Sanjay Varanasi

Crude has slipped and dived and plummeted from its high of $147 a barrel to less than half that to $68 as of today. A few months ago when the Indian government raised the price of petrol and diesel, our Finance Minister, Mr. Chidambaram had told news channels that the price was fixed for $64 - a barrel price.There was lot of opposition to this move, especially by the Left. Then there were many discussions on why the government didn’t let the market decide the price for fuel.

In my opinion, there is no better time to make that amendment to our fuel policy. This will ensure that  we no longer have to bear with discussions and heated debates on various news channels whenever the govt. plans to put a price hike into effect. This will also help save lots of wasted expensive Parliamentary hours, which hopefully would be put into better use. Mr. Chidambaram - Please do it !!

Serial blasts in India have become as common as having cereal in the morning. On the 13th of September there were 5 blasts in Delhi and 4 bombs that didn’t explode that were later recovered by the police. This is the third such incident in 2 months. As usual, the police has started raiding various parts of the city, and has released sketches. The Indian police and intelligence are definitely not capable of handling terrorism.

During my last days of my India trip(Ahmedabad and Bangalore blasts), I was nearly terrified to move about on the roads of Hyderabad not knowing which vehicle or bus nearby would explode.  I used to venture out, but with a constant fear if I would make it home safely. I guess this is what the terrorists wanted to achieve.

To the Indian govt. : Forget peace. Its time to retaliate. I’d say follow the US when it comes to terror. Bomb blasts are the last thing one has to worry apart from the plethora of other troubles a common Indian has to go through everyday just to scrape it through. 

God bless India.

This is a letter I wrote to the editor of Deccan Chronicle (India). It was printed on Page2, albeit after lots of modifications to the original.

Here is the original :

It is a known fact that Hyderabad’s traffic is a nightmare. But I’d like to add that its the traffic police’s grave negligence all these years that has led to this pathetic situation. Traffic police of Hyderabad, or any other place for that matter, has little or no control over people/vehicles. I notice this esp. since I just returned from the US where drivers are frightened at the very sight of a traffic cop. They have fear of penalty, and the fear of being jailed, and their license being suspended.

First, Motorists should be penalised and threatened of driving license cancellation if they don’t have their current address on their licenses. This ensures that violators don’t escape punishment. Second, I suggest having traffic cops with on motorbikes capable of very high speeds, and fitted with radars, deployed at various points of the city. These cops should be able to catch traffic violators, and issue a ticket/challan that need not be paid at the time of being ticketed. This would avoid some corruption. Motorists should be issued warnings, and fined upon second violation. Motorists who do not stop for these cops should be frighteningly chased and arrested so that it becomes a major deterrent for all future violators.

Violation doesn’t just mean jumping of signals or not wearing a helmet or use of a mobile. Violation must include all terms like speeding over limit - speeding at 55kmph at a 50kmph zone must attract a violation, rash driving, drunken driving, crossing the line to drive on the other side of the road (as it happens on major flyovers), not stopping for pedestrians at pedestrian crossings etc. In other words, a basic traffic sense must be instilled not through education, but by brutal penalties, and creation of fear. Fear, I noticed is the only form of bringing discipline into any mankind.

It would also largely help if all our driver licenses were in the form of IDs that could be swiped to retrieve all information about the driver and his/her past driving history.

Widening of roads, though essential, is not the only solution to all traffic woes. Proper sidewalks must be built, so motorists don’t climb these when roads fill up. Roads must have clear lane markings, and yellow markings to distinguish two sides of the road. At every junction lanes must be earmarked for traffic turning or going straight. For ex- people from the leftmost lane mustn’t turn right. Every road - major or minor must have clearly indicated speed limits. Existing speed limits must be revised to reflect realistic traffic speed limits. Traffic signals at all junctions, major or minor must work at all times of the day. Signs and signboards must be put up at all roads and streets indicating the current road, and directions to other places.

These suggestions, I know, require lot of changes to our ancient traffic laws, and also require major effort and co-ordination among the government, police, GHMC, and the traffic police. These measures could be initially started with the city roads, then later implemented on highways, and other cities and towns of the state.

News channels and papers are full of news regarding the rather high inflation currently prevailing in India. Clearly, 8.24% is a little too much for India’s common men to handle.
True, that the government can do very little about the rising fuel costs and the steeply rising number of vehicles on the road. The government seems to lesser hopes of curbing inflation, especially after the recent hike in petrol and diesel prices. Fuel is heavily subsidized. Subsidization is paid using the tax-payers money. This means that the burden of high fuel prices hits us someway or the other.

India’s economy seems to be on a slow-down. Suddenly India Inc. seems to be shying away from the optimistic attitude shown at the markets last year. The Sensex has been steadily losing points, while the rupee has been weakening at a rather quick pace.

Various parties conducted bandhs, strikes and rasta rokos all over the nation, in protest of the fuel-price hike. Such mindless acts by politicians not only disrupt normal life for the common man, but also make it difficult for them. Also, if a city like Hyderabad is under a bandh, businesses lose millions of rupees each day, and the government loses lakhs to crores of rupees in taxes and other revenues. Acts like these are clearly done only to gain political mileage. But, any sensible person would only be aggravated by such inconveniences. It was rather ironic, when a ruling party initiated a strike in its own state.

On the other hand, are our age-old, creaking, fuel-guzzling roadways and highways ‘connecting’ various parts of the country. Some of the so called national and state highways are being ‘upgraded’ to four lanes ! Thats wonderful - you might exclaim. But thats barely  enough to carry vehicle population that has been growing faster than the movement of papers for road-projects from one govt. office to another. Many of the National Highway Projects initiated by various governments are yet to be implemented. Moreover, with such vehicular growth, today’s highways quickly become tomorrow’s clog-ways.

Fast urban connectivity ensures faster movement of man to and from commercial districts. This helps develop suburban areas, and towns surrounding cities.
Speedy rural connectivity helps quick transfer of farmer’s produce to industry and markets. But this is still a dream in modern-India. Many rural roads non-exist, and where they do, they are mere 1 to 1-1/2 lanes wide; roads barely enough for two trucks to pass comfortably. Then we have cows and buffaloes, tractors, cyclists and many more reasons for traffic to slow down. Fresh fruits and vegetables can start spoiling fast, and each minute lost to traffic is loads of stock lost on countless trucks all over the nation.

What has infrastructure got to do with inflation? - you might wonder.  Let me explain. If 10kgs of a vegetable get spoilt on a truck during transit due to traffic delay, it means  end-consumers have 10kgs less to eat. When there is more demand for a product than there is supply, prices are bound to increase.

And why did I use the term fuel-guzzling infrastructure? Each minute wasted in non-moving, or slow traffic is thousands of liters of fuel lost all over the nation. More fuel means more import, which means more subsidy, which means crores of monetary loss for the nation. In turn - more burden on the tax-payer.

Railways are no better when it comes to handling goods. Existing rail-networks are congested enough for passenger traffic. Indian railways is having a tough time handling the extra-load of carrying goods along the existing lines. The recent proposal by Shri. Laloo Prasad Yadav of laying a third rail-line, though immensely useful, might just be a little too late.

What this country now needs is a network of super-highways, elevated at populated places to avoid congestion and bottlenecks, with atleast 4-6 lanes criss-crossing India’s vast expanses, connecting important cities and towns, and high-capacity, well maintained roadways connecting rural India to its markets. Projects like these, would no doubt need investments of thousands of crores of rupees, which definitely means more burden on the already heavily burdened middle-class. But, I’m sure people would be more than happy to help turn India into a truly Modern-day India.

Good news arrives, from India for all those against Microsoft’s Open-XML format. This format has been voted out for now by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) in favor of the Open Document Format (ODF) backed by IBM, Sun Microsystems and others.

From deccan chronicle website at www.deccan.com is this article : (20th march)

Microsoft has been checkmated, for once, in India. Its Open-XML format has been voted out for now by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) in favour of the Open Document Format (ODF) backed by IBM, Sun Microsystems and others. Both ODF and OXML are formats for creating, saving and viewing documents containing texts, charts, presentations and spreadsheets. They can be downloaded free from the Internet.

ODF is already regarded as a national standard by BIS. Microsoft was pushing for its Open-XML to be also regarded as such. BIS, however, on Thursday decided by vote to not accept Microsoft’s claim. India did not want two standards that did the same job or might have interface problems.

This means that Microsoft’s Open-XML won’t bear the BIS stamp and, therefore, at least the large government sector will not use it. Microsoft stands to lose out on the massive computerisation and e-governance drive that the Union and state governments have undertaken. The drive includes setting up almost 600,000 Internet kiosks in villages across the country. Industry observers say, however, that Microsoft will eventually make a comeback because the government is otherwise working very closely with the company on various projects. At the voting at BIS’ IT committee, of the 19 members present, Nasscom, TCS, Wipro and Infosys along with Microsoft voted in favour of Open-XML. Three members were absent and hardware association MAIT abstained. The rest voted against Open-XML.

The ODF camp won the day with the argument that adoption of Open-XML would create multiple national standards, leading to complications. Microsoft, on the other hand, argued that Open-XML gave choice, flexibility and interoperability to IT users. Naturally, the decision has made the ODF camp happy. “We are in complete support of the BIS decision. We believe this will help in strengthening existing standards and help create new technically sound and royalty-free standards,” said Jaijit Bhattacharya of Sun Microsystems.