Beginning in December 1951, Ernesto “Che” Guevara took a nine-month break from medical school to travel by motorcycle through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. One of his goals was gaining practical experience with leprosy. Being in contact with people who were poor and hungry while they were sick transformed Che. He envisioned a new medicine, with doctors who would[Read More…]
Municipal authorities mercilessly chopping grass in parks in Mumbai and elsewhere are doing a distinct disservice to the city, to Nature and to people who love to walk on grass which is not only fun but also immensely beneficial to health. Mr Praveen Pardeshi, the former municipal commissioner of Mumbai, had a good understanding of these issues. Thick grass is[Read More…]
We are in the midst of a new mobility revolution, declared Mr Narendra Modi, Prime Minister, at the global mobility summit in New Delhi in 2018. The gentleman who waxed eloquent on mobility then was completely silent in his recent address to the nation about the misery of thousands of workers stranded , immobilised all over the country without shelter[Read More…]
There can be some positive gains from the impact of Corona. People can take back , reclaim spaces that belong to them. In Mumbai the fancy dome of the National Sports Club of India, a site of beauty and fashion pageants, a playground for the rich, has been taken over by the municipal corporation for quarantine. It is originally a[Read More…]
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel prize winning writer, wrote a classic essay Why Allende Had to Die in New Statesman in 1974 on the coup in Chile in 1973 in which socialist President Salvador Allende was killed. He gives details of U.S. involvement in the coup and a lot of subsequent research reaches that conclusion. The United States, now facing[Read More…]
The onset of the Corona virus and the subsequent lockdown have crippled Maharashtra’s economy and this will impact Mumbai. It has also completely changed the way people think. The Gods have become helpless, they have abandoned the field, they have failed to work miracles, declared an article in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece daily Samnaa written by Sanjay Raut, editor. He[Read More…]
Since the Corona crisis is grave, the government’s decision to stop train services throughout the country till March 31 cannot be faulted. But this has grave implications for the poor. They are going to be stranded and worse, many will lose their livelihood as they cannot reach their work places. Train services had been hit in 1974 during a prolonged[Read More…]
We are being told to wash our hands (for 20 seconds!) and self-isolate if sick. But what if you cannot do either of those things? One billion people live in slums or informal settlements where water for basic needs is in short supply – let alone 20 seconds worth – and where space is constrained and rooms are often shared.[Read More…]
In one respect Donald Trump seems less autocratic than Narendra Modi. Just as Modi and his administration have sought to completely redesign the area around Parliament in Delhi, Donald Trump wants to “make federal buildings beautiful again” by mandating a return to “the classical architectural style”, according to a draft executive order. But there is one essential difference. Trump’s order[Read More…]
One aspect ignored regarding the Shaheen Bagh protests on the citizenship issue in Delhi is the issue of denial of public space to people, increasing restraints on acces to existing such spaces.Civil liberties groups urban planners should seriously study, take up these issues.The Supreme court raised questions on February 10 about protests on roads in Delhi . It would be[Read More…]
It is a shame that some 30,000 books of the Mantralaya library in Mumbai have been dumped into a godown. Clearly, the government cares more for motor cars than books. It has no space for books but proposes to build a car park under Mantralaya to park 700 cars at a cost of Rs. 70 crores. Besides, the move totally[Read More…]
Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s decision to stay construction of the Metro rail car shed at the controversial Aarey forest site in Mumbai needs to be seen in the proper perspective. The point is people are not against development, they are against an insensitive system riding rough shod over them. The point is people are seeing through the one size fits[Read More…]
The Modi government’s extravagant projects are being seriously questioned by experts. These include the Metro rail projects and the absurdly expensive proposed high speed railway between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. With the Shiv Sena-led coalition government assuming power in Maharashtra, the high speed project is likely to face strong opposition. Metro railway alone cannot solve urban traffic and transport problems. There[Read More…]
A much bigger fight lies ahead for sensitive citizens after the brutal felling of over 2000 trees under cover of darkness in Aarey colony in Mumbai. The massacre was carried out for the Metro rail project on October 4 and 5. The Metro project may provide a fast ride when it finally comes up but this may be at[Read More…]
It is not just the arrogant, rich and drunken drivers who cause road crashes . Even professors in IITs, the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, tend to drive or tended to drive rashly within the campus injuring students. Dinesh Mohan, professor from IIT Delhi and the country’s foremost expert on road crashes, points out that when speed breakers were put[Read More…]
Is then no nook of English ground free from rash assault , asked the famous English poet William Wordsworth more than 170 years ago. He was responding to the threat posed by the so-called development to Nature in his beloved lake district. Since then the threat to the environment has increased manifold in different parts of the world. One would[Read More…]
Indore city deserves to be in the news for better reasons than the ugly bat wielding by the spoilt son of BJP general secretary Kailas Vijayavargiya last week. I was in Indore last week for a workshop on sustainable transport. The city is astonishingly clean and deserves the first ranking in cleanliness in the country. Mumbai, which is in such[Read More…]
If our urban transport crisis is getting worse it is not difficult to see why. Look what is happening in Varanasi town in Prime Minister Modi’s constituency. A move is a foot at a high level to introduce ropeways in the ancient town in collaboration with an Austrian company. An absurdly expensive and technologically inappropriate solution when all you need[Read More…]
It is time Mumbai’s new municipal commissioner Pravin Pardeshi convenes a meeting of citizens to discuss ways to take the city out of the mess it has landed in. This was the view at a meeting of citizens including structural engineers, architects, planners and activists at Moneylife Foundation in Dadar. The point made by prominent structural engineer Alpa Sheth that[Read More…]
With the harsh political reality we are now faced with there is a serious need for strong resistance from citizens. This was clear at a public hearing on the proposed Metro rail line 6 project in Mumbai on May 21. Alert citizens, architects, engineers, housewives, transport experts completely exposed the inefficiency and insensitivity in the implementation of the project [Read More…]
The rulers went out of their way to bring pressure on public sector banks to bail out the unprofessionally run private airline Jet Airways. This put at risk thousands of crores of public funds. There are double standards here. On the one hand the glamorous airline industry is pampered and on the other hand the BEST bus undertaking serving millions[Read More…]
As we celebrateDr Babasaheb Ambedkar’s birth anniversary, we need to imbibe his important motto- Educate, Organise. Agitate. As Karl Marx said philosophers have interpreted the world in different ways. The point is to change it. This is the most important heritage of Dr Ambedkar, changing the world. One of the great advantages of Dr Ambedkar’s teachings was the tremendous awakening[Read More…]
Mumbai:With the collapse of transport infrastructure for common people in Mumbai making big headlines daily, any self -respecting administration would have felt embarrassed and concentrated on basic amenities and suspended or postponed fancy schemes like the bullet train or the coastal road for cars. More so when we are now amidst elections. But far from it. The authorities show little[Read More…]
Infrastructure is the catchword of our politicians and bureaucrats. But they are obsessed with creating infrastructure for the upper class, not for common people. The pedestrian bridge collapse in Mumbai last Thursday killing six people and injuring several others underscores the extremely anti-people nature of the Indian State. But it is not likely to learn any lessons unless massive public[Read More…]
True, the deaths of soldiers have to be lamented. But the Indian authorities’ record is extremely incompetent when it comes to the deaths of innocents in other fields. There is evidence of jingoism when it comes to the deaths of soldiers but on the other hand and utter callousness on the other. Many more people are killed on Indian roads[Read More…]
The Maharashtra government and the municipal corporation in Mumbai have starved and crippled India’s once premier bus service BEST and now there is a move to further humiliate the bus service and its users. A Shiv Sena corporator has proposed to the civic body that old BEST buses be used as mobile toilets ostensibly for use of commuters caught in[Read More…]
Mumbai: Mr Nitin Gadkari, union road transport minister, is one of the more efficient ministers. He often comes up with innovative solutions like converting waste water and garbage to profitable use. Unfortunately, there is little innovation in urban transport with which his department is closely concerned. In fact, instead of innovation, regressive , costly solutions are being thrust on civic[Read More…]
“It is no doubt ironic that the motor car, superstar of the capitalist system, expects to live rent-free” – WOLFGANG ZUCKERMAN. It is true even very rich motorists all over the world do not like to pay for parking. That is bad enough. What is alarming is that in India this insistence on the right to park free, grab public[Read More…]
During a recent visit to the ancient Karnak temple complex in Egypt, I overheard a lady saying Mr Trump should be here. She was suggesting that looking at these gigantic monuments, the U.S. president would realise how small he really is and that the ancient ruins should teach him a lesson. It turned out that the lady was a Parsi.[Read More…]
In Delhi authorities seem to have at least some understanding of the need for promoting public transport and to discourage private cars. This seems to be sorely lacking in Mumbai. Air pollution is now so bad in Delhi that the chief of the Environment Pollution Control Authority, senior administrator, Bhure Lal, warned that from November 1 the authority may have[Read More…]
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the exemplary National Health Service of Britain which is important for us in India because NHS gives the right to good health and treatment to citizens. No society can call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means , declared Aneurin Bevan, Britain’s health minister from[Read More…]
The famed Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz once wrote about the plight of ordinary people who must walk, eyes lowered, the body crouched in fear due to the onslaught of dictatorship(.nisaar mai.n terii galiyo.n ke ae watan is the opening line of the original poem). Faiz wrote in a different context but people in Mumbai now walk with more dread[Read More…]
The Hindutva forces now expect every one to fall in line with their thinking. But they will not succeed. This reminds me of a play Rhinoceros written by Eugene Ionesco, a French-Romanian, a major playwright in the tradition of the theatre of the Absurd In this play over a period , every one turns from a human being into a[Read More…]
The well planned digging of the footpath by supporters of Raj Thackeray outside Mantralaya shows the deeply anti-people nature of a section of the political class. Simply because the attack was not directed against human beings does not make it less sinister than recent lynchings and the assault on Swami Agnivesh. Thackeray loves expensive and fast cars and a good[Read More…]
After walking on Bangalore’s or Benguluru’s fashionable M.G. road earlier this week I casually hopped into a bus at Anil Kumble circle named after the former Indian cricket captain. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the fare was only Rs. 5 for Shivaji Nagar bus station. A distance of a little less than a km. but still the[Read More…]
If Mrs Indira Gandhi had listened to Mr P.N. Haksar, her reputed principal secretary, India probably would not have landed in the mess in the automobile and public transport sector. Mr Haksar, a staunch socialist, strongly opposed her son Sanjay Gandhi’s arrogant and ill-conceived Maruti car project and this paved the way for his exit as principal secretary in 1973[Read More…]
Mr Mohan Bhagwat,RSS chief in his speech preceding Pranab Mukherjee’s in the RSS headquarters made a reference which seems very questionable but has attracted little notice.In quoting a Sanskrit subhashit, a saying, he virtually ridiculed intellectual debate. Those who use learning for debate are wicked., he said. This was in keeping with the current dumbing down of knowledge and[Read More…]
Kiran Nagarkar, well-known novelist, floated the idea during his recent interaction with activists that some kind of a rasta roko agitation could be held to check the growing congestion caused by cars, to assert people’s right to the road and to help increase the speed of BEST buses. The car lobby , the traffic police and the whole establishment will[Read More…]
Imagine losing dear, tender teenage daughters in violence and still seeking not revenge but fighting for a new society built on justice and seeking peace. It was inspiring to listen to two peace activists, an Israeli and a Palestinian , in Mumbai last Sunday talk about how they have come to terms with their personal grief. Rami Elhanan’s daughter Smaddar,[Read More…]
When it comes to plundering of public spaces for the benefit the builder lobby, there is not much to choose in Mahrashtra between the Shiv Sena-BJP combine or the Congress parties. In the year 2005 during the Congress rule, Ganesh Naik, environment and forest minister, openly talked of the need to sell public spaces. That these were very scarce in[Read More…]
The spectacular red flag , disciplined march of farmers spearheaded by the kisan wing of the Communist party of India (M), and other Left organizations in Maharashtra has galvanized public opinion. The week-long march which reached Mumbai on March 12 is a great morale booster for the Left. The images of sore feet of women and men trudging nearly 180[Read More…]
This beats even Hema Malini’s absurd observation in the wake of the fire in the Kamala mill compound in Mumbai last December in which 14 people mainly from affluent families were killed. She blamed it on the influx of people from outside for the city’s problems. That was bad enough for a BJP MP and popular film actor. But at[Read More…]
One can understand the BJP suppressing the involvement of its drunken leader in the killing of nine school children and injuring 20 other children in broad daylight in Bihar last week. But why did a large section of the media join in suppressing the news while it gave saturation coverage to the death of film star Sridevi ?. We are[Read More…]
Pity the rich, wrote American popular comedian Will Durst recently in a satirical vein. They face too many problems. No body robs the poor but the rich are always afraid of robbers. But actually the rich rob the poor. He then went on to refer to the rich as open cancer sores on the face of society. One was reminded[Read More…]
This luxury 24 storey high rise building represents an assault on the heart of Mumbai. This is in Mahim geographically the heart of the metropolis as Mahim connects the island city with the suburbs. The skyscraper is an eyesore amidst low-rise housing but more than that it has come up on the bus depot of the BEST Undertaking .[Read More…]
I was impressed by the pleasant ambience of the Trivandrum railway station and the bus depot for long distance travel which is just across the road. This is how public transport should be but this has become so rare due to the callousness of our politicians and bureaucrats. The whole area is clean. And travel is really seamless. I[Read More…]
Vineeta Bal, a former member of the Prime Minister’s task force for science, narrated a humorous poem by the Marathi poet Sopandev Chaudhari last week to underscore the importance of scientific temper. The poem points out that Newton could think of the law of gravity when he saw the apple fall to the ground while some of us can[Read More…]
Some times creative writers give insighs into problems better than experts. During the wave of the Theatre of the Absurd Achyut Vaze wrote a play in the 1970s in which the characters wait for a bus which never arrives like Godot in Beckett’s famous play Waiting for Godot. One is reminded of Vaze’s play Chal Re Bhopalya by the[Read More…]
One can understand the annoyance Maharashtra’s director general of police Satish Mathur faced last Monday when he was stuck in traffic for half an hour in the central business district CBD Belapur. Four policemen were transferred for failing not to clear the way for him. Mr Mathur would feel much less annoyed if he realized that his discomfort is nothing[Read More…]
Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s announcement last week to set up an urban arts commission for Mumbai is well intentioned. But it comes at an odd time. Several leaders of his party, the BJP, at the national level have shown little respect for some of the finest monuments of the country and now party MLA Sangeet Som calls the Taj[Read More…]
The implications of the stampede which killed 23 people and injured 39 at Elphinstone road railway station in Mumbai on September 29, are larger than we have seen so far. I visited the station and surrounding area three days in the last one week and noticed that the treatment of commuters is far more inhuman than we thought. Two[Read More…]
I saw an interesting French comedy film Boss’s Daughter recently. It was also remarkable because of the intelligent use of the concept of ergonomics which involves right use of technology for the human body at the workplace, home or travel. In his film the boss’s daughter uses the science of ergonomics to see how work in her father’s factory is[Read More…]
Considering its huge budget, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been so much orchestrated praise in the media for the film Bahubali 2 with its record box office collections. It is disturbing enough but more questionable is the RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya championing the film as an ideal expression of Hindu values . One can give any spin[Read More…]
Beijing, the Chinese capital could well be a model for India’s Swachh Bharat mission of cleanliness. Toilets are everywhere in the city, I noticed during my two-week visit to Beijing last month. It could also be a model for us in public transport. I experienced this through my constant walks in different parts of the city and travel by[Read More…]
All media focus currently is on whether the BJP or the Shiv Sena will have its Mayor in Mumbai following a hung house after the recent civic election. Real issues usually remain buried, unexplored. Look at the neglect of public spaces despite the increasingly poisonous air . Mumbai city’s deterioration can be understood in the context of the concern[Read More…]
One has to be really affluent or be in rich surroundings to walk with ease in India, it seems. I was in a very upmarket gated colony of bungalows in Bangalore last week. There were footpaths on both sides, lined with palm trees, there was little traffic and one could enjoy the walking. This is a highly protected environment. The[Read More…]
The money crisis is more painful because of is suddenness. But the government has been causing hardships to citizens for years through various ways. One is the anti-people policy on transport. The pain is spread over a long time and we do not feel it so intensely. The government has inflicted motorization on the country without any safeguards to vulnerable[Read More…]
Gandhinagar, 13 November, 2016: This turned out to be quite a travesty of Mahatma Gandhi and his teachings in the land of his birth. This was in Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat . The occasion was the inauguration of an official government of India conference on urban transport on November 8 but the inauguration proved to be a well-planned[Read More…]
Mumbai: Despite advances in technology, life is getting worse for users of public transport . This is at least partly because of the callous way the technology is being handled. The seats in the big brand new coaches in the local Western railway trains in Mumbai are clearly uncomfortable. I tried out both in first and second class. I[Read More…]
The Maharashtra government is back to its policy of privatizing open public spaces in Mumbai. Ordinary people are the losers because of this policy declared on July 27. . The upper class is not bothered because it has created its own spaces for recreation when it is not grabbing public space. I got a glimpse recently when I attended a[Read More…]
Bombay Gymkhana Mumbai: The 140-year-old Bombay Gymkhana asserted its elite and exclusive character earlier this month. It voted after much debate not to admit senior government officers as members. But then how come this class, so keen to preserve its privilege , has for years so openly intruded upon public space just outside its premises for almost 20 years ?.[Read More…]
Mumbai: A man murdered a woman in Mumbai recently because he was afraid she was going to deprive him of his job as a temporary watchman. This shows the crisis of employment in Mumbai. And this is a city which among all places in India is supposed to provide the maximum employment opportunity. And the watchman security industry is one[Read More…]
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Today, the Republic of India faces its gravest moment since it was born seventy years ago. What has hit the second most populous nation in the world – just in the last few months itself – is nothing short of a crisis of Biblical proportions. An untreatable viral epidemic, a debilitating lockdown, a collapsed economy, hunger stalking every corner of[Read More…]
