Unearthly happiness...!

Lines from my earliest inspirations...a short story called THE BET...by Chekhov...

"Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now...."

"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you."

"To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact. . . ."

Mussoorie Morns...

The moon is still bright, and high up in the sky,

Gloom and reluctance, in my mind, is truly not a lie;

Engulfed in the silence and the serenity of dawns,

At an hour, which can be deafened by quietest sound,

Whilst hearing to the loudest of the incessant yawns,

Lazily we tread down to the far away polo ground;

The morning birds are naught yet out of their nest,

But, we, in fear, do customarily, break from our rest...

Pre-mortems...!!!

     Creating equitable, viable and sustainable economies or economic spaces is at the heart of all development programmes. Urban development policies in the developing countries often adopt a policy perspective which emphasizes on efficient utilization of the available natural, physical, human resources to develop the city and ensure the ecological sustainability of the city. The Government of India has launched various programmes for urban development and the recent Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission is hailed to be one the biggest reforms-linked development programmes taken up by the government.

    This flagship programme of the UPA government is well-organized, efficiently operated, widely utilized, adequately financed and supported. Yet, we may still ask, what about its impact? Does it bring about equity? Does it ensure sustainable development – the watchword of any economic activity today? Does it overcome the weaknesses in implementation? Does it have the expertise to avoid from the dangers of failure?

   This paper explores the theme through the prism of urban policy-making in India while referring to JNNURM as an example. This paper aims to introduce two distinct techniques – Project ‘Pre-mortem’ and Policy Impact Assessment, to improve project/policy implementation and target realization, thereby, reducing the impacts of opportunity costs and ‘opportunity time’, too.

    The first technique, ‘PRE-MORTEM’ is the brainchild of Gary Klein, in his book, Intuition at Work, published in the Harvard Business Review. According to him, “A pre-mortem is the hypothetical opposite of a post-mortem... A pre-mortem in a business setting comes at the beginning of a project rather than the end, so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied. Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the pre-mortem operates on the assumption that the "patient" has died, and so asks what did go wrong. The team members' task is to generate plausible reasons for the project’s failure”. Gary Klein advocates the use of pre-mortems, wherein the possible failure channels or blind spots in any project plan can be identified through prospective hindsight.

    And, the second is IMPACT!!! Yes, Impact, the ultimate objective of a policy, is often a casualty of misplaced priorities, ill-conceived plans and shoddy execution. The aim of impact evaluation is to assess whether a policy is achieving its objectives, stated and assumed, through its idea and its execution. A policy could fall at either of these fault lines and it is essential to know which, because in the former case it is the policy itself which needs to re-oriented, whereas in the later case, the room for improvement is quite large.

     Urban studies today focus upon provide micro-level analysis of the impact of the urban policies and other legal measures for citizens, governments and policymakers. Citizens benefit from demonstrations of the likely organizational and economic impact of policy measures, of ideal adaptation strategies to such changes, and their consequences for the further development of cities and towns. It is only a small step from analyzing the policy measures for citizens to evaluating the policy measures for policy actors. The main concerns of policy actors are the impact on and adaptation strategies of governance, the potential development of the various sectors, infrastructure especially, and the effect of policy measures on public expenditure.

     Citing from the same context of JNNURM – cities like Vijayawada, Vishakapatnam and Hyderabad have successfully implemented the reform processes under the Mission. While other cities like Ahmedabad, Indore, Nagpur, have also recorded success, there can be certain unique cultural ethos endemic to the local context that have fuelled their successes. A critical understanding of these micro-level factors and processes may be quintessential in the post-policy making stage of reform to contribute to the ultimate objective of renewal of urban areas.

     The ‘Mission Cities’ which have demonstrated the process of change effectively under JNNURM and the initiative of Peer Experience and Reflective Learning (PEARL) within the programme itself reiterate the understanding that pre-mortems and policy impact assessments are ideas, whose time has come, ushering new directions in policy-making in our country. There is a need to understand and re-visit the processes of policies of development and the processes of growth on varying scales and evaluate their sustainability for the future.

     The major issues guiding the pursuit in the future of decision-making in India can be – the identification and adoption of ‘pre-mortem’  in policy-making in India; the significance of policy impact assessment in effective decision-making; the need and emphasis to engage research in these areas of study, as an academic discourse; the extent and nature of the economic and social impacts in the urban landscapes and the spatial transformation of the cities under the mission.

    Pre-mortem, in simple words, is to uncover the problem areas or the fault lines at the very outset of a project or policy implementation and fix or streamline these hindrances, as the project unfolds. And, if effectively executed, is a powerful tool to strengthen project implementation plans in both private and public sectors. In fact, development practitioners also believe that it is likely to be even more effective in public bureaucracies where ex-ante analysis is always held back by strong currents of political correctness and bureaucratic hierarchy norms. Pre-mortems on effectively primed (about the program failure) team members has the potential to yield remarkable results.

   Concerning the purposes of social policy impact, the need to evaluate in the Indian setting is a big necessity and there are several possibilities too. The most urgent evaluation need from the supply side is the assessment of policy coordination at the central government level and the development of a capacity for policy execution and integration at the local level. From the demand side, an evaluation priority at the micro level is to assess the performance of policies at the individual, family, household, and community level by focusing on the participation and satisfaction levels of users.

   Finally, as attempts to dispel the fears under the Murphy’s law or the fourth law of thermodynamics, both pre-mortem technique and impact assessment study can adopt qualitative research methodology through a process of continuous evaluation and impact studies to brainstorm the critical aspects of the projects, anticipate the obstacles, and understand the particulars of the impact of social policy on human development in the short, medium, and long term, to compensate the fluidity of current social policy and to overcome the limitations of ex-post facto analysis.

Nothing gonna change My Love for you - Glenn Mederios - (lyrics-spanish ...

Love's Philosophy by Shelley!

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle —
Why not I with thine?


See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea —
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

just for love...

One of the longest journeys 
Of the world is made by a Knot 
All this is done just for  
Finding a loved one or a Mate. 

It’s Love that takes them 
Go all around the world 
Spreading the message of love 
To far off distances untold. 

It’s a Knot that binds them 
Together all their way 
A bond not just for a day, 
But for an eternal stay. 

It’s a Mate that makes them 
Fly with a true aim, highly persevering, 
To reach the worlds over the clouds 
That is sublime, radiant and unfading. 

Binding the hearts that hate, 
Preaching the language of hearts, 
From the Southern tip of Africa, 
They fly away to Northern Arctic- 
JUST FOR LOVE…!