What is a couple of pages worth bad publicity to a big telecom company? Well, from their demeanor, nothing much I guess. So, let me spew….
The precise date that was a harbinger of the nightmare was 27-July, related to my home cell phone. Yeah, that far back. That afternoon, I got a call from Idea Call Center, have you paid your bill sir…. Umm, yes, actually I did. Cheque number XXXX27, dated 25-July. I have dropped a cheque in the same drop box that I have been dropping for past 10 months, so you should get it.
A few days later, again there was a call asking if I have paid the bill. And then a few days later, the outgoing service was simply cancelled. No more warnings or questions! After multiple calls, I found out that Idea still hadn’t got my cheque and were asking me again and again if I have paid…the tone of disbelief going up every time!
So someone had lost the cheque, but there was no admission of that. And for Idea’s error, my outgoing was withheld. In all this rigmarole, the bill for August arrived, with charges carried forward from July, late payment fees for non-payment of July bill and also August bill with an extra topping of barred outgoing calls. That was when I became angry. So, I called the call center number…. The first thing it announced was how good Idea solutions were in billing. Really – I screamed. Then, I was put on hold for all of 45 minutes…and frustrated of hearing the background music I hung up. Then I tried logging the complaint on the website. So, pat came a standard reply, please pay the bill and then we can talk. So, I paid, taking a moral stand that since Idea lost my cheque, I won’t pay the late payment fees.
I thought that all my worries were over…but then when September bill came, something was fishy…. It appeared as if I had been given a discount for all the hassle I had to go through in July and August. I dared not ask, for I had lost the patience to be on phone with the call center and wait for tens of minutes. And then Idea decided to drop the bomb. Without any warning, the outgoing stopped! Why? Apparently, I had written a bad cheque. Huh?
Well, as the story goes, Idea mysteriously found the cheque that they claimed was lost, deposited it in the bank and since there was a stop payment put on that cheque, they treated it as bounced. No one bothered to check the history as to why that may have happened. No one bothered to call me to update that the cheque was returned by the bank. It’s as if they were waiting for the cheque to be found. And not only was I charged late payment fees once again, but also bad-cheque fees.
It took umpteen efforts from my side – lot of clamoring, posturing, use of words like dissatisfied customer, just cancel my services etc. before the imbeciles understood why I was unhappy. Two shady looking guys from collection department came over to help me settle it. I am not running away from making payments, I told them, but you seriously need to get the systems working properly. Yes, they both assured…and then Idea just couldn’t help but wait for a final climax.
Once again, there were late payment charges on the bill. It appears the shady looking guys who assured me this is the last of my problems, and had waived certain amount on the bill, did not really correct the problem in the system. This time though I would have none of it…I put my literary skills to good use and wrote a letter to higher ups in Idea. Negative words like distress, disrespect, discontinue peppered the letter. No confidence was exhibited that Idea would care about solving the problem. That had an impact and the excess charges were reversed. But by then, they had lost it.
So, now as a customer, I have been trying to understand: How is it that
* No customer care executive at the call center is not available for the first 15-20 minutes when I call?
* Looking at my usage pattern, Idea is ready to take risk with a cash-cow customer?
* No one understands what the problem is when it is explained for the first time?
* I should suffer if the customer care and billing systems do not interface with each other?
* They expect me to hold every time for more than 15 minutes if I call the call center?
* I always have to deal with the person in the call center who does not have authority to take decisions?
* The manager is never available on the floor?
* The promise – my manager will certainly call you tomorrow before 12 PM (not noon, PM!) – is never kept?
* Idea is such a moron and I still do business with them?
I actually know the answer to that last question. Too many people know that Idea number for it to be disconnected at the drop of the hat. But this forced me to finally walkover to the BSNL office to get a landline. So, once the transition period is over, Idea will miss my bill. Either that or I will wait for the number portability. Now that’s an !dea that could change my life. But for the record, they were the ones who started it….
Friday, November 23, 2007
The Imbeciles
The New History of Marathas – Armies and Administration
Read part 3 here.
One of the characteristics of Shivaji’s army that greatly helped him and frustrated his enemies was the Guerilla Tactics of the warfare. The geography around Pune and the Maval area – where Shivaji started first – was of great help to him. The armies were broken into small battalions. The armies were fast moving, light and were able to seek shelter in the forts on treacherous cliffs of the Sahayadri Mountains after a raid. Shivaji and his commanders rarely faced the Bijapur, Ahmednagar or Moguls in open planes. His tactics mainly concentrated on small group of mounted soldiers fighting with nothing more than a sword and shield cornering an enemy in a narrow pass. His army was also known to frustrate a camp of the enemy by cutting supply lines or disrupting normal operations of the camp. The army was so agile that even the British, when establishing their corps, adopted the Maratha Light Infantry. Such was the fierce attack and sharp turnaround of campaigns organized by Shivaji’s armies that not only Aurangzeb but also many historians considered him a coward who would not face the enemy in open fields. But Shivaji’s tactics were hugely successful.
Compare this with the armies of the Moguls or the factions of the Bahamani Sultanate. These armies typically consisted of heavy cavalry, backed by large siege equipment and provisioning facilities. The troops were regularly paid from the government exchequer and by this virtue also showed better loyalty. Apart from the troops, these armies also carried a burden of large number of noncombatants like grooms and servants of the mounted soldiers, animals of burden to move the cavalry equipment, cooks, record keepers and dancing girls. The armies were trained for fighting in open planes or holding a siege. And such armies were not able to move large distances easily.
Unfortunately the lightness of the Maratha army also meant, it had to live off the land. This did not go well with the peasants! Such armies were also not equipped to carryout long campaigns or to move away from the base fort to geographically distant areas.
But it is only on the basis of these strategies of Guerilla Tactics that Shivaji defeated huge armies of Afzal Khan (Commander of Adil Shah) and Shaista Khan (Commander and relative of Aurangzeb). He was consistently able to baffle the enemy and also employed strategies such as raiding a different enemy area, forcing the enemy to chase him in a different terrain.
Later when Peshwa Bajirao I started a northward expansion of the empire, the armies had to move long distances to fight battles. The Moguls had become considerably weak in the Gujarat and Malwa areas by the time of Bajirao I. By then the size of army and the distance, it had to travel for the battlefield made the logistics complicated. The army could no longer live off the land. This however, helped immensely in creation of the banking system. The government regularly borrowed money from merchants and bankers to pay for the war and expenses of the army. By the time the third war of Panipat happened, Maratha army had grown into a characteristically slow moving army that needed strong supply lines and large noncombatant staff.
One of the problems with agile army was that such army was not able to provide protection or governmental support to the areas conquered. Also, since the army lived off of the land, it was seen as a burden. And even with a less agile army, this continued even up to Raghunathrao Peshwe’s campaign into Punjab, a few years before Panipat war. While establishing tribute rights, Raghunathrao did little to establish a governmental control or to ensure that the tribute was fairly collected. However, after the provincial governments of Baroda, Indore, Gwalior and Nagpur started taking bigger role in the administration, the scenario started changing.
According to Gordon, Shivaji’s administration was largely modeled on the basis set by Malik Shah Amber. The administration of Peshwa Balaji Bajirao (Nanasaheb) brought large reforms to this administration. All the peshwas ruled in the name of the Chhatrapati, Shivaji’s heirs. As the empire expanded, the provincial governments started taking a bigger role in the administration. Eventually, the Shindes of Gwalior collected tribute from the Moguls and Rajput areas. In the calm and peaceful time, the countryside started seeing much prosperity. Other industry and trade also improved.
Gordon points out that the nineteenth century British Administration broadly consolidated the powers of a kamvisdar and created a British District Officer. Many records were already available to the British to model a tax system.
One of the characteristics of Shivaji’s army that greatly helped him and frustrated his enemies was the Guerilla Tactics of the warfare. The geography around Pune and the Maval area – where Shivaji started first – was of great help to him. The armies were broken into small battalions. The armies were fast moving, light and were able to seek shelter in the forts on treacherous cliffs of the Sahayadri Mountains after a raid. Shivaji and his commanders rarely faced the Bijapur, Ahmednagar or Moguls in open planes. His tactics mainly concentrated on small group of mounted soldiers fighting with nothing more than a sword and shield cornering an enemy in a narrow pass. His army was also known to frustrate a camp of the enemy by cutting supply lines or disrupting normal operations of the camp. The army was so agile that even the British, when establishing their corps, adopted the Maratha Light Infantry. Such was the fierce attack and sharp turnaround of campaigns organized by Shivaji’s armies that not only Aurangzeb but also many historians considered him a coward who would not face the enemy in open fields. But Shivaji’s tactics were hugely successful.
Compare this with the armies of the Moguls or the factions of the Bahamani Sultanate. These armies typically consisted of heavy cavalry, backed by large siege equipment and provisioning facilities. The troops were regularly paid from the government exchequer and by this virtue also showed better loyalty. Apart from the troops, these armies also carried a burden of large number of noncombatants like grooms and servants of the mounted soldiers, animals of burden to move the cavalry equipment, cooks, record keepers and dancing girls. The armies were trained for fighting in open planes or holding a siege. And such armies were not able to move large distances easily.
Unfortunately the lightness of the Maratha army also meant, it had to live off the land. This did not go well with the peasants! Such armies were also not equipped to carryout long campaigns or to move away from the base fort to geographically distant areas.
But it is only on the basis of these strategies of Guerilla Tactics that Shivaji defeated huge armies of Afzal Khan (Commander of Adil Shah) and Shaista Khan (Commander and relative of Aurangzeb). He was consistently able to baffle the enemy and also employed strategies such as raiding a different enemy area, forcing the enemy to chase him in a different terrain.
Later when Peshwa Bajirao I started a northward expansion of the empire, the armies had to move long distances to fight battles. The Moguls had become considerably weak in the Gujarat and Malwa areas by the time of Bajirao I. By then the size of army and the distance, it had to travel for the battlefield made the logistics complicated. The army could no longer live off the land. This however, helped immensely in creation of the banking system. The government regularly borrowed money from merchants and bankers to pay for the war and expenses of the army. By the time the third war of Panipat happened, Maratha army had grown into a characteristically slow moving army that needed strong supply lines and large noncombatant staff.
One of the problems with agile army was that such army was not able to provide protection or governmental support to the areas conquered. Also, since the army lived off of the land, it was seen as a burden. And even with a less agile army, this continued even up to Raghunathrao Peshwe’s campaign into Punjab, a few years before Panipat war. While establishing tribute rights, Raghunathrao did little to establish a governmental control or to ensure that the tribute was fairly collected. However, after the provincial governments of Baroda, Indore, Gwalior and Nagpur started taking bigger role in the administration, the scenario started changing.
According to Gordon, Shivaji’s administration was largely modeled on the basis set by Malik Shah Amber. The administration of Peshwa Balaji Bajirao (Nanasaheb) brought large reforms to this administration. All the peshwas ruled in the name of the Chhatrapati, Shivaji’s heirs. As the empire expanded, the provincial governments started taking a bigger role in the administration. Eventually, the Shindes of Gwalior collected tribute from the Moguls and Rajput areas. In the calm and peaceful time, the countryside started seeing much prosperity. Other industry and trade also improved.
Gordon points out that the nineteenth century British Administration broadly consolidated the powers of a kamvisdar and created a British District Officer. Many records were already available to the British to model a tax system.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The New History of Marathas – the unit – deshmukhi
Read about the Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
Unlike other history books that usually follow the royal family, track the strategies of the sovereign and pay attention to wins and losses in a war, Stewart Gordon takes a different route. In an attempt to trace the social history and ‘know’ the people, he does not follow the royal families or the important stalwarts of the kingdom. The book follows the revenue generating units instead and the social fabric provides him with an opportunity to track not just the land holders but also the land managers. This unit is the system of deshmukhi found in one form or the other in Maharashtra and perhaps many other states in India.
The deshmukh and the patil
As Gordon points out, at one point in the time, Maharashtra was so sparsely populated that for a sovereign it became easy to group anywhere between 20 and 100 villages together to form a pargana. Each pargana was appointed a deshmukh to collect the revenues and a deshpande to keep records. These two entities worked together with their respective village level entities – a village headman – the patil and a village record keeper – a kulkarni.
(Incidentally, Deshmukh, Deshpande, Patil and Kulkarni are long standing last names of many people. Innumerable other last names have come from such professions.)
The elite families received about 15% of the government collection. Apart from collecting taxes, the patil and the deshmukh were also responsible for the well being of the population. The deshmukh was to remain loyal to the sovereign at all the times and his duties were laid out in a sanad and/or mansab – a contract between the right-holder and the government.
Both the patil and the deshmukh had rights to negotiate with the sovereign on tax collection and in case of famine or drought reassess the tax levels and collection. After assessing the tax, many times the deshmukh also paid the sovereign the money in lump sum and the collected it from the people later. The rights were also nested. In many cases, a deshmukh was also a patil for one or more villages in the pargana. The nested rights also included hereditary rights called watan and inam. In some cases, there are also examples of a deshmukh himself being landless, and making ends meet only based on the percentage of the collection received from the pargana. But such cases were exceptions.
One of the most important aspects of a deshmukhi was that a deshmukh could maintain an army. The main purpose of this army was to protect the people from dacoits or to deal with rouge villages that interfered in the official work.
In a way, a deshmukh was a governor of the pargana and his influence was more than the formal sanad of tax collection. A deshmukh would oversee adjudication and appeals, ritual leadership at various festivals and most importantly, development of cultivation and prosperity of his area. A deshmukh’s troops were also used by the sovereign for campaigns against kingdom’s enemies, other recalcitrant deshmukhs or even disloyal high ranking officials. Deshmukhs helping the sovereign were rewarded with honor robes at the court.
Malik Shah Amber, the head of Ahmednagar faction of the Bahamani Sultanate at the beginning of the 17th Century, is said to have brought reforms in the deshmukhi system by reviewing revenue settlement for each pargana. He also recruited many Marathas in this system and gave them important positions in the government and court. The deshmukhi system flourished and obtained more legitimacy during the Malik Shah Amber period making Marathas a hard to ignore faction in the politics of the era. This also made deshmukhi an important institution in itself.
More often than not deshmukhs showed wayward behavior. There are examples of many deshmukhs not submitting the revenue to the central government and the sovereign was forced to bring action to such deshmukhs. Since a deshmukh also maintained an army, the sovereign had to be careful before taking such a step. A sovereign would require help from other deshmukhs in such operations. And this perhaps cemented the in-fighting that plagued the polity all through its two-and-a-quarter century life. And this brings us to an important aspect of the kingdom – porous borders!
Invasion, Moving Armies and Porous Borders
The armies of Bahamani Sultanate, its factions and Moguls were typically slow moving. The armies were based on heavy cavalry requiring two or three horses to move one piece, grooms and servants for mounted fighters, elephants, treasury, cooks, dancing girls etc. in addition to the soldiers and commanders. The army bought provisions in camp bazaars. The entourage hardly moved more than 10 miles a day.
An invasion usually involved an army approaching and the highest ranking officer asking a deshmukh if he would align his loyalty to the new sovereign. If the deshmukh agreed, the pargana would naturally become part of a different kingdom. And hence, many wars were fought only at a deshmukhi level where depending on the circumstances the deshmukh just re-aligned his loyalty. The deshmukhs who capitulated to the invading king, were many times also quick to change their loyalty again making the invasion worthless.
Since the deshmukhs controlled the revenue and management of factions of troops, they became important to the sovereign. Shivaji’s father Shahaji also started as a deshmukh in the Pune and Supe parganas. Later he moved to Bangalore, and became an important officer in the Bijapur court. He left his wife Jijabai and son Shivaji in charge of the Pune and Supe areas. This inadvertently helped sow the seeds of ‘swaraj’ – self rule. Shivaji also faced problems with wayward deshmukhs as well as with deshmukhs who remained steadfastly loyal to Ahmednagar or Bijapur. In fact, the deshmukhi problem persisted as far later as Madharao Peshwa, with his own father-in-law, the Patwardhan family of Miraj, changing loyalties between the Peshwa and the Nizam. Gordon claims that Shivaji largely remained a sirdeshmukh – head of many deshmukhs – and not really a king.
In his book, Stewart Gordon, tracks the Mane family of Mhasvad and the Hingnikar Bhosale family as examples. Many more families also get tracked as a part of the polity. And their rise and fall is noted. Many families became Sardars in Shivaji’s court and were honored for their support. However, Shivaji realized the problems with the system and wanted to change it. But the circumstances did not allow him to do so. Once the control passed on to the Peshwas after the long succession battles between Shivaji’s heirs, the whole system got a shot in the arm to save the polity. But as the state formation continued, a lot had changed with maintaining the armies, collecting tributes and taxes. The state formation of conquered areas of Malwa and Khandesh after Aurangzebs’ death gave an opportunity to the Peshwas to exhibit more control of the central government rather than rely on a deshmukh family. An appointed officer, the kamvisdar, may have had powers similar to the deshmukh, but there was a tight control by the central government. A kamvisdar was not allowed to maintain an army but could ask the central government for help. His contracts were also performance based and did not have any hereditary rights to the land or collection. The results of this approach were also seen in the increase in prosperity of these areas. However, deshmukhi still remained an important institution and a basic building block of the polity.
Unlike other history books that usually follow the royal family, track the strategies of the sovereign and pay attention to wins and losses in a war, Stewart Gordon takes a different route. In an attempt to trace the social history and ‘know’ the people, he does not follow the royal families or the important stalwarts of the kingdom. The book follows the revenue generating units instead and the social fabric provides him with an opportunity to track not just the land holders but also the land managers. This unit is the system of deshmukhi found in one form or the other in Maharashtra and perhaps many other states in India.
The deshmukh and the patil
As Gordon points out, at one point in the time, Maharashtra was so sparsely populated that for a sovereign it became easy to group anywhere between 20 and 100 villages together to form a pargana. Each pargana was appointed a deshmukh to collect the revenues and a deshpande to keep records. These two entities worked together with their respective village level entities – a village headman – the patil and a village record keeper – a kulkarni.
(Incidentally, Deshmukh, Deshpande, Patil and Kulkarni are long standing last names of many people. Innumerable other last names have come from such professions.)
The elite families received about 15% of the government collection. Apart from collecting taxes, the patil and the deshmukh were also responsible for the well being of the population. The deshmukh was to remain loyal to the sovereign at all the times and his duties were laid out in a sanad and/or mansab – a contract between the right-holder and the government.
Both the patil and the deshmukh had rights to negotiate with the sovereign on tax collection and in case of famine or drought reassess the tax levels and collection. After assessing the tax, many times the deshmukh also paid the sovereign the money in lump sum and the collected it from the people later. The rights were also nested. In many cases, a deshmukh was also a patil for one or more villages in the pargana. The nested rights also included hereditary rights called watan and inam. In some cases, there are also examples of a deshmukh himself being landless, and making ends meet only based on the percentage of the collection received from the pargana. But such cases were exceptions.
One of the most important aspects of a deshmukhi was that a deshmukh could maintain an army. The main purpose of this army was to protect the people from dacoits or to deal with rouge villages that interfered in the official work.
In a way, a deshmukh was a governor of the pargana and his influence was more than the formal sanad of tax collection. A deshmukh would oversee adjudication and appeals, ritual leadership at various festivals and most importantly, development of cultivation and prosperity of his area. A deshmukh’s troops were also used by the sovereign for campaigns against kingdom’s enemies, other recalcitrant deshmukhs or even disloyal high ranking officials. Deshmukhs helping the sovereign were rewarded with honor robes at the court.
Malik Shah Amber, the head of Ahmednagar faction of the Bahamani Sultanate at the beginning of the 17th Century, is said to have brought reforms in the deshmukhi system by reviewing revenue settlement for each pargana. He also recruited many Marathas in this system and gave them important positions in the government and court. The deshmukhi system flourished and obtained more legitimacy during the Malik Shah Amber period making Marathas a hard to ignore faction in the politics of the era. This also made deshmukhi an important institution in itself.
More often than not deshmukhs showed wayward behavior. There are examples of many deshmukhs not submitting the revenue to the central government and the sovereign was forced to bring action to such deshmukhs. Since a deshmukh also maintained an army, the sovereign had to be careful before taking such a step. A sovereign would require help from other deshmukhs in such operations. And this perhaps cemented the in-fighting that plagued the polity all through its two-and-a-quarter century life. And this brings us to an important aspect of the kingdom – porous borders!
Invasion, Moving Armies and Porous Borders
The armies of Bahamani Sultanate, its factions and Moguls were typically slow moving. The armies were based on heavy cavalry requiring two or three horses to move one piece, grooms and servants for mounted fighters, elephants, treasury, cooks, dancing girls etc. in addition to the soldiers and commanders. The army bought provisions in camp bazaars. The entourage hardly moved more than 10 miles a day.
An invasion usually involved an army approaching and the highest ranking officer asking a deshmukh if he would align his loyalty to the new sovereign. If the deshmukh agreed, the pargana would naturally become part of a different kingdom. And hence, many wars were fought only at a deshmukhi level where depending on the circumstances the deshmukh just re-aligned his loyalty. The deshmukhs who capitulated to the invading king, were many times also quick to change their loyalty again making the invasion worthless.
Since the deshmukhs controlled the revenue and management of factions of troops, they became important to the sovereign. Shivaji’s father Shahaji also started as a deshmukh in the Pune and Supe parganas. Later he moved to Bangalore, and became an important officer in the Bijapur court. He left his wife Jijabai and son Shivaji in charge of the Pune and Supe areas. This inadvertently helped sow the seeds of ‘swaraj’ – self rule. Shivaji also faced problems with wayward deshmukhs as well as with deshmukhs who remained steadfastly loyal to Ahmednagar or Bijapur. In fact, the deshmukhi problem persisted as far later as Madharao Peshwa, with his own father-in-law, the Patwardhan family of Miraj, changing loyalties between the Peshwa and the Nizam. Gordon claims that Shivaji largely remained a sirdeshmukh – head of many deshmukhs – and not really a king.
In his book, Stewart Gordon, tracks the Mane family of Mhasvad and the Hingnikar Bhosale family as examples. Many more families also get tracked as a part of the polity. And their rise and fall is noted. Many families became Sardars in Shivaji’s court and were honored for their support. However, Shivaji realized the problems with the system and wanted to change it. But the circumstances did not allow him to do so. Once the control passed on to the Peshwas after the long succession battles between Shivaji’s heirs, the whole system got a shot in the arm to save the polity. But as the state formation continued, a lot had changed with maintaining the armies, collecting tributes and taxes. The state formation of conquered areas of Malwa and Khandesh after Aurangzebs’ death gave an opportunity to the Peshwas to exhibit more control of the central government rather than rely on a deshmukh family. An appointed officer, the kamvisdar, may have had powers similar to the deshmukh, but there was a tight control by the central government. A kamvisdar was not allowed to maintain an army but could ask the central government for help. His contracts were also performance based and did not have any hereditary rights to the land or collection. The results of this approach were also seen in the increase in prosperity of these areas. However, deshmukhi still remained an important institution and a basic building block of the polity.
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