I really wonder sometimes about whether we should blame the ordinary citizen or the police when you see laws and rules being broken so easily in the country. I was witness to something that left me wondering about this question. We see traffic rules normally broken very casually on the roads (speed limit, usage of helmets and seat belts, drunk driving, red lights, etc); most rules are broken very easily. The sad part is that most of us are guilty at some point about breaking these rules and later blaming the police for being inactive and not enforcing the rules.
I had gone to an car accessories shop for some seat covers, and witnessed a number of vehicles parked there (hogging a lot of space in the market, but that is a different story), and employees of the shop busy fixing dark film on the windows of the cars. Now, once many years back, when the police had ruled that the dark films are not allowed on car windows, I had been ordered by my parents to be the one to remove the dark film It was a painful process, and I had always hesitated after that to fix dark films because of this reason.
Citizens of the country have mostly bad thoughts about interacting with Government bodies; a lot of them come across officialdom who are not responsive and caring about their needs (as an example, making them come repeatedly even for small errors in the red tape process), and so on. There are babus (officials), who are friendly, but most are like hard faced officials, unwilling to come across as caring people. It would be nice for people to live in a gated community (and self-sufficient place) where one would not have to interact with the Government bureaucracy, but that is living in an ideal world. However, there are cases when official responses are such that you would be horrified to read about such cases, and wonder as to how the official structure of the country could be so insensitive to the problems faced by citizens, that too when the situation is due to a fault of the agency themselves. The Delhi Development Authority however has been roundly criticized from time to time over its openness, caring nature (lack of it), and inability to care about what citizens go through. Read this article for more information:
The Delhi Metro is seen as an instrument for change in Delhi. The sheer presence of the Metro on many routes has led to a reduction in the bus traffic on these routes (for example, from the Dwarka to Connaught Place route), and has led to the commercial revival of many areas (the number of visitors to places such as Connaught Place, Chawi Bazaar, Chandni Chowk, etc) have all gone up and led to these places getting a new lease of life. However, the Metro project has not been without its slate of issues, one of them being the route passing through areas where there is liable to be controversy.
One major point in the past has been the changing of the skyline of the city wherever the metro passes, because suddenly you have a large seemingly unlimited concrete bridge being part of the skyline, and it can be quite ugly. However, over a period of time, we have tended to accept this as a compromise that has been made to get a system that provides more convenience. One such issue in the past was whether the Metro could be a cultural nuisance, especially when it was passing close to the Qutab complex. Eventually, the pressure by cultural experts forced the Metro line to give in, and they changed the lone so that it did not pass so close to the Qutab anymore. However, the other issue about passing close to the homes of people remains. A metro line can be noisy when a train arrives, and the height of the rail line (especially in crowded areas) can be uncomfortably close to either the second floor / windows of houses, and people feel concerned about their privacy.
Today, the 29th of May, 2008, was a day that a lot of people would have had a lot of worries about. Delhi and the whole NCR region has seen the effect of the Gujjar agitation when it last took place in 2007, and at that time, the lathi wielding and stone throwing members of the mob forced the major intersections of South and East Delhi to come to a standstill - traffic at major points such as the Noida Link road, Badarpur, Loni, etc was totally jammed, and demonstrators did pretty much what they liked. At that time, what was depicted in the media was that the police were essentially not taking any action and letting them burn buses and other public property.
Keeping this in mind, there was a lot of worry and concern about what the day would turn out like. The whole of Delhi and NCR region sees a lot of cross traffic with people moving on a daily basis from Delhi and other regions such as Faridabad / Gurgaon going to offices in Noida on a regular basis, and similar movement. For such people, the news of this Gujjar called bandh was a time for decision. Would you want to try this movement on this particular day and risk getting caught in violence, or stuck in a non-moving traffic jam for long periods of time. As a result, there were a large number of companies that actually declared a holiday today. Even where I worked, most people from places that were more than 10 Km away did not come, in many cases because their family persuaded them not to go.
The Delhi Traffic Police must be feeling vindicated. For the many months now in which the BRT corridor design and construction has been in progress, they have opposed the whole concept of segregating special lanes as a non-workable concept given the volume of traffic and the tendency of Delhi’s drivers to ignore the needed discipline as something not applicable on them.
The Government and experts have been advocating a dedicated bus corridor as has been used in many cities around the world, but have always ignored advice about adapting the corridor to local conditions. The result has been there for all to see; the difficulty is that there needs to be encouragement for having more buses and other mass public transport on the road. So now the bus corridor conditions have been sought to be changed for the extensions:
The changed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) design, designated Pilot B, that’s now being proposed between Moolchand and Delhi Gate, is in effect only a thinly veiled version of the existing pattern of traffic flow on all roads in the Capital. Under Pilot B, which will be implemented between Moolchand and Delhi Gate, it is being proposed that buses would ply on the extreme left, next to the footpath and cycle track. There will be no concrete medians segregating the bus lane from the MV lanes, which will now have three lanes for other traffic. The road space for buses will be painted.
We have come to regard bank drop boxes as a great extension of the branch; dropping checks, payment, check book requirements, and similar requests into these drop boxes. For credit card payments, where the required date is very close or even today, it seems like we can just drop the check in the drop box the same day and avoid a late payment. So, it will surprise people to know that this is nowhere near being a fool-proof instrument, and is subject to many delays and lack of responsibility by the bank. Refer this article:
A Mumbai resident recently dropped his credit card payment cheque in a box placed at a travel company. Although he dropped it four days before the due date, the amount was not debited from his account. Despite registering a complaint with the bank’s customer care helpline, his card was deactivated. To top it, he has been asked to pay a late fee and finance charges.
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:
How many times have you dreaded the prospect of paying a utility bill. Where the electricity or water is provided by a Government department, the prospect of queuing up outside a dingy office, with a long queue and in the hot sun is one that most people shirk from doing, until absolutely necessary. Hence the concept of either the friendly neighborhood all-purpose man who will do this duty for a price, or the private companies who are making it a business to make it easy to pay utility bills. However, sometimes even the Government can think about citizens, and make it easier for them to pay such bills:
BANGALORE: Ever wanted to pay your utility bills while at a mall or supermarket? This could soon be possible, with the directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services (EDCS) likely to set up BangaloreOne kiosks at shopping centres soon.