CALICUTCITY:SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES...SOMS...NIT CALICUT

 

The above is a photograph  of the SOMS  (SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES NIT CALICUT).It is a very impressive and large complex built with architectural accuracy and splendour and is a cut above many such campuses supposed to be inaguarated by Shri. Krishnadas Nair former CMD of HAL and was the Chairman of the Board of Governors of NIT Calicut for some time. It is built on some newly acquired land on the faculty quarters side of NIT  few kilometres from the main road amidst sylvan surroundings.

It is an excellent and well planned outfit with all attributes embedded with each other in a professional fashion with a very spacious courtyard.

People who were involved in the design of this campus deserve praise and with such an infrastructure SOMS would someday become an even more premier institute.

Budget hotel in Calicut (Kozhikode) Hotel Ambadi Comfort Inn,Near Palayam Bus-stand, Phone numbers Land line 0495-2702112,Mobile Phone number -8086340380.

MAGADI NEAR BANGALORE

Some 50 kilometers from Bangalore is a place called Magadi a prominent place with a fort and a temple and is a crucial spot to my observation with thick vegetation around which must have been some kind of a Forest centuries ago.

Magadi used to be the capital of the Gowda clan that ruled Bangalore and eventually settled at Magadi for historical and tactical reasons. The Wodeyars seem to have annexed this place into their control. The Fort is being repaired on modern lines by Governmental involvement.

I feel the place   Magadi has received less attention and prominence that it deserves; If we were to look at the map   Magadi must have become a key transit point and route for vehicles and people who vie to reach places like Coorg and yonder through the western ghats into Kerala and could have developed as a solid via-media into these districts. An Englishman by name Kenneth Anderson who lived in Whitefield and held a position in the modern day HAL has some bearing with this town around which he is believed to have hunted for Tigers in the thick jungles and this person has written couple of books on wildlife.

Kenneth Anderson 1910 to 1974

Yonder to Magadi are places like Rayasamudra , Banihole and even Madikeri, Virajpet and into cities of Kerala. In Magadi town there are few who know much about these towns mentioned above.

Let this place once the citadel of the valarous communities of Karnataka increase in significance and open more land routes of stature to improve the overall economy of the belt which extends from Ramanagaram to Chennarayapattana.

How to reach Magadi ? there are many direct routes. One of the intermediate nodes is a place called Tavarakere some 15 kilometes from Kengeri through the ring road  and Magadi must be some 20 kilometers from this place called Tavarakere.

THE INDIAN TELEPHONE INDUSTRIES BANGALORE

As I mentioned somewhere my father worked for nearly 40 years at the Indian Telephone Industries also called ITI. After independence the Govt of India put up many public sector units in India and ITI is one of them. It is a large Industrial township with many houses built for staff. To some extent it can be said that National Highway 4 runs through the ITI territory.

What a great place it is. During the heydays in the 1970's and early 1980's ITI must have had 25000 employees nearly 200 buses and made telephones and exchanges largely strowger and crossbar exchanges. In the 1990's with privatization the role of ITI began to dwindle with voluntary retirement given to employees and production almost coming to a halt, In 1986 I spent a month inside ITI as a trainee during my stint at engineering college.

ITI used to hold an annual sports meet every year in the summer with games like basketball, volleyball and kabaddi being played. Teams used to come from all over India for the event. I remember I K Gupta,C S S Rao, Swaminathan, K P P Nambiar were all Managing Directors of ITI. ITI has a park in which carnivals were conducted once in a while. ITI hospital is also an enterprise worth mentioning.

But ITI is in a sorry state after 1995 with large scale reduction of employees and not much production. The buses were sold off and the entire township wore a dejected look. Government policies and telecom revolution can be attributed to the decay of ITI.

It would also be worthy to mention about the ITI auditorium or theater where cinema used to be shown every day in the evening and three shows on a sunday. I have seen many block busters in this theater like "Sholay", "Amar Akbar Anthony" in the 1970's

Ramamurthy nagar, Vijanapura and Krishnarajapura are all adjoining areas of ITI; Can ITI be revived is a very vital question and discussed in many quarters. Some years back another public sector in Bangalore HAL was in the doldrums but miraculously revived as a result of globalization. ITI seems to be caught in crossfires and whirlwinds of many kinds. But I still beleive ITI can be revived and the re-birth will result in a transformed ITI. How could ITI be revived...? Please study the following points;

• ITI must be renamed as INDIAN TELECOM INDUSTRIES as against the present name of INDIAN TELEPHONE INDUSTRIES.
• Alongside making exchanges the company must make wire less equipments too of various kinds for the global market.
• There must be increased synergy between ITI and other public sectors like BEL and ISRO.
• An INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TELECOM must be established inside the premises.
• Finally the Government must ensure that the CMD of ITI is a telecom graduate and has vast experience in wired and wireless telecom along with managerial degree or expertise.