ‘Concerned Citizens’ over the proposed elevated metro system on Sunday.

Both reiterated their respective stands i.e. Hyderabad Metro Rail officials led by its Managing Director N.V.S. Reddy making a strong pitch for the metro rail which has reached the tender stage now while Citizens for Better Public Transport members led by C. Ramachandraiah reiterating that BRTS and MMTS were better options.

It reached such a stage that senior bureaucrat B.P.R. Vittal chairing the question and answer session had to intervene and state that it was a technical session and not a debate!

“We need a full day to debate and two hours is not enough for it, I apologise,” he said.

Of course, it was not heeded as many in the gathering thought it fit to give lengthy speeches.

J.S. IFTHEKHAR,

S. SANDEEP KUMAR, ABHIJIT DEV KUMAR,

D.V.L. PADMA PRIYA, SWATI. V, V. GEETANATH

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