*** Bangalore .... no more :(
1 Comments Published by Apocalyptus on Monday, January 23, 2006 at 6:35 PM.
Alright folks !!! It's official now. Our good ol' Bangalore would be re-christened as "BENGALURU" some time later this year (most probably on 1st November). The Pundits (ones who conceived this wonderful idea) feel the name change will give a feel of the Local language, that is, Kannada.
"Bombay became Mumbai, Calcutta became Kolkata, Madras became Chennai. Now, if people in other states can do this, why can't we?" said one of them. I read this in the newspaper a few days back and couldn’t help thinking about the decision and imagining the estimated time and effort it is going to take to get this done.
After reading this, the first thing that I visualized was the the condition of the road which has been dug recently at Koramangala, one of the ciy's most happening places. I was really astonished to see one sign board which says "Work in progress.Please cooperate. - BMTC" . And I swear, all I have been seeing there for almost more than a couple of months now is digging , digging and more digging.
Bangalore , despite it's numerous plusses, is the city with the worst traffic management system and infrastructure in India (even worse than Kolkata). A lot has been talked and spoken about the city's pathetic infrastructure and poor traffic management system but nothing useful or fruitful has been done so far.
Here it takes 5-6 years to construct one 200 metre long fly-over (The one from BTM Layout to J.P.Nagar), and that too only to make people's lives more miserable than before due to poor planning.
Full of one-ways and no-entries, the city is becoming a nightmare for all vehicle-owners. To reach a certain destination from a certain place one has to be educated enough to know about all the possible routes connecting those two places because the route which was open till yesterday may suddenly become a no-entry today and again be open tomorrow. And because of these no-entries and one-ways, more often than not, one has to travel a lot of extra distance unnecessarily (like me...I have to cover 9 Kms everyday to reach office from home whereas the actual distance is 5.5 Kms).
People who don't own any vehicle are very badly affected as well. Huge BMTC buses , the main cause behind the traffic jam on most of these narrow Bangalore roads, take exactly 90 minutes to cover a distance of 8 kilometres, stopping after every 10 metres, irrespective of whether there is a bus-stop or not. These buses look really big, twice as big compared to those in any other Indian city. And, the roads are as narrow as they can be. Once one bus stops in front of you, you get stuck there until it starts moving again.
The other means of transport are the Auto-rickshaws which are driven by khaaki-clad dacoits. Yes, I used the word 'dacoit'. They never hesitate to take full advantage of people in distress. Under normal circumstances, they start charging 1.5 times of the meter reading 8 o'clock onwards at night and it becomes 2 times after 10. The actual rule, I got to know after asking a traffic policeman, is that they can charge 1.5 times the meter reading from 10:30 at night to 5:30 in the morning.
And, if it's drizzling (yes, drizzling, not even raining)they would charge exorbitant fares to go anywhere. If there is traffic jam, they would charge double meter. Therefore, to travel 10 kilometres one has to pay up to Rs 100. Certainly not possible for middle-class office-goers everyday.
On top of that, there is the problem of parking vehicles. Hundreds of pages can be written on this topic only. So, I'm not going into that now. Will come back with a post exclusively on the parking problem some time.
Cops - both at the Police Stations and on the roads, ask for bribe shamelessly. If you've broken any rule, you can still get away with a fine of 1000 bucks if you talk to himj in Kannada and give him 200 bucks "to buy sweets for his children". But if you can't speak Kannada and although have done nothing wrong, are being held for violating traffic rules, there is no escaping....Once I even had to hear "We know you haven't broken any rules.But it's night and no one has seen why we asked you to stop in the middle of the road. Pay 300 bucks and leave, or we'll take you to the Police Station, lock you up and charge you for rash and drunken driving." You have to pay whatever they ask for. Otherwise, they will just drag you and your vehicle to the Poilce Station nearby where an equally greedy, uncultured and uncouth Officer-in-charge would be waiting to welcome you. If you have come to this city from any place outside Karnataka, Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh, whenever you are talking to a cop, the first phrase that he will be using to address you is "VAAT IZH VRAANG VITH YYYOU NAAAAAAARTH INDIANS"? (Read: What is wrong with you north Indians?). Once my cell phone was stolen and I just went to lodge a complaint and the officer on duty told me " YYYOU NAAARTH INDIANS YAARE CARELESS BUNCH WOB PEOPALLE. YEEWER SINCE YYYOU PEOPALLE HIYAVE STARTED COMING TO OUUUAR CITY,THE CRIME RATE HAS YYINCREEEESSSEED HERE." (Read: You north-Indians are a careless bunch of people. Ever since you people have started coming to our city, the crime rate has increased here.)According to them, their children also are learning bad bad things like consuming alcohol, smoking, watching porn, eve-teasing et cetera from their "naarth indian" counterparts.
One more incident, to glorify the Bangalore cops further --- My friend Rajesh writes : """One funny incident which I would like to tell you about is that yesterday while coming back home from “wonder la” I lost my way and entered on 100 m stretch of road where only four wheelers were going in. Two policemen jumped in front of my bike from no where and asked this is a no entry zone for two wheelers and auto and before I even said one word they continued telling me that there is one sign board some 50 m back so I need to pay fine.
Well I smiled took my wallet and gave him 100 bucks and asked him just one question “Sir if you know that bikers might enter in this road by mistake as it's dark and there's no light near the signboard, why don’t you stand in the beginning of road and stop bikes from entering road? I guess even you need to do new year shopping“. He was speechless and the expression of anger in his face was “priceless”."""
How idle can people get that they are desperate to get the name of their city changed, without even bothering about the zillions of more important existing problems, nothwithstanding the enormous amount of money , effort and time that will go wasted in the process of changing the name to “Bengaluru” from "Bangalore". There is so much work to be done in the city to get the image of the city right that the Government should be on its toes 24X7 but all they are interested in doing is to change the damn name of the city. Isn't it ridiculous? Forget common public.....the people who actually made Bangalore what it is todaty, that is, Azim Premji, N.R.Narayana Murthy, Kiran Majumdar Shaw - all these stalwarts have been cribbing and complaining about these infrastructural problems for years and there is no one to pay any heed to what they are saying. Every time they call on a meeting, the Government promises a lot of things and starts a lot of planning but these never get implemented.
I know, I don't have the power to change things but just can't keep quiet and see these bafoonery going on. Why the heck don't they concentrate on solving more imminent problems than getting the city's name changed or stopping Hindi/English movie-releases in the city?
"Bombay became Mumbai, Calcutta became Kolkata, Madras became Chennai. Now, if people in other states can do this, why can't we?" said one of them. I read this in the newspaper a few days back and couldn’t help thinking about the decision and imagining the estimated time and effort it is going to take to get this done.
After reading this, the first thing that I visualized was the the condition of the road which has been dug recently at Koramangala, one of the ciy's most happening places. I was really astonished to see one sign board which says "Work in progress.Please cooperate. - BMTC" . And I swear, all I have been seeing there for almost more than a couple of months now is digging , digging and more digging.
Bangalore , despite it's numerous plusses, is the city with the worst traffic management system and infrastructure in India (even worse than Kolkata). A lot has been talked and spoken about the city's pathetic infrastructure and poor traffic management system but nothing useful or fruitful has been done so far.
Here it takes 5-6 years to construct one 200 metre long fly-over (The one from BTM Layout to J.P.Nagar), and that too only to make people's lives more miserable than before due to poor planning.
Full of one-ways and no-entries, the city is becoming a nightmare for all vehicle-owners. To reach a certain destination from a certain place one has to be educated enough to know about all the possible routes connecting those two places because the route which was open till yesterday may suddenly become a no-entry today and again be open tomorrow. And because of these no-entries and one-ways, more often than not, one has to travel a lot of extra distance unnecessarily (like me...I have to cover 9 Kms everyday to reach office from home whereas the actual distance is 5.5 Kms).
People who don't own any vehicle are very badly affected as well. Huge BMTC buses , the main cause behind the traffic jam on most of these narrow Bangalore roads, take exactly 90 minutes to cover a distance of 8 kilometres, stopping after every 10 metres, irrespective of whether there is a bus-stop or not. These buses look really big, twice as big compared to those in any other Indian city. And, the roads are as narrow as they can be. Once one bus stops in front of you, you get stuck there until it starts moving again.
The other means of transport are the Auto-rickshaws which are driven by khaaki-clad dacoits. Yes, I used the word 'dacoit'. They never hesitate to take full advantage of people in distress. Under normal circumstances, they start charging 1.5 times of the meter reading 8 o'clock onwards at night and it becomes 2 times after 10. The actual rule, I got to know after asking a traffic policeman, is that they can charge 1.5 times the meter reading from 10:30 at night to 5:30 in the morning.
And, if it's drizzling (yes, drizzling, not even raining)they would charge exorbitant fares to go anywhere. If there is traffic jam, they would charge double meter. Therefore, to travel 10 kilometres one has to pay up to Rs 100. Certainly not possible for middle-class office-goers everyday.
On top of that, there is the problem of parking vehicles. Hundreds of pages can be written on this topic only. So, I'm not going into that now. Will come back with a post exclusively on the parking problem some time.
Cops - both at the Police Stations and on the roads, ask for bribe shamelessly. If you've broken any rule, you can still get away with a fine of 1000 bucks if you talk to himj in Kannada and give him 200 bucks "to buy sweets for his children". But if you can't speak Kannada and although have done nothing wrong, are being held for violating traffic rules, there is no escaping....Once I even had to hear "We know you haven't broken any rules.But it's night and no one has seen why we asked you to stop in the middle of the road. Pay 300 bucks and leave, or we'll take you to the Police Station, lock you up and charge you for rash and drunken driving." You have to pay whatever they ask for. Otherwise, they will just drag you and your vehicle to the Poilce Station nearby where an equally greedy, uncultured and uncouth Officer-in-charge would be waiting to welcome you. If you have come to this city from any place outside Karnataka, Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh, whenever you are talking to a cop, the first phrase that he will be using to address you is "VAAT IZH VRAANG VITH YYYOU NAAAAAAARTH INDIANS"? (Read: What is wrong with you north Indians?). Once my cell phone was stolen and I just went to lodge a complaint and the officer on duty told me " YYYOU NAAARTH INDIANS YAARE CARELESS BUNCH WOB PEOPALLE. YEEWER SINCE YYYOU PEOPALLE HIYAVE STARTED COMING TO OUUUAR CITY,THE CRIME RATE HAS YYINCREEEESSSEED HERE." (Read: You north-Indians are a careless bunch of people. Ever since you people have started coming to our city, the crime rate has increased here.)According to them, their children also are learning bad bad things like consuming alcohol, smoking, watching porn, eve-teasing et cetera from their "naarth indian" counterparts.
One more incident, to glorify the Bangalore cops further --- My friend Rajesh writes : """One funny incident which I would like to tell you about is that yesterday while coming back home from “wonder la” I lost my way and entered on 100 m stretch of road where only four wheelers were going in. Two policemen jumped in front of my bike from no where and asked this is a no entry zone for two wheelers and auto and before I even said one word they continued telling me that there is one sign board some 50 m back so I need to pay fine.
Well I smiled took my wallet and gave him 100 bucks and asked him just one question “Sir if you know that bikers might enter in this road by mistake as it's dark and there's no light near the signboard, why don’t you stand in the beginning of road and stop bikes from entering road? I guess even you need to do new year shopping“. He was speechless and the expression of anger in his face was “priceless”."""
How idle can people get that they are desperate to get the name of their city changed, without even bothering about the zillions of more important existing problems, nothwithstanding the enormous amount of money , effort and time that will go wasted in the process of changing the name to “Bengaluru” from "Bangalore". There is so much work to be done in the city to get the image of the city right that the Government should be on its toes 24X7 but all they are interested in doing is to change the damn name of the city. Isn't it ridiculous? Forget common public.....the people who actually made Bangalore what it is todaty, that is, Azim Premji, N.R.Narayana Murthy, Kiran Majumdar Shaw - all these stalwarts have been cribbing and complaining about these infrastructural problems for years and there is no one to pay any heed to what they are saying. Every time they call on a meeting, the Government promises a lot of things and starts a lot of planning but these never get implemented.
I know, I don't have the power to change things but just can't keep quiet and see these bafoonery going on. Why the heck don't they concentrate on solving more imminent problems than getting the city's name changed or stopping Hindi/English movie-releases in the city?
Labels: Fun, Miscellaneous, serious
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