Adam’s Bridge

Lord Rama built this bridge to rescue his wife Sita from the clutches of Ravana but little did he think that it would create wide spread protests and traffic jams so many years later!

Adam's Bridge, known in India as Rama's Bridge or Rama Setu, is a chain of limestone shoals, between the islands of Mannar, near northwestern Sri Lanka, and Rameswaram, off the southeastern coast of India. The bridge is 30 miles (48 km) long and separates the Gulf of Mannar (southwest) from the Palk Strait (northeast). Some of the sandbanks are dry and the sea in the area is very shallow, being only 3 ft to 30 ft (1 m to 10 m) deep. This seriously hinders navigation. It was reportedly passable on foot up to the 15th century until storms deepened the channel: temple records seem to say that Rama’s Bridge was complete above sea level until it broke in a cyclone in 1480 AD.[citation needed] This landbridge once connected Sri Lanka to South India during the Wisconsin glaciation


Space images taken by NASA reveal a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. The recently discovered bridge currently named as Adam´s Bridge is made of chain of shoals, c.18 mi (30 km) long.

The bridge´s unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made. The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the a primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago

According to the legend of Ramayana, the land bridge was constructed by large numbers of monkey like beings under the supervision of Rama, who according to Hindus is a personalized almighty incarnation. The purpose of the construction was to reach Srilanka (across the sea) from the Indian mainland to rescue Rama's wife from the demon king Ravana. Ramayana, according to the Hindu time calendar, is supposed to have taken place in Tredha Yuga (The ancient scriptures in Hinduism discuss about events in terms of Yugas (Time phases of evolution) numerically four namely Sathya (17,28,000 years), Tredha (12,96,000 years), Dwapara (8,64,000 years) and Kali (4,32,000 years)). The current phase according to the calendar is kali, out of which 5000 years are supposed to have passed by. This means that Ramayana, to have relevance with the bridge, should have taken place between 8,69,000 to 21,65,000 years back (between the time period 0.869 - 2.165 million years).


The controversial Sethusamudram project

The route under the project,which involves dredging over a width of 300 metres and depth of 12 metres on Adam's Bridge, though inaugurated by Prime Minister on July 2, 2005, was approved as far back as October 2002 during the NDA regime.

"In fact, the project was vetted and endorsed by no less than 4 ministers of the previous NDA government - Arun Jaitley on March 9, 2001, V P Goyal on October 29, 2002, S Thirunavukkarasar on October 25, 2002, and Shatrughan Sinha - hence objections to the project are completely baseless," the Centre said.

It also rejected another contention of the petitioner that Adam's Bridge could qualify as an ancient monument and said there was no scientific basis to this contention. It was only a ruse to stop the project that would generate revenue from fees obtained from traffic passing through the channel. It said Taylor's proposal in 1860 was followed by similar proposals from Townsend (1861), Parliamentary Committee (1862),William Deninson (1863), Stoddart (1871), Robertson (1872), Sir John Code (1884), South Indian Railway Engineers (1903) and Robert Bristow (1922).

Dabbawala - Amazing!

Recently the discussion in our office turned to the Dabbawallas in Mumbai. I haven’t noticed them during my short stays in Mumbai but heard about them a lot!

1- No unions!
3- No forward and backward reservations!
4- No Congress, BJP, Left or right!
5- No fights – they don’t have the time!
6- The most respected.
7- A compartment in the local trains allotted just for them.
8- They give lectures to the IIM’s!
9- They have been awarded the Sig Sigma Rating!

So who are these dabbawalas?

They are the wonder workers in the bustling city of Mumbai or Bombay as it was called. They satisfy the needs of 1000’s of office workers who are forced to leave their homes at unholy hours and hence their food does not get packed in time. The home made food is delivered to their work place without any fail and it is till fresh and warm.

- They have been awarded the Six Sigma rating. A few years ago, US business magazine Forbes gave Mumbai’s dabbawallas a Six Sigma performance rating, or a 99.999999 percentage of correctness — which means one error in six million transactions.

Six Sigma is a process that helps organisations focus on delivering near-perfect products and services. If you use Six Sigma you can measure how many defects there are in a process and can systematically figure out how to eliminate them and try and achieve zero-defect status.

- Secretary of the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust Gangaram Talekar and M Medge, a tiffin carrier contractor — both essentially dabbawallas — have been delivering lectures at premier institutes like the IIMs, CII conferences, Symbiosis institutes, WTC, for the last six years.

“It started with the Confederation of Indian Industry inviting us for a lecture,” said Talekar. “Our connections are well-managed, which is what we talk about at the lectures. Without putting in any capital ourselves, we manage to achieve a difficult feat,” he added.

Dabbawallas

* They rely on low capital and use cycles, wooden carriages and local trains to achieve their target.

* There are several groups that work independently and network with each other to achieve one goal.

* They meet once a month where all the groups gather and thrash out issues.

* There is no retirement age. People work as long as they want. to.

* Since their lifestyle is simple and involves a lot of physical exercise, they rarely suffer from illnesses.

* The dabbawallas have a credit society which gets them through money crunches.

How the dabba is delivered

* The first dabbawalla picks up the tiffin from home and takes it to the nearest railway station.

* The second dabbawalla sorts out the dabbas at the railway station according to destination and puts them in the luggage carriage.

* The third one travels with the dabbas to the railway stations nearest to the destinations.

* The fourth one picks up dabbas from the railway station and drops them of at the offices.

* The process is reversed in the evenings.

I guess every Logistic company would love to learn from these dabbawalas!