Blogs

Learning from mistakes and gaps at other cities - Pune could be doing that. Read this morning, with great interest that Pune has created a special purpose vehicle called Pune Infrastructure Development Corporation (PIDC). Quoting this story (PIDC cleared), this body will be:

You may remember reading this last year - Army to close Agara Farm. Each time I am on Inner Ring Road or Sarjapur Road around Agara, I wonder what use is Army putting this vast stretch of Land into. Thanks a million to them, we don't have another middle class slum developing and congesting this area. But if they don't have any serious use planned right now, would they be game to lease it out to us (the citizens) to help create a nice big park cum eco preservation area!? Challaghatta Bagh anyone!?

It was a bit puzzling to spot this tender from BDA in newspapers last week. Dated Oct 15, it called for "Improvements to Service Road of Outer Ring Road from Marathalli underpass to Central Silk Board junction (missing bits)". At least on the tenderwizard site (click for all recent BDA tenders), there is no other older tender calling for improvements to these service roads. The puzzling part however is this. Service Road improvement work is already in full swing! In fact, I have been noticing digging work for over a month now.

BBMP/BWSSB are at it again. I am surprised at the ease with which they go about cutting the trees.

This time it is the stretch of road between BDA junction and Cavery Theater junction (New Airport Road). Some one really very creative is at work here - they are finding new innovative ways to cut down trees and this time BWSSB has chipped in to help them.

In this particular case - BWSSB dug deep trenches just next to the trees (they are laying a pipe line). With in days most of the trees tilted dangerously towards the trench. A couple of days latter all these trees were cut down - may be citing treat to life and property. Surprise surprise, a few days latter, the foot paths are decreased and work is on to increase the width of the road - all this natak for a few extra feet of road (for a road which is already wide enough). Most of these tress were atleast 50-60 years old.

As outlined below, the formation of the prescribed bodies to tackle traffic congestion & to improve living conditions in the city was completed some time ago as recommended. Despite this, no concrete steps seem to be planned to stem the rot. The same old solutions continue to be doled out – the usual widening of roads after felling more trees & introducing more bus routes. These temporary solutions have been making things worse as widening roads invites more vehicles & the losers continue to be pedestrians & public transport users.
 

"I am delighted to share with everybody that Guaranteed Land Title is now a reality in Rajasthan. Rajasthan is leading the country in its "second wave" of land reforms - land title security.

The ROB at Whitefield is delayed because of inability of the parties (tenderer and tenderee) to work out a commodity rise formula. As noted in the following article, because of unexpected and steep rise in steel and cement prices, the tenderee could not complete the project and had to cite force majeure clause.