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Accountability of our emergency helplines

Governance

Here's my experience with the Police emergency phone number, 100, that makes me pray that nobody ever has any emergency.



Last Saturday, I was returning by train from Thanjavur. While the train was waiting for a clearance to enter the railway station, I heard some commotion outside. Two guys, at least one of them very drunk, were fighting. The inebriated one was lying on the tracks (and hardly moving) and the other man was beating him up. This was at 4 AM and it was still pretty dark. Sensing danger to their lives if a train happened to approach on that track the passengers from my coach urged them to move away from the rails. Since they didn't pay heed, I decided to call the police helpline 100.



My first reaction when the lady answered the phone was surprise at the complete lack of urgency in her tone and voice. I explained the situation to her, and she asked me to call the railway police. There was no answer from that number so I dialed 100 again and got to speak to the same lady. This time she asked me to call the general railway helpline 197!

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Healthcare

Public Health

Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship at IIM Ahmedabad and Piramal Foundation announce “Piramal Prize 2010” - to enable bold entrepreneurial ideas with potential to reduce the burden of disease across India.  The Prize is an initiative to solve the health crisis by encouraging innovative ideas in the field of health care. This is the second edition of the Prize with its success of the first edition in 2008.

Categories:

The Piramal Prize is to be given in 2 categories

 1 – Emerging Ventures - Disruptive ventures in existence for less than three years.  Entries may be in the start up/ idea/ growth stages, ideally with a prototype/pilot project completed or underway.  

Enact India's undiluted anti-corrupt Lok Pal Bill - Petitions

Governance

India's anti-corrupt ombudsman Lok Pal must have the powers and the jurisdiction to investigate the PM, Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament of the Upper/Lower House independent of government agencies. Legislators' families must declare their personal assets each year.

The following petitions were created in response to the email request made by two sister NGOs Lok Sevak Sangh LSS and Transparency-International India TII. The TII had sent some matter as an email attachment.

More details in brief may please be viewed at the end (conclusion) of the respective petitions.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/enact-undiluted-anti-corrupt-lok-pal-bill

http://www.petitiononline.com/lokpalbl/

FW: Blr Autos - Have you been taken for a ride lately?

EnforcementTraffic

Forwarding will help for all of us ... FYI Bangaloreans.

You are in a hurry to catch the train. You pack all your stuff and frantically run out in the hope of catching an auto. You come out and see 5 autos standing at the corner. You thank God and ask them - "Majestic chaloge kya??” The Answer is "Rs 200 hoga!!”. "Kya?? It just cost Rs 100 till Majestic". "Bahut rush hai sir!!". You move on to the next auto, to try your luck and surprisingly, you have the same conversation "Bahut rush hai sir!!". Finally you give up and bargain the price to Rs 170 and hope you don't miss your train.

Sounds more than familiar??

Railways as freight carriers

Commuter RailPublic Transport

Hi Folks

I am shifting Delhi from Bangalore and so was looking of ways to move my personal stuff from Bangalore to Delhi. I dont have a lot of stuff so it does not make sense to hire a container myself. I had 3 carton boxes and a bike.

I was wondering whether it is possible to send all this stuff through train. While I know that sending the bike is possible, is it also possible that one sends the carton boxes by train as well?

1. Has anyone tried it before?

2. Is it efficient and dependable? is it cheaper than road transport?

-Shekhar

Lokayukta, Praje and fear

Governance

I have heard him in a couple of public meetings, and have met him in a small group once. Note taken from those interactions with Lokayukta Santosh Hegde was that he has two battles to fight. One of them we know well enough, newspapers love covering how the government doesn't cooperate in prosecution or investigations.

The other battle for him - or any such toothless or draconian institution government could create - is to get real support from us, as in the citizens, people, praja. SMS campaigns, petitions etc (one petition from Loksatta party is still live on this website) is one thing, making full use of Lokayukta's office is another.

Callous Attittude of BMTC Authorities - No ownership of work -highly deplorable.

BusPublic Transport

Hi Prajas,

The BMTC bus fares have been hiked... and the monthly pass with the new revised rates have still not reached the pass-counters be it at BMTC major bus-stands (Majestic,Shivajinagar, KR Market) leave alone other bus-depots.

Proposal: Organise a Praja Blogathon

Praja related

Myself and a few other folks have been thinking about innovative ways of marketing Praja. We want to create exciting content and bring new users on Praja. So how about we organize a Blogathon?

This event can be both on the ground as well as online. The basic idea is that we fix a theme/topics, a date and a venue. On the chosen date all of us get together and blog about the chosen theme. Obviously, we will open the event to anyone who is interested and will publicize it in a significant manner.

The best blog entries get an awesome prize-- think ipods, iphones etc. We will find sponsors who can cover the costs for the venue and prizes. Normally, such events are accompanied by free snacks and beer ;)

We can also have tie-ups with newspapers which will agree to print the best blog entries. If successful we can also try doing such events in other cities.

This idea is in its nascent stages and we wanted to present it to everyone for feedback and brainstorming.

So what do you guys think?

 

-Shekhar

Which monthly pass should i prefer... help me.

BusPublic Transport

Hi all,

I have to travel daily from Kovempu Circle (near BEL Circle) to Rammurthy Nagar Signal (near K.R Puram tinfactory), now i want to take a monthly pass for this. I want to know that is in this route Black board pass valid or not? I have confusion in Black board pass and other pass. Should i take Black board pass or other pass?

Suggest me!!!

Unpleasant experience at RTO Koramangla

Private transport

I sent out the following email to Ashwin Mahesh narrating my experience at the RTO recently. I am pissed about the whole experience. At moments like these it feels awesome to realise that I am a member of Praja:)

 

Need help in capturing reliable data on water supply across all the wards in Bangalore

Water

[Posting on behalf of Gautham Ravichander. If you want to volunteer you can also add your name and details as a comment below this post and I will ensure it reaches out to Gautham.]

Road Widening in Bangalore - City convention on 4th July

EnforcementTraffic

Hi All,

"Save Bangalore committe" has taken up for a city convention about road widening in Bangalore.

Thought of sharing the information with all of you. Please go through the attachment for the details.

Thanks,

Manoj

Meeting with Adviser to the CM on road-widening issues

Traffic

The meeting was convened by Dr A Ravindra, advisor to the CM on urban issues, at the instance of the Bangalore Environment Trust (BET), on the matter of 'road-widening', on 23rd June, at the Vikas Soudha. Along with Dr Ravindra was his deputy Dr Ashwin Mahesh. Though the Commissioner had apparently been requested by Dr Ravindra to be present, along with some of his top officials, only a Superintending Engineer turned up, that too some half way through the meeting.

There were about 20 invitees, largely from Civil Society groups, including Capt Prabhala, Mr Govardhan, Mr Nityananda, Mr Devare from BET, Ms Kathyayini Chamaraj from Civic, Dr Harini Nagendra, a Doctor who is spear-heading the 'Sankey road widening opposition' movement, apart from yours truly representing Praja and Koramangala Initiative.

It started with Mr Nityananda of BET making a presentation, making out a case for widening, where need be, in a more tree-friendly way, citing examples of some specific roads.

Give prosecution & suo motu powers to Lokayukta - Petition

Everything else

This petition’s been created to request those concerned to

01) Appoint the Upa Lokayukta at the earliest.

02) Give prosecution and suo motu powers to the Lokayukta.

(If the Lokayukta has suo motu powers, it can speedily take up investigations on its own without waiting for someone to file a complaint.)

03) Dismiss the corrupt government officials from service.

04) Retain Justice Mr. Santosh Hegde after accepting his demands/requests.

Justice Santosh Hedge's requests to the government as soon as he'd taken over as the Lokayukta chief

01) Give power of suspending and revoking suspension of corrupt officials.

02) Amend Section 36 of CrPC to confer police power on the Lokayukta.

03) Give suo motu powers to investigate Class I officials as well as politicians, who come under the Lokayukta purview.

http://www.thepetitionsit...

Using IT methods to control traffic and enforcement of traffic rules

EnforcementTraffic

Hi All,

may be its time we used the IT infrastructure and the already available infrastructure to get people learn some traffic rules

My opinion would be to outsource technology, infrastructure and marshaling to high end cameras and monitoring systems to take care of traffic rule violations and imposing of fines and make the process devoid of traffic police interference and in the process take the big burden off the heads of the Traffic police and let them stick to their more important job of managing the traffic  -

using technology would let the TP (traffic police) make a note of repeated offenders and would help in auto collection of fines through third party system,

The above may be well known to all- but the reason to mention it out here is that - it needs to be at least tried out in a pilot way to find its effectivity -

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