A trip to Bangalore

What do I do all of a sudden I had to travel to Bangalore for a day. I had to shell a sweet 1100 for my to and fro expenses apart from about Rs 400 as sundry expenses. This time, I did notice some differences during my travel.

First of all, in this era of Privatisation, the more you pay, the better service you will get. I started from Chennai on Sunday night by 11.00 from the Koyambedu private bus stand. It was a volva bus and it reached Bangalore private bus stand by 5.30 in the morning. In about six and half Hrs, it has taken us more than 350 Kms. As I reached there after a fairly good sleep in a semi-sleeper seat in a AC bus together with a woolen blanket, I didn't feel like having travelled 350 Kms. The opening of privatisation has given the Indian railways too a run for their money. Else, would they have any time thought of introducing a train like Sathabdi. I boarded the training by 6.00 in the morning and by 10.55 it was in Chennai. The train was amazingly punctual at te only stop in between Bangalore City Junction and Chennai Central. It reached there at 8.58 and started exactly at 9.00 from there. For someone who is used to seeing trains coming atleast half and hour to one and half an hours late, this is very unusaul. But these doesn't come cheap. The to and fro journey costed me 570 + 530 = a sweet 1100 Rs.

Apart from the difference in climate and the language, the other thing I could see was the obvious differences in bus fares. When it is fairly cheap in Chennai, it is pretty costly in Bangalore. If you are taking couple of buses to commute in Bangalore, the to and fro journey would easily cost 40 Rs. I think such a high cost mass transport and high petrol cost would effectively keep away lower middle class families out of Bangalore.

Whom do you expect to meet when you are travelling from Bangalore to Chennai in Sadhapthi. I was expecting a guy from the software indusry or someone working in a Bank or a grade I office in state or central Government. Strangely, I met a guy who is a creative writer working in an adverticement company. This guy was a chartered accountant by profession. But he told me that he is very passionate about advertising that he switched career and is now in advertising. His job is to write scripts for advertisements in visual media -print and TV commersials. I had nice time chatting with them for about 1 hr. He was telling me about the various activities they do and the processes they follow in their company.

Atlast thanks for the short notice. If not for that, I would have never travelled in a Volva or a Sadhabdhi.

Oil Price Hike and the Inevitable

It is official. The inevitable has happened at last. After increasing the price of petrol by Rs. 4 per liter and diesel by about Rs. 2 per liter, the Government has in principle agreed to allow the price of petroleum products to be decided by OMCs if the price crosses $75 per barrel. This will obviously have a cascading effect on the prices of essential commodities which in turn on the inflation. This is inevitable though as the Oil Marketing companies(OMCs) had been incurring a loss of Rs. 6.50 per liter of petrol and equally in diesel, LPG and Kerosene. Part of the high price can be attributed to Central and State taxes which account for about 55 per cent of the retail selling price of petrol and 34 per cent of diesel. The left have been demanding a cut on taxes instead of increasing the retail price of petroleum products. Looks like the government have struck a balance between the price hike, tax reduction and bonds. One thing I fail to understand is attitude of the government here. The government should in fact regulate the price of petroleum product when the price is high. But the Government is trying to do it other way around.

Need for an alternate source of energy
The international crude oil price which $25/barrel in September 2003 is now hovering around 73$/barrel and is soon expected to touch $100/barrel. Infact, it looks very much inevitable considering the phase in which the world community(especially India, US, China and European countries) are consuming the natural resource without giving much thought that we are depleting it very fast and the alternate means of producing oil proving to be atleast as costly. It invariably mean that the prices of petroleum products will keep raising. While the world community is already searching a way out either by might or by identifying alternate sources of energy, the top politicians and bureaucracy in India are quiet oblivious to this is quiet difficult to understand.

The short-sighted attitude of the governments and the bureaucracy is very well evident by the way they are trying to handle this long-term emergency. The Indian government should work on finding alternate source of energy instead of considering raisin the price, cutting taxes or issuing of bonds every time.

Dynasty Politics & Media Hype

The Indian society, particularly the politicians seem to have a hang-over of monarchial culture where a son of a king becomes a king, a son of a prohit becomes a prohit and a son of a vettiyan becomes a vettiyan. The obvious reason seems to be the ease of choice and lack of standards of merit of selection. Off late the print and electronic media in India seems to have joined such hypes. And the "party with a difference" doesn't seem to be any exception with it looking at Rahul Mahajan to fill-up the void created by Promodji. No doubt, Promod Mahajan was a great leader and I adore him. A great dad doesn't always mean a great son.

Rahul got the media glare when Promodji was hospitalized and all the great leaders like Atalji and Advaniji came calling. Proximity of his father with such leaders and a hug by them to Rahul was seen as enough reason for the second-rung BJP leaders to consider him the heir to Promodji. Not very late, the Maharashtra BJP sought the support of the congress for Rahul's RS membership a replacement for Promodji's. But as expected, it is promptly turned down by the congress. What else can you expect of a party which wants to rule even it is not the single largest party in the coalition.

Now after the hospoitalisation of Rahul Mahajan, after what looks like cosumption of drugs, the same media talks of embarrassment for the top-rung BJP leaders. I didn't expect the news of hospitalisation of Rahul to come as the headline in the front page in "The Hindu" or the headline news in "CNN IBN" or NDTV. But this happened and I don't find any reason other than for creating artificial hypes and there by increasing viewership. IMHO, the Indian media should learn to look at the professional and personal lives of the leaders differently. I am not sure if the media and indian political system is complementary or derogatory to each other. But I am sure journalists and media don't do justice to their profession by doing building such hypes.