India has again seen a painful chapter of bombings. Over 20 bombs targeted the Indian cities of Bangalore and Ahmadabad and killed 10s of innocent civilians and injured 100s.
While I feel very sad and rattled by the developments, I also fail to make sense of them. I only have questions for the militants on a killing spree and also questions for myself and all Indians.
It’s good to know that the Health Minister has challenged the name of the Bangalore Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team, “Royal Challengers”. It’s however sad that it takes the Health Minister of the country to speak up before the authorities looked at such an obvious and blatant form of surrogate advertising for liquor brand “Royal Challenge“.
Everyday we read stories about protests in the country where buses are burnt, trains are stopped, public and private property is damaged and so on. However one often feels that the creators of these protests do not get due credit for their work. The government releases figures about the property damages in rupees. However these figures don’t quite convey the true impact that a protest had on the nation. How useful would it be if earthquakes were reported not in a Richter scale but just in terms of the monetary loss of property? Only when someone tells you the Richter scale reading of the quake, do you truly feel the power of the quake. Considering India’s need for a scale for protests, the researchers at Oak Labs have devised the ingenious “OakTyre” scale for measuring the impact of social unrests.
The basic unit of measurement in the OakTyre scale is a “Tyre”. Like we measure distances in meters, we measure protests in Tyres. So the measuring scale goes as follows
For reasons only known to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), the PMC has now changed the official website from http://www.egovpmc.com to http://www.punecorporation.org and killed egovpmc.com.
PuneCorporation.org is definitely a better name than egovpmc, but why kill the established egovpmc.com? They could have just redirected to the new site. PMC also hasn’t shown the sense to buy the domain name PuneCorporation.com. So please note that http://www.punecorporation.org is the official site while PuneCorporation.com is a fake.
However if you are hoping to get some work done on the corporation site, it doesn’t matter if egovpmc.com or punecorporation.org is the official site, because both sites are currently not working.
I think it’s time to use the Right To Information and check which politician’s family member is minting money by bagging these contracts for the PMC websites and delivering rubbish in return.
Article about improper use of parking spaces and builders tricking the city administration by just converting public parking into private parking spaces.
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As per construction rules in cities, all buildings need a certain parking capacity to be approved by the corporation. Even these standards seem inadequate to handle the traffic mess in cities like Pune. However builders have found a way to make it appear as if they are conforming to the law without doing anything of that sort. They just convert public parking into private parking and supposedly comply with parking capacity rules.
This year the state of Maharashtra again suffers from acute electricity shortage and extended power cuts. While cities are facing 2-6 hours of cuts, the villages have to go without power for 10-16 hours a day.
As most in India are aware, the reason for this situation is the incompetence of the politicians and the state run power company they control.
The Congress led by Suresh Kalmadi and the NCP led by Ajit Pawar had both promised the electorate that they would not join hands with each other post elections, as they thought the other party was responsible for the ruin of Pune.
The electorate voted under the impression that they won’t come together post election. However like the stereotypical politicians in Hindi movies, both the Congress and NCP now seem keen on coming together in an attempt to grab power. The same leaders who had indulged in extensive name-calling are now on the verge of forming a coalition. You should soon see statements saying that they have come together “For the development of Pune” or “To keep communal forces at bay” or “Our high-command said so” or some such corny line.
While poiliticians continue to behave in this fashion, one can’t really blame the masses for losing faith in Indian democracy.
Anybody who has been to Pune would know that the Pune Municipal Corporation is not a very competent body. The city is going down rapidly and hardly anything is being done to stop the slide.
I have been reading up on the Right to Information for quite some time and now intend to use it to get some answers on an important issue, Footpaths. I have written about this before “Pune Corporation - The Art of Converting Public Parking Spaces Into Private Property” and “Footpaths are for pedestrians and not illegal chaat stalls”
All over the city, builders are converting footpaths into parking places or approach roads for their buildings. I intend to get the following info under the Right To Information Act
I might rephrase things a bit. But this is more or less the info I would be ask for.
I went through Right To Information Info at -
While most of my queries have been answered. I still could not find a satisfying answer to -
Ideally I should be able to make an online payment for a flat fee of say Rs 100. Then fill up a form on a central RTI site. The site should be well aware of the Public Information officer (PIO) to contact. The PIO should get anemail and I should get a confirmation.
Looking at the government’s e-awareness record, e-Right to Information is unlikely to happen in the near future, so I guess I should start planning my visit to the PMC office.
Any suggestions on how I could simplify the process or make better use of my application, are most welcome.
As per construction rules in cities, all buildings need a certain parking capacity to be approved by the corporation. Although even these standards seem inadequate to handle the traffic mess in Pune, builders have found a way to make it appear as if they are conforming to the law without doing anything of that sort. They just convert the parking potential of the public road into a private parking facility.
My letter published in the newspaper Sakal Herald dated 29th Sep 2006.
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“MSEB or whatever it is known as these days issues these expensive ads every week announcing that it will switch off power for several hours every Thursday for so called “maintenance activities”. Puneites also
seem to have accepted these Thursday cuts as a fact of life. No resistance either from the people or the people’s representatives.
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