KEEPING A WATCH > perched precariously, restive as ever, on a thin fence !
<<< http://vswaminathan-swamilook.blogspot.in/2014/09/om-namo-narayana-contd.html
Humchi Mumbai (with its queen necklace !)
< Localcircles
BL
Nov 15
A reality check on intellectual property concerns
If nothing else, through the resorted move by linking LPG supply to ADHAAR , and in turn, to bank account,- OR taken in the reverse order if so preferred, -is sure to have the inescapable consequence of adding one more discomfiture to the already miserable life of 'commoners' , as opposed to affluents or 'influents' (sorry for doing violence to the language) , already filled and brimming with such irritants . By way of adding insult to the injury, though not given any publicity hence not heard of widely, is the surreptitiously introduced bottleneck via ceiling on LPG consumption. That has , as come to be heard, been done in a roundabout way by a ‘rule’ mandating that booking for a refill is impermissible unless a period of 25/30days has elapsed from the last refill delivery date. Even after booking, the minimum waiting period, as order of the day, for delivery of a fresh refill, is 15 days. As such, the underlying assumption is , regardless of actual size of a family, fresh cylinder should not but last for no less than 40 Days. The explanation proffered by the agency is that the objective is to thrust upon the habit of least consumption, thereby help government in saving on the subsidy outgo. Does that make, or not, any sense or logic, though certainly from the viewpoint of the consumers, is a matter for a long winding controversy- howsoever endless that might turn out to be. Be that as it may, that reminds anyone of the proverbial wisdom in deciding to cut off the nose to spite the face.
Prasanth
"Lead Kindly Light" is pathetically often taken to be a wasteful prayer; well rhymed but wrongly considered, by and large, to simply stop short of a wishful thinking, nothing beyond. What has been evading realization by we the humans is that, - 'candle light' is so symbolic as to ritualistically suggest to be more than adequate, and so powerful, as to provide THE LEAD and in a right or better direction, provided anyone is not averse but fine tuned to the humble idea of being so led. To be contextually precise, should even a couple of the large scale/macro scams, out of the series of them haunting the scenario all the time, be prevented or short-circuited, on a timely basis, the moneys saved to the exchequer might more adequately cover the dreaded subsidy burden.
jottings-
... court is the common HC for both the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. ... the CJ also said there was no need for the judges of the current high court to take fresh oath as judges of the common ...
PREV.
BS
anshuman tiwari @anshuman1tiwari
Key Note :
<<< http://vswaminathan-swamilook.blogspot.in/2014/09/om-namo-narayana-contd.html
Humchi Mumbai (with its queen necklace !)
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Mumbai is on the verge of imploding
Mumbai is on the verge of imploding
Residents of this overburdened and polluted megacity are held hostage by a politician-builder nexus that allows rampant ‘development’ to fuel its descent into urban hell
The Guardian Cities team is reporting live from Mumbai all this week - follow the latest on our live blog
One in six of Mumbai’s 12.7 million residents lives in a slum.
One in six of Mumbai’s 12.7 million residents lives in a slum.
It used to be India’s urban showpiece. Today, its sceptre and crown have fallen down and, in a phase of cynical destruction masquerading as “development”, Mumbai has become a metaphor for urban blight.
Consider these statistics. Rubbish could be its Mount Vesuvius. Some 7,000 metric tonnes of refuse is spewed out each day. Dumping grounds are choked, yet there is no government-mandated separation or recycling.
Around 7.5 million commuters cram themselves into local trains every day and the fledgling metro and monorail are unlikely to make a perceptible difference in the near future.
There are 700,000 cars on the road and the authorities indirectly encourage private vehicle ownership by adding flyovers and expressways, instead of building or speeding up mass rapid transit systems. Private vehicle numbers have grown by 57% in the past eight years, compared with a 23% increase in public buses.
There are around 700,000 cars on the road Mumbai causing untold congestion, air and noise pollution. Their number has grown by 57% over the past eight years.
There are around 700,000 cars on the roads of Mumbai causing untold congestion, air and noise pollution. Their number has grown by 57% over the past eight years. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP
Toxic nitric oxide and nitrogen oxide levels stand at 252 microgrammes per cubic metre (mcg/m3) more than three times the safe limit of 80 mcg/m3. Protests against sound pollution fall on deaf ears.
There’s less than 0.03 acres of open space per 1,000 people. The global norm is four; London has a profligate 12.
There are 12.7 million people jammed into the 480 sq km that comprise today’s Greater Mumbai, that’s 20,680 people per sq km. We are the world’s eighth most-populated city – and dying to prove it.
As a consequence, every sixth Mumbaikar lives in a slum. The premium on land was exacerbated by the Rent Control Act of 1947, which wasn’t amended till 1999. Too little, too late. Real estate prices are unreal. It’s cheaper to buy a flat in Manhattan than in Malabar Hill, and you can be sure that shoddy materials will shortchange you in Mumbai.
Considering that housing is the city’s biggest shortfall, it’s ironic that unbridled construction is indisputably its biggest problem. Many villains have been blamed for Mumbai’s descent into urban hell, from mafia dons to impoverished migrants, but for the past three decades the main culprit is the “politician-builder nexus”.
In 2005, the entire city was held hostage for three days. On 26 July, suburban Mumbai was lashed by 668 mm of rain in just 12 hours. Unwarned commuters and children in school buses were left high, but not dry, as roads and railway tracks disappeared. Slums and BMWs went under the deluge without discernment for their economic standing. It may have been the country’s financial capital, but in the photographs that followed, swaggering Mumbai didn’t look much different from a monsoon-marooned Bihar village.
For this humbling disaster, the finger pointed at that same culprit: the developer and his facilitator, the politician. There was nowhere for the rainwater to go. For decades the concrete army had been allowed to commandeer all open spaces, and illegal encroachments had done the rest. Public parks, verdant hills, salt-pans, school compounds, private garden plots, beaches, mangroves – nothing was spared.
The built environment in Mumbai had increased fourfold since 1925 – and at its fastest rate over the past 30 years – all at the cost of green cover and wetlands.
Around 7.5 million commuters cram themselves into local trains every day.
Around 7.5 million commuters cram themselves into local trains every day. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
The 2005 deluge brought to light the little-known fact that Mumbai had a river. The Mithi had been reduced to little more than a turgid drain, bubbling with the putrefactions of one of Asia’s largest slums, Dharavi. Why blame its desperate inhabitants when the authorities had built an airport runway and much of the swanky new business district of the Bandra Kurla complex over it?
The traumatising flood was a flash-point. Citizens rose against all the civic atrocities heaped upon them. Why must they suffer such acute and chronic brutalising when Mumbai was the biggest contributor to the national economy? It accounts for 33% of income-tax, 20% of central excise collections, 6.16% of GDP (the largest single contribution in India), 25% of industrial output, 40% of foreign trade and 70% of capital transactions.
Activists demanded it should be administered separately under a chief executive-like head, instead of politicians who siphoned off its wealth to their rural constituencies. The municipal commissioner should be answerable to the elected corporate leaders not, illogically, to the state chief minister. But all this sound and fury receded with the flood waters, and it was soon business as usual.
The unequal war between profiteering and civic wisdom was in unabashed evidence some 20 years before this great flood. An eagerly anticipated shot in the arm turned into a wound that still festers. The cotton mills, on which Mumbai’s original fame and fortunes were built, had been killed off by the prolonged strike of 1982 (and chronic neglect by their owners).
After nearly a decade of legal wrangling, especially over the laid-off workers’ dues, it was decided to redevelop the defunct land – an eye-popping 600 acres in prime south and central Bombay. Recreational spaces, public housing and private enterprise were each to get a one-third share of the total area.
The twenty-seven storey personal residence of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani is named after a Antilia, a mythical island in the Atlantic. It has three helicopter pads, underground parking for 160 cars and requires some 600 staff to run.
The 27-storey personal residence of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani is named after Antilia, a mythical island in the Atlantic. It has three helicopter pads, underground parking for 160 cars and requires some 600 staff to run. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty
But in 1991, the relevant Development Control rule 58 was unilaterally changed by the chief minister, making only “open” land in the mills eligible for the division. This left the lion’s share to the owners, their builder accomplices and, naturally, the obliging politicians. The city got a mere fifth of its desperately needed windfall.
Instead of the imaginative, integrated development plan drawn up by Charles Correa, the renowned Mumbai-based architect, the former mill-hub of Lalbaug-Parel is a soulless cram of skyscrapers, mall-to-mall carpeting and snarled traffic clashing with the tenements housing the dispossessed worker families.
The opportunity for Mumbai’s redemption was obscenely squandered. The greedy, selfish “development” has worsened, instead of alleviating, its two biggest headaches: housing and traffic.
Now, a new phoenix is projected to rise from the 800 acres of decrepit dockland along the city’s eastern shoreline, again in the prime south. Will the city finally get its life-saving leisure space and affordable housing? Or will it be one more land-grab hastening its death by “development”?
Mumbai waits with more cynicism than hope.
Residents of this overburdened and polluted megacity are held hostage by a politician-builder nexus that allows rampant ‘development’ to fuel its descent into urban hell
The Guardian Cities team is reporting live from Mumbai all this week - follow the latest on our live blog
One in six of Mumbai’s 12.7 million residents lives in a slum.
One in six of Mumbai’s 12.7 million residents lives in a slum.
It used to be India’s urban showpiece. Today, its sceptre and crown have fallen down and, in a phase of cynical destruction masquerading as “development”, Mumbai has become a metaphor for urban blight.
Consider these statistics. Rubbish could be its Mount Vesuvius. Some 7,000 metric tonnes of refuse is spewed out each day. Dumping grounds are choked, yet there is no government-mandated separation or recycling.
Around 7.5 million commuters cram themselves into local trains every day and the fledgling metro and monorail are unlikely to make a perceptible difference in the near future.
There are 700,000 cars on the road and the authorities indirectly encourage private vehicle ownership by adding flyovers and expressways, instead of building or speeding up mass rapid transit systems. Private vehicle numbers have grown by 57% in the past eight years, compared with a 23% increase in public buses.
There are around 700,000 cars on the road Mumbai causing untold congestion, air and noise pollution. Their number has grown by 57% over the past eight years.
There are around 700,000 cars on the roads of Mumbai causing untold congestion, air and noise pollution. Their number has grown by 57% over the past eight years. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP
Toxic nitric oxide and nitrogen oxide levels stand at 252 microgrammes per cubic metre (mcg/m3) more than three times the safe limit of 80 mcg/m3. Protests against sound pollution fall on deaf ears.
There’s less than 0.03 acres of open space per 1,000 people. The global norm is four; London has a profligate 12.
There are 12.7 million people jammed into the 480 sq km that comprise today’s Greater Mumbai, that’s 20,680 people per sq km. We are the world’s eighth most-populated city – and dying to prove it.
As a consequence, every sixth Mumbaikar lives in a slum. The premium on land was exacerbated by the Rent Control Act of 1947, which wasn’t amended till 1999. Too little, too late. Real estate prices are unreal. It’s cheaper to buy a flat in Manhattan than in Malabar Hill, and you can be sure that shoddy materials will shortchange you in Mumbai.
Considering that housing is the city’s biggest shortfall, it’s ironic that unbridled construction is indisputably its biggest problem. Many villains have been blamed for Mumbai’s descent into urban hell, from mafia dons to impoverished migrants, but for the past three decades the main culprit is the “politician-builder nexus”.
In 2005, the entire city was held hostage for three days. On 26 July, suburban Mumbai was lashed by 668 mm of rain in just 12 hours. Unwarned commuters and children in school buses were left high, but not dry, as roads and railway tracks disappeared. Slums and BMWs went under the deluge without discernment for their economic standing. It may have been the country’s financial capital, but in the photographs that followed, swaggering Mumbai didn’t look much different from a monsoon-marooned Bihar village.
For this humbling disaster, the finger pointed at that same culprit: the developer and his facilitator, the politician. There was nowhere for the rainwater to go. For decades the concrete army had been allowed to commandeer all open spaces, and illegal encroachments had done the rest. Public parks, verdant hills, salt-pans, school compounds, private garden plots, beaches, mangroves – nothing was spared.
The built environment in Mumbai had increased fourfold since 1925 – and at its fastest rate over the past 30 years – all at the cost of green cover and wetlands.
Around 7.5 million commuters cram themselves into local trains every day.
Around 7.5 million commuters cram themselves into local trains every day. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
The 2005 deluge brought to light the little-known fact that Mumbai had a river. The Mithi had been reduced to little more than a turgid drain, bubbling with the putrefactions of one of Asia’s largest slums, Dharavi. Why blame its desperate inhabitants when the authorities had built an airport runway and much of the swanky new business district of the Bandra Kurla complex over it?
The traumatising flood was a flash-point. Citizens rose against all the civic atrocities heaped upon them. Why must they suffer such acute and chronic brutalising when Mumbai was the biggest contributor to the national economy? It accounts for 33% of income-tax, 20% of central excise collections, 6.16% of GDP (the largest single contribution in India), 25% of industrial output, 40% of foreign trade and 70% of capital transactions.
Activists demanded it should be administered separately under a chief executive-like head, instead of politicians who siphoned off its wealth to their rural constituencies. The municipal commissioner should be answerable to the elected corporate leaders not, illogically, to the state chief minister. But all this sound and fury receded with the flood waters, and it was soon business as usual.
The unequal war between profiteering and civic wisdom was in unabashed evidence some 20 years before this great flood. An eagerly anticipated shot in the arm turned into a wound that still festers. The cotton mills, on which Mumbai’s original fame and fortunes were built, had been killed off by the prolonged strike of 1982 (and chronic neglect by their owners).
After nearly a decade of legal wrangling, especially over the laid-off workers’ dues, it was decided to redevelop the defunct land – an eye-popping 600 acres in prime south and central Bombay. Recreational spaces, public housing and private enterprise were each to get a one-third share of the total area.
The twenty-seven storey personal residence of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani is named after a Antilia, a mythical island in the Atlantic. It has three helicopter pads, underground parking for 160 cars and requires some 600 staff to run.
The 27-storey personal residence of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani is named after Antilia, a mythical island in the Atlantic. It has three helicopter pads, underground parking for 160 cars and requires some 600 staff to run. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty
But in 1991, the relevant Development Control rule 58 was unilaterally changed by the chief minister, making only “open” land in the mills eligible for the division. This left the lion’s share to the owners, their builder accomplices and, naturally, the obliging politicians. The city got a mere fifth of its desperately needed windfall.
Instead of the imaginative, integrated development plan drawn up by Charles Correa, the renowned Mumbai-based architect, the former mill-hub of Lalbaug-Parel is a soulless cram of skyscrapers, mall-to-mall carpeting and snarled traffic clashing with the tenements housing the dispossessed worker families.
The opportunity for Mumbai’s redemption was obscenely squandered. The greedy, selfish “development” has worsened, instead of alleviating, its two biggest headaches: housing and traffic.
Now, a new phoenix is projected to rise from the 800 acres of decrepit dockland along the city’s eastern shoreline, again in the prime south. Will the city finally get its life-saving leisure space and affordable housing? Or will it be one more land-grab hastening its death by “development”?
Mumbai waits with more cynicism than hope.
< Localcircles
BL
Jan Dhan scheme: FinMin asks LIC to speed up execution of life cover
Nov 15
A reality check on intellectual property concernsBL
Cash transfer benefit: double bonanza on first LPG booking
RICHA MISHRA, SHISHIR SINHA
It will be a double bonanza for domestic LPG customers going in for the direct benefit transfer... »|
| Is anyone around quite clear on what is sought to be conveyed ? In Bangalore (as it then was), when the scheme was first introduced (albeit later rolled back), and became effective, one remembers to have paid for the initial cylinder the bloated price; then only got a refund of the excess through ctb. Open to correction if mistaken ! LPG cash transfer benefit scheme re-launch today |
If nothing else, through the resorted move by linking LPG supply to ADHAAR , and in turn, to bank account,- OR taken in the reverse order if so preferred, -is sure to have the inescapable consequence of adding one more discomfiture to the already miserable life of 'commoners' , as opposed to affluents or 'influents' (sorry for doing violence to the language) , already filled and brimming with such irritants . By way of adding insult to the injury, though not given any publicity hence not heard of widely, is the surreptitiously introduced bottleneck via ceiling on LPG consumption. That has , as come to be heard, been done in a roundabout way by a ‘rule’ mandating that booking for a refill is impermissible unless a period of 25/30days has elapsed from the last refill delivery date. Even after booking, the minimum waiting period, as order of the day, for delivery of a fresh refill, is 15 days. As such, the underlying assumption is , regardless of actual size of a family, fresh cylinder should not but last for no less than 40 Days. The explanation proffered by the agency is that the objective is to thrust upon the habit of least consumption, thereby help government in saving on the subsidy outgo. Does that make, or not, any sense or logic, though certainly from the viewpoint of the consumers, is a matter for a long winding controversy- howsoever endless that might turn out to be. Be that as it may, that reminds anyone of the proverbial wisdom in deciding to cut off the nose to spite the face.
Prasanth
"Lead Kindly Light" is pathetically often taken to be a wasteful prayer; well rhymed but wrongly considered, by and large, to simply stop short of a wishful thinking, nothing beyond. What has been evading realization by we the humans is that, - 'candle light' is so symbolic as to ritualistically suggest to be more than adequate, and so powerful, as to provide THE LEAD and in a right or better direction, provided anyone is not averse but fine tuned to the humble idea of being so led. To be contextually precise, should even a couple of the large scale/macro scams, out of the series of them haunting the scenario all the time, be prevented or short-circuited, on a timely basis, the moneys saved to the exchequer might more adequately cover the dreaded subsidy burden.
Related (updates) >
· No consumer will be denied LPG subsidy: Arun Jaitley - The ...
Modi arrives in Australia; to highlight black money issue at G20 summit
PTI
As India attempts to unearth black money stashed abroad, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will push... » 1 comment
"Ahead of the summit, Modi felt that focusing on
transforming .... economic growth.” This one narration, of 'what Modi felt',
is, if perceptively viewed, likely to have provoked somewhat confused thinking
in anyone's intuitive mind. For, 'the quality of life', 'the health of the
financial markets' and 'employment- generating economic growth', the three obviously
distinct ideas, do not necessarily forebode a healthy or desirable , much less
a pragmatic blending; and especially so, our modern times being replete
with/surrounded by ab extra complexities/life
situations . To simply put it, the fervent hope is that the PM, with his
undoubted inborn tenaciousness, coupled with shrewdness/common sense approach ,
will certainly bring to bear in no mistakable terms as to what are our nation's
exact qualitative , not merely quantitative, expectations to emerge out of the deliberations at the
august summit.
A Sudden/abrupt Shift Back , THIS? -
A Sudden/abrupt Shift Back , THIS? -
Repatriation of black money kept abroad is a priority: Modi
Info on black money
India is also expected to urge the G20 to pressure tax havens into
revealing more information on black money from India to help retrieve
this illegal money.
Besides Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir
Putin, South African President Jacob Zuma and Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff, were the other leaders who took part in the informal
interaction.
jottings-
- quite likely to turn out or prove as futile as shots in the dark, more so with eyes blind folded
- shorn of
- what i regarded as avoidance v evasion, does it believe there exists a basic distinction, to what length or breadth allowed to be stretched, local conditions,
- philosophy of life in general, in such matters as corruption , conceptually different,
- monies stacked in banks and the extent of power and control, wielded by the government- the men constituting the government fro time to time - policies how ideally sound, or stable, efficient administration so on, after all somebody else's baby then why waste time or go out of the way unless there are reciprocal advantages of the same magnitude in quantity, internal - voluntary rather than compulsion
Times of India
PREV.
|
Shiv Sena’s protestations clouded an otherwise
classical Cabinet expansion exercise on Su...
|
Probably realising that “minimum
government and maximum governance” was only serving to overwork certain
Ministers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi enlarged his Council of Ministers to a
robust 66 members. Professionals and technocrats such as Jayant Sinha and
Mahesh Sharma as well as credible leaders with proven administrative records
such as Manohar Parrikar and Suresh Prabhu were inducted.
Sellers who focus on advice and persuasion
without considering how to build trust, cannot succeed in the long run
|
William Pesek: How much is this handshake worth?
|
|
anshuman tiwari
No change in cult. Modi burdens himself with a bloated government. risks of corruption and fiasco are rising.
Key Note :
Guidance value set to rise in Bengaluru, citizens rush to register
Opinion Poll (exclusively for ‘thinking’ people)
Do or don’t you consider NOT
UNRELATED >
This,-
this, -
If were to react
BLUNTLY: As a singularly wise man , true to his unbending righteous conscience,
is remembered to have effectively said, to apply for all times, there are only
two classes of bureaucrats (civil servants), -the one, to call so, would be an
affront to such perceptive, thinking individuals. The other class is, to call
so would be an affront to the English language who believe they are the รข€œsteel
frame of the government€, as they were called in British days. To be precise,
in choosing to remain, as ever, as rigid, unthinking and unbending as steel,
the persistent mooting and going ahead with such impulsive, but wrongly
believed-to-be innovative ideas, can seriously damage the health of the
national (in turn, the state ) economy, or vice versa - which is, as is
commonly feared, on the brink of an inevitable collapse.
If were to react BLUNTLY:
As a singularly wise man , true to his unbending
righteous conscience, is remembered to have effectively said, to apply for all
times, there are only two classes of bureaucrats (civil servants), -the one, to
call so, would be an affront to such perceptive, thinking individuals. The
other class is, to call so would be an affront to the English language who believe
they are the “steel frame of the government”, as they were called in British
days. To be precise, in choosing to remain, as ever, as rigid, unthinking and
unbending as steel, the persistent mooting
and going ahead with such impulsive, but wrongly believed-to-be innovative ideas, can seriously
damage the health of the national (in turn, the state ) economy, or vice versa -
which is, as is commonly feared, on the brink of an inevitable collapse.
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