Celebrating Bengaluru's Namma Metro

The way we (Bengalureans) are celebrating the opening of the full stretch of the East-West corridor just shows how frustrated we are about the traffic. It was inaugurated on March 29, and it was thrown open to the public the next day.

Finally, the bogies are running to packed capacity. Not surprising, considering it runs across around 18 km from one end of the city to the other end, touching key spots like Indiranagar, M G Road, Vidhana Soudha, City Raiway Station etc. It's also proving to be a good feeder service for the Indian Railway and Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation,

I only wish the remaining portions of the Phase I are also completed as quickly as possible. The government has said that it will be over by November 1. That would mean the North-South Corridor also be fully functional. And a good segment of the fledgling city will be covered.

Mercifully there are fewer protests against the Metro now, compared to the run-up to the completion of the very first segment from Baiyappanahalli to MG Road, which was inaugurated on October 20, 2011.

After so much dithering and long discussion on the pros and cons of having a metro, the detailed project report was submitted in 2003, work should have begun in 2005, but the final clearance in the form of Union cabinet approval came only in 2006. Then, followed endless protests and court cases. And for the construction of mere 6 km stretch of railway it took five years! Not that it could be done in a jiffy. But lots of time and money was needlessly wasted. Delay means cost escalation.

After the first phase was inaugurated, there was much less protests. Probably, many people understood that the metro is after all good for the people.

But still there are vested and selfish people stalling the project, on some silly issue or the other. Like, who should decide how many trees should be cut.

When we all know that the metro has to come one day or the other, why don't we get the thing up and running fast?

Names of cities haven't changed

From November 1, Bangalore is written in all English communication as Bengaluru.

Besides the capital city, 11 other cities too have dropped their English names for the actual name.

They are: Mangalore to Mangaluru, Bellary to Ballari, Bijapur to Vijayapura, Belgaum to Belagavi, Chikamagalur to Chikkamagaluru, Gulbarga to Kalaburagi, Mysore to Mysuru, Hospet to Hosapete, Shimoga to Shivamogga, Hubli to Hubballi and Tumkur to Tumakuru.

I doubt, how right it's to say that the names of the cities have changed. The cities are in Karnataka, and they have always been known by their local Kannada names. In Kannada, no one said Bangalore. All India Radio always said Bengaluru and Mysuru. Kannada newspapers have always written Bengaluru. So, too government communications and signboards in Kannada.

Thanks to our British rulers, officially the cities were referred to in English by their Anglicised versions. Now, the government has issued a gazette notification saying officially too the cities will be known by their actual names.

More precisely, post-November 1 in English communication too, the names of the cities will be known by their local original names.

The names of the cities haven't changed, have they?

Similar was the case of when Madras became Chennai or Calcutta became Kolkata or Trivandrum became Thiruvananthapuram.

The name of the city was and is Chennai. The British in their English communication called the city Madras. Just because many people referred to the city as Madras didn't mean the name of the city was Madras. So is the case with Thiruvananthapuram, or Kochi or Kolkata.

So, let's get this right -- the names of cities don't change. What changes is the way the city is referred to in English.

Involve entrepreneurs to solve Bangalore's garbage problem

Waste disposal has become a major issue in Bangalore. Every year once or twice the issue hits headlines with people residing in areas near the landfills complaining of health hazards, and refusing to let garbage trucks into their areas.

Only a few days ago the government managed to pacify the people of Mandur in Bangalore outskirts, who were on a protest, resulting in garbage piling up all over the city.

It's not that there are no solutions. But there are many extraneous issues related to land that are thwarting attempts to implement a solution. All advanced cities around the world have adopted mechanical processes to either harmlessly incenerate the waste or turn waste into organic manure.

There is also lack of determination to look for solution and make them work. Deccan Herald has an article today on how an entrepreneur is running 170 Organic Waste Converters. One of the converters in Jayanagar, sold to the city corporation, is maintained by this entrepreneur Narendra Babu. The people of the area are  helping him to keep it going.

So it'sn't that there are no solutions. Taking a cue from the good work done by this entrepreneur, the government must get private players and citizens involved in the process. Such OWCs can be set up at various locations and a self-sustaining model devised to have the manure distributed. A win-win solution that is crying out for adoption.

It's an irony that a city like Bangalore, which has a huge number of innovators and entrepreneurs, doesn't have an effective way of handling waste.

A political rally with a difference

Political party rallies aren't very different from one another, barring the party that organizes them. There are huge crowds; and an implicit assumption is that they have been hired, brought by the volunteers from neighbourhood villages and towns for a price. Speakers portray themselves as saviours of the poor and downtrodden while tearing into their opponents. Speeches dissolve into bland political rhetoric, notwithstanding the speakers' high vocal pitch and oratorical theatrics; finally everything sounding like pots calling the kettles black.

Today, I went for the Aam Aadmi Party's public meeting at Freedom Park, Bangalore. It was a political rally with a number of differences.

I reached the venue at 3 pm. There was a fairly a good crowd. At a booth near the entrance, one could pick up the AAP caps. They were for free, but the organizers expected a contribution -- of any amount -- towards the party. One could also register as a volunteer or even formally join the party. I made my way towards the podium, through the crowd, with some difficulty. I noticed that there was a barricade separating the audience -- women who had come alone or along with men, and senior citizens on one side; and men on the other side.

The composition of the crowd stood out. They were definitely not brought to the town from neighbourhood villages. No one paid them. But on the contrary, the members of the audience had offered whatever they could to the party's kitty. The audience comprised middle class and upper middle class people in the 25 to 40 age group. But there was a significant number of elderly people as well. Definitely not the ones who would normally go to such rallies, they were the new breed political followers who were evidently attracted by the pitch of the greenhorn party.

The huge crowd of young middle class and upper middle class people who had come to the AAP rally in Bangalore 

The atmosphere was festive. It made me feel as if I was at some college reunion or some youth festival. On the stage were youngsters with musical instruments like drums, keyboard and violin, playing well-known patriotic songs and a few ones composed by the party's lyricists mocking the current political culture. The rhythmic numbers and the young lady moderator's exhortations steadily electrified the atmosphere, with the crowd continually breaking into handclap and loud cheers. There was also a performance of "broom dance": a few young men and women doing an amateurish jig with brooms in their hands, and a song resonating with AAP theme playing in the background.

The podium wasn't covered. Obviously, since the party doesn't have the money to get an ornamental pandal and decorations. Everyone was sitting in hot (by Bangalore standards) sun.

At 4.10 pm, Arvind Kejriwal arrived to a thunderous applause and cheers of the crowd that had swollen to huge numbers by then. The AAP candidates were introduced to the crowd and there were speeches by a number of people, including a 96-year old person, Doraiswamy, if I remember the name right. He spoke so vociferously and passionately on the state of the nation lamenting the lack of progress even after decades of independence from the British. A former career diplomat, who resigned after the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition, too spoke, singing paeans to Kejriwal's dream of a new India.

Around 4.45 pm Kejriwal began speaking. It was the usual tirade against Congress, BJP, Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and many others of both the national parties, besides Mukesh Ambani. Most of the attack was targeted against Modi, since he is tipped to the next prime minister going by multiple opinion polls. He read out names of many politicians of the BJP and the Congress who were allegedly involved in corrupt deals. He kept asking why Modi had to have people involved in dubious backgrounds in his ministry or in the party.

Arvind Kejriwal addressing AAP's Bangalore rally

He said he would consider himself fortunate if he had to lay down his life for the country. Mocking Modi for looking for a safe seat, he said if the party decides, he would contest against Modi in Varanasi. The speech went on for close to an hour. There were constant cheers on the lines of "Kejriwal, we are with you!".

This was definitely a political rally with a difference; at least for the following reasons:

• The type of crowd, comprising young, educated middle class and upper middle class people. 
• The lack of any decorations at the venue. There was no shade or even chairs on the the podium.
• The festive atmosphere, with music, songs and dance.
• The determination of speakers to plough a new and different track in India's political discourse. 
• Speeches free of old rhetoric of freeing the country from poverty, a staple of usual political speeches; 
• Projection of common man's problems as the most pertinent political theme. 

AAP's ideals sound noble. They reflect the frustration and disappointments of common people. Kejriwal seems to be a good leader, is a good speaker and knows how to steer political agendas. He has positioned himself as a politician with a difference; and AAP as a political party with a difference.

But the challenges before Kejriwal and AAP are huge. Because they are not fighting an issue or two. They are taking on an entire system which has run the country all these years, and to which we all have got used to.

Not many realise that this is a challenge not just for Kejriwal and AAP but for all the common people too, since they all will have to get used to a new system crafted by Kejriwal and AAP. Fired-up party leaders may be ready for the required sacrifice, but are the common people ready for that sacrifice?

Only time will tell, but surely, a beginning has been made -- a beginning that will, for sure, have a bearing on the results of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Bangalore's voter apathy

(Crossposted from Kaleidoscope)

Many feared that the voter turnout in Bangalore city had plummeted to a new low yesterday. But the figures put out by the Election Commission paint a different picture. A little more than half the city voted, 52.8 percent, five percent more than the 2008 turnout. But Bangalore Urban continued to record the lowest turnout among the 30 districts in the state.

I don't find anything surprising in many city dwellers shying away from exercising their franchise. There are many reasons why voting isn't a priority for them. 
One is the general cynicism about politicians and the system they operate in. Many people don't believe that merely voting will bring about any change in the society. They argue that the changes they are desperately looking for are apolitical development-related ones, like infrastructure; and accountability of public servants. These are in no way related to political ideologies; and many feel politicians have collectively failed to do the least that is expected of them.

There’s no choice either. Most candidates fall far short of minimum expectations. Politicians hardly inspire. There are so many cases of lawmakers turning into lawbreakers. There are honest, educated politicians with good credentials who are committed to bringing about quality changes in society. 

But they are a very small minority. Besides, we have many examples of such well-meaning public servants being beaten back by the system.

All parties finally turn out the same. No party has acted in a way that inspires when it comes to, for example, corruption allegations against one of its men.

There are also many reasons why village and small-town residents are less cynical. One, there is lesser disconnect between them and politicians. Two, their expectations are fewer. Three, when it comes to voting, the "herd mentality" works to some extent in small towns and not in cosmopolitan areas like Bangalore where people are individualistic in their thoughts and actions.

Having said all these, did I vote yesterday? Yes, I did. Was the choice easy? No, not at all. But the process was.

I thought if most politicians shun their part of the work, should I shun mine too? Voting is the easiest part in the democratic setup. I didn’t want to fare poorer than most politicians.