NALLADHUKU KAALAM ILLAI

 

 Recently I watched a movie called 'Jerry Maguire', though the movie was average one I liked Tom's character very much. People being honest and acting according to their heart always are taken for granted and end up in the receiving end. His characterization was very nice and something where people can relate to.  I am pretty sure many of us must have had bitter experience in the past for being truthful/honest and often we wonder ‘Nalladhu kaalam illai’. Everything must be glossy and glamorous to get one’s attention and a celebrity draws so much attention from public for a six hours makeup whereas frontline healthcare warriors like Doctors, Nurses, Sanitary workers who are exposed to COVID patients and dress up with PPE kits for eight straight hours hardly get any notice. Recently I came across a gentleman whom I patronize for the past three decades had to close one of his Tiffin center due to poor response from public.

   Let me give you a rough idea as far as group of audience whom I would like to categorize into five groups – Group A, B, C, D and E as far as eating habits. If you take Dosa for example you may have a star hotel sell it for 500 (Group A), Family restaurant sell it for 250 (Group B), Bhavans sell it for 120 (Group C), Tiffin centers sell it for 50 (Group D) and road side shops sell it for 30 (Group E). A hard working couple in my area runs grocery store on top of that also a tiffin center. They serve breakfast and lunch and since food is kind of homemade they had steady flow of customers. Things were going good for the couple but with the growing number of roadside shops they were not able to compete with the price. With Covid they began to lose money too and finally had to close the shop recently.  This is unfortunate to see a well deserving and hard working couple close the shop. Road side shops have absolutely no overhead expense like rent, tax, maintenance, EB bills etc., and they are able to translate this to lower price which draws people towards them. Even road side owners are hard working and put up lots of time and effort to run the shop in a profitable manner.

 But if you look into both the cases I feel couple who closed the shop are victims of the system.  Road side owners bribe authorities/officials in order to run the shop at a prominent junction or a congested road, they also offer free food to these authorities to be in good books, create more congestion by having people stand around their shop, do not pay rent and in no way help in revenue generation for the corporation, makes the place messy by having food all round their place and the worst thing I personally hate is they draw so much of stray dogs in and around their shop. You give me a challenge that of making me watch one hour of Prathap Bothen’s speech I can but facing these stray dogs in the streets makes me realize I can run as fast as P.T Usha. Some people feel odd to stand in a road side shop hence choose tiffin centers who are grounded and people with humble background.  Facing unfair competition from road side shops they have no other choice other than to close their business.

So if you look at the loop – Why do people bribe? Because authorities are paid low salary; why are authorities paid low salary? Because respective departments do not allocate funds; why do departments run short of funds? Because Government does not allocate appropriately; why do government not allocate funds? Because they do not get anticipated taxes from public? Why do people not pay taxes properly? Because people are salaried with blue color jobs and do not fall under tax bracket? Why do people not earn enough to pay taxes? Because they do not have proper education; why do people not educate themselves? Because Education is becoming a costly affair and am afraid it may fall under luxury category in near future. If education is made affordable then I would call that as fixing the system. But that may never happen because most of the educational institutions are owned by Politicians. 

Rather than focusing on fixing the problem we need to fix the system. Road side shops should be encouraged to form SHG (Self help groups) and start to work collectively to improve their living conditions. But all these can be nice to read and good to watch on movies and if these have to be implemented then we need to inject young blood full of energy something similar to Shri.Jagan Mohan Reddy – Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Unless we see system gets fixed it is always going to be dindigul towel on top of your head for honest folks with the slogan ‘Nalladhuku Kaalam Illai”