How to work with GHMC and get things done in your locality

Let me keep the preamble short...
I came back to Hyderabad after a few years and noticed that a giant new garbage dump had been created in a vacant plot right next to my home. I have no idea how this place became the preferred dumping ground for 3-4 colonies in the vicinity but the net result was that it was impossible to reach my house without wading through filth on the road. Just to give you a picture, this is how it looked like

I found that garbage was being dumped by people from my colony, neighbouring colonies, GHMC sweepers and GHMC garbage collectors who were just too lazy to carry garbage collected daily, all the way to the dumping yard.

How do we fix these things? I have seen people trying to get pictures like this published in newspapers and hope to shame the authorities into acting. But why assume that the authorities need to be shamed into doing their job? Have you tried going through the right channels for help?

So I started with a search for GHMC complaint numbers. Surprisingly, I realised that they don't just have a call centre, but also have a complaints portal where you can log complaints. I raised an online complaint and got an SMS with the grievance number and the name and contact number of the person it has been assigned to. I thought that was pretty cool! Two days later, I got another message saying the complaint has been processed and the problem has been rectified. Well..it wasn't! The person had simply closed the complaint without action. So I called the call centre and got the complaint re-opened and escalated. The next morning I left an SMS with the Grievance number to 4 people in the hierarchy (AMOH, Dy Commissioner, Joint Commissioner & Zonal Commissioner). Surprise surprise! A garbage truck was there within an hour to clear the trash and a profusely apologetic supervisor requested me to call him/whatsapp him in the future instead of going to the Commissioners directly. (The guy has been fantastic ever since. He just needed a little nudge.)

Two days later, the problem was back! Trash occupied half the road again because people had gotten used to dumping garbage there. The supervisor was very helpful this time and immediately got it cleared but he had a point - as long as people didn't stop doing this, it was impossible to fix the issue. So I knocked on atleast 50 doors in the neighbourhood and asked them not to do litter on the street if they were doing it now OR give people a dressing down if they find them doing it. Happily, we now have atleast 10 people taking turns to watch and deter people from littering. The problem hasn't been fixed fully ofcourse but atleast I now know it can be, in due course of time.

The learning from the whole exercise has been that GHMC does have processes in place to get things done. We just need to be pro-active and approach them through the proper channels. Here's a picture with all the information you need to approach them. Please share it widely with your friends and family.

If you need some help with the process OR have an experience of your own that you would like to share, please let me know.

Planning your higher education in the UK? Think again!

**************************UPDATE**********************************
Two days after I posted this, Business Secretary Vince Cable underlined his government's policy to increase the number of International Students by 100,000 in the next 5years (Click here for the policy document). He made all the right noises in that session and was confident that the target was "achievable"

EXCEPT -  the same day, the Home office announced this 3000 pound bond for visitors

AND this - 2000 pound fee for using NHS

All I can say is...Good luck keeping the existing numbers Mr Cable!
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For years, the United States has been the number one choice for Indian students going abroad for a higher education, followed by Britain. According to UNESCO, an estimated 38,500 students came to Britain for their higher studies in 2010 and the numbers have more or less stayed there ever since. Till Labour was in power, Britain had a reasonably open immigration policy and many students who came here got post-study visas and jobs after their education. David Cameron's Tory government however, promised a net cut in immigration numbers in their election manifesto and have made a number of changes to the visa policy ever since they came to power. The most important one from an Indian student's perspective is the scrapping of post-study visas. More on that later.

First lets tackle the 400 pound gorilla in the room - Immigration. Immigration is perceived as a huge problem in recession hit Britain. This is a truism in any country. When things are not great, there's a tendency to blame the foreigner for loss of jobs, increase in crime, wasted social security benefits and even the fact that they can't get a seat on the train! No amount of positive messaging will change people's perception on this and the British are not the only ones guilty of this thought. The Tories correctly sensed the mood of the nation in the previous election and promised the unachievable - a huge cut in net immigration numbers (we will bring it down to 100,000 they said). I say unachievable because migration in Britain comes from two sources - EU migration and non-EU migration and thanks to EU regulation, the British government has no control over European citizens coming to the UK. People can and do buy a bus ticket in a country like Romania and land in Britain to start work the next day. All they have to do is wave their EU passport at the UK border. So, the only feasible way to cut immigration is by cutting down non-EU immigrant numbers. The problem is that even if they bring the numbers in this category to zero, they still won't get to their 100,000 magic number.

The first step in this direction was a change in Tier 1 and Tier 2 work visa rules between 2010 and 2012. Tier 1 work visa (HSMP previously) has been scrapped together (technically they still give out 1000 visas a year in this category but I guess the only people who qualify are Nobel Prize winners) and the minimum salary for a Tier 2 work visa has been raised to a mark where it only makes sense for large multinational companies to sponsor these visas. There's no more flab to cut when it comes to work visas except putting a cap on Tier 2 Intra-company transfers (a move that would honestly be protectionist). So the only category where they could cut numbers was the post study visas for non-EU students.

Since 2012, students cannot apply for a work visa to stay and work in the UK after their graduation. When they were doing away with the Post-Study visa regime, the administration, leading all the way to David Cameron, promised that it would not affect genuine students and was a move targeted at curbing bogus students who came here to work on student visas. Personal experience has proved that this was intellectual dishonesty at its worst. I actively encouraged by younger brother to quit his stable IT job and come study in the UK because he got an admission into the London School of Economics. Six months and more than 150 applications later, he still hasn't gotten a single interview call from companies. The first question they ask on the application form is - 'Do you require sponsorship to work in the UK?'. If the answer to that question is yes, you get an automated rejection mail after 15mins. It's the same story for every single classmate of his who isn't a British or European national. An acquaintance of mine is a Rhodes scholar with a DPhil from Oxford. Even he can't get a visa sponsorship. If LSE graduates and Rhodes scholars from Oxford can't get work visas, I am not sure what hope students from less popular universities have!

Post Graduate degrees from one of the Russell Group of Colleges cost an average of 15,000-18,000 pounds. And living costs for 1yr would come to around 10,000 pounds per year. So we are talking about spending atleast 25,000 pounds for a one year degree with the help of a student loan where you pay 14% pa in interest. And at the end of the year, you are expected to go back to India and look for a job on a salary that would take you atleast 10 years to pay back your education loan. You do the math! For a country with average graduate salaries of about 2,000-5000 pounds an annum, it makes no financial sense to take a 30,000 pound loan and come to the UK, only to go back immediately after finishing your course, without any chance to pay back atleast a portion of your loan or gain some International exposure in your job.

I am not sure what the situation is with colleges in countries like the US, but I am distinctly unimpressed with the quality of education here, especially at the Post Graduate level (disclosure: I am reading for a post graduate degree at Oxford, so I speak from personal experience). While these Universities and professors have a great reputation worldwide, their fame is mostly based on their research. Graduate students, especially International students who are in a majority at the PG level, are treated as cash cows. Exorbitant fees charged from Post Graduate students goes a long way in funding research in these Universities I guess. The quality of lectures is pretty average but the only silver lining is access to a wealth of resources and a chance to network with smart people from various corners of the world. I'm hoping an Oxbridge or an LSE degree next to your name would help at some point of time in your life because otherwise it would have all been a waste.

So what's in store for the future? Not great news I'm afraid. With the 2015 elections looming and UKIP making sensational gains in the last few by-elections, the Tories wouldn't dare take any steps which might be construed as immigration friendly. In fact, the support for UKIP (whose only articulated policy is that they are anti-immigrant) from large sections of the public might probably force Labour to take a stricter line on immigration. The loss of revenue to Universities resulting from a fall in Indian student numbers would be shrugged off as the numbers from China have been steadily increasing over the years. Chinese money is the number one priority for Britain these days - in industry, tourism and education. So if you are a non-EU student looking for an overseas PG degree, I would advice you to stay away from the UK unless you have loads of cash to spare.