Tag Archives: government

In search of my Destiny

 

 

Destiny

 

When everything is in your control, your life seems great. You can do what you need to, when you need to with predictable outcomes. If you are taken out of that organized lifestyle and put on an unknown path with a time limit to reach your destination, and your quest is spiced up with very less food, bad weather, poor visibility, and no end in sight then that becomes another situation altogether. You then have to resign to only one thing – your DESTINY!

 

This was the essence of a trip that I undertook during the last two days covering hundreds of kilometers with my family to a non descript location a few tens of miles of a fairly populated hill station – all from a concrete jungle infested with information technology professionals much like locusts eating up all the produce in a field and leaving it empty. The upcoming festival weekend only meant a long holiday and a certainity of unavailability of any room in any resort anywhere in Karnataka thanks to the smartness of the above mentioned locusts of the city.

 

So this time, my ploy was different – but a rather tried and tested one – with accurate results – that of using up the weekend days to make this trip possible when the locusts were busy elsewhere working away. In a situation where you have a couple of young kids, planning is of utmost importance for their comfort. My analogy of the kids being able to cover about a 150 odd km range in three hours or so as a maximum threshold at any given point of time proved to be right beyond which enjoyment turns into hunger, sleep and frustration. A brief halt at Mysore for the night proved to be useful to bring the kids back to a calm state of mind.

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BDA launches yet another mega E-auction

The Bangalore Development Authority launched yet another mega e-auction today covering both prominent areas in the IT belt as well as areas in South Bengaluru such as BSK Vth stage.

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In the last few e-auctions, people have had some issues with registering for the auction. One day before the auction, people could not register for the auction since the registration link was taken away hours before the auction started. While one can expect that e-auctions would not load the server as in the case of say a railway ticketing system, still BDA needs to iron out a few nitty gritties to make this system more reliable and foolproof.

Now there could always be scenarios where they jack up the price by themselves and in the heat of the moment the participants dont notice it when the auction is going on.

Further BDA’s website was not renewed by them which shows how callous the government department can be at times. Somehow they have found a way to get their website back. But even then, their certificates are not trusted by a browser like Chrome that displays this message.

ScreenHunter 01 Sep

 

With all these drawbacks, this page will show the current auctions going on.

What is important to note is that the minimum bid amount by which an increase can take place is Rs.100/sqauaremeter. Some important information about this event is specified below:

ScreenHunter 02 Sep

 

So if you are participating in the auction for a slice of the Bangalore real estate pie, Good Luck!

 

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Nandi hills to get artificial waterfall, and splash pad and other facilities

Today’s paper carries a tender call for Nandi hills to be upgraded as a tourist destination in the true sense. It is not very clear what facilities will be provided, but the nandi hills is sure to get an artificial waterfall a-la-Courtallam simulation at kishkinta water park chennai.

ScreenHunter 01 Aug

 

Besides that there is also going to be a splash pad which is a water area without standing water. Unlike many wave pools that are part of Wonder La, or Innovative Film city or other theme parks the splash pad is quite the contrary concepts which does not mandate any heavy cleaning procedures since the area dries up naturally. it will be a great pastime for kids as indicated by the pictures on this blog.

The estimated time for completion of these is 8 months which means by next July it should be ready for enjoyment. It clearly goes to show the importance that the GoK is giving for the development of the area next to the Airport and Nandi Hills seem to be their best bet yet. Karnataka continues to build on its tourist policies slowly but steadily and this will surely put it in the right spot given the number of yearly visitors to the silicon city of India.

 

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Palace road widening, GIM investments and the impacts

The road widening hooligans are at it yet again. This time they are aiming to chop off full grown trees alongside the palace road from both cauvery theatre side as well as from TV tower side. Reason is they want to make it a 10-lane road leading to the already glorious (for the wrong reasons) airport. Of course Mr.Srikantadatta being from the royal lineage wants 40 crores per acre or per squarefeet – all this while the government is already mulling whether palace really belongs to him or not in the first place. The palace itself is earning crores of money for all kinds of events and some sundry income from few roadside meters chopped off is a feather in wadiyar's money cap. Here it seems both the government and wadiyar are equally selfish to their own ends. Whether its road widening or underpass or flyover, in the name of infrastructure the government seems to be siphoning off funds here and there in mass scale. No wonder in the recent GIM, the government has sanctioned power projects alone to the tune of some 2 lac crore if i am not mistaken, and pat came the query from the high court asking for the details of such blanket approvals and what exactly were these projects. While industrialization of karnataka is not bad, mass approval of projects without any consulting agency or committee just by the chief minister is a certain invitation for trouble in the short future.

 

 

 

An evening at the Total Mall, Madiwala

It was my wife’s birthday and I decided to take her out to Total Mall @ Madiwala for some shopping. Also since there was a karaoke competition, I decided to enroll her and ask her to sing a song accompanied by lyrics to the public. I myself wanted to sing a song, but decided that I did not want to screw up other people’s pleasant evening shopping, so kept quiet.

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Pic courtesy: www.bangalorebeats.com

The total mall as you would know in Madiwala is refurbished over the old madiwala shopping complex that was supposed to actually house all the grocery stalls out on that road. For whatever reasons such as maybe high rentals or otherwise, these grocery vendors did not occupy the complex, leaving it in tatters. Slowly but steadily the commerical value of this piece of real estate was well underestimated and the government had a high priced property which was not getting properly utilized. With the advent of low cost retailing such as Total (I say low cost as compared to malls such as Forum, which was of a high standard), they took up this space and transformed it into what you see above. Note the older building in the last four floors and you know how bad it was!

I was expecting a TOTAL surprise, and ended up with a TOTAL disaster. Before I bash up TOTAL on this blog, some good points about the shopping. My wife participated in the Karaoke contest with the song Tere Mere Pyaar Ke Charche har zaban par …. a beauty!

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The lyrics were on the screen and all one had to do was get used to this and sing along! My wife did sing well enough, more better that what I thought she sung at home! And I did enjoy those moments with my son too. After that when the crowds started piling up, I decided to go shopping within the mall which gave away some of the ridiculous arrangements of this mall. Here I list a few of them:

  • Right in the middle of the mall where people must have been walking is a CD store occupying all the space
  • The only eateries include MacD, Serengeti and yet another restaurant (no food court or nothing of that sort)
  • Rides for very young kids like the horse, car, etc (swing along) costs 20 bucks which I thought was meaningless!
  • The mall is designed in such a way that once you enter the shopping area in a floor the only way out is to take a full round of all stalls, and go up another floor, hold your breath, take a full round all over again and then reach the billing counter. Damn, I wonder what these people were thinking when they built the mall this way. Absolutely ridiculous waste of time and energy.
  • The AC was terrible or non existent making me sweat like hell all the time, its a pity such a big mall felt like a furnace (so much for pleasant shopping)
  • The travelator (Total’s modified meaning of eslacator) is pure hell served to you. Twice the length of the normal elevator, and double the distance to reach the other end meant only longer walks and even more outrageous waste of time
  • Just when you thought you could get things billed and get out, you had to remember your personal things kept at one floor below! Waste time again and over again.
  • The staircase leading to the car park wont even accomodate one thin person around the corners (landing area) – guess only animals like cats and dogs can go through these. Absolute horror.
  • My wife being in the architecture field puked at such a design that the government had come up with years ago.
  • And just when you thought everything was over, the absolutely horribly designed car park strikes you in the face. Even a car such as my swift diesel brushed against something on its roof, one can only imagine what cars such as scorpios which are SUVs will undergo in this car park. Look for yourself

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We did shop a few things in this mall, but vowed never to return again. If you were to heed my advice, take your family to the FORUM mall. Its like comparing well bred labradors or golden retreivers with rabid street mongrels. My two cents, have a good family outing, not a TOTAL DISASTER.

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E-Stamping of properties – a sure way of avoiding corruption and bribery in Bengaluru

Finally I found some time to write about the new E-Stamping technique that has been introduced on a pilot basis in Bengaluru for preparing legal agreements for sale and rental of properties and many other instruments. The entire article detailing this is available here.

So one would like to know what exactly is the difference between the old method and the new method of stampings. And why in the first place is the stamp paper required itself. For starters, the stamp paper is a document that is franked with the government seal on the top of the page, which in essence signifies the legality of a certain instrumental transaction like for eg., that involving a sale or agreement etc. This used to be supplied by the government to the registrar’s offices and some stipulated banks like State Bank of Mysore used to sell it to customers. This was until a few days back. Now no more do these banks stock these bond papers as they are called. And you may not even get it in the registrar’s offices anymore.

Firstly one has to understand that the government of Karnataka has now shifted over to the e-stamping mechanism which in essence means that these franked papers are no more used from now on. Earlier there were many touts who used to procure these bond papers and make a killing by selling them at a premium to customers. This led to mega scams like the Telgi stamp paper scam, more about which you can read here and understand. This scam alone led to a 30000 crore rupee loss to the government of Karnataka which is much more than any politician even could amass in terms of ill gotten wealth.

The government of Karnataka finally woke up and has ushered in an e-stamping mechanism now whereby a company by name Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited are the official vendors of E-stamps from now on. This essentially means that you go to them now, put in all details of why you need an e-franked bond paper, give your address details, contact details, PAN numbers, property details, rental / sale details, and sale/rental value details etc. There are a multitude of things for which this mechanism can be used from now on. To know more about this company and the things you can use their services for, click here and to get the list of things you can use the estamps, click here.

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Old and new Stamp paper formats – an illustration

The best thing about this approach is that SHCIL as a company will take care of taking money from you for the bond papers and stamps related instruments, and directly remit it to the government and they will create a unique franking with a unique ID generated for each transaction which is accountable at any time and can be traced to the participating parties always with the PAN numbers. And hopefully the Telgis of the new era might have to come up with something more sophisticated than this to cheat the government. So before I end this post, I am proud to say I used this method and feel more happy, satisfied and confident that my money is legitimately going to the government instead of to a tout.

The directions to the office of SHCIL I went to is in Koramangala is given in a map here for reference sake. They work between 10am and 5pm only between Monday and Friday and are closed for the two weekend days.

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It happens only in India

I had written about bad driving and stressed out lifestyles in my previous blog post. This post is somewhat related to it closely. If you are driving on a road and you see a lorry stopped in the middle of the road with a twig of leaves sticking out of it like as if it were a flowering plant, then what do you make out of it? Should you assme the lorry owner is relaxing on the road? Well, welcome to India.

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In India such a symbol means the truck has taken a hit either with another, or has a flat tyre, or perhaps even a flat axle or engine :mgreen:. It also means that this truck which you see has no immediate plans of being towed away from the accident spot and it also does not say anything about how many people it killed in that accident.

Take a break and come back tomorrow, perhaps it wont be there on the street. And the driver of the truck, well he has already been recruited by another truck company to drive and crash a different truck tomorrow. This is the biggest pity in India and Benglurur particularly.

If its a small vehicle its a HIT & RUN case, if its a large one, its a HIT & DRIVER RUNS case. The occupants of such trucks walk away stealthily into the crowds even before someone understands who did what at the scene of crime. And the police have no records of who is driving the truck, the truck companies have no records of who they recruit and there are also no records of the lost lives in these accidents. Everything is conveniently put into a file which says HIT & RUN case – now closed.

So much so that the entire truck drivers association (or union or whatever nonsense you may want to call it) are against the government for asking them to install speed governors in their vehicles. Their grouse is that the vehicle consumes too much fuel if driven at lesser speeds purposely. And if driven at higher speeds, others bear the brunt of their driving and land up at hospital or even worse – HELL.

So the government and the unions are not only putting at risk many a life in the city, but also sometimes their own kith and kin by doing such immoral decisions at their own cost.

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Accidents, callous driving and impoliteness – the new face of Bengaluru?

Gone are those days when you thought this city is a pensioner’s paradise. Or for that matter even a Garden City. With the winds of change come necessities for better connectivity, transportation of essentials day in and out to the city and a whole bunch of people from all over the country entering this city daily on one pretext or the other. Today all you have are zipping cars, slugging trucks and buses, whizzing cyclists on the wrong sides of lanes, and struggling two wheelers managing to find their space in this ocean. I am so ashamed to see that I myself have been driving my vehicle faster than what I did say 5 years back. I am not sure why the urge to do so, but I do so. And thats bad. Perhaps its the state of mind after or before office. Perhaps its just plain attitude. Whatever it is, it does sound like an irreversible change this city’s state has made on me.

What is this all pointing to? Well one for sure is IMPOLITENESS. Today we are always of the notion that ONLY the other guy is WRONG. Have you ever thought about whether you can be wrong as well? No, right? Well I do so. And I am happy that I do so. It gives me a chance to correct myself and be more calmer on the roads. I give way for pedestrians even now. I give way for vehicles who are in a tearing hurry. I apologize if I did a manouvre which might have been wrong on that road at that instant; to whoever suffered because of me. I have borne a few scratches on my car, just to let a weary cyclist go home in haste. Are others behaving the same way towards me? The one word answer is – NO. And it hurts that people have become insensitive. To everything around them. I mean what is the hurry in life? Where do we all want to go? Die soon? Whats gone wrong with us that we dont allow children and elders cross the road while we wait in peace for that to finish?

The animal instinct in us is more than the human one. Do you know what happens if you just touch some two wheeler or someone who is walking by, at 80-100 kmph in your car? Well the other person can easily die. A death he never wanted, never imagined will come to him – all because of our urgency. Add to that our rudeness and callousness, and what are we giving the people we hit and run? – Only salt on their wounds.

Sorry for becoming a bit sober. But the life I had was so good and I feel bad it cannot be the same for others being born today. Are gated residential enclaves the solution to this? Well heck, no! Change in our attitude is. The our includes the government too. The business leaders too, the LEAD INDIA’s too.

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