Let’s make India better!

Democracy is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people. Is it really working in India? It does not need a debate. Every common person will agree to that it is not. The current debate who should be the president is a classic example. The politicians that we have elected have an opposite perspective to the common man. More than 2 lakh people have voted on NDTV in favor of Dr Kalam. Close to 50% are in favor of Narayan Murthy or Dr Amartya Sen. Where as all the politicians want the sovereign power to be a person who will not be an impediment to their dirty politics. Is it really democracy?

We often hear about public interest litigations raised by several individuals and groups. I always wondered if I can do it and if I am eligible to do it as well. While I was searching for this information, I found couple of good links. From virtualpune:

What is a PIL?
Public Interest Litigation (PIL) - litigation for public interest. PIL was started to protect the fundamental rights of people who are poor, ignorant or in socially/economically disadvantaged position. It is different from ordinary litigation, in that it is not filed by one private person against another for the enforcement of a personal right. The presence of ‘public interest’ is important to file a PIL.

A PIL can be filed when the following conditions are fulfilled:

• There must be a public injury and public wrong caused by the wrongful act or omission of the state or public authority.
• It is for the enforcement of basic human rights of weaker sections of the community who are downtrodden, ignorant and whose fundamental and constitutional rights have been infringed.
• It must not be frivolous litigation by persons having vested interests.

Who may file a PIL?
The Supreme Court (SC), through its successive judgements has relaxed the strict rule of ‘locus standi’ applicable to private litigation.

Any person can file a PIL provided:

• He is a member of the public acting bona fide and having sufficient interest in instituting an action for redressal of public wrong or public injury.
• He is not a mere busy body or a meddlesome interloper.
• His action is not motivated by personal gain or any other oblique consideration.

How to file a PIL:
A PIL may be filed like a write petition. However, in the past the SC has treated even letters addressed to the court as PIL. In People’s Democratic union v Union of India, a letter addressed by the petitioner organization seeking a direction against the respondents for ensuring observance of the provisions of famous labour laws in relation to workmen employed in the construction work of projects connected with the Asian games was entertained as a PIL.
The SC has encouraged the filing of PIL for tackling issues related to environment, human rights etc.

Some more information is available at corecentre.org

India has immense potential for tourism. With all the disagreements and debates on the actual number, number of tourists in 2006 were approximately 4 million. The earnings from tourism is quoted as 5 billion USD. I am not sure if government includes business travelers in this number as well. I hope not!

It is also estimated that 60% of the tourism comes from North India. Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, UP(Agra) and Himachal Pradesh being one of the top states from North and Goa being the prominent one among all the states. There is so much untapped tourism market out there. North East, Southern India (Kerala being one exception), Lakshwadeep, Andman Nicobar and many more. They need some serious marketing and uplifting to become attactive tourism places. Tourism can be a real good boost to the economy and can feeed so many families. Government did increase the advertising budget to 65 crore ruppes. Is it good enough? Not sure. But we have started to seeing its effect. Below is the advertisement created by Madhya Pradesh (MP) Tourism Government. It is very interesting and fun to look at for sure!

In order to boost tourism, just the marketing is not enough. More number of airports need to be developed, more hotels need to be built and a better services industry need to emerge. According to the report at India Tourism site, Tamilnadu has the highest number of travel operators and agencies! I am very sure the number needs to grow by manyfold to grow the tourism pie. If the government provides the right infrastructure, the market economy will automatically create these travel operators and agencies.

Shaheen Mistri runs Akansha; a non-profit organization working towards improving the poor children’s lives. There is a great article about her and her dream, her Akanksha. The article is at rediff.

Something about Akanksha from the home page:
“The Akanksha Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to impact the lives of less privileged children, enabling them to maximise their potential and change their lives. Akanksha works primarily in the field of education, addressing non formal education through the Akanksha centre and also formal education by initiating school reform.

Over the past 15 years, the organization has expanded from 15 children in one centre to over 2,600 children in 51 centres in Mumbai and Pune, with an additional 2100 children in 10 schools. A commitment is made to support each child by giving him or her a strong educational foundation, a good time, self esteem and values, and to help them plan how they can earn a steady livelihood as a step towards improving their standard of living.”

I had the opportunity to meet Shaheen in Pune. My wife is interested in being part of Akanksha and she got an appointment with Shaheen. The sheer exuberance, confidence and the passion to do something for the kids was so obvious. We were swept by her dedication to reach out to as many under privileged kids as she can. Shaheen is not just trying to educate these children, but she is taking more holistic and practical approach to actually spread the model. She is trying to bring changes in the educational system that can help these kids. She told us that she is working with Anu Aga (Thermax Foundation) to run a municipal school.

I am sure few will disagree that good education and inculcating good values in our children is the key to a developed India. Of course we need many more Shaheen Mistris all over India. But what we can do to make our education system better? Any thoughts?

Support Akanksha and be part of a good cause!

I do not need a survey to claim that almost 100% of the folks are frustrated with the traffic woes in India. I have been to many cities and all the cities have this problem albeit of different magnitude. Pune probably has one of the worst and maximum traffic violators. Virtually no one respects red lights, one ways, lane culture, speeding and high beams.

Few months back, one of my friends in Pune took the protected left turn (For the uninitiated, left turns in India are mostly free - left side driving) and a cop stopped him. My friend accepted to pay the fine and then he saw many people jumping red lights. He pointed that to the cop and the cop responded that its fine to jump red lights as it eases the traffic jam!!! The traffic discipline needs to be inculcated in the citizens as well as cops.

My top traffic grievances:

a) Jumping Red Lights: I just feel like killing those folks who jump red lights or honk me from behind when I am waiting on a red light.

b) High Beam: Couple of days back, I was driving from Indore to Pune and it was dark on Jalgaon-Pune road. All the vehicles (Bikes, Cars, Jeeps, Trucks, Buses) were driving on high beam. When it is pitch dark and you are driving on single lane highway on a hill with these vehicles coming to you with a high-beam, it just blinds you. If you are not vigilant and active as an owl, you will bump into the vehicles in front of you. No one understands and respects this law of driving on low beam. These vehicles are creating situations for accident to happen. For heaven’s sake, drive on low-beam unless necessary!

c) Driving on the wrong lane: Driving in the wrong lane is not only dangerous for you but for the oncoming traffic as well. It irritates the hell out of me when I am waiting in my lane for the traffic to get cleared and there is one indica crosses me from the wrong lane to beat the traffic. My time is as precious as the next person. Respect traffic, respect other people on the road and follow the lane discipline. It will not only clear the traffic jam quickly but also reduce accidents.

d) Two bikers driving side by side at 30kmph and gossiping on the road: I am very sure you have witnessed this camaraderie on the road. Two bikers going side by side on a road with 30kmph speed and covering the whole road. If you honk, they will give you a stare as if you are tress-passing their property! Be little aware and responsible while you are on the road.

e) Disrespecting one ways: One ways have been created for a purpose. It is to make our commute better. If we our-self abuse it, the whole purpose of one way is lost! I was cruising on NH4 from Bangalore to Chennai (part of golden quadrilateral) at 100+kmph in the rightmost fastest lane and suddenly I saw a guy(wearing a lungi but thats immaterial) on a bike with 100 odd plastic bottles on the back driving towards me! It scared the shit out of me and I had to shift to a left lane in fraction of a second. When I saw in my rear view mirror, that guy was actually shouting at me! Golden quadrilateral has cost the tax payers a fortune. Lets use it in the right way to maximize the return on its investment.

f) Parking at the turns: You do not have to be Einstein to understand that parking vehicles at turns create problems for the other vehicles. The turning radius increases and the vehicle taking the turn can not see if other vehicle is coming from the opposite direction. Be little understanding and park away from the turns in the designated parking spots.

Solution For Traffic Problems:
In my humble opinion, the traffic laws enforcement is very week. That’s why people have utter disrespect for the laws. They know if they violate a red-light, they will get away with paying 50-100 bucks as against to 200-500 bucks which is the actual fine. What if the actual fine is 2000 or 3000? Would not the cop ask for at least 500 rs in bribe to let the culprit free? If an auto driver has to pay 500 bucks for the traffic violation, he will think twice before jumping red-light. If the cop has a potential to make 500 bucks (thought with corruption), he will be more vigilant to catch these violators.

Another initiative to tighten the law enforcement can be that each traffic inspector needs to generate x amount of revenues in traffic fines every month. This will make them more vigilant and improve the law enforcement. May be these cops can get 25% of the excess fines collected as bonus every month. It will not only improve the traffic in cities, but also decrease corruption, increase taxes (as cops make more white money) and reduce traffic delays and frustrations!

We all need to understand that a driving license is a privilege and a responsibility and not a license to be disrespectful and threat to others.

Bangalore - Bengaluru, Madras-Chennai, Bombay-Mumbai, Calcutta-Kolkata.. How significant is the name change? What is it’s positive impact on the city and its people?

Trivandrum became Thiruvananthapuram during the United Democratic Front’s rule in 1991
Bombay became Mumbai during Shiv Sena’s rule in 1995
Madras became Chennai during the DMK’s rule in 1996
Calcutta became Kolkata during the Left Front rule in 2001

The whole name change exercise involves crores of tax payers money! All the sign boards, government and private forms, notices need to be replaced and tenders of crores of money are opened. All this money is spent without a direct or indirect benefit to the citizen’s life. The money that can be invested into city’s infrastructure to make the citizen’s life better. That precious tax payers money, yours and my money goes into the hands of corrupt politicians, their friends and family. It just makes these good-for-nothing politicians better off by increasing their excess pile of money and probably some more votes to their kitty. We keep using the old names. I know my friends from “Kolkata” still prefer to address it as Calcutta, “Mumbai” is still Bombay for the people who have been living there for ages, Madras will never be Chennai for all the inhabitants. Do we really not have any checks and balances into our system to prevent such abuse of our money?

Taking cue from such easy way to dupe citizens and steal the tax payers money, many more name changes are the pipeline: Indore-Indur, Bhopal-Bhojpaland even more karnataka cities like Mysore, Belgam, Mangalore etc.

Other links on the same topic:
Rediff blog
outlook india article

Manjunath’s murderers were convicted yesterday. After a 18 months struggle, the court convicted all 8 culprits. Now the Indian judiciary will do its magic! The accused will milk the inefficiency of the Indian judiciary. The judgement will be challenged in the higher courts and it will be a long time before the culprits are actually punished.

The Great Indian Dream talks about the inefficiency of our judiciary and I quote, “Such a judiciary helps the unjust have complete control over the lives of vulnerable citizens”. The Naked Economics also makes fun of Indian judiciary. It mentions a case where it took 39 years for a case hearing and both the parties were dead. Another innocent person released from the jail after waiting for 37 years to be tried for murder charges. One more example of the delays in judgement is that of Bombay bomb blasts accused. It took more than 12 years for them to get convicted and they haven’t been punished!

The procedural delays in our judiciary are insurmountable. We must invest money to have much more courts and judges. USA has 10 times the judges per million population compared with India. A dysfunctional judiciary fosters crime and corruption. It is one of the pillars to have a successful democracy and it MUST be taken care of.

It’s been more than year when Manjunath was murdered by Oil mafia of UP. The court hearing is supposed to be today. The media kept running the Bob Woolmer story, the “The Namesake” making and other stories but did not give enough air time to the hero who fought for the justice and gave his life. Should not we (and the media) be more responsible, empathetic and concerned for our heroes?

Here is a blog dedicated to Manjunath and his bravery.

Links to more stories on Manjunath murder -
Manjunath inspected Mittals Petrol Pump the day he was killed
Manjunath murder
Manjunath case verdict on March 23, 2007