Politics over principles characterises India: Shashi Tharoor

09/15/08 16:19 - mcadambi

Indian politics is essentially debate over principles unlike developed country politics:

"The French political scientist Maurice Duverger once explained that politics in India involves conflict over basic principles and in Britain, conflict over subsidiary principles, whereas in the US, party politics amounts to a conflict without principles. For both parties agree on most things: liberal democracy, free-enterprise capitalism, low taxes and superpower status abroad."

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Mahadevapura/Whitefield Development Task Force - Update and Next Meeting

09/15/08 09:26 - rithesh

(See this related Post) Mr R.K. Mishra is actively working on solving the issues related to Whitefield and Mahadevepura region. Accordingly a task force has been setup with the help of the local MLA Mr Arvind Limbavali (Hon. Minister for Higher education). Following are the minutes of the 2nd meeting that the task force had recently (7th September).

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Effective use of RTI

09/15/08 07:53 - murali772

When Ravindranath first saw the irregularities, he started investigating and found that the buildings did not have occupancy certificates . "But the trade licences were given by the BBMP's health department. When I informed the authorities, they were not bothered. So I took up the issue through RTI and approached the KIC. Following the KIC order in May 2007, the three commercial complexes have been closed down and sealed," he explains. For more

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The Cheap Volvo ride coincidence

09/15/08 07:36 - murali772

The travel in the BMTC’s prestigious Volvo air-conditioned buses for just Re 1 from one point to another point in the city for four days is seen as a gesture by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government to celebrate its completion of 100 days in office. But not many people know that it was a gimmick. It is believed that the gesture was intended to benefit the participants of the three-day national executive meet of the ruling party in the State. The Re 1 travel did help many commuters, who find the rates otherwise unaffordable.

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Probing public transport stats for Bangalore

09/15/08 04:42 - silkboard

Last we heard (Mr Sharif may have told TOI), BMTC said that public transport accounts for 48% of trips in the city. Another stat from Ministry of Urban Development had put public transport's share in Bangalore to about 35%. So, there we have, a range of 35% to 48%, and we know that in Bangalore, public transport virtually equals BMTC.

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'Jaago Re! One Billion Votes' from Janaagraha and Tata Tea

09/15/08 03:08 - silkboard

Got this on Janaagraha's email group. worth posting, and nice initiative.

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Metro shoddy too?

09/13/08 04:56 - idontspam

They have dumbed down the metro stations originally to make it look straight out of a village. Maybe BMRC is also taking us for a ride. (see the two images)

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Need study for metro projects

09/14/08 03:38 - blrsri

We have seen many projects which are very ill conceived and never catering to the actual needs. These more to satisfy interests of few people!

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Urban transportation - addressable market size: how big?

09/12/08 06:05 - silkboard

I had asked this question at the TransInnova/ BMLTA summit yesterday, and didn't get a good answer, most likely because nobody had a number handy. Local urban transportation is a "problem", and problem equals "opportunity". Why is it that private players are not taking enough interest in lobbying to get access to this market? Policy hurdles would be one reason, but I am curious if the size of the market is being underestimated here. Lets do some numbers, simple and basic.

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Practical governance - need of the hour!

09/12/08 04:42 - nijavaada

We've all been evidence to this. All of us might have stumbled upon this at some point of time.

India is a union of linguistically formed states, and hence governance in India is a matter of managing people of different languages/identities. Even though these remain written truths, there're subtle ways in which our identities have been forcibly compromised with, and attempts to mask various identities under one off identity have been made almost everywhere in the past 61 years of India's existence.

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