The still sinew

It was the evening of September 4 in the year 2021. I was watching a wonderfully evolving five-day test match between India and England. It was the third day and it already felt like a fascinating eternity in which I had found my life captured in it. The Indians had started batting on Day 1 in utterly hopeless fashion only to find themselves being given a sinew to clutch hopes from Shardul Thakur who had effervescently blazed and blasted fifty-seven runs off a mere thirty-six deliveries. He was very much threatening to be the latest avatar of Lord Krishna, whose birthday had gone by three days earlier on August 31^st.

Parallelly, I was also watching the historic day for India when we won two gold medals for the first time on a single day in Paralympic sports in Tokyo, an event that can be juxtaposed or even dared to beat the often-justified hype around the normal Olympics.

Coming back to the test match cricket. Indian bowlers had rekindled hopes of stealing the match by showing steel during the final hour of play on Day 1 when they dashed three top order England batsmen. Since then, I have been ogling at the match with great adulation and hope to learn some lifelong lessons. I have not been disappointed with Ollie Pope hitting a quite marvellous and magnificently composed eighty-one runs, and Chris Woakes offering so much variety, composure, runs and wickets. I instantly took an idyllic photo of those two nice human beings playing the hard way but looking so soft and pleasing to my eyes.

England then raced to a 99-run lead. India was relying on one of their bowlers to limit the fast-vaulting English lead to below the three-figure mark. It was then as if Lord Krishna heard it and offered a chance by dismissing the England team for a lead of 99 runs.

It was the last straw that Indians were mentally telling themselves to hold to. Within ten minutes, Rohit Sharma and Rahul came out to bat, and what I saw later across twenty-four hours is the Lord Krishna like quietness, calm, yet mischief being shown by Rohit Sharma. He didn’t race to his first foreign century in this format. Instead, he gardened his way to that milestone. The three flashes of Lord Krishna that he showed were when he smashed a sixer to reach his milestone of a hundred runs, followed by his raising his bat every so softly and humbly that the English fans sitting far in the stadium could feel a friendly twinge in their spine that led them to stand up and give an adulation and honour. The last and final flash reminiscent of Lord Krishna showing by Rohit was when he could not resist the temptation to smash the new cherry out of the ground, and in the process, flicked the ball straight into the waiting hands of the fielder who was stationed at the boundary.

In this entire process, I feel that the English fans and cricketers would have felt the still and stable charming influence of Lord Krishna in Rohit. They would also realize that it was quite the last sinew that he had provided to India for completing what would be a truly pyrrhic victory but most importantly, to show the world the way to behave, play and celebrate in a quiet and still manner. His demeanour also teaches us to how to respect the thing we love the most, such as cricket, and to always be generous, humble, and tempered and mild mannered.

Performance speaks louder than words.

The pain that he endured when the cricket ball was hitting him on his legs, hands and each sinew later eventually got transformed to a beautiful rendition of runs, style, grace and the last straw that Indians were so hopefully yearning for in order to complete the victory, and to transcend the way the world looks at Indians as pleasant, graceful, caring and hard working.

His performance is perfect in its timing as it came just a few hours before Teacher’s Day.

The raw, uncut, pristine flock

Today, I was given the honour of reviewing my daughter's artwork. I call it an honour because arts is something built upon since my childhood days when my father had spotted my early talent and had rewarded me consistently based on the quality of my artwork and more so for how much he used to like my piece of abstraction represented on a sheet of paper. Then I had soon blossomed into a full-fledged painter and had begun painting aeroplanes, flowers, faces of beautiful people, parrots and then nature. It was this transformation from aeroplanes to nature that had captured my imagination so much so that I still benefit from that. Whenever I get drowned in the depression given by the man-made structures, there is something that I can sense and smell from the perfume of the air that comes to my rescue to provide bright and vivid creatures of nature that I can cling to. Today was an inch perfect example of that. I had got the chance to help my daughter with drawing a large tree draped under the hot Sun and housing a woodpecker and above all a sweet squirrel. The fluffy tail of that cute animal piqued my interest so much that I began looking at the different colours and hues that don its body. I could quickly spot a pattern with three colours present on its body. Later, I also realized that it can become a pet for the humans because of the sweet camaraderie it shares with us. I was stunned to see the raw speed of such a tiny creature yet a pristine and a rich flock of hair on its fluffy tail and elsewhere on its near invisible body. No wonder humans have been inspired by this creature and made movies such as Ice Age and its sequels. It has not been raining since several weeks in various parts of north India. A primary reason is either too much pollution of air due to vehicles occupying the road or the cruel trimming of trees as if they deserve a haircut during this summer season. If we would have allowed the vast trees to live freely and not chopped off the leaves and the branches from it, then we would not have been bothering about why the God has kept us bereft from the beautiful rain. This event of my virtually seeing a squirrel capturing my imagination which the tall buildings or the guzzling cars acting as spoilers has been enough to make me realize the importance of living with the nature and being with the nature at all times. It might rain tomorrow as is predicted by the Indian Meteorology Department and people may use that water to wash all the sins they have committed in the past. However, it is the smell of the rain and even more important the smell of the predicted rain that I am more interested in, and I have already got the fragrance of that smell! I would like to end this piece of artwork by saying that the nature has taught me to stay humble, happy, hopeful and hirsute in all times.

Run we can, and…

It was the London 2012 Olympics when we were all curious to know whether our all time great Abhinav Bindra who had famously won the gold medal in the Beijing 2008 Olympics will continue to win us more medals. We also wanted to see if the investment in the athletes will pay off. We were able to win six medals then, which is the richest haul in any Olympics for India till date. Once those games had culminated, it gave me the impression that we had won at least ten medals. We had struck silver and bronze, but our victories were looking so pyrrhic that the individual gold medal performance of Bindra was already bested by the combined ‘team’ performance of our London-bound athletes. So much so that my British colleague who was interning in India had hailed the Brits’ countless medals in equal light as India’s overall performances. However, then the fear of not being able to strike medals in team events was not up to the mark for India. That fear came back to haunt the Indian team in Brazil where the 2016 Olympics were held, and we ended up with two silver medals both in individual sport. We celebrated Dipa Karmarkar’s fourth place finish with such elan that we completely covered our mind with our incompetence in team sports.

Where India falters time and again is in not taking sports as a serious path to success. It is sport that gives us resilience, tests our resolve, sprinkles us with hope, fills us with buoyancy, gives us courage, and most importantly, makes us rise above every negativity of life such as hate, religion, race or caste.

We must excel in sports and give our Government a gumption to invest at least a billion dollars for the next Olympics.

We have been found floundering in swimming, cycling and countless other sports that require us to run. The meaning of a gold medal is that one needs to literally outrun and out-chase all the opponents.

We as a nation in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics have failed to take as a personal insult when we go down fighting in a boxing match to China, or a table tennis match to a Hong Kong citizen who was born in China, or to a swimming semi-final qualifying heat to a Chinese Taipei citizen.

We as a nation have consistently failed to flame our inspiration from athletes of different race or religion who have won gold medal out of utter hopeless situations. The victory of the Tunisian who upset all odds to beat the fan-favourite Australian for a swimming gold medal will be a story that will always be etched in gold for me.

We as Indians wilfully obliterate our perspective of why some people such as a woman from Bermuda chose to renounce their British citizenship to go to Bermuda and defeated a Brit by a handsome margin to strike Gold medal in triathlon that too under extremely bad weather.

We must begin to excel in the power of learning from others and in giving credit where it is due. We must respect the value of the Gold medal for the winner when we don’t even reach the podium or are not good enough to be qualifying for it.

We must not sit back and harp upon our flash-in-the-pan victories even if they had come in a team event, although that rarity had happened to us more than four decades ago when we had won our last Olympic Hockey gold medal.

We must not count on odds to wait for the Chinese woman gold medalist to get disqualified so that our own silver medalist can somehow escape with a gold medal.

The single most important step that is required for all of us is to be mindful of the tropical climate of the Indian subcontinent and thereby to allow every single Indian to run and chase the glory. We must keep inspiring everyone to assign equal importance to running on the land, under the water, or in the form of a triathlon, even if it requires us to do that under the cold conditions of Himalayas or to go to China or Russia for practicing. We must encourage the children to best out their lungs and to identify their own halo of Gold medal in equal stead as the visualization of the Ohm chanting. We must live, breathe and learn from sport every single moment of life. We must let women take a lead in sports. We must not repent why chess or cricket have not yet been included in Olympics. We must value team sport significantly above an individual sport. We must clap the winners and learn from the struggles of every champion who is not an Indian. Above all, we must stop our extremely bad habits of indulging in cricket, Bollywood, politics and corruption.

To win a medal in Olympics requires nothing short of a Herculean effort. Let us call it an ‘Indian’ effort in the future. Together, when we have run a billion miles, then we must remind ourselves of “We can!” and then offer our own brand of Indian-ness to the world in the future Olympics. A target of 2 Golds, 3 Silvers and 10 Bronze should be enough for us to see us be eligible for hosting our own Olympics.

If some sane Indian person encounters this blog while she is running, then who knows we may inspire her to win a Gold medal in the present Olympics itself!

Toolchain “Over-take-over” to fight Covid-19

It is very important to anticipate the onset of a tsunami or a clear and imminent danger. Covid-19 second wave has proved to be a tsunami that too of unforeseen and magnanimous proportion. It has ravaged thousands of houses as well as households.

To put it succinctly, it has overtaken the comfort factor and the breathing space of many people world over, with India becoming the latest nation that is seeing dance of death on a daily basis.

It has shuffled the mindset and questioned the thought process of the most rational people.

There are so many theories being propounded about the origin of this coronavirus.

It is imperative that we understand the pain, the suffering and the shock being borne by countless Indians, yet formulate a resolve and collectively leverage all other tools that we have got to fight against this deadly devastating disastrous disease. We should prepare a diverse dashboard which mentions the benefits due to all the tools in the armoury that we have devised to tackle this virus.

We should look beyond finding the count of at risk and Covid-19 infected people in our near vicinity starting from five hundred meters in India’s famous Aarogya Setu app and augment it with the following:

Finding the count of at risk and Covid infected people in our near vicinity starting from ten meters.

How many people were able to heed the advice of someone whom they trust, and had got saved by that advice.

 The number of people who got cured due to the help provided by their neighbours. This is important to do because currently the Aarogya Setu app only works to frighten us by alerting us in Orange colour even if we are living directly above or below someone who is Covid-19 positive. Whereas the need of the hour is to combine forces and together fight this pandemic.

 The proportion of people who are vaccinated in the society where you live.

The number of masks that you have been wearing consistently since the last seven days.

 The number of people who you have succeeded in wearing a mask in your neighbourhood or society.

 Social distancing norms.

 Yoga and other exercises meant to increase the capacity of your lungs and to keep you from being mentally anxious or distressed.

 Not panicking no matter what the situation is.

Building knowledge about the pandemic.

Getting keenly involved in home bound activities such as reading, cooking, etc.

Hand wash using soap.

Keeping an empathetic attitude towards others at all times.

Watching news only for a few minutes in the morning.

Whilst each of the above-mentioned ideas may have contributed to saving precious lives, it is now vital to unite all these ideas to create a collected benefits due to these tools and to create a “halo” effect on the troubled infected patients.

Once we prepare such a variegated dashboard, only then can we be enarmed enough to wage a battle with this invisible beast called coronavirus.

Flow-chart

Life is like a flow-chart. It begins with how to start it when we are running to crawl then walk. Once we know the magic formula, then we assume that we will go with the flow and escape unhurt. However, if we start getting hurt or punished due to deviating from the predetermined steps, then panic, fear and other problems can quickly seep into our system. This can in turn result in a few people trying to exploit our situation by pitying,  bullying or fleecing us. When fear, greed and other challenges hit us together, only then we realize the importance of preparing a dashboard or a chart of real time updates about the challenges being faced and the possible solutions for dealing with those challenges. When we come out of a torrid trouble by often a hit-and-trial manner, then we reflect upon how we had learnt from our past mistakes or how those wounds continue to inflict on us. Having said that, Covid-19 is not any normal disease because it has the potential to spiral into an invisible tsunami from which not even any combination of human beings or their intelligence can truly define the new normal.

Now I want to make a chart to depict how well we cope with the following new unknowns: 1) how likely are we to contract Covid-19 virus when waiting patiently for our turn to get vaccinated at the long queues in the vaccination centre, 2) whether we can ever find merit in finding the degree of infection in patients who get vaccinated twice, 3) whether we can ever devise a technology to detect a person wearing a handkerchief or wrapping a sari dupatta on his or her mouth masquerading a mask, 4) the number of non-stop numbing hours being put by doctors and health workers who have been treating the Covid-19 infected patients, 5) will the Covid-19 news of patients painfully testing positive finally yield to the balancing act of “negative” upon the tsunami of patients staging full recovery. Even if 300 such patients get recovered on any given day, I can resonate that news with the 300 Spartacans who had successfully kept thousands of Xerxes army at bay in one of the most famous wars.

What the numbers fail to report in a dashboard like Worldometer is the varying degrees of fight put up in a ferocious level as if to deny Covid-19 from breaching their defense. Other features such as the colors of joy, relief, faith or the attritional approach taken during the long quarantine period in their tears does not get captured in those dashboards for Indians. There should be a case for launching such a beautiful and inspiring dashboard.

Finally, with this blog, I pledge the support of everyone to recognize the importance of staying strictly confined to their homes and to believe in scientific research and innovation to pull our way out of the powerful willy-wobbly web that we have created for ourselves. This is a wonderful opportunity to recognize the beauty of diversity among us and to help each other in a selfless way as though we all belong to some part of a communion.

The colloquial insignia

The new horizon makes us leap to frantically search for motivation and what will keep us going during this post Covid-19 era. With new variants being found in various nations, you can never be certain whether and when to wipe this virulent virus from the Earth. The most predictive distress is due to the dire threat of it being spread to such lovely birds and animals as koala bears, peacocks, dolphins and kittens to name a few, for their fond and friendly “hi-five” capability to their human friends upon the slightest gesture given to these grand lovely species.

Yet people have become so besotted with wearing face mask that they now feel that their photo will get masqueraded behind the veil of a mega cloth, and render their presentability and handsomness into oblivion. Even more of a creative yet fretful sight would be when we find a red colored mask covering the beautiful nose of a dolphin or a grey mask to not allow the lustre of a peacock to radiate. Although it would be quite a fun to watch any kitten ensconced safely beneath a mask of any shape, colour or size!

We have caused the coronavirus to create crippling crisis in not only our lives but also for other living beings.

The least that we can do is to start respecting people beginning with those living with us and then near us. We should strive to salute their spirit for whatever good deeds that they have done or are thinking of doing, for it is this capability of thinking about others and putting the community’s interests ahead of our interests that can alone safeguard the reputation of the human being, once it becomes extinguished or engulfed by the gigantic yet invisible threat of the coronavirus.

We can begin with realizing that giving a mere salute to an otherwise ordinary worker can raise his self esteem as well as lift the value of the nation in front of your own eyes, for you never know the value of that worker to the nation.

The beauty of giving a salute is that is can be silent and can be good for posture as it forces us to visualize the national flag getting raised.

The challenge for all of us is to find those people who deserve our salute and to then record their marvelous acts in our diary of colloquial insignia.

Once we realize that it will take a collective effort for all of us those living with us or nearby us to fight this pandemic, we will start contributing to the society by creating badge of honour or as I call “Colloquy of Insignia”, for these are acts that can raise us to the level of earning an insignia yet in an informal way. We can furtively say “I salute you” to an unmasked yet spirited or a helpful or a friendly neighbour, or we can “Hello” twice and then wait for the reciprocation by your neighbour. Also, you can pick every Saturday to make a handful donation to a needy person who has to win bread for his struggling family and does not have the money or the food or the clothes to do so. Those tiny acts may eventually contribute you to expanding the dimensions of your thought process or your well being, or both, which are pivotal to succeed in today’s competitive environment.

The key is to not rush but rather let such moments flow into you and inspire you to force yourself to think positively about others so that they too can start thinking good about you, with the end result being mutual respect or collaboration, and benefit to the society or the nation.

We can spare some soft laughter for those who choose to befriend us only virtually such as on Zoom meetings!

I would like to end this story by saying that a photo of yours inside an Insignia can reveal so much about your inner confidence as well as hint at the numerous acts of sacrifice and kindness that you would have done in order for others to view you from the glass of repute that had culminated in this most humanitarian award.

You have to believe me when I say that I had found two people who directly benefited from my positive approach while I was penning this story in the last twenty minutes!!

 

About my boy

About my boy child

I have got two kids, the elder one being a girl who will turn six of age next month, and the other being a mere fifteen months old boy.

Typically, the girl is more attached to her father during the first ten years of her life, and then with her mother after that. In my case too, she has shown attachment to me in her first five years.

Whereas, the boy is always more attached to his mother than to his father.

This “skewed” bondage also results in the mother developing more

 emotional bondage with her kids.

My boy is already showing glimpses of having innate curiosity to explore different locations, toys, people in our immediate vicinity, and “things” to eat. He does not really mind if he is happily munching a torn ragged piece of paper or wildly hogging on only two or three pieces of pomegranate. He does not how to distinguish between the edible and non-edible food yet.

Having grown up in the outskirts for Delhi, I quickly developed a culture of food, something which is a hallmark of Delhi. I also quickly latched on to the hustle-bustle and the outcome-based attitude of Delhiites. I wish that my boy also gets blessed with assimilating these benefits that Delhi has to offer.

Only yesterday, my family was watching a very nice movie “Bala” featuring my favourite actor Ayushmann Khurranna. It was a stunning and a highly captivating movie. However, for me, the most learning came from my boy.  I was enthralled to find that my boy had enjoyed unabated in the vast open stretch of brightly lit shopping mall with only a handful of people near him, after coming out of the dark film theatre in a disconsolate mood. That he repeated this behaviour when we took him back to the movie

Just like me, he likes freedom too. I always had my points of views and wanted to spew those out either through the medium of news reports or via publishing in blogs. I do not know if my boy would be equally marauding and hungry in expressing his points of views, but it would be a good to have trait.

Now coming to the bad habits. Some of my girl’s bad habits have steadily and on occasion swiftly crept in to my boy, such as yelling and yearning to always take him out of the house for a quick walk or a lazy recline in our new car. He is so fond of changing the gears in my car! Whereas my girl was always fond of taking the driver’s seat and bossing the wheel!

It is the other bad trait that I want to hinge this blog on. That bad habit is that my girl, just like many other kids of her age across the globe today have started being selective in their choice of food and their choice of content to view on television, Youtube, or on mobile phone. The perspective of the kids is reducing every day, and it is also making them hooked on to the highly addictive world of video games, virtual world that is often shown with bright colours, and with tremendous layers of aggression. I find such content to be completely detached from the real world situation and how to cope with the demands of living each moment in the real world. For instance, my daughter needs a

lot of assistance in eating her meal. She cannot appreciate my spending two hours sweating out under the hot Sun in playing lawn tennis. I do not want to use this blog as sounding board, but I need my boy to come out with me and train himself hard in jogging, playing tennis, football, and all other games that require physical activity and training. The trouble today with the gadgets is that one song (or any other content) will have dozens of similar content (for instance, for a popular Bollywood song, there would be  a tomboy who would be singing, a coterie of seven kids attempting to dare a dance step on that song from the terrace of their home, etc.), which has the effect of keeping the viewer in that virtual yet vortex like world that does not let the viewer come out of that world. What I would want him to understand is that the best friends have got a lot of meaning movies in common, and that he should project his most favorite movies along with lessons learnt from those movies in his first blog. That would be special feeling too!

In the end, I want my boy to approach life with dignity, to always be classy, to show off with black or grey goggles but not to overdo the art of marketing oneself, by saluting heroes like Abhinandnan Varthaman but not to overdo patriotism, to publish books and blogs, but not to project himself as bookish, to express his points of views on multiple burning and pressing topics – such as Delhi burning due to stubbles put on fire, how to improve the happiness quotient of oneself, how to value small things like growing of plants, cultures of various countries that I used to so dearly learn from the splendid stamps that were around me during my childhood – all concurrently, yet not in a boorish manner.

Next, I want to mention some quantifiable things.  Some people say that it is the first time that the child learns to walk is the most pivotal moment in its life. However, I have now discovered that we need to timebox the moment when the child learns how to avoid jumping into troubles when it attempts to reach the object that is placed in front of it. This is because it does not know how to learn and apply cognitive abilities to find alternate ways that are safer and easier to reach to the object that is lying in front of it. Only yesterday, I was scared to find that my boy attempted to jump off the sofa to reach to his blue bicycle. Whereas a safer path would have been to step down from the sofa and then walk towards that bicycle. It is yet another revelation that he has not yet learn to climb down from a sofa! So, for me, it would be fascinating to know when he learns to step down (say from sofa) and then safely walk towards that object of interest. To diffuse the situation, I had pushed that bicycle out of his sight and far from the sofa. His only tools and weapons to save him from such situations at this age are his cute shouts.

I also want him to imbibe my good habits, which are walking under the Sun, walking bare foot on wet morning grass, experiment with mixing and matching of food (e.g., pomegranate with samosa!), how to connect with neighbours, and how to develop an empathetic attitude towards others yet have a sense of humour. He should work with full honesty throughout his life and always value nature, simple living, and a benevolent attitude. He needs to understand in due course of time that I have always valued fiction above non-fiction, abstract ideas above those that can give you short-term gains and living in the present than worrying about past or future.

He needs to learn from me how to value learning from reading, from gaining perspectives of different people across the world, and how to take things in perspective before jumping to any conclusion. He also needs to learn from me how fast I can arrive at mathematical computations, sometimes faster than a calculator. He also needs to learn from me how to stay away from air conditioners and all the things that enslave you. Finally, he needs to learn from me that I am learning from my within and from the Research fraternity the time when he would stop making silly mistakes.

I wrote this blog while being seated at my rocking chair.

Solving Delhi pollution

How to reduce pollution in Delhi NCR

1.       Rivers and lakes and other water bodies have become devoid of its flora and fauna. The fishes in Yamuna river are also dying. This is due to the alarming pollution of air and water in Delhi NCR that has been plaguing the city since more than three years now. The top contributors for this malaise have been construction activity, stubble burning by farmers in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, vehicular pollution, use of diesel generators coal powered electricity, etc.

2.       Some of my friends and accomplices have shifted to Jaipur or Chandigarh. However, more people are settling down in Delhi NCR than those who are voluntarily churning away from this region to lesser polluted yet nearby cities like Jaipur. Moreover, the people who are moving away from Delhi NCR are typically those who have either recently got possession of their new house in Jaipur or Chandigarh, or those who are not yet keen to uproot their family base which is happily ensconced in Delhi NCR.

3.       We need to label the zones where air quality is perceived to be particularly bad, for which we can make use of crowdsourcing from citizens of Delhi NCR who walk on a regular basis (we can further split by morning, afternoon, evening, night; and cluster by locations that are within a community/highway/other location).

4.       I think the main problem is with the smoke and pollution emanating from the industries around Delhi (Ghaziabad, Meerut, Muzzafarnagar, Manesar, outskirts of Manesar, and other places). However, Delhi being capital gets highlighted. We should monitor pollution of small cities around Delhi. Those cities are in hazardous situation. News only highlights Delhi NCR. The small cities have got no news value. These ‘fringe’ or neighbouring cities have worse pollution, but nobody bothers about them. The residents of those cities need to be educated too about the pollution problem. The citizens should keep a strict check on their vehicles and their tendency to buy a new vehicle after achieving every personal landmark. Also, the people in both Delhi NCR and the crop stubble burning states are illiterate and poor. They do not know even know the problems of pollution and fire. They need to be educated about how China through its political will had solved the problem of pollution in its country.

5.       Another problem is that both the Government and the citizens are not serious. Citizens have been consistently ignoring the warning of Supreme Court of not bursting fire crackers during Diwali season, yet they continue to do so unabatedly. Hence, the citizens need to be collaborate and stop relying on the Government or to clutch to some other straw for finding a comprehensive solution to this problem.

6.       Construction activity related pollution: We should label all the construction related activity (we can cluster by locations that are within a community/highway/other location). We should label and keep a digital record of all the vehicles that puff up dust in a very irresponsible and unaccountable manner, that leads to construction activity. We must penalize the drivers of such vehicles as well as the people who pay for such construction activity.

7.       Crop residue burning: Incentivize initiatives like ‘Happy seeder’. Also, design chemicals that can get mixed with the stubble for useful purposes and thus not requiring the stubble to be burnt. Package the stubble in such a way that it can be sold as ingredient to beer manufacturing companies at a high price. Look at the Youtube video on residue management using Happy Seeder technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9EONsoIfxg

8.       Crop residue burning: We should reward the farmers who do not burn their stubbles, and further reward those who do not commit suicide one year after not allowing their stubbles from being burnt. Even better, we should propose to the Central Government to allocate money to the respective State Governments in an equitable manner for the machinery as well as to the farmers. This will facilitate the farmer to pay the EMI (Equated Monthly Installment) against their loans.

9.       Crop residue burning: Incentivize citizens (including farmers) who spend 2 hours each day in library to learn from other countries about the solutions that they had adopted to curb the pollution menace.

10.   Citizen initiative: Incentivize bicycle riding (say with rented bicycles) and walking on trails.

11.   Citizen initiative: Incentivize those who buy fitness clothing from e-commerce websites. Doing so would inculcate fitness attitude as well as digital payment.

12.   Citizen initiative: Incentivize car-pooling during odd hours.

13.   Increase the parking fees of SUVs or high and new vehicles.

14.   Nowadays, highways are expanding in Gurgaon and other parts of Delhi NCR. This is causing the vegetation (trees) to be cut or shifted to other nearby location. Can we prepare an optimization algorithm that can recommend the most optimal location where the vegetation should be shifted in lieu of highways being created or expanded?

15.   Citizen initiative: Incentivize those who do not order from Swiggy or other e-commerce companies in small lots.

16.   Accident prevention/prediction: Everyone should be cognizant of the benefits of having a clean and cluttered mind before hitting the road. We al know that a rash decision taken on the road can lead to severe accident.

17.   Accident prevention/prediction: Encourage people to drive their vehicles at optimal speed of say 50 to 65 kilometres per hour, which will be subject to penalizing them if they overtake from left side of the road just to maintain their optimal speed.

18.   Accident prevention/prediction: Vehicles (cars, buses, trucks) need to comply with certain safety norms. For instance, they should be automatically disallowed from opening any door of their vehicle in the middle of a road, which can save a motorbike driver behind them from meeting with a severe accident.

19.   Accident prevention/prediction:  Label all the instances with root causes of when there are three or more vehicles that have collided and that has resulted in other vehicles to slow down or in a mob to assemble. Such accidents can also contribute to pollution because of slow pace of vehicles.

20.   Odd-even scheme by Chief Minister of Delhi is a good initiative. This is because the minds of drivers today have become so corrupt that all the citizens need someone who can control our minds.

21.   Accident prevention/prediction: Equitable spread or distribution of traffic signals should be there in order to avoid accidents.

22.   Accident prevention/prediction: Penalize two-wheeler drivers from overtaking from left when they have immediately taken a highway exit.

23.   Accident prevention/prediction and Driver psychology: Record how someone reacts upon getting more than one challan due to over-speeding on the same road and especially when the speed limit is quite low.

24.   Accident prevention/prediction and Driver psychology: People get somewhat defeated from psychological point of view when they know that their long journey is coming to an end and when they see that they are just four miles away from their home. They want to speed to their destination, resulting in challan. Study the behavior of such drivers from the next time they hit the road.