It has been a while since I have been in Bangalore for a reasonable duration. It was Chennai during Dec-Jan. A nice trip to Vishakapatnam (I would highly recommend that town, go forth and move there and make it another Bangalore, please...), Orissa and then longish trips to Lucknow, Kanpur and a brief but nice stop in Goa on the way back.
Something has changed in Bangalore. It seems to be getting better. Am in a dream? Or is it that as further time has elapsed since my regular agony of commuting through Hosur road to Electronic City I seem to be in a better mood in general to deal with Bangalore traffic?
Day before I had to drop someone to the railway station at 8 in the evening. Peak hour. But it took only 35 minutes for the 12 kms! Amazing isn't it? H.D.Kumaraswamy is making all the right noises of hauling up the recalcitrant bureaucracy, is he really serious about it? Is it showing effect?... I am still not able to believe this...
Well it is not an isolated case. For all the hype about the turn around of the Indian Railways, it does seem really true. I have been using the railways heavily in the recent past. I had shuddered to think of traveling in sleeper class to the badlands of UP. But it was indeed not so unpleasant. Trains run reasonably on time (The Farakkah Express was only 4 hours late, it was usually expected to be around 12 hours, so massive progress there). The food from the pantry car is actually hygienic and tastes reasonable. I did not fall sick after having more than 10 railway meals in a span of a week. I was stunned when the fellow from the pantry car came to me with a feedback form! The stations are clean. What is going on?
Are we seeing a new vigour in public administration or am I just day dreaming?
4 comments:
OMG, you took Farakka express to commute. My impression for it - its one pain of a train which takes ages to go from NDLS to LKO and so on. There are better options, if you were not planning to get down at one of those unknown stations where it stops.
And I am also wondering at your being happy with 4hrs delay. I hope it was sarcastic. But you are right, Farakka late by just 4 hrs is improvement, though it has got so much of buffer (to pass faster trains), it should always run ontime.
And btw, I was there in Lucknow and around last week.
~Mks
I do not agree with your observations on Bangalore and even if it has improved it must be at the expense of some basic hygiene or road improvement program that could have been benefited a more deserving population. The techies have created this problem by buying cars and driving them all at the same time to work on Hosur road. I am yet to see any meaningful carpool program in place at any of these "futuristic" companies.If fact, I often feel that depriving infrastructure to Bangalore is not a bad thing. On the other hand, I am very impressed with the railways. I had an opportunity to read the Railway Budget 2007-08.
Lalu is talking a lot of market economics and sound business decisions. He mentions things like SLAs .. unheard of in the Indian public service context.. I think he is onto something big with the railways. This is a great effort to lift the railways from the quagmire of socialist thought and professionalize it to serve the public in a market facing way. On another note, I have been commuting between New Jersey and Stamford, CT on a regular basis on Amtrak. The train was always late except on 1 or 2 occasions. What makes the diference between Indian Raliways and Amtrak is that there is communication between the driver and the passengers.. on one occasionthe driver told a stranded bunch of commuters that this train needs to be "rebooted" and we were waiting for the "boot up" for well over 30 min. All of you should read the IR budget. It is an excellent document without any major spin and has Lalus flavor (with his poetry) sprinkled in great measure. Please visti the following link http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/Budget-2007/budget0708.htm
I disagree with you Swami -
1. if it has improved it must be at the expense of some basic hygiene or road improvement program that could have been benefited a more deserving population
Let's stop being socialist please, money is taken away here from people who can "generate" on the same arguments as given above and it fails to reach the deserving population, we have a 60 years history in that. Lets try to agree on the point that both the things need money and none of them can take lower priority. You can't stop building (better) roads, and yes you can't stop giving opportunity to people who are not that lucky. And unfortunately we are not so successful on both fronts. With that understanding I find your statement not appropriate. Lets also understand that there is no alternative for better roads and infrastructure, it helps in the growth of all sections of the society.
2. The techies have created this problem by buying cars
You can't stop techies from buying car. No, that's not practical. If we expect/ask people to stop buying automobiles like that the whole auto industry will go for spin.
The poor roads are just not meant for this growth. Take the road to Electronic City for example, statistics says that the road is currently handling 1.5 times the number of vehicles it can handle. It can handle some 80 to 100 thousand passenger car units only. What was required was widening of the road and additional access roads to Electronic City to take the load away, which is somehow happening now.
~mks
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