Transforming City Toilets into Smart Amenities Centres

The Smart Public Amenities Centre involves financial and social engineering to solve the two key issues of Public Toilet Utilities (PTU’s) which are (a) financial sustainability and (b) operational sustainability, and transforms the PTU’s to Smart Public Amenities Centre at no cost to the municipal corporation.

It is inconceivable to build smart cities without having proper Public Toilet Utilities (PTU’s). However, PTU’s face the challenge that their annual operating costs is roughly the same as the initial capital cost. Therefore PTU’s tend to be ill-managed and dirty. In order to solve the issue of finances, some cities use the front wall of the PTU for advertisement revenues and force the users to enter the toilet from the rear side. This leads to safety issue for women as the rear side is not visible to general public, thus exposing the women to safety issues from anti-social elements. Moreover, the odour, the unhygienic conditions of the PTU and the lurking anti-social elements dither the general public from using the PTU’s. In addition, many of the PTU’s are used for anti-social activities at night and thus pose a challenge to the vibrancy of the city. Some municipalities try to solve this problem by making PTU’s chargeable – this ensures that there is revenue coming in to support the PTU and also ensures that a private party can be brought in to maintain the toilet. Unfortunately, in the Indian conditions, many people tend to use the walls as soon as there is a charge on the PTU, thus defeating the purpose of a PTU.

Statistics indicate that mere construction of Public Toilet Units and Community toilets does not address the core issues. There are three models of toilet construction undertaken in urban local bodies (ULBs) in India – toilets built and operated with government finances; toilets built and operated by NGOs, often for a lease period of 30 years; and toilets built and operated under the PPP model, where the private builder is allowed to operate a toilet for a limited period of five to 10 years and given advertisement rights for that period.

Studies indicate that in all the above models of public toilets, poor hygienic conditions within and around the toilets is a deterrent to the use of public toilets. The hygiene standards around the toilets deteriorate with time after their construction due to lack of operation and maintenance. The lack of access to sanitation infrastructure is not only a matter of class, but also a matter of gender. Poor design of the public toilets reduces the access for women, wherein safety becomes an issue of key concern for female users. In summary, Public Toilet Utilities (PTU’s) have two key challenges – (a) Financial sustainability and (b) Operational sustainability.

Smart Public Amenities Centre

The Smart Public Amenities Centre involves financial and social engineering to solve the two key issues of Public Toilet Utilities (PTU’s) which are (a) financial sustainability and (b) operational sustainability, and transforms the PTU’s to Smart Public Amenities Centre at no cost to the municipal corporation. A Smart Public Amenities Centre (SPAC) takes away all financial burden of the PTU from the municipality and uses Value Capture Economics to build, operate and maintain the Smart Public Amenities Centre. For overcoming the challenge of operational sustainability, Smart Public Amenities Centre creates a vibrant mini-ecosystem of stakeholders around the Smart Public Amenities Centre (SPAC) that puts pressure on all stakeholder in the ecosystem to ensure that the SPAC is well maintained, and is odour-free and hygienic. This requires transformation of the public toilets and community toilets into Smart Public Amenities Centres. The SPAC consists of a set of services in addition to the PTU. . Each Smart Public Amenities Centre consists of toilets for men, women and the differently abled. One floor of the SPAC is used to deliver Citizen Services by Municipality (as Citizen Facilitation Centre). The SPAC has Solar panels installed at the rooftop for powering the components of these Smart Public Amenities Centres. The set of services within the SPAC ensures vibrancy and security to the citizens and solves the two issues of (a) financial sustainability and (b) operational sustainability. Utilizing the concept of value capture economics, (VCE), the smart amenity centres would be funded, constructed, operated, and maintained by the private sector on land provided by the urban local bodies (ULBs). As a result of the envisaged ecosystem, the ULB would be unshackled of the annual operation and maintenance cost of the public toilets, thereby presenting a win-win situation for the ULB and help reduce the pressure on urban public expenditure.

Policy Support for MSME’s for GST

On-ground challenges faced by MSME

• MSME’s are befuddled with the concept of GST
• Many who want to come into the tax net, finding it very difficult to comprehend the system, especially when they were doing cash transactions earlier
• Those who were in the VAT system, are finding it difficult to understand the basic concepts of Input Tax Credit, maintaining of purchase invoices and sales invoices
• Fast changing rules is an even greater hindrance
• The multiplicity of tax rates, where for the same products, there are multiple tax rates (eg. Textiles of cost above Rs 2,000 attracts 12% and that below Rs 2,000, attracts 5%, similarly with shoes) is perplexing for the small and micro enterprises
• Those who have adopted softwares have lost trust as the softwares have not been able to seamlessly post the GSTN returns as the GSTN system was having problems
• Many cases are undefined – eg. If a textile trader buys 1000 m of cloth and it shirnks 10%, how will the shrinkage be accounted for or will the inspectors charge him with malpractices for the unaccounted 100 m cloth? How will employers deal with per diems paid to employees when they are traveling – should there be a GST on it and should that be treated as part of ITC? What happens when the employee is traveling outside of India?

Issues faced by MSME on GST

• GST regime requires MSME’s to have a minimal IT infrastructure in order to create and file invoices electronically
• This minimal IT infrastructure includes a laptop/ PC, connectivity, cloud provisioning, GST invoicing software with access to GSP in order to access GSTN
• A smartphone or tablet is not a realistic solution to create large number of invoices in a day
• The cost of the above minimal infrastructure is Rs 45,000, which is a large amount for MSME’s
• For every minimal IT infrastructure setup by an MSME, government receives approximately Rs 8,000 as taxes (18% of Rs 45,000). So for even two million MSME’s adopting IT solutions for filing GSTN, government receives Rs 1,600 crores as taxes on the IT infrastructure.
• MSME’s believe that they have to pay for the above infrastructure in order to pay to the government and view this as an unfair arrangement

Implications of MSME’s not becoming GST complaint

• It obviously has an impact on the success of GST regime
• More importantly, it impacts the large companies to whom the MSME’s are vendors, who will not be able to set off their Input Tax Credits against their Output Tax

Suggested Government Policy for alleviating the MSME issue

• (a)    Make GSP charges free so that private sector can bring in completely free software
• (b)    Government procures in bulk on monthly lease, laptop, GST software, GST support, dongle, and connectivity as one bundled solution, just like EESL procuring LED bulbs in bulk, thus reducing the cost of the equipment, and provides the same to registered GST taxpayers. Government also makes this procurement tax-free, thus reducing the cost by 18% which will further reduce the lease cost as the cost of money will also come down. It is expected that the total cost will come to less than Rs 1,400 per month
• (c)     The monthly lease amount for this infrastructure should be allowed to be set-off by the taxpayer, against the monthly GST payments. In fact, the entire amount should be added to the Input Tax Credit for easy processing.

Alternatively, the following mechanism may also be adopted:

• (d)    For those registered with GSTN, should be allowed to have a one-time set-off of the cost of procuring the minimal IT infrastructure against their indirect tax liabilities, similar to allowing expenditure on IT assets to be set-off against direct tax liabilities
• (e)    This set-off can be capped for a maximum of Rs 50,000, on a one-time basis
• (f)     It can be further made easier for MSME’s by allowing them to procure equipment on an EMI basis, and setting off the monthly EMI against the GST payment due
• (g)    To facilitate private players to provide credit to the millions of MSME’s who have poor credit history, the government can collect the complete GST due and use that to pay off the EMI that an MSME was supposed to pay, with a cap of say Rs 4,000 pm for one year
• (h)    The above can be made available to only those who are paying GST of above Rs 4,000 pm

Impact

• It would provide significant relief to MSME and reduce their resentment towards the GST regime
• It would also introduce them to Information Technology and put them on a path of automation
• It would create more jobs

Blue Whale, Kamikaze Pilots and everything about mind control

The deathly game of Blue Whale appears to have distilled the learnings of human mind control, to such a fine art, that it is capable of doing so remotely, from thousands of miles away.

What does the game do? The game targets a victim, and gives it a series of ritualistic tasks to do, with most of the tasks at a specific time of 4.20 am, that slowly cuts off the victim from his or her usual connects, numbs the senses of the victim by exposing him or her to horror movies that are to be watched alone, and then pushes the victim down a path of self harm that ends with the target killing oneself. And all this being done remotely, from thousands of miles away, through an app in a smartphone.

Is this the first game of human mind control? Is this the first time that people have been manipulated to do things that would be perceived by others to be actions that are against their own interests? Or is this the first time that people have been manipulated to perform acts that they are not usually expected to perform out of their own free will? Clearly no. From time immemorial, humans have been subjected to mind control in one way or the other, some more deadly, some supposedly benign.

Blue Whale is merely a distillation of those techniques that have evolved over hundreds of years, perhaps thousands.

Let's peep into our recent history. We have had cults egging their followers to commit mass suicide. The Johnston Town mass suicide (otherwise known as The People's Temple Agricultural Project), The Heaven's Gate Cult, Adam House in Bangladesh, Order of the Solar Temple in Quebec and so on. All of these cults apparently made their members voluntarily kill themselves - commit suicide - the same end as a Blue Whale participant eventually has.

But these are not the only mind controls that led to self harm. We have the recent phenomenon of Fidayeens - Islamic terrorists who are willing to kill themselves in the process of harming others. And we had the LTTE suicide attackers, one of whom blew herself up to kill the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. And then we had the Kamikaze pilots of the Japanese Army in World War II who were motivated to kill themselves by crashing their planes into enemy targets. In fact, it was not just the Kamikaze pilots, but the bulk of the Japanese army of World War II, who were prepared to die rather than surrender, and thus many of the battles in the eastern front of World War II, ended with most Japanese soldiers getting killed rather than surrendering or being captured.

There has also been ritualistic and/or traditional sanction to suicides, such as the Balinese puputan, the Japanese seppuku which involves disemboweling oneself and the santhara system of the Jain beliefs which involves fasting to death to attain higher consciousness. In each case, the person is convinced to bring oneself to end.

Is driving people to kill oneself the only mind control? Well, it is of course the most extreme form of mind control. But there are many other forms of mind control. Most Nazis who oversaw the murder of millions of jews in the concentration camp, completely believed they were doing the right thing. The British officers who snatched away foodgrains from Eastern India and left an even larger number of people to die than those killed by the Nazis in the concentration camps, also believed that they were doing the right thing. These behaviours would normally be perceived as deviant behaviour. But large number of people performed these acts. And they believed they were doing the right thing. The mind control was no less amazing than what we see in Blue Whale.

And then there are the numerous Godmen and Godwomen, dotting the landscape in India, who regularly pop up to display their devastating dexterity in manipulating the thinking process of men and women, who then willingly let themselves be duped and let their family and children be exposed to harm. The more recent case being that of Ram Rahim Insaan. Be sure, he was not the only one lurking out there.

Does mind-control end at only self-harm - suicides or otherwise? Well, whenever the target is removed from other sources of information and contact, and is moved away from his or her natural connects, with the sole purpose of influencing the thinking process of the individual and to align the individual to the manipulator's objectives, it is still mind-control. And no mind-control is really benign.

And this is the space that religion has taken up for thousands of years. Setting up rules, similar to Blue Whale, of not getting in contact with alternate thought process as it would make the person impure and corrupt. Making the individual follow strict rituals which makes the individual have a world view that is aligned to the objectives of the set of people who drive the religion. Making them visit specific places that are places of worship or of supposed high religious value. Making the individual do actions at set times in a day, or month or year. Periodic and aperiodic events triggering the individual to perform certain acts. Sounds familiar?? That is what Blue Whale also asks its victims to do - perform tasks at 4.20 am in the morning. Have them cut off from reality. Numb their thinking process by exposing them to horror movies, by making them visit cemeteries. Blue Whale merely borrowed the same process as used by religions and refined it further.

In fact, all "isms" follow the same pattern. For that matter, Nazi philosophy was also an "ism" and should have been called Nazism. In fact, in a rapidly globalising world, where peoples are fast awakening to the fact that they do not have any differences with other nationalities, even nationalism appears to be an anachronistic "ism" which is still chugging along, fuelled by media control, symbolisms (anthems, flags etc) and education curriculums. A Blue Whale victim has to carve out a blue whale in his or her arm as a sign of loyalty to the controller. Nationalism, and all other "isms", demand similar loyalty and symbolism - wearing certain things, singing certain songs, holding certain days as sacrosanct and so on.

In all cases, the target is promised an imaginary benefit - honour to family, virgins in heaven, freedom from miseries of rebirth, plain freedom from planet earth or some such conceptual construct.

Human mind is fascinating. He who controls the human mind, dictates our lives. Alternate facts, post truths, fictional enemies and promises of a better fictional future are all the tools and weapons used for waging this war on the mind. Blue Whale should be a wake up call for recognising the constant threat of mind control that is engulfing our existence. Even democratic elections are not left out from these games with adversaries indulging in mind control to influence the voters in a country. No wonder, the words of the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore sounds prescient - Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, Where knowledge is free.. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way.. into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake. A free mind is necessary for the pursuit of true happiness. Let us learn that again from the deadly game of Blue Whale.