less government

murali772 - 29-DEC-2007

Economic Times has invited its readers to state what their dream for the state would be. My response was that I dream of a state with the babudom reduced to such an extent that half of Vidhan Soudha (and, of course, the entire Vikas Soudha) itself gets rented out.

SEC's muddle

murali772 - 12-DEC-2007

Isn't it time that as important a task as preparation and maintenance of the electoral roles (and issuance of EPID cards), on which the success of the entire governance system rests, is out-sourced to professional agencies?

Following sarkaari projects

silkboard - 18-NOV-2007

How would you like the ability to watch and follow all work that our local governments do? All concerned citizens want it. A lot of work needs to happen though to make such a thing possible. Fancy websites for bodies like BBMP and BMRC are only the face, there need to be internal government systems to store and expose the information about their workings. And then you need easy to use tools that sarkaari babus and engineers would use to enter information into these systems.

Forget the technicalities for a moment. What we want is this. Tender gets floated for a work, we see it. We should then see all the bids, and the winner. And then on, the status and progress of work. Last, after the work gets completed, the details of how it was signed off as completed or successful.

Biometrics: The future is here ...

tsubba - 30-OCT-2007

... but the past wont let go.

In the land of benaami khatas, multiple registrations, school certificates, drivers licences and other sundry scandals, a government initiative to use biometrics to pin a person to his identity, has stirred the shackles of citizen groups and raises important questions about identity and the sanctity of personal space.

Website Reviews

tsubba - 18-OCT-2007

Please post your reviews of the various Bangalore websites in this forum.

Choked Bangalore - Heart of the matter?

silkboard - 23-SEP-2007

The best piece of news I have heard this month came last week. It goes "BBMP to book crook engineers". Its something we all know and suspect to be true for ever now, and the plan to break the so called 'nexus' is ambitious:

"BBMP will book the engineers of the erstwhile CMCs and TMC who have sanctioned projects on storm water drains, valleys, in agricultural lands etc. ... Taking a serious note of rampant violation of zoning regulations and building bylaws, the BBMP ... will trace these officials ... and recommend action against them ... In the wake of demolitions being carried out across the city, the BBMP has stumbled on several cases where engineers have encouraged encroachments in exchange for kickbacks running into lakhs of rupees."

Not that we haven't heard similar language before, but there is an interesting twist to BBMP's threat this time.

Your property tax for 2005 ...

silkboard - 3-SEP-2007

... is due! Spotted an interesting BBMP tender that tells us that you could very soon find letters like that in mail.

"BBMP requires services ... to extract data, print Demand/Collection/Balance notices of owners of the Properties in BBMP area ... for the fiscal year 2005"

Further details of scope of this work tells you a bit about the level of computerization at BBMP's end:

Date: whats the point?

silkboard - 23-AUG-2007

What is that? A board proudly displaying information about a public project at Marathahalli. [flickr-photo:id=1210640454,size=m] Work detail says: "construction of approaches to road over bridge". Does that include the bridge work as well, or only the approach roads? Where does the approach road start, and end?

Bangalore Encroached II

tsubba - 19-AUG-2007

Some insider stories, some disturbing questions, and a few happy trends for public participation and accessible governance.

Letters to editors and letters from readers

silkboard - 17-AUG-2007

I read at least two newspapers everyday, and one feature I like is - letters to editor. Sometimes, you also hear of 'success stories' (like Nisho's about an open drain) resulting from these letters.

Well, I am a fan of this reality-TV like content. If you ask me, newspapers can chose to go the rediff way (have you seen their news article based bulletin boards?) and start having an extra page full of these letters from readers. Yes that will sell well :) But actually, I read these letters - especially the ones that complain about a local service or public amenity - because they put me in these chains of thoughts: