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AIMA conference on PPPs - a report

22 July 2010 - 2:10pm — murali772
Governance

The following is my report on the "All India Management Association (AIMA) Conference on Public Private Partnerships: Issues of Governance", held at Hotel Lalit Ashok, Bangalore, on Friday, the 16th July.

Hearing pursuant to the appeal under RTI in the case of the Indiranagar Tree Felling

20 July 2010 - 4:53pm — murali772
Everything else

With the BBMP tree officer remaing silent to the RTI query raised by me on the 10th April, in the matter of the apparently unauthorised tree felling on 100 ft road in Indiranagar (check this), I had sent an appeal to the Commissioner, BBMP, on the 28th June.

BMTC - Extending the monopoly

18 July 2010 - 10:06am — idontspam
BusPublic Transport

Quoting myself from an earlier post "I predict the irrelevance of the auto in the transport scheme within the next 5 years." 

Nanos may push autos out of B’lore

Looks like we dont have to wait 5 years for my prediction

Scrap Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill / Act 2010 - Petitions

16 July 2010 - 3:56pm — indian
Politics

The maximum imprisonment for violating the provisions of the 1964 Act was 06 months whereas the 2010 Bill/Act prescribes imprisonment extending up to 07 years. It is this that has made people question the intentions of the State BJP (right wing) government as in the Indian Penal Code (IPC), imprisonment for such long terms is usually meant for crimes of a far more heinous nature.

The latest Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill / Act 2010 virtually equates the killing of a cow with the murder of a human. (It's only the economically weaker sections of the society who consume/eat beef in India.)

An offender may be imprisoned from 01-07 years and fined between Rs. 25,000-50,000 or Rs.1 lakh. Draws the lines - us and them, the beef-eaters and those who don't, the killers (bad ones) and the pious/good ones. Reinforces those lines with the draconian, absolute and brutal police power of the State behind one particular section. Removes any distinction between "cow" and "cattle".

Commuter Rail meeting with CiSTUP, went well, summary

16 July 2010 - 1:23am — silkboard
Commuter RailPublic Transport

Sanjeev, IDS, PS Anantharam sir and myself went over to IISc today to meet head of CiSTUP. Short summary on how it went

  • CiSTUP to add their review comments / foreword to the report
  • We will jointly organize a roundtable/seminar at IISc/CiSTUP to formally release the report and discuss the subject with relevant government officers and leaders
  • Will invite all transportation and investment related departments of Karnataka, railways as well, and also, local MLAs and MPs who have shown interest or tend to attend these.

We are thinking end of August for this Commuter Rail / Namma Railu seminar. Keep watching for mroe updates, or join in if you want to help organize this.

A hard copy of the report is available now, contact IDS or anyone from the Namma Railu project team if you want to see it. Wll upload the soft copy here as well as part of work for this seminar at CiSTUP.

Lets go Namma Railu :)

Open Data progress - met with dept. of Sericulture

16 July 2010 - 1:07am — silkboard
Governance

So after 2 months of pause - we have been struggling to work meeting dates with some govt depts we have spoken with - we kicked this off with a meeting with Manivanan, who now heads dept of Sericulture.

Counting the poor - how many do we have?

15 July 2010 - 8:40am — silkboard
Governance

Public Agenda dear, here is that intellectually ruminating discussion we said we will have soon. How many poor people do we have in our country? The debate, and understanding the number is important because the classic quote goes - "you can't fix what you can't measure". If you can't count your poor, you can't check how your poverty alleviation programs are working.

Two important things around which disagreements arise are 1) How do you define a poor household? 2) How exactly do you count people using the poverty definition you accept?

First of all, the two popular stats that are quoted to start a discussions like this

  • Arjun Sengupta - 77% of Indians lived on less than Rs 20 a day.
  • Suresh Tendulkar co. - Poverty ratio at the all India level ... 37.2% in 2004-05. Rural poverty ... 41.8% and urban ... 25.7%. Criteria, spend per person per month. Rs446.68 in rural areas. Rs578.8 in urban. (see http://www.dnaindia.com/i...)

Some other notable stats:

Right is there; but, no information

14 July 2010 - 3:23pm — murali772
Governance

Following (in italics) are the relevant excerpts from the New Indian Express report:

The government may have enacted a law empowering citizens to demand information from public authorities, but five years later many government departments are yet to take the “first step” towards proactive disclosure. Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI act mandates that all authorities under the purview of the law must index, catalogue and computerise official records to be easily accessed by the people. So far, however, few departments have paid heed to the provision, says K A Thippeswamy, Karnataka State Information Commissioner. The progress, he said, has been “almost negligible”. “They (departments) do not even have a record room to keep  documents,” he said. “They were supposed to do it within six months of the Act coming into force. But it’s been five years and they are yet to do it.’’

Alternatives to Road-Widening

14 July 2010 - 1:39pm — pdk

This post is in response to criticism that road-widening critics haven't provided alternatives to widening.

Two things.

1. Sorry for the extreme illustration, but suppose I find someone committing a murder. I'm not sure that I have to provide an alternative to him and only then try to stop him.

2. I think the people mentioned above have suggested various alternatives. The 'people' say that the problem is a unsustainable number of private vehicles on our roads. Following from that, they have likened road-widening to 'loosening the belt to cure obesity' and recognised that it is a unworkable response to traffic congestion. They have provided following alternatives to resolving traffic congestion. None of these may help by itself. But some combination of them should be tried. The list has been made from the following sources:

SBC's Convention invite

The Solution - CyBaNa

Stupidity of road widening



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