murali772's blog

Last evening, I happened to watch the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ programme on CNN-IBN, where Karan Thapar was interviewing Sunita Narayan (of CSE). The subject of discussion was TATA motor’s NANO. And, contrary to the norm, both were generally agreed on many of the points that came up.

I am referring to the Indore bus services, which has been touted by many as the World's best public-private bus partnership - Indore. I had raised a few questions about the Indore model, vide my posting under the caption ‘better bussing’ on 22nd Dec, ’07.

Subsequently, I had attended the seminar on ‘Effective Traffic Management’ convened jointly by the DPAR and Centre for Public Policy, IIM, Bangalore, at the Vikas Soudha on the 4th Jan, at which a presentation was made by Mr Shukla from Indore (he had come in place of Mr Vivek Agarwal, IAS, Dist Magistrate, who had conceived the entire scheme and who was originally supposed to come), and the answers to the questions I had raised became more or less clear, based on which I have drawn my conclusions.

text of the letter sent to the New Indian Express:

There's no denying that the tree cover in Bangalore is being lost largely due to road widening. Road widening is necessitated due to unchecked growth and usage of private vehicles. To address this problem, you have to have excellent public transport services. METRO may be a solution. But, it is extremely expensive, and at best a solution in the long-term. BMTC cannot cope up with the needs, however much they may appear to have become efficient, which they are not and cannot be, as long as they continue to enjoy a monopoly status. The simple answer is to facilitate the entry of TVS kind of companies (my first exposure to TVS was as a bus service provider in the city of Madurai) into the fray. The present rules do not provide for that. It facilitates only the 'Sharma' kind of operations, which in turn only helps provide fodder for the die-hard opponents of the private sector.