August 25, 2008 at 10:44 am
· Filed under Pune City, Software
The Devcon site says that at the event you can -
Explore the issues surrounding programming mobile devices, Windows application development, integrated Web solutions, Microsoft Office programming, and language enhancement and IDE productivity features. Address issues such as easier development of applications across client types and migrating applications to .NET. Learn new techniques for building a scalable and secure architecture, and designing applications for easier and more effective deployment.”
30th & 31st Aug 2008, Pune, India
http://devcon.puneusergroup.org/
August 15, 2008 at 1:13 pm
· Filed under India, Pune City, Reform, Society
Over the past couple of years, the left bank canal of the River Mutha between the Prabhat, Bhandarkar and Agarkar Road has morphed from pretty much being a dump to now a beautiful garden. The area of about six acres now has lush green lawns, a jogging track and many trees. It’s like an oasis right in the heart of Pune city.
The Pune Municipal Corporation and an NGO, Hirwaee have been jointly running the project as yet. However maintaining the garden, caring for the trees, keeping it clean and free from encroachments is an ongoing challenge that requires the support of residents in the area.
It is critical that Pune citizens and especially residents from the Prabhat, Bhandarkar and Agarkar (BMCC) Road come forward to ensure that the garden not only sustains but also keeps getting better ever year. With this aim has been initiated the “Friends Of The Canal Garden” program. It’s an attempt to form a core team of people who care about the garden and wish to do their bit in improving their surroundings and the city.
Meet -
The first meeting of this group is scheduled for 9 am on the 24th of August 2008. It will be held at the Prabhat Road end of the garden.
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May 3, 2008 at 11:30 am
· Filed under Column, Environment, India, Pune City, Society
Nature shows the way to healing the city…
Like most Indian cities, Pune has crumbled quite rapidly over the past decade and most citizens are convinced that things can only get worse. So thought I would write about a positive development in the Deccan Gymkhana area in Pune. About a project that highlights how things can change if citizens decide to ‘be the change’ and about how citizens are enjoying the benefits of returning prime city real estate to mother nature.
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April 8, 2008 at 1:04 pm
· Filed under Column, India, Pune City, Society
On our way back from a beautiful village on the Konkan coast, me and my wife got talking about why Indians are abandoning the vast countryside and moving to ever so cramped and inhospitable cities. We have long toyed with the idea of moving out of the city but never have actually done much in the matter. So we decided to list the things in the city that mattered to us. We rated them on a scale of 1 to 10 and found that only a few made it over 5. Basic amenities like electricity and water got a 10 on 10, while business amenities like banking, transportation and Internet connectivity got an 8. Schools, hospitals and security got 7. Social life and recreation facilities got a 6. Surprisingly the hotels, restaurants, multiplexes and shopping malls that take up so much of our attention in the city barely made it on our charts.
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January 27, 2008 at 4:36 am
· Filed under Column, Health, India, Pune City, Reform, Society, Sport
“World Spitathon Champs”
Indians might have the strongest lungs on the planet. Not because of any genetic reasons but because of the exercise that they make their lungs undergo by firing spit missiles every couple of minutes. Across the country we have great exponents of this art, hard at work on every street. While walking, driving, through cars, buses and every other vehicle you will find spit missiles fired with great dexterity and regularity. Although the best performances come from tobacco consumers, even those who are not, often put in scintillating performances.
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December 30, 2007 at 9:16 am
· Filed under Column, India, Pune City, Society, Traffic, Travel
With cities like Mumbai where an overwhelming majority of citizens travel south for work but stay up north, it’s quite obvious where the city centre is. However it’s intriguing how city centre means different things to different people in Pune. A friend was recently telling me how his company located in Kalyani Nagar refuses to give bus transport to employees stating that the company was located in the city and so bus transport need not be provided. Considering that he stays in Kothrud and believes that the old city and the Deccan area is the real Pune, he found the company’s suggestion that Kalyani Nagar was ‘in’ the city quite ludicrous.
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November 22, 2007 at 7:50 am
· Filed under Column, Conference, India, Java, Oracle, Pune City, Society, Software, Technology
I am writing this column from the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on an Internet connection that’s as fast as the Internet speed of half of Pune put together. It’s strange how fast Internet connections always put me in a good mood. Anyway, talking of OpenWorld, it’s an annual event that has over 40,000 people coming to San Francisco from over a 100 countries. It’s amazing that the city can pull off such a mammoth event fairly easily and the infrastructure doesn’t collapse under the load.
The city administration seems to go the extra mile to ensure that delegates have an enjoyable and safe visit to the city. Although OpenWorld is the biggest, it is just one of the many events that happen all year round at the Moscone Center. Each event not only gets people to San Francisco and works as a great public relations exercise for the city but also pumps millions of dollars into the economy of San Francisco.
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October 20, 2007 at 4:02 am
· Filed under Column, Democracy, India, Protest, Pune City, Reform, Society
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
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September 29, 2007 at 5:19 am
· Filed under Environment, India, Pune City
Geologist Suvrat Kher has written a five part series of articles on Pune City and environment. He integrates geology and high-resolution images from Google Earth to highlight and discuss urban planning and environment issues.
- Idling and Pollution
- PMT buses and Pollution
- Rickshaws and Pollution
- Urban Forests and Clean Air
- Sensing Corruption Remotely
Apart from these articles there are many others that also make for good reading. Do check out http://suvratk.blogspot.com
September 24, 2007 at 11:28 am
· Filed under Column, Democracy, India, Information, Media, Pune City, Reform, Society
For several years I have been planning to use the Right To Information (RTI) to get information and facts on things that bother me in the city. I read up on the subject, talked with friends, blogged about it, but never managed to take the most important step, that of using the right and asking for information. I even explored every possibility in which I could get information without having to visit the Pune Corporation office. Unfortunately that’s not possible. If you want information you have to work hard for it.
So I picked a Saturday when I did not have much else planned. Picked some RTI form samples from the net and filled up three forms asking for information from the PMC. The first form asked information about footpaths / pavements in Pune. The second about parking provisions that commercial buildings need to make as per corporation rules and the third asking for information about the PMC’s e-governance initiatives. I will write details of the information I sought and the response I got, when I do get the information. For the time being I will stick to the submitting the form part. A friend of mine who has been complaining for years about the stray pig menace in Shivteerth Nagar, Kothrud accompanied me hoping to submit his complaint to the relevant department and to finally rid his locality of the pigs.
(Cont…Click here for the entire article). Published as part of my fortnightly column for the Maharashtra Herald
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