Where is the bailout package for employees?

Governments have rushed into saving complacent and greedy Investment Banks and Housing Giants who were trying to make merry on wide spreads on sub-prime credits. However, nowhere have we seen measures being taken to save employees being sacked from these as well as other directly or indirectly affected organisations. Targets are usually the newest employees on board who had no or the littlemost role to play in there failures. Is it not the job of the government to protect them by ways of passing extraordinary legislations which shall make these organisations pay dearly before sacking them?

eRTI: What, When and How

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Unwasting Life

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Green Fuels, Inflation, Pollution: What is the right mix?

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Delhi Roads - Making them Safe

Travelling to work everyday, I keep wondering what's more important - Better infrastructure or more efficient management of the one that exists. A recently published study from CRRI has indicated that Delhi wastes Rs 1000.0 Crore a year (at October 2005 fuel prices!!!) by not switching off their vehicles at Traffic Signals. I think of it as a smart headline because -though an individual might be able to save only a hundred bucks but the sense of contributing towards a saving of thousand crore (see how big it is -> 10,000,000,000.00) for the car-city would definitely enchant him to try this out. In fact, in my bike days (and that was almost 7 years ago), I did this to yield a more than 10% extra mileage. And if you believe that today's traffic situation would give a better yield for same measure, then check it out today itself. However, it is silent on the fuel lost in jams where riders don't have the choice of switching off their vehicles.

Great study! However, this leads me to another thought -which the study has failed to capture. Delhi (and lots of other cities) is developing city roads, transport systems etc aggressively. If we try to recall construction of flyovers on Ring road during mid-to-late nineties, chaos around those flyovers' sites are similar to that around today's construction sites. This implies that authorities have refused to capitalise on their experiences of the past to roll out better solutions today. There might be exceptions (one clearly is DMRC -which has consistently endeavored to reduce pain for traffic system, in a very dynamic manner).

Mental Agony: A vast majority people lose precious time on account of these jams and apart from fuel losses, a lot of frustration builds up at such times in them leading to road rage incidents and sometimes accidents. One can immediately relate to the Bluelines(DTC) here. Implication: The road accidents and the resulting losses are due to bad roads and not solely the callousness of the people behind the wheels i.e. the behaviour is induced or I'd say people are being insinuated. Ofcourse, we can't attribute all accidents to this but a small percentage definitely.

Safety Guidelines: All road and related construction work has to follow guidelines of MORTH(Ministry of Shipping, Road Transport and Highways), which states that any construction site must arrange for proper diversion of traffic passing through that area. Assessment of the same is left to subjective assessment of supervisory body. Here lies the catch. Culprit is in the system engaged in developing the infrastructure. And this leads us to a catch-22 situation. We cannot stop these people from working or we shall be left with no one to carry out the works.

Solution: I feel that it is time for some introspection. I am dedicating a new blog (Road to safe Roads) to solutions related to road infrastructure problems whereby my dear readers would be invited to share their thoughts to make transport systems in Delhi and other places better. Nonetheless, I have some thoughts to share on this problem. Here they come:Privatisation of Road safety: Lets think of a stretch of road e.g. Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway - It is one of the privatised highways in terms of construction, operation and maintenance. If government were to go ahead and allot safety of the road to private parties whereby a fixed sum was assured to the contractor for ensuring safety of drivers and penalise him for every mishap with different penalties tagged to different incidents with a huge loss for every death. Incentive to not loose money would be huge here and the party shall try to bring in as many disciplinary measures to streamline traffic flow and reduce mishaps. Throw in couple of more covenants related to customer satisfaction and we might end up having the most disciplined traffic system in the world. Technology would be cutting edge and fuel saving immense.

Road to safe Roads: I would like to discuss many more themes in the new Blog related to infrastructure including reducing road rage, improving city fuel efficiency etc.

How soon can I see this: Ofcourse, this cannot be done overnight. Nor will it happen lest if finds the right takers (I found some here.). I am trying to find ways for the same . And as my welcome post says, suggestions and participation are welcome. Also, I invite you to participate in related polls to this post to ascertain my views.

Au revoir!

Related links: DTC, DTP(P is for police, there's a link for suggestions too), Road reviews (hope he rides Delhi roads and present his analysis soon)

Will my surrounding get any greener?

Every urban dweller asks this to oneself everyday. Efforts, obviously are on. Solar, Wind, Biofuel and other means to GREEN the mechanics of running the world are bearing fruits albeit in a fraction of the quantum one'd want it to.

This page will try to identify the quantum of these developments and collate such info at one place.

Modus operandi: Track the latest happenings, discuss the same and quantify overall. Ideas on means to green shall be debated.

Suggestions welcome.