Cycling all the way in a joy!

Today I am very happy to see this headline in Bangalore Mirror “Cycling corridors in city will soon be a reality”. This helps me to recall the 1980’s good old days in Bangalore where I used to cycle with not much traffic. The cycling lanes will be very helpful in Bangalore as there are many people who would want to go to work in their cycle.

During 1980’s in Bangalore it was very common to find the vendors who were renting cycles on a hourly basis and for an hour I still remember I used to pay Re. 1 to finish of all my work in an hour with the help of cycle. These cycling lanes will be very helpful to students who will travel to schools and colleges.

Bangalore will have Metro trains very soon and there are people who want to travel in Metro but the closest metro station is 2 to 4 kms from their homes, how will these people reach the Metro station?

If I need to travel to office by Metro the closest station from my home is 3 kms, to walk 3 kms it will take me 20 to 30 min. If I have to reach in a cycle with a cycle lane it will take me 10 min, the Government should introduce a system and provide the license to vendors to rent the cycle this will help the passengers of Metro to reach their last mile destinations, this will also create employment and will improve the Health of the person who uses the cycle.

With this small thought I would wish all my friends a very healthy happy new year.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world!

The Earth provides resources that are exploitable by humans, we should exploit the resources from earth which can be reused again and again, and the most basic requirements of any living being on this planate are water. 70% of the Earth surface is covered by water, but the fact is over large parts of the world, humans have inadequate access to potable water in a recent report* (November 2009) suggests that by 2030, in some developing regions of the world, water demand will exceed supply by 50%.

There is no shortage of resources, but there is a problem in managing the resources, to manage these resources we need good leaders, we need to identify these leaders who are willing to be part of this change and we should empower them.

The most critical part for the successful management of resource is political leadership, Today’s political system is in a total mess and calls for the election commission to have a re-look at the present political system and establish some strict guidelines and policies on the selection of democratic leaders for contesting elections.

You may be wondering what has political system to do with the resource management?
By reviewing the present Political system will make a difference? Is a question to be answered by yourself, I would like to end these thoughts with some quotes by great leaders.

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world" - Mahatma Gandhi

“We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.” - Swami Vivekananda

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. -Peter F. Drucker
*Source Wikipedia

Global warming! How do we solve it?

Who is responsible for Global warming?
Society (we the citizens), Political leaders and IAS officers.

How do we solve this problem?
we are doing our bit by switching off lights, using CFL bulps, adopting energy efficient products etc., but this is not enough. Imagine you are watching a movie of 2012 where a city is falling off as a pack of box and pause that graphic and relate to your city and ask yourself “should we let this happen to our city”?.
Every citizen is responsible in the society, we should ensure we have stable political government, we have the right process, system and transparent administration in place by adopting right technologies and we as citizens should monitor and raise our voice and give time for the society.
To be the change today we are in a stage where we need to ask our self the following questions,
How much time are you giving to yourself?
How much time are you giving to your parents, wife and children’s?
Are you able to strike a balance between Work and your personal life?
Are you compromising your integrity to fulfill your dreams?
Are you compromising your integrity to fulfill your lifestyle requirements?
Are you feeling insecure?
Do you forgive people?
Are you willing to change?
What is our social responsibility?
Should we wait for the world to end?
What is that change we are going to be ?
Should we change our lifestyle for our children’s to have a better world?
But can we be the change?

Your small steps will have a very big impact to make this world a better place. Finally we need Leaders and we should encourage people who are willing to work with responsibility and accountability who have the potential to be transformed into a leader.

Technology with small basic steps makes a big social impact

There are efforts made to build efficient public transport system in Bangalore city, there are initiatives taken like Bus day, monthly bus pass, new bus routes introduced, but what is lacking is the smartness in adopting the technology and implementing the same.

There are thousands of crowded buses on road which stops every 1 to 2 km which is wasting time, this is also one of the reasons why people don’t want to travel by bus, if the below concept is adopted I am sure many people will adopt public transport system.

With the present number of buses we can do reasonably good job by adopting technology and taking some basic steps to implement the new concepts with technology. To implement this concept firstly we need to divide the Bangalore city with 5 different zones, Bangalore South, North, East, West and Bangalore Central, this is already in place which will have Bus depot to serve the different zones.

The next step would be to have a networking in place for ticketing, we can implement the intranet for the BMTC service and all the Bus stops will have a ticketing counter and these ticketing counters will be connected to the different Bus depot zones, based on the ticket issued on each bus stops the empty buses will directly pick the passengers from the respective bus stops to their respective destinations with less number of stops or no stops.

The seating capacity of bus would be 30 but we can see the bus is loaded with 50 to 60 passenger and this should not be accepted, instead if a passenger is in a hurry and is willing to stand in the bus he should be issued a ticket with the bus number and the standing should be limited to 10 passenger this means the bus can carry up to 40 passengers to the assigned route with no stops. No passenger will step into the bus without a ticket, every bus has a conductor, but this conductor is in the wrong place he should be stationed in one of the bus stops with a computer issuing the tickets.

We should have the passenger friendly public transport which gives comfort, safety and quickly reach the destination.

Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam means "vasudha", the earth "eva" = emphasizer and "kutumbakam", "family" is a Sanskrit phrase that means that the whole world is one single family. As the days are passing the world is shrinking smaller and smaller, it is good technology is connecting people across the world and we are all connected.
On the other hand Global warming is also shrinking the world there are many studies going on to fix the problem. Social responsibilities, lifestyle, Education and Politics are the 4 major factors for today’s world.
The question needs to be asked by every citizen how can we make this world a better place and contribute.