Apr 23

Government asks Gill to step down as Hockey head

By now, the reign of former Punjab top cop KPS Gill as headman (President) of the Indian Hockey Federation is acknowledged by all to be a disaster for Indian hockey. Coaches have been juggled up and down, players complain of ill-treatment and the national squad under-performs to an incredible degree. They did well in patches, but overall the performance has been roughly the same for the past many years: under-performing. The last disaster was the failure at the Olympic trials and the team failed to qualify for the Olympics, a disaster for Indian hockey of a very high level. And yet, when KPS Gill was blamed by a wide section of the press, former players and other people associated with the sport, he refused to take responsibility and kept on promising a better performance in the future.
The Government also shrugged its hands and claimed that it could not intervene due to non-interference in the activities of a sporting body, a claim that almost nobody believed. But this is how the matter rested, since Gill refused to step down and nobody else could force him to. This is how matters rested till a sting operation by a TV channel showed the powerful Secretary of the IHF (K Jothikumaran) accepting a bribe to get a player into the squad in a most shameful display; he was forced to step down. And this is when another Gill (MS Gill, the new Sports Minister) started applying pressure on KPS Gill to step down:

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Apr 23

Government of Delhi in panic mode over BRT failures

The Times of India is really playing this story to the hilt. Refer this article:

The BRT corridor has gone bust. Yes, that’s the resounding message from two days of chaotic trials on the Ambedkar Nagar-Moolchand stretch. What else can explain the decision of a panicky government to let in taxis and autos into the corridor dedicated to buses! If the BRT architects are willing to jettison lane segregation, then the corridor - on which about Rs 100 crore has already been spent - is as good as dead.

When the Government of Delhi started thinking of becoming serious about the scheme to implement a dedicated corridor for buses, there were mixed opinions. The concept of creating a special corridor for buses so that they can move smoothly and carry a large number of passengers sounded good; after all, many countries have such corridors and they seem to have worked. Then the Government said that the corridor will go upto Old Delhi and there were some worries - anybody who has traveled to Old Delhi areas such as Daryanganj, Chandni Chowk and the Red Fort would wonder about where would they find space on the road to create a dedicated corridor. But this was supposed to be the second leg, and the first leg would be from the comparatively wider section from Ambedkar Nagar to Moolchand, a section of road that is an important road for that region and is somewhat wide.
Okay, maybe this should work. However, there are certain things that such a project should follow, and just copying a concept from somewhere else would not work:

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