Blue Line and Red Eyes

Deli newspapers are ever ready to show red eyes to the Blue line bus services in Delhi and not without reason. The blue line bus services in Delhi which comprises all of public transport buses are almost like "Devil in the Blue Dress".... Between January and November this year the number of deaths caused by these buses is 106... 106 families have been shattered by these buses in less than a year. The government apparently has tried every trick to discipline these rogues... from insisting that the drivers wear uniforms, to speed monitors to automatic doors to lane driving. In fact this time I noticed that every major bus stop had a Marshall who was directing the blue line buses to stop at the right spot and not overtake... But these measures have not stopped fatal accidents as the records kept by newspapers in Delhi would show.

I am no fan of blue line buses and really do not care if they are there or not in as much as I do not care about Delhi autos, taxis call centre cabs and such likes which make Delhi roads like the jungles of sunderbans where the only operating principle is "might is right".

But I am amazed that a trasport which would end up killing 200 people in Delhi is being so horribly badmouthed by the media to the extent that every week teh delhi high court regularly enquires of the Delhi government as to when these services are going to be withdrawn.

Do not get me wrong, I am not heartless, but at 200 a year they do not even deserve mention in the annals of road accidents in Delhi where if I am not far off the mark over 1000 people die in road accidents every year... It would seem that bluelines are getting 100 per cent flak for 10 per cent of crime.. I would like to ask our friends in the media what is being done to save the lives o other 900 people who are not victims of blueline buses? Here are some other culprits:
1. Call centre drivers [you can ask anyone who drives to Gurgaon eveyday what they are scared of most, all of they would say call centre cars... Their record at killing and maiming is much much better than blue lines
2. Drunken and Rash driving... Culprits and victims are mostly young people with rich parents and big cars... what is being done to punish the parents of such youngsters?
3. MCD and NDMC: pathetic road signs, signals covered with trees, no signage at construction sites, no cleaning up after construction... and so many others.... cows on roads
4. Bikers, Cyclists and Jaywalkers: First category should know that Delhi roads are not for stunt practicces, the second should know that the inside lane is for fast vehicles not for cycles, and the third category should know that in cities roads are mainly meant for vechicles not for walking and crossing whereever you wish to

Till such time as we distribute the onus equally among other "stakeholders" let us at least be fair to blue lines and whenever you publish their score card please mention it as a part of total road deaths so that we can understand their responsibility in the right perspective. Thus: January to November 2007 Total Roaddeaths in Delhi 1000, total killed by Bluelines 106..... This will help up look at roaddeaths as well as blueline from a fresh perspective.

Disclaimer: I or any of my relatives to not own, operate or use any blueline services.

Crowded Skies and Timeless Travel

Air India's international flights were delayed by 24 hours and there was violence at the Delhi airport last weekend... that was the big news.. The bigger news of course is how the concept of crowded airports, low cost flights and overcrowded skies are combining to change the concept of time altogether in India. Take this example below
When I started flying before the start of so called railway passengers taking to wings, a flight to Mumbai from Delhi actually took 1:30 mins but the declared time was 1:55 mins... the exra twenty five minutes was time to taxi etc.... After two hours if a flight was late by 15 mins, you could see some of the older passengers getting uneasy and some younger people complaining about the sorry state of Indian Airlines [Indian Airlines and Jet take 5 minutes to travel Delhi Mumbai route even today 1:55 mins as oppsed to 2 hrs by all other airlines... I do not know why]........
But as I said, the concept of time itself has changed.... My much younger colleague who flying started post crowded skies, low cost airlines etc.... has a different concept of time altogether... The other day he was on a flight to Calicut from Delhi with a change and stopover to 1:40 mins in Mumbai. When he reached Calicut I enquired after his flight... He was all in praise for Jet Airways and told me in the passing that the Delhi Mumbai flight was only an hour late..... A two hour flight taking three hours is so normal that no one complains nowadays... I could not figure out why this change in us.
Is it because our inherent believe in fatalism, karma or some other tangential cultual experience? Probably not. It's probably those used to train travels have a differnt concept of late/delayed and when they take to flights they retain at least in the initial years of flying the same concept..... It is not surprising therefore that so few people in India complain about late flights and there are so few scuffles at airports... From my colleague's point of view one hour is no big deal since travelling to Calicut from Delhi by train would have taken him a week.....

Has this got to do something with the theory of relativity?

Hindustan Times

The Hindustan Times, arguably the largest circulated English language newspaper in Delhi has undergone some dramatic changes in the last few months. The regular readers would not have failed to note these changes. First it was the cricket led headlines evey day of the T20 championships, then there is a great page on "user generated content" the best one being "Your HT Your Photo" section. The general tenor of the newpaper now is peppier and happier and I assume it is trying to move away from stodgy old readers like me and move on to greener pastures, becoming the newspaper of the future, so to say. The Sunday edition especially in the post edit page has seen some drastic though not dramatic changes. Thankfully for us Vir Sanghvi still writes his liberal democratic columns and I guess most us oldies read it because of him [although he is now into cooking and lifestyle, he remains, I think along with Vinod Mehta, an old fashioned editor]. Regretfully, Karan Thapar is still there, writing about his daddy and mummy and all those he met through them. Manas Chakravarty has made an appearance as has Indrajit Hazra; the first makes economics easy for us and the second makes reading difficult for us, both of them bring some amount of pleasure.
However, overenthusiasm must be curbed at all costs, they do sometimes cost dearly and make a laughng stock of the paper. And here i am not talking about spelling errors but other interesting goof ups: Here are some: a) Cricket might be a passion of the country but not headline stuff every day even when a tournament is going on. b) circket leads to major goof ups like the one day after India won a match it had almost lost. The headlines read something like "India at the verge of loss", but India had won the match at night after the paper went to print and in the morning everyone had a good laugh. Just imagine what would have happened in a match where India snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. The headlines would have read "India at the verge of winning" and would have lost the match while the paper was in print. We would have read the headline and cursed the paper. c) The most interesting, the YOUR HT YOUR PHOTO Column carried the photo of a langur with a bold caption "your HT your photo"; Yeah I guess if I am still reading HT I must be a langur.
Running a newspaper in this day and age can be a monkey business afterall.
Jai Hind [the last word to be pronounced as in hindi not as in English:)]

Ram Setu or Hanuman Setu?

I have always wondered why I can't think straight. Believe me I have tried for many years to think straight but failed. Now I guess I am too old to even try.
There is a great debate going on in country at least it was on sometime back, between the secularists and religious fellows; between rationalists and those who believed in the power of the myths, between the north and the south, between those who belived in the power of cement and those in power of scriptures. These debates are nothing new in our vast country. In fact they are very common. This is what inspired Amartya Sen to write a tome called the The Argumentative Indian to much acclaim and which also I guess signalled the end of his career as an economist [nothing much is left in that discipline post Nobel prize and one needs to move on in life]
Be that as it may, what is important in India is the topic of the debate not the two sides [the two sides remain the same whatever the topic] And what is more important that the topic is the fact that there is a humongous effort the reduce any debate to two sides only by simplyfying, recalssifying the many other sides.
The current debate was on the benefits of dredging a piece of sea which was either built by Lord Rama [the pious kind who always doubted his wife] or by a stroke of nature; depending on which side of the debate you are on. Obviously, by common agreement, it was accepted that for the country it was more important to debate how the bridge [Google can help you locate the bridge or the sea depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist] came to be, rather than whether it was economically, socially and politically beneficial to dredge the piece of sea and make it navigable.
Was the bridge built by Lord Rama while on his way to Sri Lanka to kill the demon king Ravana? Or was it built at some geological time when the continent of India separated from the Island of Sri Lakna? The debate continues.
However, in spite of having an opinion on things I know and also things I do not know, I am unable to offer an opinion on this. Not because I want to sit onthe fence, nor because my head is somewhere and my heart somewhere else, not even because I am scared of being beaten up by either side. None of these.
But for the fact that the debators have got it all wrong once again. The debate should ideally have been on whether the bridge was built by nature or by hanumana [the monkey god much revered or as much revered as Lord Rama in certain parts of India]. If you go throught the Ramayana, it is clear that Rama caused the bridge to be built, he did not build the bridge. The bridge was built by Hanumana and his cousins. having reached the sea in hot pursuits, Rama simply took the decision to build the bridge [as anyone else in his place would have]. The full credit of building the Bridge must go to hanuman and his "associates". if you realign the debate thus, it would be interesting to see how many of the Ram supporters are ready to take up the cause of his trusted lieutenant Hanumana. My guess would be not many. Is that a better way to take the winds out of a good debate? Shall we wait for some hanuman fans [we would have all the kids on our side] to raise a hue and cry against Rama for getting all the credit?
While of course, the nature continues to do its work quietly on the far margins of this debate. One more tsunami, well targetted, we may have a six lane sand highway to Sri Lanka or a Palk Strait which can take the largest Oil Taker.