murali772's blog
An analysis of the public voting (through SMS) pattern, after each of the rounds, shows that whereas the competitor (Mr Nanavati from Ahmedabad) has always had over 80% support from his home state, our very own Mr R K Misra has had consistently less than 50% support from his home state. As such, folks, if there's one factor that's working against our man, it's the apathy of his own people.
As Asian cities demonstrate their development through an extensive network of expressways and flyovers, Paris, recipient of the World Sustainable Transportation Award, shows the way forward to making our cities more livable…
http://www.thehindu.com/t...
While the Karnataka High Court is to be commended for its efforts in introducing innovations like ‘mediation’, a question that arises is why is it not doing certain simple things that can earn it considerable goodwill from the litigants.
I was quite excited to read the caption 'Voters' list review Bangalored' in your columns this morning (23rd Jan). However, on going through the text, I was disappointed to find that what was proposed hardly amounted to 'Bangaloreing', going by the general understanding of the term.
Rash driving is essentially a policing issue. And, in this aspect, our BMTC drivers can give any call centre vehicle driver a run for his money alright. In fact, not a single day passes in Bangalore without some report or the other about rash driving by BMTC drivers, very often including fatalities. Even yesterday’s and today’s papers are full of the gory details.
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.
Public Affairs Centre is pleased to invite you to the Annual Public Affairs Lecture titled " Mediation: A Success Story in Judicial Reform" to be delivered by Shri Justice Cyriac Joseph, Hon'ble Chief Justice of the High Court of Karnataka as per details given below:
Date: Tuesday, 22nd January 2008
Time: 5.30 p.m.
Venue: Rotary House of Friendship
20, Lavelle Road
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.
Economic Times has invited its readers to state what their dream for the state would be. My response was that I dream of a state with the babudom reduced to such an extent that half of Vidhan Soudha (and, of course, the entire Vikas Soudha) itself gets rented out.
With even the likes of Medha Patkar critical of the system, perhaps the only ones who would be opposed to it's being dismantled would now be just the racketeers and a few pseudo-socialists. Isn't it a crying shame that the country continues to allow as massive a loot as an annual Rs 10,000 crores by this lot?
text of the letter sent to the New Indian Express:
Isn't it time that as important a task as preparation and maintenance of the electoral roles (and issuance of EPID cards), on which the success of the entire governance system rests, is out-sourced to professional agencies?
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.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the Chairman of the Nobel Laureate, IPCC, when asked to comment on the TATA '1- lakh car' project, in the context of the adverse remarks made by the famed economist, Thomas Friedman (addressing a meeting of the Bangalore International Centre), expressed his wish that TATA's would simultaneously get into public bus transport services. And, TATA's being TATA's would be happy to do so, provided the government facilitated their entry.
text of letter sent to the New Indian Express:
I refer to the report captioned 'auto lanes may be allotted to BMTC' published in your columns on the 5th instant.
The idea of 'dedicated lanes' for BMTC buses seems to have caught the fancy of every self-appointed traffic expert. And, there seem to be plenty of them in the city today, apart from the author.
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