After that whole lot of uncertainty, that mouthful of grapevines and that dead attitude that the very mention of word 'DCTA' roused, the elections finally happened. The new team is formed and outwardly has till now managed to get adjectives for them as fervent, promising and to top it all, one being 'full of energy' and 'keen on synergy'.
The dry grass caught the fire with rumor of Shyam Modi promoting himself as Chairman and Mahendar Aggarwal as President. The issue was dealt with much a due importance and urgency that within a span of 20 days, whole world came to know that elections were now happening, though almost all still had those much expected doubts.
When the process started for finally conducting the elections, three Election Commissioners were appointed--Ashok Aggarwal of Trifin Technology, Kapil Wadhwa of Champion Computers and Sunil Narang of Elcom Trading. There were some falls here and there, though at the end it can be termed as a successful conduct. Apparently, there was a list of total 125 people who voted when elections were last held in the year 1994 and this time in the new list of 279 voters, a few prominent names were missing, who were present then in the list of 125.
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On speaking to Narang on this, he stated, "The members who voted in the 1994 were DCTA members by default because they were old people in Nehru Place and so they had to vote. But when the new team was formed, they started a membership development program from scratch. Now all those who paid their dues and filled in the forms, became the members and rest did not. So now if they expect their names to be there, it is not possible. The voting list was based on criteria that either the voter is a old member, as he would have paid Rs 2,000 after 1994 elections or Rs 250 now when we called them to become members. All those who did not pay on either of the occasions were not included in the list. There was a case of Marks Marketing, whom we included after it presented the proof."
Then there was a scrutiny of the nomination forms that gave way to another series of raised eyebrows. The nomination papers of Rajesh Aggarwal of Micromax Technologies were rejected giving the fact that his organization was not a member of DCTA. It may be noted that this person was a very strong contender for the post of President. Also this time there were two new seats added to the set nomination paper--those of Senior VP and Joint Secretary. The roles of both specifically, are yet to be decided.
After all the teething problems, finally there were a total of 10 contenders for seven seats; where again there was a close contest for three posts and rest four posts had unopposed candidates. Anil Sachdeva, the newly elected President, enjoyed a clear win with 83 percent of the total votes cast with just 24 votes going in for Vijay Kumar
Chaudhary.
JP Bansal won the post of General Secretary with a lead of about 30 percent over his nearest rival, Rajeev Sagar. The post of Joint Secretary saw the thin cut and witnessed Amit Pasricha winning with a mere lead of five percent against his rival Chander Shekhar. The rest unopposed positions for Senior VP went to Ashok Taneja, Ved Prakash for VP, Bharat Bhushan as new Secretary and Arvind Singhania as the Treasurer for the new team.
Then comes the turn of making plans (executing them would come much later). On asking Sachdeva about the membership drive, he opined candidly, "Initially we are focussing at Nehru Place, but since it is a Delhi-based organization, we would surely spread it at the capital level. As of now it has been a predominant association. But we now aim to build up an association which firstly has a wider base. Increasing it from a low of 125 to 279, in the coming future we want to see it going up to 2,000 at the city level."
Another important issue is that of yoking with all other so-called dealer associations prevalent in the market, nearest being CMDA. Sachdeva commented, "Media industry is actually not separate from IT hardware, but it is just that their problems till now have not been addressed properly, which compelled them to have an association of their own. Again it is not good that there are so many associations coming up under the same banner of Nehru Place. Because this industry is one, so should be the platform from which various people address their problems and raise their voice against or for anything. DCTA is considerate about it and would surely work towards bridging that gap."
Another burning issue for association to tackle with, at priority is that of financial defaults, which are now such an intricate part of dealers life. Being asked on this, Taneja said, "Currently for the financial defaulters, it is the communication that needs to be strengthened primarily. Presently what is happening is that defaulters manage to find a easy way out because even though any person here is duped, he does not spread a word around and the defaulters afford to ditch many other. Now we will make sure that anybody who is under DCTA banner, does not hide that kind of a thing and raises a stink about these matters, so that these kind of occurrences can be put to rest."
Bansal upturned it saying, "If we think of preaching each other it would not work. If it has to be materialized, we have to get people in one ideology first. And we aim at getting that ideology into peoples minds first of all. We are of course not law enforcing agencies here, who can work to set things right by the deliberate use of danda. What we can probably do is get the social pressure into people's mind. And you cannot beat me when I say that it is any day a more difficult job then getting people on the road and preaching about the wrong doings. But officially we plan to hire an attorney who would be regularly on the rolls of
DCTA."
At this Sachdeva said, "But that is again the carrot policy. The stick policy is to reprimand the wrongdoer, formally or informally, and make sure that there is a social pressure on him to hold off from doing these kind of activities. Also, may be we can decide upon the credit limits for any such person, before it is too late."
The constitution for the association is yet to be finalized because the old team as yet has not handed over the tenure to new team formally. Once that happens the new team shall decide upon the amendments required. As they believe that when those bylaws were formed some seven years ago, things were absolutely different and it is all together a different world now as the nature of business has changed entirely.
This time DCTA is also planning of having one particular spokesperson, who will be well aware and accountable for the organization's activities and anybody can approach him for any kind of information. This would also help to cut down on the grapevines and misleading information that take birth from anyone but a reliable source. Also, DCTA would be answerable to the verdict of this man. A need for this was felt when during the election process, a lot of misconduct happened because of lack of this common provider of information. The nature and authenticity of any information was at the mercy of the number of people who claimed to know the 'right thing'.
So far the organization has received all the applauds and appreciations. All hope it to be a competent, efficient and promising team. How far do they manage to live on people's expectations is for all of us to see.