Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, in association with NIIT Imperia conducted a certificate programme called Executive Programme in Supply Chain Management (or EPSCM). The first batch of the programme completed its requirements in January 2010.The institute has chosen not to inform the participants of the programme about the status of the certificates. The undersigned is one of the participants of the programme.

Please provide :

· the status of the certificates of the of EPSCM batch that finished the exams in Jan 2010

· the reasons of the extraordinary and ongoing delay

· The reasons for non-communication by the institute regarding the reasons for the delay to the participants.

Sure enough, I received the response soon enough. Reproduced below for your reading pleasure.

Look at the way the non-specific response has been craftily drafted, which defeats the purpose of seeking information.

Let’s examine:

Q 1: Please provide the status of the certificates of the of EPSCM batch that finished the exams in Jan 2010.

Ans 1: Certificates have been either dispatched or are being dispatched  (Oh God, why did they invent present continuous usage in English language at all?!) depending on(variable – it depends, you see) the status of the students(rich, poor, what?).

Q 2: Please provide the reasons of the extraordinary and ongoing delay.

Ans 2: The delay is routine (A 4 month delay is just ‘routine’, you see. Reminds me of passenger train somehow). There is no extraordinary or ongoing delay (Really? The Chandrayaan took only few days to reach the moon) in cases where students have followed the proper procedure(conditional if, and what is an ‘improper’ procedure, pray? Isn’t a procedure a procedure?).

Q 3: Please provide the reasons for non-communication by the institute regarding the reasons for the delay to the participants.

Ans 3: The service provider (NIIT Imperia) (Blame it on them) had been informed regarding the reasons for the delay(Finally, they accept, there was delay, but then, what if it did not reach us).

PS: Curiously enough, between the filing of this RTI query and the response, I received the certificate!

If you would like to access some quality discussions and resources on how citizens can use Right to Information Act to your situation, please check out  RTI India portal.

A big drawback for us Indians is that we are not used to seeing our banks looking at our credit score, and therefore, do not care what is written in there. Many of us do not even know about the existence of such a bureau.That means the credit report available to your bank may have some subjective elements inserted to your adverse impact, which you may not even realize. The best way to keep track of such obnoxities is to watch your credit report. Yes, very few of us know that it is possible to get access to your credit information report(C.I. R).

The process is fairly simple. A very basic form to be filled and sent along with a Demand Draft of Rs 142/- to be sent to CIBIL through the post office only.While many identification documents are allowed in the application, it is recommended to provide the PAN number, since all bank transactions require the same.

If you notice a discrepancy in your C.I.R, you can take that up with the concerned financial institution as the credit bureau cannot update the records at your instance.

Link: The CIBIL Site can be reached here. The report contains details of which institutions have asked for your data, maximum amount you ever borrowed, and how much outstanding you have with each bank.  To see what a typical report available on yourself and what information it contains, click here. Below is just a snapshot for quick reference.

Updated June 04, 2010: Learnt offline from my professional colleague Chinni Krishnan that the report does not carry a credit score, (as credit reports in US do). He feels that this is a good start and there is much scope for the report to have ‘less English, and more Math’. His experience in getting the report was marked by very quick response time from CBIL authorities.

Almost so, till you try it out, something I did last week. The process is simple. You go to this site, locate the form and get going. So far so good. It even matches your PAN number with the Income Tax Department database to see if you have typed the correct PAN Account number, so that typos do not result in disasters of wrong credit. The form has no computational intelligence, which means it will only take values of the tax, surcharge and education cess etc. The portal also appears to offer direct transfer from several banks which is a great help.

All went well, the name matched, the transfer happened alright. Only when the receipt (‘counterfoil’) was being generated, it failed to save on my machine, gave some error, thank you, and failed to save. It was frightening, since the ‘counterfoil’ copy is supposed to be enclosed with the return. Luckily I had a screen shot of the whole document, taken in parts. That one moment was enough to generate sweat beads on my forehead, after what happened last year at ICICI Bank.

Suggestion: Please do take a screen shot of the receipt, atleast of the counter foil and save it. Or select all and save it on MS Word. A great system improvement could be to ask people for an email id and mail them a PDF of the receipt if they want it and also to include a text on what common taxpayer should do, if none of the above works.  

Actually, along with the picture post card views of Vembanad lake, there was a freshness and calm in the breeze, that perhaps the visuals cannot capture. Thank God we planned this Kerala trip.

Kumarakom town is few kms from Kottayam city, and the ambience completely changes once you reach there.
The house boats, which are nothing but floating hotels, replete with a kitchen, sit-out and a bed room are an experience by themselves. The Kumarakom town is criss-crossed by canals and it is such a pleasure to be travel in one of them on a boat. It is also an expensive place. A night in a house boat will set you back by 7-10 k rupees. Worth every penny I would say. We certainly came back with what appeared to be a true out of the world experience.

It was also noticeable that thanks to the web, all arrangements can be lined up even before you reach there.