Reservations in India

In a recent news report in the Hindustan Times about the Gujjar agitation for the demand for their inclusion in the Scheduled Tribe list I found a thought provoking comment from Col Kirori Singh Baisla who is leading the agitation. The report says that it took Col. Baisla 7 years to mobilise the Gujjars to fight for the demand for reservation. When the reporter asked Col. Baisla about the motivation behind this, he replied "I wanted to do something for my community as I felt that these simple people were victims of injustice. I had no political ambition in mind when I laid the foundation of the movement seven years ago."

If there are leaders, like Col. Baisla who believe that to uplift a community it has to be first made backward, then even God will not be able help us. No wonder, the Supreme Court recently said that India is probably the only country where being backward means that you are forward.

Reality of Real Estate In India

The other day I was having an animated chat with one of the employees of Eldeco Properties about some of the complaints that I had. During the course of our chat, I asked him why does he do this job where he has to hear hard words from nearly every customer? And if there is no other option then why don't you ask your superiors to help you resolve the issues faster so that no one would have any complaints from you.
To my utter surprise he said that he loves this part of his job where he gets to hear hard words from his customers. So far so good - no harm in loving some one who is out to abuse you. Remember Mahatma Gandhi. But what surprised me even more was when he said that he in fact welcomes such stuff from his customers. And that this is the reality of the real estate industry in India where the service providers have to hear abuses from the customers. And that every single company in real estate business in India welcomes such abuses.

Now this made me speechless, cause, if someone welcomes the abuses showered on him, to me that means that he does not care about taking corrective action about the reason for which he is being abused.

This made me wonder if that is the reason why in spite of the real estate industry being on the rise, the trust that the public shows in the builders is still very low, and is nowhere near the amount of trust public has in other sectors like automobiles, FMCG, etc. Is this the reason why, baring few, real estate stocks have not been the darling of the stock market till recently.

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A concealed threatening from Eldeco

Today we recieved a letter from Mr. Vishal from Eldeco Marketing saying that the maintenance payment that we make to Eldeco for maintaining the "beautiful and wonderful" (pun intended) Ananda residential complex where we live, will now be made part of the "pre-paid" system that is used for track our electricity consumption.

At first it does seem to be a good idea to ensure that regular payments are recieved by Eldeco, but wait till you read the next para of the letter. It says that in case the payment for monthly maintainance is not made then the electricity supply may be disconnected!! That is even when I am regular in paying my electricity dues!!

I wonder if this is due to the comments that I have written on my blog about the pathetic service from Eldeco. But why am I wondering, I should have expected this from them given the kind of people they are.