Metro,Mono or Rapid Transit

Road transportation has always been a problem in our country.More so in the past few years as India has developed rapidly(atleast in urban areas) and our notorious infrastructure hasn't been able to cope with it.Now there are several problems plauging our surface transport sector.There are the ever crumbling roads,rash driving etc etc.But I will limit myself to the problem in Chennai.

Traffic in Chennai,like in other metropolitan cities has been consistently rising.The increase in the no of cars and two wheelers has quite literally put tremendous pressure on its roads.However even then there are innumerable people who still use public transport.They ply by MTC or Electric Trains.However even these modes of transport haven't been able to completely bear the ever increasing load of people.Hence the Chennai government decided to introduce a new public transporting system throughout the city.They first proposed Metro Rail.Metro rail seemed to be the popular choice as it was doing well both in Kolkata and Delhi.However after initial inspections,officials claimed that such a system would not be viable in our city.Hence they decided to go in for Monorail.It was to be executed by the MTC and was to be ready in 2-4 years.However yesterday the PMK,as expectedprotested against the government's decision.They instead proposed the Bus Rapid Transit system.They claimed that this was cheaper and would serve the people much better than monorail.

Hence I decided to do a bit of research(mostly from wikipedia) about the above mentioned modes of public transport and also tried to find out what could possibly be the best public transport system for my city.

I think we all are quite familiar with the metro rail system.Yet I decided to write a bit about it here.Though there isn't a clear cut definition for the metrorail system according to Wikipedia,

One definition of a metro system is as follows:

• an urban, electric mass transit railway system
• totally independent from other traffic
• with high service frequency.

Metrorail primarily functions only in the city's "core" and usually doesn't extend to the surburban areas.A distinct advantage of the metro rail system is that it has the ability to transport a large volume of passengers.Metrorail is quite a popular form of tranport and it is prevalent in different countries spread all over the world.Infact there are several cities like London, Moscow, New York City, Paris, Seoul,Tokyo and Osaka where people prefer to use the metrorail rather than purchase their own automobile.A distinct disadvantage of this form of transport is that it requires a lot of financing for both construction as well as its maintainence.And for a country like India where apathy is genetic trait I am quite surprised that cities,like Mumbai,Bangalore,Hyderabad, have decided to adopt this form of tranport.

Now on to monorail.According to Wikipedia,

A monorail is a transit system, resembling a metro or railroad with a track nominally consisting of a single rail (actually a beam), as opposed to the traditional track with two parallel rails. Monorail vehicles are wider than the beam they run on.

The most prominent advantage of the monorail system is it compactness.It occupies minmal space and wouldn't serve as a burben on our already fragile infrastructure.However this very advantage could serve as a disadvantage as the volume of people it transports is limited and hence this doesn't really solve the problem we are encountering in our city.

Finally,the rapid transit system

Bus rapid transit (BRT) is a broad term given to a variety of different transportation systems that, through infrastructural and scheduling improvements,.It attempts to use buses to provide a service that is of a higher quality than an ordinary bus line. Each BRT system utilizes different improvements, although many improvements are shared by many BRT systems. The goal of such systems is to at least approach the service quality of rail transit while still enjoying the cost savings of bus transit.

The biggest advantage that the BRT seems to possess is that it doesnt require as much capital investment as in the case of the previously mentioned systems.However to have a extremely efficient BRT system one needs a very sound infrastructure and certain special provisions.This includes

• Bus lanes,Busways and Bus-Street
  
• Bus signal preference and preemption
• Traffic management improvements
• Faster boarding

 

Again as in Monorail space is a constraint and hence the volume of people it transports is limited.

Personally I would prefer all the three systems in my city.Here is my proposal for viable public tranportation in Chennai.

I would advise the simultaneous initiation of both the metrorail as well as the monorail system.The metrorail system could be limited to the prime areas of our city and the monorail system can take care of transportation to and from the surburban areas.The metro project could either be completely outsourced to a private system or it could be a joint venture between the government and any infrastructure company.On the other hand the monorail could be a complete government venture.I think this would solve the problem of high volume and it would also ensure the all parts of the city are connected.As for the rapid transit system even that could be implemented after a few years in our city.Infact I feel that our MTC buses are already following the several provisions required for a BRT.They don't follow the lanes and overtake at will.Signals,for them, are non existent and hence they never stop.As for traffic management well our MTC drivers ensure that no one else comes in their way.Their either blare their horns to push the driver out of their way or ensure that the driver gets knocked out of their way.Well if we seriously intend to implement the BRT then we will have to ensure a change in the attitude of our MTC drivers and also upgrade our buses.If possible we could even privatise our MTC(I think it was a private enterprise earlier).

To sum up all these three systems seem to have their share of advantages and disadvantages.However no matter which system we choose,it can't succeed unless we have a sound infrastructure and a responsible and responsive public.If our people continue to remain apathetic all efforts to improve transportation systems in our city would come to a nought.

 

This was Coming!!!!

It seemed that after attacking our armed forces,parliament,markets,temples,historical monuments,modes of transportation,foreign embassies in our country the terroists were running out of targets in our country.But for these bigots nothing is indespensable.They aim to destroy the very fabric of this nation and hence always try to come up with different targets.Hence this time it was the IISc,the foremost institution in research in our country.

It's the epitome of research projects in our country.Any aspiring research scholar would love to do a project in this institution.The IISc is also believed to be involved in several confidential projects for our country.Hence it's comes as no surprise that the terrorists chose to target this institution.Infact this was long time coming.After the different forms attack on our country it seemed that an attack on our defence and research institutions was next.And the terrorists too seemed to have thought the same.

Now I would like to mention an interesting article written by Mr.Raman.Mr Raman is a distinguished bureaucrat and is famous for his insightful but,at times,pro-congress articles.He puts forward a theory which sounds extremely plausible and tangible.

First of all he claims that the recent attacks on Bangalore were motivated by nothing but economic compulsions.He cites similar acts in different parts of the world.Terming it Economic Terroism he feels that the terrorists look upon Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai as economic powerhouses of this country,and feel that striking them could have a negative impact on India's reputation and economy.

As with all terrorist acts and especially those in India even this seems to have a Pakistani connection.He elaborates that the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has been,ever since he came to power,striving hard to diversify Pakistani economy.In this regard he efforts have been aimed at developing the IT industry.However since India is already considered a superpower in this field,the Pakistani IT industry hasn't really taken off.And hence what better way to divert attention to their IT prowess than to discredit the Indian industry by creating security concerns in the minds of the western MNC's.

Now I don't support this theory.But I can't discard it either.After all the Pakistani Govt has always tried matching us in every way as possible and the prolonged Kashmir Dispute is just an indication of the same.The Pakistani Establishment has always used Kashmir as a political ploy and they are quite aware that until the Kashmir dispute is solved India would never be able to achieve complete economic growth.Well the reasons of that will take an entire post and hence I won't dwell too much into that.Coming back to the point,I feel this could very well have been the handiwork of the ISI,a govt in itself,and the quintessential intelligence agency,ruthless and unscrupulous.

But if this was the case not only is it shameful and disgraceful but it also doesn't show Pakistan in good light.After all this isn't the right way to achieve development.But I guess with Pakistan nothing is unexpected.But I request you all not have any fallacies that I am Anti-Pakistan.I neither love nor detest Pakistan but I hate the Pakistani Govt and their ISI.After all I am not sure what happens to the Pakistanis,as long as they are ordinary citizens they love and respect our country but when these very individuals come to power they suddenly start hating our country and consider Kashmir to be an inalienable property of their nation.

Well now that it's obvious(and has always been) that nothing is immune to terrorist attacks it's time the government slashed the number of armed personnel deputed to our politicians,celebrities and corrupt bureaucrats and instead started dispatching them to reputed research and educational institutions in our country.But going by the kind of security provided to our University which IMHO is next only to IIT interms of Technical Excellence,the terrorists won't find it hard breaching our University walls.After all how long will it take to knock out a potbellied constable and a couple of security guards.

P.S:-Ever since our VC has come to power his primary aim has been to convert our campus into a fortess,immune to "western and unethical" activities.It would be advisable that he rather concentrated on making our campus impregnable to terrorists.

 

Let Better Sense Prevail.

2005 was a landmark year for the aircraft sector.The boom was unparalled.Arguably the stock market seems to be the only other entity that had a better year(excluding IT which has been having good time for past 2 years).New air carriers were launched.Aircrafts were bought and leased for record sum.

Indian Airline became Indian.Air Deccan had a new CEO.It has ordered 30 news aircrafts.Air India made a landmark order for 68 Boeing planes.

I just have one question to all these aircraft carriers and our aviation minister as well.What's the point in spending such humongous amounts of money when the aren't sufficient number of airports?And even those that exist are so ill equipped that most of the ordered aircraft could very well stay grounded.

Poor infrastructure has for long been the bane of the aviation industry.Not only India lacks proper infrastructure in several sectors and this is a perilious situation as proper and all round development is not possible in the absence of infrastructure.The primary reason for China's dominance today across all sectors and industries is its impeccable infrastructural capabilities.Whatever the industry,whatever the demands,the Chineese have always been upto task and have been diligent in ensuring the setting up of the required infrastructure.That's one of the few things that the Chineese govt seem to do well.But in India infrastructure is absolutely non existent.Gargantuan amounts are allocated by the government for establishing infrastructure but by the time the construction is complete only a minuscle proportion of it would have been put to real use and the rest of it would have filled the coffers of contractors and middle men.This doesn't mean the such corruption is non prevalent in China but it's quite minimal and the Chineese are renowned for their infrastructure.

So back to Airports.Here we have the Delhi Airport.The National Capital.Thousand's of passengers use this airport to go to different cities all over India and the world.However come winter,year after year after year,we hear the same story.Planes delayed,cancelled and grounded.And the poor innocent victims are the passengers.What makes it even harrowing for them is the callousness and lackadaisical approach of the aircraft carriers.People had hoped that things would change with greater privatisation and competition but the way it looks,govt or private,everyone seems to function the same way in our country.Well the private carriers put the blame on airport officials,but what are they doing.A person complain on NDTV that one gets to hear melodious music on calling Spice Jet but no one picks up the phone to answer the queries.Why the hell do these carriers give their helplines when they don't intend to answer the calls?

According to an article on ndtv.com Delhi airport has been equipped with the necessary equipment to deal with fog.The catch is that only Indian and Air India pilots are familiar with handling this technology.Consequently all private carriers are forced to cancel or reschedule their planes.Now I would like to know what were these carriers doing all this time.The carriers would obviously have known that fog would be a problem this winter and yet their pilots are ill-equipped to handle the same.

Merely starting a carrier and offering cheap fares isn't going to do the trick for these companies.They need be more sincere in serving their customers.They need to start caring for their passengers and should take adequate measures to arrange for their accommodation in case of delays.

I am not sure whether Mumbai is equipped to deal with fog.But I feel this perplexing that the propreitors of these carriers who are influential,rich and enjoy a clout in the echleons of power are unable to convince the government about the poor infrastructure prevalent in our airports.Government talks about privatisation of our airports and has floated tenders for different airports.But these tenders are mired in controversy and debate and the time these tenders take to get cleared are so long that one could very well build 10 airports in that period.

One can only hope that better sense prevails and that the government realises its folly and takes necessary damage control measures.I would also love to see privatisation of our airports at a faster pace and I request our communist comrades as well as the airports union to not raise a hue and cry on this matter.After all don't you people want to see airports in India equipped with state of the art facilities giving any international airport a run for their money.Any patriotic Indian would love to see that.Hope you guys don't differ.

 

The rot in our system

The parliament,yesterday,did something uncharacteristic.It decided to expel 10 of its MP's who were caught red-handed pocketing money to ask questions in the parliament.It was something unexpected.Not only were they swift in their response but also wise enough to expel the guilty legislators.But the legitimacy of this decision came into question as the speaker announced that these individuals could again contest polls.What are they actually trying to achieve?This is like dropping Ganguly and now bringing him back for the Pakistan Tour.

Well we should never have expected anything from these senseless bloodsuckers.Policians are corrupt.Period.There's no arguing about that.And the fact that politicians accepted money to ask questions in the parliament was the worst kept secret.During the 80's when license raj was in full force innumerable politicians cutting across party lines were on the pay rolls of different companies and their palms were regularly greased to ask questions and counter questions in the parliament.With liberalisation and reforms thing mellowed down a bit,yet,these politicians continued to recieve money for all sorts of deals and agreements.How else would you explain the wealth of the Maran clan related to Karunanithi.It's believed that Murasoli Maran used to pocket a hefty commission for every factory he permitted.Now all this is speculative as there is and will never be concrete evidence.

So the question arises that when all this was well known why hadn't anyone spoken about this earlier.Well the reason was that in the 80's and early 90's the press to was on the pay roll of these companies and the near total absence of the electronic media.But the advent of the millennium changed all that.With the no of news channels increasing by the minute media houses were forced to do something that would set them apart from all other channels.Tehelka brought the word "Sting Operation" into the Indian media's lexicon.India TV based their entire channel on these stings.But most of these stings concentrated on the perversive side of human beings and left a bad taste in the viewer's mouth.All other channels too have had their share of sting operations.But Operation Duryodhan carried out by Cobra Post and Aaj Takwas the biggest of them all,atleast the biggest after Tehelkas.Earlier stings had concentrated on corrupt police officers and bureaucrats.But this time they went for the politicians.Now whatever the channel might claim,they carried this out to increase their TRP ratings and they are justified to do so and in the process they thankfully brought some corrupt politicians to the book.

But was this enough??Certainly not.If one took a closer look,it would become apparent that the people accused are nothing more than small fishes in a huge ocean.They were out to make a quick buck and ended up getting caught in the process.It is also clear that Aaj Tak was clever and prudent to only target those in the opposition and not bribe someone from the congress.Had they done so they could very have put their channel and career on the line.We all know what happened to Tehelka after the defence scam.Instead of going after the corrupt officers and politicians the government embarked on a ruthless mission to destroy Tehelka and they almost succeeded in doing so.But thanks to some concerned well to do individuals,Tehelka today,is up and running as a newsweekly.Could Aaj Tak risk so much.Well they decided not to and went for the gullible.

So what choice did the parliament have?Not much.They could have ignored this and gone on as nothing had happened.That could have been the case had some congressmen been accused.But that was not the case and more than 5 of the accused were from BJP and the congress was no going to let go of this opportunity.And hence it decided to expel them.A committee headed by a congressmen decides to expel it.But in reality the congress had too many bones in its own cupboard to do too much and hence they most probably worked out a compromise with the BJP and other parties and offered both the stick and the carrot.Now whether the guilty politicians would again want to contest the elections is a different matter but they have atleast been given the opportunity to do so.

Hence what did the operation actually achieve.Nothing!!.The politicians were expelled but are again allowed to contest.So the net effect is zero,zilch,null.

What I would like to see is more such stings targeted at big wig politicians and bureaucrats.The fallacy with Bofors was that there wasn't any visual evidence.Everything was subjective.The same is the case with the Volcker controversy as well.Everything based on documents.We need concrete evidenc.Visual evidence is even better.We need to expose the rot at the top and only then can we hope for some changes.The way our media has been "stinging" the day isn't far away when some one of Vajpayee or Sonia Gandhi's stature is caught on camera.

 

A conundrum called Africa

Over the past 24 hours,I watched two movies.One was the Hotel Rwanda and Lord of War and .While the former was directly concerned with the African continent the latter was about arms export but dealt a lot with the African continent.

Watching these two movies made me think about the african continent.In the past I had heard a lot about the conflicts in Africa on news but had never paid much attention to the same.But these movie made me think and also forced me to do bit of searching.

This is what i found.There are 54 countries in Africa.Out of these nearly half the countries are involved in a war of some kind.There are nearly 9.5 million refugees.Confounding the matters is poverty,hunger and AIDS.Despite all these Africa is continuously ignored.

I searched further.I decided to concentrate on the wars alone.Some of the countries in conflict are
# Algeria
# Burundi
# Congo
# The Democratic Republic of Congo
# Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
# Eritrea/Ethiopia
# Liberia
# Nigeria
# Rwanda
# Sierra Leone
# Sudan
# Uganda
# Zimbabwe

Now onto the reasons why there are so many conflicts in these countries.Some say poverty,some say tribal disparities,others say dictators and despots.But for all these conflicts to take place don't we need arms and ammunitions to kill people,to maim them,to injure them??Who provides them with these.I did further researching.I had got a hint of it in the movies itself but I wanted to confirm it and what I found shocked me.

US,Russia,UK,Germany,France,China are the largest exporters of arms in the world.They legally export to several countries in this world including India but away from all the attention these countries seem to be the primary suppliers for all forms of conflicts in these world and Africa is their primary market.Now since they can't explicitly supply these countries with arms they do it through arms dealers and this is what Lord of war tries to potray.

It's even more ironical that these 5 countries are the permanent members of the UN security council.Isn't that funny.They claim that they intend to end these conflicts and yet it's their ammo that keeps these wars going on.

Massacares and genocides keep happening and yet these countries don't care.That's because it doesn't matter to them.Their people aren't affected.And it's profitable for them to keep these wars going.

And when things don't go their favour they decide to take matters into their own hand.It's only then that they decide to send their own countrymen into the battlefield.It happened Vietnam,Iraq,Afghanistan.And they do it in the name of freedom,democracy.What crap!!!

In such a scenario how the hell can we expect an end to all these conflicts.How the hell can such hypocrits represent the UN??As long as these affairs continue we can't expect anything extraordinary from the UN.We should never expect these conflicts to end and they probably never will.

There is only one place where I think we can turn to and that's GOD and even he seems to have a turned a blind eye to this great mystical continent.

A couple more links about import and exports of arms

10 Largest Exporters of Arms

10 Largest Importers of Arms