silkboard's blog

Want to join a political party - but which one to join?

12 November 2013 - 8:19am — silkboard

Clear in my mind that I got to join a political party this year. Intention is to understamd how parties work, from up close. Tired of constant flow of 3rd hand, 4th hand and via-media information, which comes in only one color, that political parties and politicians all stink like hell.

BMTC's encouraging mini bus talk - good going Mr Parwez

19 September 2013 - 8:59am — silkboard

Amidst all the press that BMTC is getting recently, one thing that caught attention was talk of mini buses, shuttles and feeder routes. As we all know, feeder plans, and solid execution of first/last mile connects can help increase usage of BMTC as well as (future) metro.

Here are the bytes I have picked up (read in print, so don't have links handy, will search and add later)

BMTC losing out on outdoor advertising revenues?

15 September 2013 - 6:00pm — silkboard

You see colorful, big, bright, and sometimes visually polluting hoardings, legal as well as illegal, crowding out road side air space almost everywhere in Bengaluru. The cacophony of imagery and colors tells you that there is decent demand for outdoor advertising.

Halt massive Bangalore Metro investments, give satellite town connectivity its due first

20 August 2013 - 1:10am — silkboard

Have been reading up on Metro's Phase 2A and Phase 3 plans and few thoughts cross my mind.

CAG report on allotment of sites by BDA - action take so far?

7 June 2013 - 8:27am — silkboard

I notice that there is a lot of halla in newspapers this morning on a new CAG report on financial performance of BBMP. This reminded me of the other report release last year on "Denotification of land by Government and Allotment of sites by BDA". embedding the report through scribd below.

Now that rains have saved Bangalore, forget about it?

4 June 2013 - 9:16am — silkboard

We came "this" close to going dry this summer. How close? Don't really know, but the word is that if rains had arrived 10 days later, we would have hit that point. But now that rains are here, newspapers, BWSSB, KNNL (Neeravari Nigam) will all move on and wait for a crisis to approach next year or year after depending on when we would have the next monsoon shortfall.

Someone (BPAC?), please fund a CIO for Bangalore

19 May 2013 - 6:45pm — silkboard

"Can't fix it if you can't measure it". That is what a lot of people say. There is a lot that gets measured by BBMP/BMTC/BWSSB/BESCOM/BDA etc. But we just don't get to see. Want GIS data used for creating masterplan to be public? Want to know the city's water consumption, and inflow from each source every day?

The day of equality, and confusion!

5 May 2013 - 5:05pm — silkboard

One vote, is all you are worth, like everyone else around. That's equality. The word democracy sounds heavy and "elitist" :) So I prefer equality. And this time, there was confusion too. Was confused till the "moment", which party or person to vote for?

Cash for votes - some investment mathematics

30 April 2013 - 9:36am — silkboard

"The rates have gone up". "Many of them want touch phones". "down payment for a new bike". "Digital box for TV" (remember the digitization deadline?). The murmurs are on. The "cash rates" are as high as Rs 4000.

Water - its going to be pretty serious this summer

12 March 2013 - 10:25am — silkboard

We are probably going to see a severe water shortage from mid April onwards. The word going around is that this won't be a routine shortage that we are used to over last few years. May get pretty serious.

Understanding "sustainable" - the Whitefield Marathahalli case study

1 March 2013 - 7:29am — silkboard

Mobilicity Event @ CiSTUP, March 6 - Day Plan

26 February 2013 - 1:08am — silkboard

Here is an hour by hour plan for the event day (March 6). Please do register here if you want to attend. And more details are on this event post.

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Chiranjiv Singh report - on new capital for Karnataka

4 February 2013 - 8:38am — silkboard

Mr Chiranjiv Singh, an IAS officer from 69 batch, now retired headed this Alternative Capital Project (ACP). ACP and Mr Singh apparently produced a report that suggested building a new capital city of Bangalore. I have heard about this report from a few people, but haven't seen this report at all, nor have I met Mr Chiranjiv Singh.

"Rs 4500 not good enough" - how much is?

30 January 2013 - 9:02am — silkboard

Some interesting numbers from the ongoing protests by anganwadi workers. See them in context of minimum wages prescribed by state government.

From The Hindu, Jan 24,

Ward committees etc - sorry, wouldn't work

28 January 2013 - 9:10am — silkboard

Moving a comment on this excellent post from PSA/Pathy sir up here in the hopes of generating more discussion. And some disclaimer first - 1) I am not against the concept of engagement/consultation.

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