My father always said that ‘making money was not the cleanest or the best of jobs’. We are caught between the banks, the real estate sharks and the sarkar. We definitely need the support of a Higher Power with us right away. As long as land power is greater than ‘information’ and ‘technology’, our country will remain in the grips of goons (whether in the form of real estate developers or politicians).

To create something ‘beautiful’, one has to become ‘unbeautiful’. That is what is happening with us. We have survived but at what a cost. There has been no music, no hobby,no, connecting with my daughter for many years now. It has just been the banks, clients,tenders,GC and now dealing with the real estate guys.

Rajeev is our new accountant and he has a huge mess of ‘unfinished and pending’ work left by his pre-decessor Shiva, to finish. Not a rosy chair for him at all. We are hoping that he will be on target for the audit scheduled in March.

The weekend is here. The weekly rations for the office need to be bought. Appu has her dance class. And I might just get fewer calls than on other days. And that is a huge relief.

More money is always equal to more shit. Wondering how much we would be able to handle.

And If at all.

Anyway the long and short of it is that there is another project and the same person has contacted us for participating. We have entered very late in the bidding process (better late than never) and it was suggested that we meet the MD with our battery of experts (Irrigation and survey) at a short notice of a few hours. And with the methodology. And with the pricing. So I was scanning the database in my mind and I could zoom in on the survey expert very fast. But the Irrigation expert was another ballgame. And which expert would be interested in attending a meeting at such a short notice and that too for a small company?
The scanner in my head worked overtime. And I called up a professor from IIT Delhi who handles GIS projects. And hoped that he would know someone in the Irrigation sector. Well it was late in the night when I called up his residence(his wife was quite irritated) but he said he would work something out by the morning. And Narendra worked on the methodology. SO bingo. It all came together. I could attend the meeting with the experts and the methodology in place. So it was done. We stand a good chance of winning. But here is the catch. ‘liasioning’ ka paisa chahiye and that too in advance. Bole to ‘ghoos’ ka arangement karna padega. ??

The next meeting had been arranged by the real estate guys with the chairman of the ‘Airport Authority of India’. I had asked for it as there were a lot of technical queries. The client’s plot lies in the outer horizontal surface and I was keen to know the guidelines AAI would use to freeze the maximum possible height. The slope of the obstacle surface, the distance from ARP and the key points. The meeting had been specifcally arranged for me but I could not reach on time. So the client met the chairman and collected the technical points. I then had to meet the client in their office (in Cannaught Place) and I could reach there only by 8:00pm due to the traffic. The information collected from the chairman was transferred to me along with another set of maps and drawings. So I have to start studying ( not again!).

Appu has been feeling low. She and her troupe are getting ready for a dance performance on ‘Teachers’ day’. She is mostly coping on her own while I am trying to close some work. She is also paying the price of keeping GC alive.
I had to make a choice between paying for the inetrnet or buying fruits or rations today. So I chose paying for the net ( I guess we always have choices). After all, being ‘connected’ is more important than being ‘alive’ these days.

It has been a day of ‘meetings’.

Now Tech Mech invited us for discussions and for outsourcing the GIS part. Mainly the creation of a base map using high resolution satellite imagery. They have no idea of the how’s and why’s of the work. We explained the process and methodology to them in great detail and we reached the stage of discussing the prices.  In a day or two, Mr. Ankit who was representing Tech Mech travelled to Lucknow to meet the client and came back after outsourcing the work to some other company in Gorakhpur. And the take on the issue was that there was ‘political pressure’ on them to give the work to that particular company.

I mean this is bullshit. First a company who does not deserve to get the job gets it. Then it is pressurized to again give away part of the job to a yet again undeserving company. I mean one wrong sparking off a series of wrongs. Spoke to the CEO of LIDA, Mr. Vaarshney and he has expressed his incapability of doing anything. And these are the ‘men’ in ‘power’. Awesome.

And those who are deserving stay in the background because they do not have the necessary ‘links’ or ‘liasioning’ as it is called.

What would ‘success’ in such a system mean?