SriLanka and Tamils - An issue centuries old

Many voices and some fists have been raised in wake of the news of the LTTE head honcho Prabakaran's death in the hands of the SriLankan Army (or his suicide.) People tend to jump to a conclusion that with the death of Prabakaran, the Tamil-Sinhala fighting would be over. But I would say they are either overzealous about peace or have no eye for history. The Lankan Tamil crisis is not a one that had started during the British Raj. The Tamil-Sinhalese conflict and fighting is centuries old.

If we take a look at the history of South India, every one of the three dominant Tamil emperors the Chera, Chola and Pandias have had their war with the Sinhalese kings and had conquered the island then called Eezham. The Sinhalese kings have also shown their prowess by defeating the weaker kings of the Tamil dynasties. This has been continuing for centuries. The current ethnic problem has its roots in the history. Literature plays a pivotal role in fueling the fight. Sinhalese literature praises and lifts high of the Sinhalese king by showing the Tamils in dim light for the goods they've done and in bad light overall. The Tamil literature also boast that the Sinhalese kings lamenting about their ill-fate at the victory of Tamil kings over them, and shows the Sinhalese kings as born tyrants.

It is literature that gets more into the minds of the people than recorded history. Literature makes or breaks social harmony in such cases. But humans, with their emotionally charged mindset and fancy for fantasy, always prefer literature and it's mostly distorted visual form cinema. With exaggeration being the baseline of literature and cinema, the facts get distorted and human mind takes history as a reason to fight with others.

The present Lankan turmoil was due to the Sinhala only stance adopted by the Government of SriLanka. Instead of getting diplomatic pressure to deal with the potential ethnic cleansing, the Govt of India and the people of Tamil Nadu took the emotional path to deal with the issue, which made strategic thinking impossible. One man thought with a military mindset and he was left at the top with none to guide and mentor. He was Prabakaran and he gradually took course to eliminating other Eezham freedom fighters to hog the whole limelight. Had he been mentored properly, he would today have become the commander in chief of the Armed forces of Tamil Eezham with some political leader being the head of the nation state.

His unfettered desire with mentor-less thought process, lead to the separation of his own men from him, with which he lost trusted commanders like Mathaiya, Karuna etc. They were the people who translated the goal into military strategy into war tactics which lead to their invincibility for 30 years. Also he earned the wrath of the people of India and the world with the killings of Amirthalingam, Padmanabha, Rajiv Gandhi, Neelan thiruchelvam, Lakshman Kadhirgamar and the level headed likes. His self-centric attitude brought to an end his life (suspicions surround this claim) and his organization, till someone else takes it up again.

The problem with the people of Eezham is that they don't like LTTE, but the TINA factor worked in LTTE's favor, as the people liked to hate the Srilankan armed forces. Military victory over the LTTE of the SL Army would not solve the Eezham crisis as it is an ethnic problem not a national problem. Both parties involved try to get the issue resolved in their terms. Negotiations have failed. Now that the remaining leaders of the Tamil political parties need to take up the initiative to take the cause forward, for which great men like Amirthalingam were killed.

Prabakaran's LTTE is history. But history teaches us not to trust the Lankan Government. So, the trained cadre of the LTTE shall be kept intact to get an edge in the negotiating table, since without an edge in the negotiating table, Tamils would be again put to trouble. We don't want another Black July and another Prabakaran's LTTE.

Eezham people want peace and tranquil life. It is the duty of Tamils worldwide to diplomatically pressurize the concerned Governments to get this done.

Vox Populi: 2009

The nation has delivered its verdict as to who would rule it for the next five years. Though there were hiccups in the election process, results have shown some positive trends and a clear message. The election results though have not given a clear majority to any single party, has not given the regional parties the upper hand, which is a positive national trend. One of the national parties, Congress has won 206 seats, while the other national party BJP has won 116. The one state wonders with high national ambitions, AIADMK and BSP, were shown their places, while the two state wonder with exemplary back pulling capabilities, the Leftist group, was drubbed in it's own forts.

The movie magic shows and empty rhetorics failed miserably. Performance and governance were rewarded, though they measured fathoms deep down from the required level. An interesting thing to note in this election is that the Opposition had high ambitions, but lacked proper planning and concerted efforts to achieve them. The campaign was perfectly planned and executed by the Congress, while the BJP and other opposition parties resorted to mere rhetoric and empty statements of extreme hope.

The Congress campaign was aimed at the common man, who cares for who cares. The issues concerning the common man like employment guarantee, better roads and railways etc were discussed and highlighted in the Congress campaign. BJP on the other hand tried the run the show based on national security, foreign policy, harping too much on Mumbai terror attack etc issues not within the understanding of the common man, only to be rubbed back with the Kandahar episode by the Congress. BJP was forced to change strategy in the midway with the casual and cool rejoinders of the Congress star campaigners, which projected them in the light of immaturity.

Overall, the common man had delivered his verdict, which is perfect in the national interest with two national parties sharing majority of votes and remaining in the top two positions. The much longed maturity that regionalism shall be a plank for regional elections not for the national elections, has been silently emphasized by We, the people of India.

Hope for the best is the adage. But being happily tainted and never caring about being tainted are the characteristics of the winner, the Congress party. Shall we anticipate more Quattrochi like releases, more corruptions right from Planes to pickles, or for a change a combination of growth in economy, and development in corruption?

I remember Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathiar, the great Tamizh poet who lamented, "Oh Fate!what have you in store for the humankind?" If you know the future for sure, the thrill of living would be lost. Let us look for the future with good hope and trust in GOD.

Taking Business Client centric

There is story told in almost management every management seminar, class or workshop. There was a telephone company which was leading the market with large customer base. They outsourced their billing and customer support to a company called Alice services in wonderland. There was a proposal in the telecom company to club the bills of one customer for different services. For example, if a customer has 3 phone connexions, one for office, one for personal and another for his wife they would be clubbing together the bills of all the three. This arrangement was to check the paperwork and reduce the billing expense.

Customer were given an option to choose for it or ignore it. The next month, there was a call volume spike at Alice services, with customers who opted for the new joint billing finding it difficult and wishing to return to the previous state. Now that the Alice services have no clue what to do in such a situation. The customer were pressing for a restoring previous status or threatening to close the account. There was no SOP for such a situation.

Alice services were given the business of soliciting new accounts and also closures as and when necessary. So, when customers insisted on closure if their demands are not met, they opted to offer closure, as they have no specific instructions for such a situation, and customers were also demanding a quick solution so, checking with client was also not feasible. The client realized the impact after a week and a loss of hundreds of accounts. Then a roll back of the scheme was announced and alterations made to take necessary care for the business to stay. But the damage had already been done, smarting from that took a lot of time and money.

This is one of the banes in outsourcing, but there is another side to this issue also. Taking everything to the clients. To service a customer's special request, the outsource partners would wait and get the clients approval, by which time the customer would have gone out of hands.

The same happened in a place where one of my friend works. He was with a team that handles critical issues and dissatisfied customers. His team was trained by the client and they were deciding on the solutions to be provided for the customers. Once there happened a management change and the new manager didn't know an iota of the business intricacies. He was much concerned about the industry basic standards of TAT, on-time calls, and metrics like same day case closure, delayed case closure etc. The business was of a nature that the customer's were to be taken care of in every possible way. When freebies were to be stopped due to recession-bite, these guys still managed to get it in a different way for the customers.

But the new manager insisted on metrics through numbers. He didn't care for appreciation letters, praising mails etc. He wanted numbers to show that he mattered. When client came up with new work arounds, he would not question back as to the nature of the customers the team was handling. Had he done so, the clients not so business conducive proposals would have been scrapped at the start. Without discussion, the client's proposals were implemented and when results shot back they would still take "gaalis and golis" from the client and go around with the new work around.

None seemed to have realized the famous words of Jack Welch,"If an idea doesn't stand for a no holds barred discussion, the market place would kill it ruthlessly". The manager had his infamous justification, "If client says crow is white, crow is white. Because he is client and it is his business." Finally some of the people who were veterans in the business were sent off as they were not doing their "allocated job" and were asking too many questions. Now people who were retained in the business are looking around for opening elsewhere.

Well, what is the moral of the second story. BPO businesses should been run client centric. But making it centered around the client and according a demi-God status to the client would definitely ruin the business for the client- they are also humans and would err by nature- consequently to the outsource partners.

It should rather be a cooperative effort by both the client and the partners right from choosing the people to run the business. People who run critical business should atleast have a minimum business intelligence, rather than a "Yes Minister" attitude. The business managers and leadership team should dare to question the client on his proposals keeping the business in mind. Outsource employees should have the feeling of ownership towards the part of the business they run for the client. This attitude could be brought through by training, orientation and encouragements by the outsource management and the management of the client.

Jack Welch, Louis Gerstner and Lee Iacocca have developed a sense of ownership for GE, IBM and Ford respectively and they succeeded because of that. For that matter, take any of the successful business managers. They own it, they win with it. If you don't feel you own something, you will have indifference towards it. If you have indifference towards it, you will not care for it. If you don't care for it, you're not fit to run it, be it business, family, nation or a bicycle. Business managers need to develop a sense of ownership towards the business they manage to successfully run the show.

Panick-stricken perpetrators

The news that the Taliban has taken 800 police trainees as hostages in Pakistan has come as a rude shock to followers of news, but only as an expected development to people who believe in the universal law of life, "As your sow, so you reap". The Pakistani establishment gave an upper hand to the ISI as it is part of the armed establishment after the military established supremacy over the civil government. We cannot expect civility from armed people who have gross indifference towards the public sentiments and refuse to learn from history that every military dictator in that nation has been overthrown by either the democratic forces or by their heirs apparent.

The Pakistani military has a history of military blunders right from 1948, when they sent hooligans in the name of mujahideen (armed freedom fighters) to Kashmir in an attempt to separate it from India. It miserably failed. They invaded us in 1965 thinking that we were out with the Chinese armed fiasco of 1962, but we proved to them that we were only down. They planned to take over our nation in 1971, when we helped the suppressed East Pakistani people, but we proved to them again that their military thought process was fundamentally wrong.

Their association with the US in an attempt to get the Soviet Army out of Afghan was handled miserably without administrative sense of responsibility, by giving ISI a free hand to operate without any checks and without asking to balance its acts. ISI was allowed to grow like a motherless child, uncared for and unquestioned, that it grew up with a rowdy attitude. No one dared to question ISI because it worked with CIA and US gave money. With the Shariat Law adapted and adopted by Zia-ul-Haq, fundamentalist forces were given a free hand to operate at will.

This resulted in Pakistan slowly being swallowed by the forces of religious fundamentalism and the Government establishment there repeated its mistakes by playing along with the fundamentalists and the moderates with money pumped in to banish the fundamentalists. We have intelligence confirmations that the poor villagers of Pakistan were caught and sent over to Guantanamo stamping them as Al Qaeda operatives. The fact that these people were exposed only to the Islamic culture and knew only Urdu and Pashtun made it enough for the US forces to accept the words and people Pakistani establishment supplied.

Reports say every such man fetched $5000 to the Pakistani Government and thousands of men were sent over. Later this scam was found, but was covered up, as some of the thousands of people sent over were Al Qaeda. The cover up has an unofficial reason, dwelling into it might be revelation of a deal between Bush and Mush. Now that the financiers of war on terror asking to account for the rolled out bills, if not for the thrown out nickels, Government of Pakistan simply blinks. With Mr.10% at the helm and he has no clue of how to rule a nation, but only to play double games with people and groups, we have this grave development of a militant gang holding police trainees hostages.

Pakistan Government was in its usual denial mode when asked about the casualties. They might have thought of denying the very existence of the slain trainees inside the school, but would have later realized that this was not an attack on India to deny identification of the arrested or the killed. Now they come up with 10 terrorists attacking the academy, but this figure is just for numbers' sake. Apart from the 10 there were others. If their accounts have to be taken at the verbal value, it should be about 15-20 militants, some of them clad in police uniforms.

The free for all terror training schools in Pakistan, covered up in the name of Madarassas, were the root cause of this ruin. When the target was India, the ISI (parallel Government of Pak) had helped these establishments with place, pay and people. But now is the time to watch what the Pakistanis are going to do. Their own actions to destabilize their sane neighbor, has now started to back fire. Let me quote from former PM Atalji's poem, “If you think about setting our house on fire, be reminded that you're the neighbor". This was aimed at Pakistan's aiding of terror in India. We have a belief based saying in Tamizh, "Poet's words would come true". They have started to.

Being paranoid of cricket victories

It is good see the feeling of ahoi in the cricket loving population on Indian cricket team's victorious show in New Zealand. There are reasons to celebrate. After 1976 Indian cricket team has won a test match in New Zealand. With this the title that makes people flinch, "Heroes at home and zeroes elsewhere" is challenged. The limited overs cricket series win is also a good news. The performance of Sachin and Sehwag along with the back to form Dravid are commendable. Then why paranoia?

Reason behind the paranoia is historically driven. Indian cricket team was victorious under the captaincy of Mohd Azharuddin and everyone was ecstatic about the resurgence of Indian cricket team. But when it came to key performance occasions, the team goofed. The two world cups and some other international matches stand as evidence for this. In Sharjah, the team had a habit of losing the finals. But yet, when it came to overall performance, the team was good.

Then came the startling revelations of match fixing, bookie-player nexus, underworld manipulation of cricket and so on. The performance of the team and the losses in key matches were pre-orchestrated. Players played and goofed for money and no sporting spirit was allowed. The key people were South African players and the then Indian cricket captain. Fine this is history. What gives to be paranoid about the victory now?

The coach of Indian cricket team is a South African, the players are young and partying hard when not in the game. Dhoni is rumored around with an actress, as Azhar was during his prime. Girls are the easy way to gain access to players privacy. Add up all these information and the recent history of the Indian cricket, along with the money poured into their pockets through IPL(where does this much money come from), makes one to suspect that Dhoni might do an Azhar.

Shameless unlike elsewhere, Azhar is admitted into Congress party and is asked to seek election to represent people. Crimes of the worst nature go unpunished and after while perpetrators and criminals are given place in the political arena in the nation. So, fear of punishment is also ruled out. With no bar to any sort of conduct, we have every right to suspect that something is fishy underground with the victories in New Zealand.

People may suggest to pray to God for not landing us up in such a situation again, as if God has no other job than policing crickters. He has the few good men in the world to take care of, and that is a mammoth task.

Azhar in Congress - Defying Science!!!

The recent reports in the media that one of the former India cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin joining the Congress is really eyebrow raising from a scientific stand point. Let us check out the history of these two, because I don't want to just dabble around without historical evidence and data proof for my stand. Congress is the most corrupt amongst political parties. Azhar is the most corrupt amongst cricket captains. Let us see in detail.

Congress has corruption and controversial behaviour as a trait right from Independence.
In 1948, after the knowledge that the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi, Nathuram Godse, was a Maharashtrian Brahmin, the so-called non-violent Congress Party went on a rampage , killing hundreds of Maharashtrian Brahmins, burning their houses and putting thousands in jail.

In 1957, Haridas Mundhra a notorious stock speculator, got the government-owned LIC to invest Rs. 1.24 crores (about USD 3.2 million at the time) in the shares of six troubled companies belonging to Mundhra. The investment was done under governmental pressure and bypassed the LIC’s investment committee, which was informed of this decision only after the deal had gone through. In the event, LIC lost most of the money.

Starting then, the Congress was always the center of controversies and corruptions. KGB money was flowing into the country and was instrumental in keeping the Congress Party afloat in the political arena, by "all" means. We have Mitrokin's archive to speak about it.

Bofors scam speaks a lot about the Congress party's scant respect for national defense. During Narasimha Rao's period, corruption was at it's prime in every nook and corner of the administration. Right from pittance to pickle, there was corruption. We had the PM accused of taking bribe to bail out a tainted stock broker. Result of inquiry is ambiguous, as usual.

Well, take the case of Mohammed Azharuddin. Statistically he is one of India's most successful captains. In 1991 he was named as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year. But then came out all his corrupt practises and collusions with the underworld operations. He abetted with betting monsters and ruined the spirit of sport, not for victory but for money. Former South African captain Late lamented Hansie Cronje, in his confession for match-fixing, had indicated that Azharuddin was the one to introduce him to the bookies.

India's premier investigation agency the CBI had stated in it's report as follows,"It is clear that Azharuddin contributed substantially towards the expanding bookie/player nexus in Indian cricket. The enquiry has disclosed that he received large sums of money from the betting syndicates to fix matches. There is also evidence which discloses that he roped in other players also to fix matches, which resulted in this malaise making further inroads into Indian cricket. The evidence against Azharuddin, which is discussed next, clearly establishes that he took money from bookies/punters to fix cricket matches and also the fact that the underworld had approached him to fix matches for them."

This led the BCCI to ban him from cricket for life in 2000. In one of his interviews, Azhar claimed that he was being targeted because he was from a minority community. After severe criticism from all parts of the country, including prominent minority community organisations, Azharuddin had to apologise publicly and retract his statements. A typical Congress style.

Both Azhar and Congress party have similar traits. We have studied science that says, only opposite poles attract. We don't have an answer to why, as with physics we have answers for only how and what. But I've come across a beautiful explanation on the web that inspired me, may be because I'm an economics student.

The given reason for opposite polls attracting each other is,"because everything in nature tries to reach equilibrium. Positive and negative are in equilibrium when they are neutral. They can become neutral only by coming together and they attract".

As always reality would be stranger and we may have Azharuddin given the sports ministry if Congress comes to power, as history states that corruption and Congress are two sides of the coin called scandal.

Well, let us get back to the point. Corrupt Congress and corrupt Azharuddin have come together. They both have same qualities, so could be classified as same poles. Hence this union is science defying.

Terror Targeting Sports

Terror has no religion said people who oppose terrorism being unleashed in the name of religion. Terror has no common sense. In common terrorists have no sense, so looking for common sense in them is an imbecile expectation. The attack on Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan is the latest evidence to prove that terror has no human sense. Luckily the players were not fatally attacked. But one of the umpires are still critical in an ICU.

This is not the first time sports persons or sports event is targeted by terror. Terrorism has threatened the Olympic Games also. In 1972, when the Olympic Games were held in Munich, West Germany, eleven members of the Israeli athletic team were taken hostage by the terrorist group. A liberation attempt led to the deaths of the nine abducted athletes. Another example of terrorism at the Olympics came during the Summer Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta. A bomb was detonated at the Centennial Olympic Park, which killed 2 and injured 111 others. The bomb was set by an American domestic terrorist, who is currently serving a life sentence.

What made terrorists to attack sportsmen, who have nothing to do with their so propagated war of ideology. They play for the sake of the game. The ideology is not at stake. Even the national pride is showed up to be at stake by the media hype to get publicity to the advertisers product. The sportiness is marred by such publicity. So the media and the publicity industry is partially responsible for violence flaring up due to a loss in a game.

Well, let us get back to the current situation. What has Pakistani terrorists against with Sri Lankan sportsmen, given the pro-Islamic stance of the SriLankan Government to counter the Hindu-Christian LTTE? So, a direct ISI hand is ruled out. We have intelligence reports that some of the Jihadi outfits have themselves indebted to LTTE for some arms smuggling and drug trafficking. LTTE had got valuable weapons as kick backs for such 'helps'. This is kind of a give and take without trusting each other.

The BBC has ruled out the possibility of either the direct or indirect involvement of the LTTE on the ground that many of the star SL cricketers are Tamils and it would not want them killed. But given the history of LTTE, one would not accept this argument. We have a list of prominent and pragmatic Tamil leaders killed by LTTE. Amirthalingam, Varadaraja Perumal and Neelam Thiruchelvan are to name a few. The LTTE head honcho has a self centric tendency which triggers the murders of many other Eelam tamil leaders who gain prominence over that person.

We don't need lessons to understand the LTTE's stand against Sri Lanka. Now that the link between Islamic terror gangs and LTTE has been established, we can take a safe bet that the Lahore attacks were done as a return of favor to the LTTE, which was reduced to a gang on the run for life, by the recent attacks mounted by the SL army. The art of hiding and awaiting right time to strike is the guerrilla strategy and LTTE follows it like night to the day.

But we should not rule out the possibility of the Islamic terror gangs viewing cricket as a westerners' game and targeting it to root it out of Pakistani soil, as a first step towards 'cleansing' the Islamic world of western leanings. At least now, Pakistan should employ it's true professional investigators to find out the truth behind this crime and let the world know. Whether or not the terrorists are punished in Pakistani soil is not our concern, but we're concerned about the Islamic terrorist gangs taking the sub-continent for granted and threatening tranquil human life.

If Pakistan is not acting, India shall act taking up the role of Big Brother protecting siblings, at least to preempt terror from again bloodying our soil.