Skip to Content

July 2010

High petrol prices - 59% levies in Bangalore, where does it all go?

Infrastructure

[Promoting Transmogrifier's comment to a separate 'crowdsourcing' post - we need to know what is happening to the various taxes and cess that makes petrol so expensive for us. 59% of fuel price is levies, where is it all going today? Do share if you know.]

@ PublicAgenda, while conspiracy theorists make for good movie-making, it's time (like many here are suggesting) that we look at why we pay so much as in the way of levies (59%?) and much worse, get so little. Let's take two examples:

1. In one of the most capitalistic of societies, federal and state taxes, on average, are about 45.6c/gallon (for petrol) or 16.7% at today's price of unleaded petrol. What do you get for that? For 18.4c out of that (or 6-7%) you get 75,000 km of Interstate system on which you could cover 950km (that's the distance to Chennai... and back...and then back again) in 9.5hrs.

Corruption in the BMTC - Tickets

BusPublic Transport

Tickets not issued in BMTC buses -  The conductor asks commuters to opt for ticketless travel, by paying an amount lesser than the ticket value. Surprisingly, this is a regular practice.

Conductors of BMTC reusing already sold or old tickets.

BusPublic Transport

I happen to take the BMTC bus everyday to my office, however recently i encountered a situation where the conductor handed out a used ticket to me instead of tearing a new ticket from the foil. By the look of the ticket even a lame man could say that its an old ticket with traces of sand and dirt and torn edges. When i questioned him about the issue of old ticket he refused to accept his mistake and said it to be a freshly torn ticket. I was so helpless and did not get support from any of the so-passengers and had to return with the same ticket. This has not happened only to me and when discussed with some of my friends, they also complained of having faced the same issue earlier.

These conductors are not only causing a loss to the BMTC but also to the passengers, the situation is worse when some illiterates or school children alight the buses, many a times the conductors take the money and not issue the ticket for short distances thus pocketing the extra money into their personal account which actually belongs to the BMTC.

This could rather be called a daylight theft.

Some authority needs to look into this and get this right immediately...

A new "How To" feature on Praja - your suggestions

Praja related

Dear readers, and supporters of Praja. We have started a new drive to better organize and present content contributed by users on this website. As part of that, we are planning a new "how to" self-help feature on Praja.in. Examples of "how to" would be things like - "how do I apply for khata", or "how to buy a BMTC monthly pass", or "how to complain about an overcharging auto", basicaly just about any experience that we can share around in dealing with govt or public agencies. Please provide your review and feedback to help tune this feature.

Quick Description:

Brownfield incremental cities

Commuter RailPublic Transport

Brownfield incremental cities

The challenge for India is to write a new chapter in low-cost urban development, the way it has done in wireless telephony and automobiles (Nano) writes Subir Roy

Why did I post this under Commuter Rail? Because it ties in very well with what we are trying to say. Commuter rail infrastructure costs afraction of the fortune we spend today as most of it is already available. Incremental investment in mordenization of signaling and operations is all that is required to make it efficient. If one picked the cities identified in this report, connect them to Bangalore and did all that the author is trying to say, we can have a world class ecosystem up and running in no time.5 years tops.

Is the govt listening? Are the bearucrats up to it?

Praja.in comment guidelines

Posting Guidelines apply for comments as well. No foul language, hate mongering or personal attacks. If criticizing third person or an authority, you must be fact based, as constructive as possible, and use gentle words. Avoid going off-topic no matter how nice your comment is. Moderators reserve the right to either edit or simply delete comments that don't meet these guidelines. If you are nice enough to realize you violated the guidelines, please save Moderators some time by editing and fixing yourself. Thanks!



about seo