Lax Security in Banks (Vox Populi)

Despite spate of bank robberies over which the public and media went to town, banks are yet to learn its lesson, it seems. This week alone, I had occasion to witness security holes in two nationalized banks. 


In one, the customers could virtually walk through the cash counter, exposing the cashier to risk. 


In another , the cash counter was at the doorstep at the entrance. In earlier times, the cash counter will be the last one at the corner most spot, making any heist difficult. 


While the public always cry over the spilled milk, the media makes heavy business out of it, it is for the employees and their welfare groups to protest and highlight the security lax to the senior management. 


Will the Banks wake up?

Vox Populi

Whenever you open a Newspaper or a news website , you are crowded with incidents of loot, fraud, murder, deceit and many such news which makes one wonder whether are there not anything good happening around? Also, in our day to day life you meet some good Samaritan, a friendly gesture by a stranger, which reaffirms your faith in life and the need to move on. One also gets raw deals which he/she would like to share both to let the steam out and also to educate others, across geography.

A page in Facebook, called 'Thinnai' has been created by me for this purpose and it is accesable at: www.facebook.com/Thinnai

If you have any such thoughts/happenings or you would want to guard yourselves against through others' experience then, you will find this page informative. For everyone's convenience, I wil also share the Vox Populi updates in my blog.

Welcome, relax on my THINNAI and share at : www.facebook.com/Thinnai

Tamilnadu & Civil Services Exams

Results of the 2011 Civil Services examinations are out and 910 out of 2.4 lakhs have been selected for the IAS, IPS and other services.Yes there were 2,43,003 candidates out of which 11,984 cleared the preliminary exams, 2417 candidates were selected for the personality test  out of which 910 have finally made the grade.

Every year when these results are declared, it will send warm, sweet and sour thoughts within me as I too had tried my hand at this sometime in 1982 and went upto the Main exams. I am among the many unsuccessful candidates, whom one of my acquaintances described as a 'wounded soldier'. Very true. Whether you win or lose, after preparing for this, you will really feel like a soldier, realize what planning is, how focus helps, how not to be sucked by distractions and have all the scars on you which will surprisingly be sweet as you lick over the years. Preparations for this exam are like a penance. You have to live, breath, eat and live only with IAS thoughts.

Right from 1980s I have been hearing that it is totally North India oriented, it is biassed etc., and these were also cited as reasons for not churning out enough candidates from Tamilnadu. Setting these aside, the main reason in my opinion is that the IAS culture is more prevalent in North India; people were fed with IAS dreams early from their childhood like our Tamilnadu parents dream of their children getting into MBBS and Engineering. The CBSE syllabus also helps them a lot and most of the NCERT books used in North schools are basic requirements for IAS preparations.

In my opinion, candidates from Tamilnadu are not inferior to anyone and their knowledge, grasp and reproduction are in a way better than others. Only act that we need to tighten is to encourage and provide greater support to take these services. In fact, if you start planning for this exam from the school days, one can crack it ver very easily. If you are strong in two subjects, read the papers regularly and keep your eyes and ears open, half the battle is already won. Of late it is heartening to see that many Doctors, Engineers and technocrats from top institutions like IIT are choosing this ahead of their otherwise lucrative offerings in their own chosen areas of specialization. Also, IAS is one way to arrest the Brain Drain and retain the creamy best within India.

Instead of pointing fingers as to why Tamilnadu is unable to produce IAS officers, let us focus on how to increase our support to the aspirants.

Let us have more training institutions focused on competitive exams. Out television could play a major role in enhancing the general knowledge of the aspirants and could also wean them away from filmy craps under whose clutches the state refuse to free itself .The successful candidates from TN from previous years could also play a vital role in encouraging the aspirants and I am sure such a concerted effort would bring more successful IAS candidates from TN.

Last but not the least, as is evident from the competition statistics given earlier, not all who compete can be successful, however sincere their efforts are. Remember it is not an examination for a person to be declared Passed or Failed. It is a selection process by which candidates are ranked and as per the number of vacancies, people are inducted into the cadre. A person who is next to the last successful candidate could also be as good as others, but only the competition would have edged him out. But, the silver lining is that the sincere preparation for this exam also  helps one so well in developing  all round knowledge, personality and attitude that any other competitive exams would be much easier for the candidate and invariably he/she will land up in some job or the other. So, one has nothing to lose in preparing for this exam.

Some interesting tidbits I gathered from some tweets on the Civil services exam, 2011:

·         Women top Civil Service exams, IITian come third

·         Of the 910 finally selected, 715 are male and 195 female

·         A candidate ranking 287 has blamed RSS for such a performance!

·         50 from Tamilnadu and 10 from J & K Qualify for Civil Services this year

·         3 Muslims in Top 50

My Century

When I visited my blog today, I was happy. I had reasons to be happy on many counts.

I am happy that I have not made any updates for over a month.

I am happy that involuntarily, I have detected some pattern of my activities and thoughts. It appears April is an otherwise busy month, which has been keeping me occupied & kept me away from my blog. It does not mean that I had nothing to share or express. My Blog master has more than ten topics under 'draft' all under
different stages.

Happenings over the past week gave me different thoughts. Some angered me, some pacified me and some kept me thinking. All of these gave enough fodder for me to share. But, somehow, it never took me to the stage of culmination, where from it was ready to share.

There have been occasions when I had made more than one post in a day, many posts in a month and no posts at all. This irregularity helped to convince myself that I do not rush to convey and at the same time do not hesitate to share if I had multiple thoughts even on the same day.

Incidentally, I also noticed that I have made 99 posts so far and this one will be my hundredth! I could by no stretch of imagination compete with Sachin but here I notice that I too had a yawning gap between the 99th and 100th posts!!

On noticing this milestone , I went back to my posts and realized that there have been many feedbacks, comments , advices and suggestions all of which I respect and am attempting to implement, wherever feasible.


There were people who were impressed, enhanced inputs to my posts, suggested on the frequency of posts, shared how they have implemented my thoughts all of which humbled me.


My initial thoughts, when I started this canvas two years ago, was to "pen my thoughts- capture my kaleidoscopic mood swings and incidentally welcome visitors and their valuable feedback". The ideals enshrined on the fly has been mostly met, I believe.

In between I also went back to the reading room to know more about 'blogging', where I learnt about the frequencies of posts, monetizing the blog etc., Thankfully, there are varied opinions on the number of posts - some had suggested once in a month, some many in a day and some whenever you feel like. Nothing is overdose neither anything is underplay. For instance, Amitabh posts daily, almost publishing his public
diary. But, all the feedback are taken in the right earnest and many lessons have also been learnt.

Fortunately, I have no intention of monetizing my blog and so my focus in that area was
minimal and only academic.

When there was a drought of posts, I was thrilled when some queried whether everything is fine at my end !
This canvas is a very creative medium for me to exclusively express my thoughts and if the visitors turned well wishers and vice versa were concerned about it, my day is made. I now have a commitment to
improve myself as my thoughts are no more private and so I have a social responsibility too.

I take this opportunity to thank all those who had visited and provided feedback, those silent editors who read but held back their feedback, those who encouraged and those who implemented some of my suggestions.

Though the idea when I created this blog was not to go after audience, I am truly overwhelmed by your responses, suggestions, encouragement and support.

Expanding on these, I have also created a page in Facebook called "Vox Populi", to which I invite you all and share your ideas too.

Shortly, I also propose to come back with some announcement , which I am sure will enthuse you and I look forward to your continued support.

Thank you, friends, for keeping me company, in my post retiral journey!!

I enjoyed walking holding your hands and I have miles to go!