Sunday, January 15, 2012

Operation COVER UP - a LANDMARK crisis erupts in UP!!!!!



The recent directive from the Election Commission with regards to the impending polls in Uttar Pradesh has met with some unanticipated opposition. The Election Commission ordered the state government to cover up all the statues of Su Sri Mayawati, her elephants and Kanshi Ram across the state. This decision was taken wth a view that these monumental statues could influence voters while exercising their franchise.


The result of this directive has had some strange outcomes. An independent poll was conducted across the state to gauge the public reaction and reasons for the same. Presented below are some snippets from the detailed survey.



An overwhelming 92% of the people interviewed were completely against this operation Cover UP!!!!
Now, this result stumped everyone as it was generally believed that these statues were symbolisms of ostentatious display of wealth and were not meant for any public good. Au contraire, the exact opposite was the reality.


Some of the responses are presented here -




  • Ram Prasad Sharma, a retired Government employee who stays in Azamgarh had the following to say," This entire operation Cover UP has resulted in direct damage to my knees. I used to go for my morning walks and I used to measure my walk from one statue of Mayawati to another and return back from there. Now, I do not know when to take a U turn and hence ended up walking more and hurt my knees".

It seems that the general working community of the state had marked the state into horizontal vertical and diagonal slots based on the locations of the statues. Maya ek starting from the Lucknow City Center statue to Kanshi 777 to haathi 999. This unique triangulation system of creating grid lines across the state had its own advantages - it overcame the cities and district barriers, it was also relevant in the interiors where there are no roads and you would never end up getting lost!!!!!!!



So, for example my office in Noida would be Maya 55, Kanshi 34 Haathi 48. Between these three landmarks woud be the building that I need to go to. So efficient compared to Sector 64 A7 where 64 has no correlation to 63 or 65 in terms of proximity!!!!! How elementary!!!!





  • Sham Kumar Gupta, a real estate broker complains," This operation cover UP has impacted my business in a big way. Earlier, the properties around the Mayas or Kanshis or Haathis used to fetch a premium in that order because there would be an assured electricity and water supplier in those areas. Now with this operation, all properties have to be kept at the same price and this has impacted my business".


The Mayawati government has ensured that all statue-park combinations have 24 hour water and electricity. The Mayas have 99.999999999 (11 nines) SLA where as Kanshis have 99.999999 (8 nines) and Haathis have 99.9999 (6 nines) SLAs. Such strigent SLAs are not to be heard even in the best IT organizations (Haathis have a downtime probability of just 31.5 sec/annum!!!!) Hence the abundance of power and water leads to more than adequate pilferage for the surrounding properties and residential areas!!!!





  • Amit Kumar Verma, a government contractor spoke on telephone from Zurich where he had some "bank related" work,"I have just bought a manufacturing unit in Schenzhen, China in anticipation of more orders for the statues. This directive from the Election Commission has just come as a bombshell for me. What am I going to do with the infrastructure that I have procured?"


On asking Mr. Verma if he was the chief contractor for this mammoth (pun unintended!!!) project- he mentioned that he was one of the lowliest contractors supplying silver coated tusks to be embedded into the elephants' statues!!!!!





  • Luxury brand Chanel has decided to file a suit against the Election Commission. Mr. Purseoir, the legal representative of the luxury hand bags company had this to say," We had paid the UP Government a huge sum of money to have our brand of handbag in the statues of the Chief Minister. This was our marketing strategy to gain a foot hold into the non elite market of India. This new directive has grossly diminished our brand visibility and is impacting our business in India. We will be filing an objection petition against this directive. "


Mayawati government had signed a 5 year contract with Chanel (to be renewed for another 5 year pending election success) to showcase their leather hand bag range across UP. Mayawati herself gracefully agreed to endorse the brand. Her charges for this endorsement was quite frugal - all she had asked the company was that the purse should never be empty!!!!



The remaining 8% who were in favour of Operation Cover UP just happened to be Samajwadi Party supporters!!!!



Under attack from different quarters, now the Election Commission is seriously reconsdering it's decision on Operation Cover UP.
Last heard from the CEC office was that the statues will be given a transparent polythene covering so that the sanctity of Operation Cover UP is maintained and the general population also appeased!!!!!



Swayam hitaye swayam sukhaaye, saari janta bhaadh mein jaaye!!!!

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