Season's Greeting's...

My walks are getting interesting for a while, just by looking at the trees that wear the new colors of the season. Yes, most of them have shredded the old leaves and are wearing the new range, old style but with fresh colors and shines…

The aging seem to have this new perspective, there is so much more than just to see how beautiful these trees look with the new leaves. Are they saying to the world, “It’s time to shed your old viewpoints and think about something new and charming!!”

Crossposted on Metblogs

The PILgrimage

Indeed, common man’s belief in court have started rising as they don’t have option but to start filing PIL (Public Interest Litigations) to get them to be heard and provided for their queries. It was the turn of Indian Railways this week to get a directive from Karnataka High court to increase the frequency of the number of trains between the two cities and lay a parallel line along the existing route to avoid abnormal delay because of crossing of trains.

Recent the brutality towards stray dogs also required a PIL filed by a senior citizen, B Krishna Bhat, to sought measures to control stray dogs’ population, while citing the recent havoc created by them. The Court has already issued notices to Union and State Governments, Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, Animal Welfare Board and Akhila Karnataka Prani Daya Sangha on the petition. The petitioner has challenged Rule 7 of Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2001, which does not permit killing of dogs by the civic body.

To make the state a "lottery-free zone”, The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday ordered issue of notices to the Central and State Governments, Meghalaya and Sikkim on a public interest litigation (PIL). The prestigious BMIC, Bangalore-Mysore infrastructure corridor project struggled it’s way through courts and few PILs to make it a success …

The reasons vary from appointment of teachers , protest the airport congestion charges or even fixing toilets in court complexes, protecting forests, the PIL seems to be the way to go!!

Not to mention the numerous amount of PIL on land allotments, , layout formation and regularization. If this PILgrimage continues then perhaps courts have to start PIL Inward departments outside most of the Govt Departments, isn’t it?

The First Blogger Disease…

I was not ready when it hit me, the burn out syndrome of the very first blogger disease (dis–ease) the stress of consistency and most important the role trap called ‘prolific blogger’ all indications point to the fact that I have been hit.

Yes, indeed it’s optional, you have complete control to turn back, relax keep out from the post-mania and grapple yourself in soduko sorts to keep you away and occupied, few of my blogger fraternity of seniors had already warned me that you may land into the burn out situation but I think I was a bit over confident and kept running the race against me, my time and my life!! The dis-ease carved out few golden moments and many happy moments from me away to my camera and the six-sense I call Blogging!

I started seeing everything via a post ability of the situation, sometimes I could balance myself and made fun of me ‘being there and done that’ kinda, but truly, it’s catching me faster than I think…

Recourse, take a break, stop thinking, and stay away from posting at least for some time that you take over control of you life, time and senses back from it!!

World is not ending with you being few posts away, Can wait for that revolution without your opinion or paradigms too!!

So bother me not for those milestones I left un-turned. Chao!!

yours on-line,

The not-so-eternal prolific blogger!!

15 Regulations that can save Bangalore’s green cover!!

Who care’s there are still lot many trees around!! This seems be the attitude of people and administration when you see diminishing garden city. Yes, the word ‘diminishing’ is used categorically to instate the alarming situation.

It has become a normal sight to see trees being cut, uprooted or falling victim to termite attacks and no one seems to care about them. Large termite attacks, cutting off branches, cutting off the full grown trees on roads and public area’s, uprooting for basement constructions, and umpteenth number of advertisements nailed on the trees for PG accommodations, call taxies etc. Heart broken, I felt like an important organ of the city being amputed!!

I heard there are many measures forest departments’ takes which have dedicated officers to conserve the green wealth in far flung forest areas. I think their presence in governance in cities is now becoming essential as it make more sense to monitor the green public wealth.

Few regulations/things which should be immediately enforced and implemented are..

1. Conduct tree census and index each and every tree on public and private land and should be duly marked on current and future Development plans.

2. All trees should be protected like endangered species and prohibit cutting, trimming activities anywhere in the city jurisdiction.

3. Before approving any construction plans a forest department NOC should be mandated, any vacant land which has trees older than 5+ years must modify the designs to protect the current trees.

4. All trees on the roads must be monitored at least on monthly basis to protect them from termite and human attacks such as nailing posters and advertisements.

5. Any tree cutting should require approval from CM’s office under an affidavit notified via magistrate after obtaining forest department NOC. More importantly this notification for cutting should be advertised to invite objections from public if this tree is on public land.

6. All offences on trees should be treated at par with humans and major punishments like imprisonment with fat fines…the amount collected should e used to enhance monitoring. Reporting any such offence via citizens should be rewarded 50% of the fine collected. A ‘tree helpline’ should be constituted and publicized. Even police have to support such called received on the number 100.

7. A city tax should be levied on all properties which do not have earmarked space for trees within the premise for sites which are more than 40x60 in dimension; all smaller sites should have a reservation for one vacant space on the same road against 10 houses sold.

8. All current tree conservationists who have five or more trees in their premise aging more than 10 years should get 10% tax rebate and support for monitoring them.

9. All apartments should have provided for one tree per resident duly maintain by the resident. Most enemies of trees are car park requirements, thus all residential sanctions must include / insist on design incorporating stilt car park, be it a independent house or an apartment.

10. All localities should form a tree committee and govern the trees and coordinate with forest department to help conserve them, best committees should be rewarded with tax rebates for entire neighborhood…

11. All advertisements, cables put/pulled on/upon the trees should be removed and any deviations should be reported via a toll free tree helpline or dedicated website.

12. All defaulters should be deprived of any govt benefits or rebates, even business houses who only promote decorative plants and lawn should not be exempted if they don’t support big trees and include aforestation in their corporate objectives in their premised where they operate.

13. Large urbanization projects should provide for budgets for relocation of trees if coming in way and ensure proper technologies are in place to safeguard the wellbeing of each individual tree being moved or relocated.

14. Each corporate house should get free advertisement rights on road they would adopt in conservation of trees.

15. All advertisement holdings should be removed if they cause any disturbance on growth of any tree directly or indirectly.

Perhaps these measures could help us sustain this green wealth and help restore the loss already causes to this beautiful city….

Cross posted on Bangalore Metblogs... Discover Bangalore

Inflation, SEZs and the Current Fiscal Fiasco in India

Large scale land acquisitions in the name of SEZs will be the talk of the town in the near future. I guess the so-called 'Globalization' has started taking its toll on the rising prices of commodities. Indirectly, with the rising stock indices and the GDP race it's a temperament sold to everyone encouraging to spend more and keep earning more. It has seen percolating deep down at every level to commoners. I mean the commoners who are interacting daily with each other being a customer, being a trader, vegetable vendors, to the autowallas and so on.
Everyone seems to be in the rat race of increasing their margins through costs/prices for the simple reason that 'everything' is up. As I remember, milk is up by a rupee. Why? Because the petrol prices have gone up and transporters ask for a hike. Now despite petrol prices having come down, the cost of milk still has remained up. The transporter now reasons that his laborers have, meanwhile, hiked their wages. All in the name of hikes and securing their own margins to safe guard themselves from this calamity called Inflation.
The hike in the auto meters from Rs. 10 to 12 was on these similar lines a few months ago, due to the petrol price hike, but no one is lowering them even when the petrol hike is reversed. Even for those who run the vehicles on gas, the cost of operation remains less than the petrol variants, yet they continue to 'meter' the customers at par and strip them off. Is anyone monitoring this? Is there any way we can drill-down the benefits of lowering cost via subsidies and effective rollovers downwards? You bet I haven't seen any. Forget about them reaching the common man.
Despite industries growing at 11% we don't have adequate jobs, economies of scale, but we tend to keep the higher strata of the society happy. Another big thing which is coming to ruin the ruralite are the SEZs. The FII inflow, global competitiveness and opportunities add a few more brands and getting few high-end cars like Mercedes/Audis built on this soil, but they may not help the poor who will continue to be churned out as cheap labors and will be found under contracts with bigwigs and their share on the already stressed infrastructure resources like power, water and air will be taken away for global benefits.
Many cities have already experienced this crunch as we don't curb the development and try adjusting with unscientific approach over resource distribution and management with the elected wisdom of political parties hijacking the democracy.
Try and check the new retail funda of getting more employments for localites. Most of them will be hived off under the contracting firms who manage the security guards, house keeping and even front desk personnel via labor contracts and the strata gets paid peanuts for maintaining the so-called international standards and brands. The spirit on rising and shining India keeps shining the 'creamy' layers and foreign companies and the localites that lost their land come out on roads struggling to live. Yes, we created lot many jobs but kept them deprived of benefits and job security.
We never worked on performance based pay for Government staffers who continue to make money and are never held accountable for their wrong deeds. The job market is focusing on outsourcing the talent while our technical/business schools talk/walk only those who score more than 85 percentile. They don't see, recognize or provide for anyone lower than their cut-off percentile. This arrangement thus ensures that the nation will continue to have a large un-skill pool for contracting companies to offer cheap labor and keep filling the intellect with abstract perquisites eating our national reserves and funds.
The mantra of success always seems to revolve around land acquisition and land development, and no one bothers to know why do entities like the BDA exist when they can't afford to work on a nonprofit basis. They don't work towards making homes affordable, but all such development authorities acquire land in the context of development and develop their own revenue generations for self and the body.
The poor man who struggles for his handful of rice and dals (lentils) gets a breather from the FM saying to put off future trading immediately (Budget 2007) and seemingly doing a great favor to them. It seems government has not been able to see around the unorganized sector trading in these commodities and creating demand by suppressing the supply on large scales. The agricultural bodies which were floated to keep commodities at affordable levels are themselves busy generating profits which was never to be their purpose or the intention for which they were formed. The local political goons control such mundis and markets to decide the rate and charge both farmers and consumers with so called regulations once created to protect them.
I am no economist and know nothing about the Finance domain, but I must say have been doing rather good managing my expenses and limiting them as it starts becoming unaffordable these days. The electricity bills have multiplied and the hours of power coverage has lessened out of proportion. The water supply has become irregular for localities which are even 25 years old and are within the city, because the same water is diverted elsewhere making me prone to the tanker mafia. The entertainment has gone beyond the fingertips from cable to CAS and then to DTH / Sky.
All lobbying, wanting the share of their margins with multiple selections and their product marketing strategies which ensure my monthly bill would go northwards - besides this my telephone bills continue to remain the same despite rentals and tariffs going down. I have been pushed to have one mobile each for all of my family members and my bottomline gets adequately hit.
As I read these big words like 'Inflation, GDP and National Reserves', I wonder how it will translate into making the fellow Indians just above poverty line to build this nation to be financially and socially secure and duly protect its countrymen from this epidemic of 'fiscal fronts' and 'budgetary wisdoms'. I don't know and damn sure most of our vote banks would ever!

Crossposted on Desicritics...

Learning to Live, Living to Learn…

Sometimes when with few pictures I capture on the move start telling me stories. Stories about realities of life, opportunities and struggle…a unique window of my third eye, the dig cam, with which I could see the world at my leisure and try understand looking at the pictures with my mind opening up few subtle paradigms.

Let me share what I got just two days back, here is a picture of two children. Both doing their duties and fulfilling expectation life has for/from them to offer. A child who is carrying loads of education signifies the opportunities available to him at his pace, while the other rushing towards the daily dose of work schedule…

Perhaps I may be reading this aloud. The children crisscrossing each others path talk about the diversity in their lives and living. The opportunities one has may not be available or visible to other. One laden with the realities of today via self sustaining his efforts to make the living and there are promises for other via dedicating his time for learning and capability building. Not sure who will win the battle called life as the measure and goals of success are already chained to them like the steel bars chained together by a steel itself….Life offers avenues and opportunities simultaneously enforces constraints of struggle and choice of direction on the other hand….

Cross posted on Metblogs