By: Harshad Oak
Article about improper use of parking spaces and builders tricking the city administration by just converting public parking into private parking spaces.
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As per construction rules in cities, all buildings need a certain parking capacity to be approved by the corporation. Even these standards seem inadequate to handle the traffic mess in cities like Pune. However builders have found a way to make it appear as if they are conforming to the law without doing anything of that sort. They just convert public parking into private parking and supposedly comply with parking capacity rules.
“Article about freedom on the Internet published in my bi-weekly column for the Maharashtra Herald daily newspaper.”
Orkut.com has been getting the Internet a lot of bad publicity of late. Orkut is a site where you can find old friends and make new ones. It has 1000s of communities and millions of active members. But this popularity has also made Orkut the favourite punching bag for the media today. It may be an obscure Orkut community that defames a national icon or some anti-Indian post on an Orkut forum, but it all becomes sensational news very quickly.
The reasons why we keep seeing these news are –
1) It’s very easy to find improper things on Orkut. If you spend 15 min on Orkut you will find somebody somewhere talking nonsense about some great man or saying things that might be offensive to someone.
2) Orkut’s popularity ensures that any Orkut news gets a lot of attention.
3) Orkut will always provide a steady stream of controversial news, as moderating Orkut is close to impossible.
So if a 24 hr news channel is short of news it can always pick something from Orkut or an offensive video from YouTube and blow the story out of proportion.
Maharashtra again suffers from acute electricity shortage and extended power cuts. While the govt. hasn’t shown much innovation or vision when it comes to power supply, it has been ingenious in managing the power cuts. It’s relying on good old “Divide and Rule”.
Considering that the entire state of Maharashtra is short on electricity, an outsider would think that all parts of the state will be facing equal power cuts. But the reality is that the power cuts vary inversely to the political importance of a place in the state.
A few days back I wrote about the the Pune Corporation’s announcement about the city budget for 2007-2008 being a participatory one. Citizens can suggest development activities in their ward for upto Rs. 20 lakhs.
This year the state of Maharashtra again suffers from acute electricity shortage and extended power cuts. While cities are facing 2-6 hours of cuts, the villages have to go without power for 10-16 hours a day.
As most in India are aware, the reason for this situation is the incompetence of the politicians and the state run power company they control.
Pune Municipal Commissioner Nitin Kareer has announced that citizens can give written applications suggesting developmental works in their wards to the extent of Rs 15 lakhs.
The application forms which include space for name, address and other details are available at all 14 ward offices. The form explains how citizens can make suggestions for development work, based on which they can give their own suggestions.
