silkboard's blog

Last month, I spotted two notices from Prestige Group announcing environmental clearances for their projects (Dynasty, Exora). What caught my attention was that document numbers and a website were mentioned, I assume for us, the public, to see the documents for ourselves.

Ever been to the CAG website? Its of interest because it provides useful data on how select government departments are doing with tax payer's money. Look at this report on NAL (National Aero Lab) for example, and see how CAG details NAL's failure to meet its targets. Or see this report on allotment of housing by DDA. Don't we wish Karnataka too had a CAG like body to audit the likes of BDA and BBMP?

I think its a challenge, a real one. How do you convey, via simple road signs, the so modern concept of looping road interchanges!? Try describing an interchange when giving out directions - is that a left, or a right that you take from Inner Ring Road to get on to airport road towards HAL? The road signs around such interchanges convey this confusion really well. Some samples for you:

Time for a boring post. A habitual visitor to MoUD website, I was waiting to put up a small summary of a policy paper that showed up recently. Its called "Capacity building scheme for urban ...". If that was all greek and latin to you, jump to section 3 (page 9) on that pdf, and under "specific capacity gaps", find things that you and me complain about everyday - they don't know how to plan, how to run projects, how to handle public relations etc etc etc.

Who is not stunned? Writing more about the incident from terrorism angle will lead to needless rambling. I have only one question to ask, from the angle of law and order. Isn't it time for Police Reforms, and overhaul of our internal security systems?

A lot of activity goes on behind the scenes here that doesn't show in blogs and forums. Not that members want to keep things private, but things tend to start via emails or conversations between island groups of members, and there is just no time to post everything in detail.

I see this every other day on my commute, and to many who back competition and liberalization in public transport as a possible solution, this picture represents the fear keeping them from being vocal supporters of the idea. On one side, you have a 3-4 year old nice big bus. Pushing it out of the stand though is a 15 year old vehicle which would be worth a lot less than the bribes it'd take to get operating licenses from RTO.