GENRE: Voices

"Better than nothing" is not progress. It's just better than nothing. If we set our metrics so low, we can never develop. Take the example of buses. The city needs about 13,000 to 15,000 buses to reach the kind of service levels that are seen in places with excellent bus service globally (1,250 buses per million of population). Also, each year, as the population grows, the fleet strength has to grow by about 200-300. That's the need. The actual fleet strength now is 6,500. And each year, 600 buses are scrapped, so these need to be replaced to keep the…

Who has the right to park on the street? For how long? And at what price? These are questions that every city faces, and universally they have come up with some practical ways of answering them. The core of these is that parking cannot be free everywhere. There may be areas where it does not need to be priced, but surely where there is high demand for parking space, it is important to price the use of public space by vehicles. Such pricing, it is assumed, will discipline people into using their vehicles less and wherever they continue to use…

Who has the right to park on the street? For how long? And at what price? These are questions that every city faces, and universally they have come up with some practical ways of answering them. The core of these is that parking cannot be free everywhere. There may be areas where it does not need to be priced, but surely where there is high demand for parking space, it is important to price the use of public space by vehicles. Such pricing, it is assumed, will discipline people into using their vehicles less and wherever they continue to use…

Half the city of Bengaluru travels using 6,500 buses. The other half uses 55 lakh vehicles. This data points so obviously to what we should be doing, but unfortunately, we insist on spending enormous amounts of money supporting private transport, and less than one-tenth of it supporting public transport and sustainable options. The illogic of financing urban mobility is that it is easy to get 30,000 crores for a full Metro system, or 1,000 crores each year endlessly for road-building, but we struggle to get 50 crores a year for footpaths and refuse to spend 200 crores for a Bus…

Half the city of Bengaluru travels using 6,500 buses. The other half uses 55 lakh vehicles. This data points so obviously to what we should be doing, but unfortunately, we insist on spending enormous amounts of money supporting private transport, and less than one-tenth of it supporting public transport and sustainable options. The illogic of financing urban mobility is that it is easy to get 30,000 crores for a full Metro system, or 1,000 crores each year endlessly for road-building, but we struggle to get 50 crores a year for footpaths and refuse to spend 200 crores for a Bus…

Hello all! After a two-week hiatus, I'm finally back at the old stand and churning out blogs again. I've had my pre-board exams for the past two weeks, so between studying for them and wishing I didn't have to, I've not had time for much else. However, the exams are finally over, so I can get back to blogging at regular intervals.  I'm sure many of you have been wondering what happened to the Thousand Smiling Faces project which I wrote about two weeks ago. The happy children with their paper crowns. Pic: Ritvik Mandyam I'm happy to report that…

Hello all! After a two-week hiatus, I'm finally back at the old stand and churning out blogs again. I've had my pre-board exams for the past two weeks, so between studying for them and wishing I didn't have to, I've not had time for much else. However, the exams are finally over, so I can get back to blogging at regular intervals.  I'm sure many of you have been wondering what happened to the Thousand Smiling Faces project which I wrote about two weeks ago. The happy children with their paper crowns. Pic: Ritvik Mandyam I'm happy to report that…

When three women - a flautist, a violinist and a vainika - got together to give a Carnatic concert a couple of years ago it was the beginning of a new journey. The venu-violin-veena concert team of Vani Manjunath, Prema Vivek and Shubha Santosh has been making waves in the Bangalore concert circuit. Here's what they shared about their team dynamics and musical journey. How was this idea of forming such a team conceived? How did it develop? The concept of forming an all-women concert team was the brain child of mridanga vidwan H.S.Sudhindra of Bengalooru. The motivation for this…

When three women - a flautist, a violinist and a vainika - got together to give a Carnatic concert a couple of years ago it was the beginning of a new journey. The venu-violin-veena concert team of Vani Manjunath, Prema Vivek and Shubha Santosh has been making waves in the Bangalore concert circuit. Here's what they shared about their team dynamics and musical journey. How was this idea of forming such a team conceived? How did it develop? The concept of forming an all-women concert team was the brain child of mridanga vidwan H.S.Sudhindra of Bengalooru. The motivation for this…

Some interesting twists in law come up in corruption cases, revealing technicalities that need to be addressed to clean up the system. This morning's news about Lokayukta-filed cases against former CM BSY is one such technicality. The cases were filed based on a CAG report, but in court it was argued (and accepted) that CAG reports are the exclusive property of the legislature, and no one else can take action based on them. I.e., when the CAG finds irregularities in actions of ministers, we must rely on the MLAs to take action against their own fellow legislators. In practice, given…