Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

If you don't create change, change will create you. Change starts when someone sees the next step and the first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance. Many fine things can be done in a day if you don't always make that day tomorrow. You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.

Sometimes it's the smallest decisions with larger aims that can change the lives of many. If our attempts can at least become a spark. We are really grateful and the TEAM can proudly proclaim ‘MISSION ACCOMPLISHED’.

If you can LEND A HELPING HAND for the advancement of our country and its people be part of our ENDEAVOR.


Tuesday, March 8, 2011

An Honest Man, Dead of course.


A Tribute to Honesty and Candour

By: Gopikrishnan  

When this author first heard of Satyendra Dubey, he was filled with a child-like admiration for someone who stood for good, for truth. Here lived a man who believed that the duty of a man is to stand up for what he believes in. This is not a happy story that this author will narrate, but a sad recollection of a life lost while standing up for the truth.    
  
Born into a family supported by a clerk at the local sugar factory, with five sisters and a brother, Satyendra Dubey was the first from his birthplace in Bihar to get into an IIT. Having got into the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT – Kanpur, he graduated with excellent marks. After which he was selected for the prestigious IES.
 
Despite the wide range of career options that were open to him after graduating from the premier institute of education in India, Dubey opted to work for “Our” country. He joined the Ministry of Surface Transport as Assistant Executive Engineer.

After 4 years, the man first angrily turned down a fat envelope of rupee notes, without the temptation of improving his parents’ hay-strewn house or enjoying the feeling of being rich for the first time in his life. However, Dubey, for the first time, saw what institutionalized corruption really was when he was put in charge of a 60 km, 450 – Crore stretch of The Golden Quadrilateral Project.

Seeing the number of forged documents, sloppy reports, and huge advances and sub-letting to petty contractors who lacked the technical ability to work on a project of this scale, he described this as a loot of public money by Government engineers and MNC construction companies to local thugs. Instead of staying silent and just letting it happen, he, on November 11, 2002, sent a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) describing the fate of the project.

But having understood the risk that he was taking by sending a letter in his name, Dubey put his life in the hands of the PMO, he attached his name to a separate sheet of paper and requested that his identity be kept a secret. 

“Honesty is the best policy.” (Yeah Right!).

Unfortunately for Dubey, the above said quotation was put to test by the PMO when they didn’t protect the identity of the informant nor pursue any investigation on the charges. More bad news for Dubey when his details as well as his letter was sent to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, where at least eight officials scanned it before passing it on to the National Highway Authority of India.

The disgusting detail here is that Satyendra Dubey had to face threats from the ones he complained against, and a “reprimand” from his bosses for having sent the letter directly to the Prime Minister.
There is no point in adding trivial details to this, and so we come to November 27, 2003, when at 3 AM, Satyendra Dubey arrived at Gaya Railway Station to find that his car was nowhere to be found. Having decided to take an auto-rickshaw, on the way to home, he was shot dead by unidentified assaulters.
Sir, we still remember you, and of course your 'SACRIFICE'
 A fitting Epilogue to the blasphemy :
The murder case was taken over by the CBI (oooh!) and they took custody of the rickshaw puller Pradeep Kumar, who had reportedly witnessed the murder. Pradeep Kumar was seen for two days around the CBI office and after that was reported missing. Two other people that the CBI had taken in for questioning, Mukendra Paswan and Sheonath Saha, died of poisoning. All this happened by the end of January 2004.

-          This author does not wish to comment on what the PMO or the Ministry of Road Transport did, or rather, didn’t do. Nor on the incompetency of the CBI or the corrupt swindlers and charlatan in the dark who conceived the murder of Satyendra Dubey or any other man who might have found the balls to stand up for truth.

“My only purpose is to let the readers know that a man named Satyendra Dubey once walked this earth, and his death will be a thousand times more glorious than the thousand lives that corrupt vermin will live.”

---Lets say NO to corruption. Why should we create a world where we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and feel inadequate?