DK Kapila The Oracle

  JERC Meeting Some Points I attended the JERC (Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission) Meeting yesterday 25/07/2025. Democracy in action. As consumers we get our say. A lesson I learnt, first there were only three ladies present, one was the second judge (count her out), one presented on behalf of the company licensee CPDL (count her out) and one was a journalist. One policewoman was also there. Let us count them out too.  Not a single lady consumer was there. Surely they should be present. And make their concerns felt and expressed. They would be heard too.  I and a few others did circulate our views and the need to attend but it was not responded too.   We  tried to mobilise ladies and told them to read up but to no avail. It was stated to be too complex and layered in too much details. Secondly, among those attending it was predominantly an older profile in age as regards the males too. The only youngsters were the journalists. If the youngsters...

  The Mayurbhanj Sari and Poverty and Success The Prime Minister recently spoke about the Santhali Sari in Mayurbhanj Odisha, where women have started earning a decent wage due to the revival of this Sari, actually called the Mayurbhanj Sari. It is actually an initiative (an Off Farm Producers Organisation Project) taken up at the senior level by two of my batchmates from NABARD, Chola Uday Bhaskar and Devashish Padhi. For Devashish (now retired, this project started when he headed the Off Farm Dept at Head Office) it was a special project close to his heart, he was born in this district where his father was the Executive Engineer way back and took up irrigation projects to settle tribal farmers into Agriculture. The first lesson was not Handlooms and Saris but nutrition. A lady who had studied abroad (Oxford) and had set up a NGO found the women so undernourished that they did not have the physical strength to run the looms (Handlooms). She is Bindu Vinodhan, Founder, Mauna Dhwa...