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Showing posts from August, 2009

Life breakers

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Why should I care for these speed breakers(I call them life breakers)? Well, I struggled like hell to get the road built. Fought with GHMC and met people and was in touch regularly with officials until it is built. Now few weeks back guys in chaitanya vilas colony built hurdles in their colony (5 speed breakers in less than 100 meter distance with 3 curves). This inspired few guys in my colony to demand treasurer to give money to build speed breakers(as they call it) in our colony as well. Is it a fashion in colony road? I am not sure. Is it acceptable to cite 1 or 2 errant drivers and troubling everyone. Can I take my pregnant wife on this road to hospital or shopping? Any one cares? God please help!  

Ideas for sustainable development - Cities

Few thoughts that are floating in my mind regarding development. 1. Pollution control : Govt should proactively buy/replace all the outdated vehicles. Look at no of scooters, auto rikshaws that leave smoke like a serious fire incident (If it is a developed nation, for sure there will be hell lot of fire alarms because of these vehicles). 2. Making life easy for vehicle owners/drivers. Let them drive without fear. Make rules simple. I always wonder why one need to pay fine if he forgets to have copy of insurance or RC book with him. If system is automated enough, it should be able to identify if he has valid documentation or not. If not(no insurance for that particular vehicle) then police can charge fine for that. Also if pollution certificate is not available, it is better to do the test on the fly and charge for the test. If test fails, then vehicle should be sent to garrage for repairs at the owner's cost. This will save millions of people from unwanted embarrassment followed b

Giving it back - Bhallan pally

My recent visit to Bhallan pally village, Mahabub nagar district gave me more in sight into what the schools in the village require. Yes it is my native place and my parents live here. Last few days (or one week), I have been busy spending my evenings exploring various shops for buying some teaching material and books for my schools (Primary and High schools). Here is a list of items that bought. 1. Vernier calipers - 2 2. Screwguague - 2 3. Magnets (Bar and Horse shoe) 4. Pendulum 5. Stop watch 6. Metal ball and ring 7. AID (Association of India Development) kit worth Rs 400/- 8. Spring balance 9. Thermo meters - 2 10. Min, max thermometer. 11. Magnesium sheet 12. Chemistry model making material (60 balls and sticks) 13. Litmus papers 14. Biology charts -8 15. South america chart -1 16. Paper charts -20 (includes periodic table, maps and other related items). 17. Good student - telugu motivational books by B.V.Pattabhiram. -3 copies 18. Wings of Fire - Telugu version - 2 copies

Website review: India development Gateway

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While looking at SSA AP , I got a link to Govt. maintained website called "India development gateway" . It really looks cool and informative. Home page of this site looks like this (at the time of this blog writing). Here is a telugu screenshot. It seems to be very much informative. Contains information on farming,agri loans etc.

Exploitation of the society

Last sunday I happen to watch Saraswathi's documentary called "coastal under attack". It was an interesting movie exposing the problems of the coastal villages where people lost their land, livelyhood etc because of the large scale industrialization. People lost their lands, almost by force. Though there are "hearings" to know people opinions, everything (should I say most of them) are manipulated. We can always argue about the immediate need of more GAS, more POWER and more chemical companies but as Rakesh rightly put it "At whose cost?". Are these people inferior than us in hyderabad? If it is we in big cities who use most of the GAS, POWER then why these village people on coastal corridor are suffering?. Rakesh argued about having a nuclear reactor right here in Jubilee Hills or in ISB (Indian School of Business, this Context came when Krishnan of ISB argued about the necessity of the industrialization). Well, I view this as a controllable inevita