Roads are fine , users need more skill.

This year, in Bengaluru ,we have had one of the heaviest rainfall in the recent past . Time and again roads were converted into rivers . Many residents have had pathetic time negotiating rainwater rushing into their homes.

Poor planning and corrupt administration has been completely exposed by the condition of the roads .  Yet no one seems to be be held accountable for the condition of the pathetic roads. Motorists and pedestrians are having a tough time commuting in bengaluru and yet no civic body has assured any help and no authority or no person is held responsible for the chaos on the city roads .

Over the years, i have made hundreds of representations to civic authorities (BBMP) and elected representatives (From corporators to MLA) . Have met commissioners , Mayors. MPs, MLA and even two chief ministers . One common thing among every person in authority is that they are all ever busy and no one is responsible (neither a solution) for the problem at hand.

No person in authority wants to talk about the problem at hand.  The political authority blames on bureaucratic authorities and vice versa.

Take the case of a pothole on the road. To start with, if the authorities had done their job properly and if they were competent enough, there should not have been any pothole in the first place . But as it stands today, Bengaluru roads has 30,000 potholes on record.  It is shameful on the authorities to have actually given out such a number. Looks like they are proud to publish their inefficiency and incompetency.  75 years of independence and we cannot lay a 1 km of pothole free road. Yet what is important today is beef and not roads.

Coming back to potholes on roads , On the bureaucratic side there are the following people responsible to either have laid a better road or at least fix the damage.  It starts from the ward engineer, You have a junior engineer, Then you have the Assistant engineer, You have the assistant executive engineer, Then comes executive engineer, Then is the superinedentent engineer, On top comes a chief engineer, On top of him is Engineer in chief. Parallel to these people there is Executive engineer (Road works), Executive engineer (Major roads). On top of all these people comes the steel frame of the administration It starts from the assistant commissioner , Then is the Deputy commissioner, on top of him is the additional commissioner, Then we have Joint commisioner, Then is the special commissioner and on top is the commissioner. Over all these commisoners sits the development commissoner , with him sits the joint secretary (Urban development), with him is the additional secretary (Urban development), Over them sits the Secretary (Urban development). On him sits the additional chief secretary and top of them all sits the Chief secretary.  Technically this line can be extended to secretaries in the union government as well all the way till cabinet secretary. All of them have the authority but none of them are accountable , answerable and not even accessible.

Coming to political side , the line of responsibility and accountability starts from the corporator or the councillor of the area, then comes the MLA, The mayor of the city , Then is the MP, Then is the urban development minister and on top of all sits the chief minister . Technically this can be extended all the way till PM. Again all of them have the authority but none of them are accountable , answerable and not even accessible.

Ask any of the above people on who is responsible for the pathetic condition of the Benagluru roads , the unanimous answer will be “NOT ME”. All the above authorities get the best cars, get drivers, fat pay , carry the best phone, Have personal secretaries and so on but no one is accountable nor answerable. According to the present system and the so called rank and file of our administrative set up no one in the above set of authorities is responsible for the pathetic roads in the city. If by your misfortune you end up hurting yourself or others while doing the misadventure of riding on the city roads, you are a negligent driver but the road is world class.

One set of political leadership is busy with pleasing their bosses in the center and the other class is busy worshipping their leader. Misplaced priorities has been the hallmark of the indian political system over the last two decades. Present leadership is more about PR and creating controversies than any real ground work. Unseen Ram (I am sure he does not need a temple), beef , celebrating birthdays of freedom fighters is more important than nutrition, roads and hygiene.

Go to the bureaucratic authorities. You must be lucky to find one in the first place . Everyone is very busy but no one is answerable . from top to bottom there is “Sahebru” attitude and status quo is the most favorite passion and perhaps duty of the almost all concerned.

Worst is even disheartening . Elected representatives and civic authorities have gone on rounds in the city and uploading pictures of their inspection of the damage. Some of the comments they have received on their pages are “We are proud of you”, “True leader”, “We need people like you”. Come on , are we any kind of elite democracy ? These are the exact people responsible for the mess and we are here glorifying them just because they had the courtesy of atleast seeing the damage.

The poor citizen is just caught up in this mess . The poor citizen has to just increase his prayers before stepping out of the house . May be the combined effort of our civic authorities and elite politicians has increased the citizen’s faith in God.  Perhaps the only other vent for the anguished motorist is his fellow motorist with whom he can pick up a fight and vent out his anger.

Culture or lack of it !

Last month , myself and couple of my friends were on a road trip across many places inIndia. We covered 5800 Kms in 9 days across 10 states and 2 union territories. We started from Bengaluru and drove up to chandigarh touching the western ghats, , the Vindhyas and the Aravallis. We covered lengths of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and the union territory of Dadra and nagar haveli to reach Chandigarh. On the return journey , we touched Delhi, UP, MP, Maharashtra, Telangana, AP and reached back to Bengaluru.

It was a memorable trip. We saw some of the cleanest and filthiest parts of India. We Saw the best and worst roads of the country. We had a chance to taste plethora of delicacies from from chikkis of Lonavala to sweets of Gujrat, Amazing lassi of Rajasthan, parathas of chandigarh, chats of delhi to spicy food of Andhra.

This was my second road trip almost in the same route . One lifetime will be insufficient to understand the diversity of this country . Our country is amazing in more than one ways . One such thing is our culture . Though the country boasts of a very rich history and culture , people of my generation will not always find it to be always true.

One such trait in our culture is the culture of cleanliness. Again in this trip, we saw Chandigarh, arguably the cleanest part of India and also saw Ajmer and jabalpur, perhaps one of the filthiest parts of the country.

Swachh bharat is a much talked and much hyped national program by the current central government. Notwithstanding the initiatives of the government , it is the primary duty of every citizen in the country to keep the county clean. In our childhood, we were taught in school that “cleanliness is godliness”. In my opinion, keeping the country clean must be included as a “fundamental duty” in the constitution .

The least we can do to keep the country clean is at least keep our heritage sites, our monuments , our places of worship clean.

In this trip, we had been to India gate in New Delhi. This monument is a mark of respect to all our soldiers who have sacrificed their life in line of duty. India gate is in the heart of New delhi, about 1 KM away from the Indian parliament, the seat of power . It is from this parliament ;mission “Swacch Bharat” was launched. Our PM Narendra modi , one of his pet projects being Swachh Bharat sits in this very Parliament house.

It is painful to see the plight of India gate. It is used as a picnic spot. Numerous street vendors crowd the place. In-spite of dustbins provided , most people throw trash on the lawns, roads and the water bodies.  Paper cups, chips packets, Pani puri plates etc are to be seen everywhere around India gate.

The least we can do to our soldiers is to atleast keep an emblem built in their respect clean. It is an irony that our PM who launched this Swachh Bharat mission sits just one KM from this iconic structure.

Me and my friends started cleaning up the place. My friend avinash was in deep knee pain . Inspite of the pain, he started picking up paper cups and ice cream candies. We went around picking up bits and pieces. We were hopeful that some people may join us . To our surprise, not a single person joined us. We just went about our job. There were hundreds of people around,  not one joined us. Some were passing comments while few were supervising us.

Then came the most disgusting part. One gentleman walking with his wife and little daughter passed by us and threw his tea cup right in front of me. He had no sense of shame or guilt. Perhaps he did not notice that we were cleaning. When i picked up his cup, he did say sorry. But the point here is not about saying sorry. He just thought it is ok to throw the cup on the lawn.

Strange country , we are !! We are spending thousands of crores on clean India mission while many people just do not bother to put the trash in the dustbin just a few yards away.

It is just the sheer ignorance and disrespect to the country and fellow countrymen that drives some people not to care . Not sure what the solution for this is but i feel that this attitude is deeply ingrained in our culture.

Few days later, we move south and come to the district of Chandrapur in Central india located in one of the most backward regions of India, Vidarbha.

Vidarbha is in the news for all the wrong reasons and is one of the driest and poorest regions of the country .

We had a chance to interact with a few students of Sardar patel Mahavidyalaya in  chandrapur.  My friend Avinash was to deliver a talk there. Experience in this college was totally different.

We were greeted not by flowers or bouquets but by living flowering plants.  We were shown the campus and introduced to many activities taken up by the students of the college.

We drove past a beautiful lake called Ramala lake before reaching the college. We were wondering how the lake was so clean in a particularly dirty town. Just before arriving at chandrapur, we visited nagpur and the lake experience in Nagpur was not at all great. So we did not have high hopes on Chandrapur. But the Ramala lake was a totally different story.

The students of this college had made numerous petitions to the town administrations to desilt and clean the lake. When their petitions did not work, they took the task on themselves. Students made groups and started cleaning the lake and de-weeding the catchment . They formed groups and stood at the lakes during the immersion of Ganesha Idols and directed the devotees to the designated place for immersion . They have planted numerous trees around the lake.

Inspired and probably ashamed from the students, the town administration finally have started maintaining the lake.

Few students shared their experience in their efforts. Apparently locals did not help them but instead ridiculed them. Local residents did not come to their help. In Spite of this the students used to show up daily and clean the lake and the surroundings .

Every student in this college has a mandate to plant one tree and maintain it for three years. They have a green council among the students which looks into various green initiatives in the college campus.

India is a land of dichotomies and diversity.  Perhaps it is this dichotomy and diversity that makes this land so interesting.  However there are many practices and behaviour which are ingrained in the cultural fabric of this land that just refuses to change, cleanliness being one.

Swacch Bharat, Clean India ,all these are really good and must be appreciated, respected and followed. But these missions do not succeed very well if there is still a medieval mindset among the people of the country.

It is not the laws that govern the country. It is the people who govern the country.  Country cannot be governed by law “enforcement”, it can only be governed and cleaned when law is “respected”.

Winds of change are blowing swifty , let us hope it touches as many of us as possible.

Happy Independence Day !!

x

Satisfaction !!!

In January 2015, IEEE (Institute of electrical and electronics engineers) New york wanted to try some new technologies in Solar energy at a few places in India. They had asked me find out a test site. I had suggested them a school near Kukke subramanya, in the heart of western ghats in Karnataka.  For some reason, by August 2015, they backed out of the experiment in India. I had however promised the school that i would help them out in their power situation.

Gopalakrishna School in Puttur Taluk near kukke subramanya is a partially government aided Kannada medium school. They have a pretty poor pass percentage in class X. Most students stay in nearby hilly areas with poor access to electricity. Though this school is connected to state power utility grid, the power supply is erratic and they do not have power for most parts of the day .The school conducts special evening and night classes for class X students from mid january till the class X exams are over. So the boys and girls of class X students stay up in the school from January till mid april.

The school is located in in the forest range and for all practical purposes does not have power supply. The school faces a lot of problems during the months of Jan to April when students stay back in the school for classes and reading. The students had to put up with darkness .The school authorities were using Kerosene lamps and torches for classes and cooking.

I was impressed by the dedication of the school staff. By turn, they would stay back in the school to organize and conduct night classes. Teachers were cooking in the dark.  There was no way i could back up from my promise.

By January 2016, i thought i must raise some money  from friends and family for putting up a solar power unit in the school. I approached a few of my clients and they readily agreed to partially fund the project. My sister Jhanavi (Bindu) sponsored a big chunk of the project. 

However, we still had to raise more money and we thought of the idea of crowdfunding . We put up our campaign and within a few months we got sufficient funds.

Though we could not power the entire school , we were successful in raising enough money for powering two rooms where kids stay , the kitchen and the dining room.

We were however late since by the time we raised funds ,the rains had started and it was not possible to install the system.

Finally in october of 2016, we decided to install the system.

We replaced the old fans by energy efficient fans , Thanks to Sunil Sood , an environmentalist based out of Bangalore and Atomberg technologies , Mumbai, we were able to source highly efficient ceiling fans.

We replaced all lights by LED lights so that the power consumption goes down. We have given many spare lights so that they do not have trouble sourcing lights in case of bulb burnout.

In most off grid projects , maintenance of lead acid batteries is the biggest issue. Many Thanks to Veeresh Anehosur and BOSBalance of Storage Systems AG Germany, for giving us the Lithium battery for a very concessional rate,.we have used a 12 V Smart Lithium ion battery pack which caters to critical loads and prevents discharge of lead acid batteries (Which is used in parallel with the Lithium ion battery) .

This project was possible only because of generous contribution from friends and family. Special thanks to my sister Jahnavi Jagadish for sponsoring the major part of of the project. Many thanks to Barki Narayanrao Ramadevi and Pranesh Mysore Bheema Rao. 

Many many thanks to Ramkumar Radhakrishnan, Pranav Rajanala and Mrs Indu Thomas who are more friends to us than clients. They are very receptive of our ideas and have been supporting us in many of our ideas and projects.

Many thanks to my friends Mahesh Kumar, Sri Harsha, Anjana Nataraja, Adhi Kesarla, Rajesh Lalgowdar, Suraj Gokhale, Pawamana Ramachandra , Avinash Narayanaswamy, Varun Nagpal for very generous contributions.

Special thanks again to Avinash narayanaswamy for giving us his fabulous Skoda car for transporting the materials.

Last but not the least Special thanks to our colleagues Chitti Babu, Shivaraj Thallam and Mayur M Rotti who deciphered the complicated old wiring and retrofitted the new system without any major glitches.

The system was commissioned in october 2016 and the class X students have used it to the fullest for preparing for their class X exams. From Mid january , the system has helped the school authorities to cook food for the students staying in the school. The students could read comfortably thanks to the fans which could beat out the humidity. There was enough and more lights for the students to read and prepare for the exams. The school principal told me over phone today “This year we had a very comfortable time”.

The story here is not about school .It is about the satisfaction that you derive by doing something positive. The sheer joy in being a part of someone’s joy cannot be described in words.

Many years back, i had done a done a similar project at a school building near nelamangala. There, we collected rooftop rainwater from a school building filtered that water and stored in an underground sump. Few months after that project , i received a letter from the school saying that year they had 4 more girl students enrolling into the school since there was water in the washrooms.

My dad used to say “You will never get all that you want and there will be no end to your want. Your sole purpose in life must be to be of some positive value to someone. Having an aspiration beyond yourself and working towards it is the only way to sustained happiness”.