Revolutionizing urban transport

Ahmedabad’s Bus Rapid Transport System ‘Janmarg’ a wonderful case study of revolutionizing urban transport.

Literally meaning ‘way of the people’, Janmarg has established itself as a 

transport system that carries the citizens of Ahmedabad in safety, comfort

that too in the quickest way possible. Janmarg gives top priority to 

buses, pedestrians and non-motorized transport and this is achieved by 

segregating it from the rest of the motorized traffic. While buses run

on dedicated lanes at the Centre of the road, cyclists get their own dedicated

 track and pedestrians get wide footpaths. The supporting infrastructure from

 bus stations, Janmarg control centre to the workshops have been put

 in place with latest technology to make our travel as hassle free as possible.

Ahmedabad’s BRTS has the following special features that have truly made 
it a cut above the rest:

• Over 60 buses with GPS enabled facility with 2 way voice days and Passenger Information System as well as e-ticketing system.
• Extensive application of Intelligent Transport System (ITS).
• Low floor buses with large central doors of both sides. Accessible to persons with special needs.
• Bus Stations with the latest technology.
• Option of a Janmarg Travel Card that saves the commuter the need to stand in long lines and buy tickets.

Mr. Modi understood that Ahmedabad, being India’s seventh largest city and the largest
city in Gujarat with a population of over 5 million people urgently required a transport
system that is effective, efficient and can complement the pace of development Gujarat
has been going through over the past decade. Almost all leading international financial
centres from London, Paris, New York have mass transit infrastructure in place and
this is exactly what Modi is seeking to achieve for Ahmedabad for which Janmarg
is only the grand beginning.

The transit system has done Gujarat extremely proud by winning several awards
at the national and international level. In 2009 itself, the year when it was launched Janmarg was awarded the prize for ‘the best MRT project’ in the country.
 In 2010 it won the prestigious Sustainable Transport Award from the Transportation Research Board in Washington.
In 2011 It was awarded National Award for ‘Excellence in the category of the best ITS project’
from the Government of India and in 2012 when Ahmedabad won the special mention in the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, Janmarg was one of the 3 projects listed as pioneering feats towards the city’s urban regeneration.

Janmarg has drawn praise from far and wide. Just recently a team of corporators from
Pimpri-Chinchwad were in Ahmedabad to know about how the system works and even
the PMC has spoken on replicating the Ahmedabad model for their city. In a time when 
this form of urban transport has not been very successful in other parts of India, Janmarg 
serves as a classic case study of how to revolutionize urban transport and take it to 
the next level for maximum public good.

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Govt wasting money on ads

Stop govt from wasting money on ads, says new petition in court

Reported by Sunetra Choudhury, Edited by Prasad Sanyal 

A galaxy of ads - colour, black-and-white, half-page and smaller - all starring Rajiv Gandhi were nestled, many of them adjacent to each other, in today's newspapers. They varied in cost between one and four crores each, depending on whether the ad  was created and placed by a private ad agency or by the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP), which coordinates the advertising needs of  different government departments. At the former prime minister's samadhi (memorial) in Delhi, Mr Gandhi's wife, Sonia, who is the Congress president, was seen along with her daughter, Priyanka, at a service that was also attended by President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The government has not been unaware of the irony of PR campaigns having the opposite effect. So the Information and Broadcasting Ministry recently suggested that on special occasions, there should be just one ad placed on behalf of all ministries, and that the government's DAVP should coordinate its placement, because it is entitled to discounts from newspapers. The Finance Ministry is meant to drive home this point to other departments. The steel, commerce and power ministries are allegedly the worst offenders, often hiring private ad agencies to design and run their ads. Written rebukes from the Cabinet Secretary have been ignored, say sources, by ministries who like to prove to the party's leadership that their loyalty to the top rung, past and present, remains unshaken.  

Today's expansive and expensive ad campaign appears just days after the government was taken to court by an NGO over its habit of spending taxpayers' money on self-promotion. Last week, the Foundation for Restoration of National Values, a non-profit that has industrialist Ratan Tata on its board, filed a Public Interest Litigation or PIL in the Supreme Court. The petition says that governments must be stopped from using public funds for "eulogising" and "glorifying" their achievements. "This wasteful and wholly unnecessary exercise, cannot be justified in any manner, particularly at a time when various development and beneficent schemes are not able to reach the masses and the unprivileged, owing to either paucity of funds or infrastructural deficiencies," the NGO said. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear this appeal, along with an older petition that objects to the government spending crores on the birth and death anniversaries of political leaders.

The gloomy financial climate has compelled the government to officially announce that it's in austerity mode; as part of its attempts to check expenses, five-star hotels are off-limits for seminars and official lunches; new parameters for foreign travel have also been mapped. In May, a Right to Information application filed by NDTV established that the Central government has spent Rs. 58 crore on ads in the last three years. Rs.15 crore were spent on ads honouring Mahatma Gandhi; anotherRs. 12 crore were used for ads in honour of BR Ambedkar.

Ads on the Gandhi family (Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi) added up to roughly Rs. 22 crore, and that did not include today's campaign.

The RTI also reveals that state governments are equally generous with their advertising expenditure - Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Uttarakhand are the big spenders. In Andhra Pradesh,Rs. 8 crore have been spent in three years on ads for former chief minister YSR Reddy who died in a helicopter crash in 2009.

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Bureaucracy hits back whistle blower

Woman who stalled Rs 5000 cr corrupt irrigation projects

Bureaucracy hits back at Anjali Damania by taking away her 59-acre farm, but she remains undeterred
Yogesh.Sadhwani @timesgroup.com 


On Friday last week, when 42-year-old pathologist Anjali Damania received a government order informing her that she had lost ownership of a 59-acre farmland she had so lovingly nurtured for close to 18 years, it just brought a wry smile to her face. What is 59 acres for a woman who has stalled irrigation projects worth over Rs 5,000 crore across the state and who has become the pivot in a struggle against a corrupt system that lets project costs escalate to help contractors make obscene amounts of money.

    The forfeiture of her farm was the system hitting back at her, hoping she would get scared and abandon the movement. But on Monday, when this correspondent met Damania at her residence, it did not look like she was afraid or was contemplating laying down arms.

    Activism was thrust upon this softspoken mother of two who till a year ago led a comfortable life, dividing her time between the farm, her medical practice and foreign holidays. 

    Farmers' rights, human displacement, cost escalation in government projects and land acquisition were phrases she had read in the passing in newspapers and heard on evening TV news.

    She was just trying to save her land in Karjat which was to be acquired for the construction of a dam when she stumbled upon papers that showed how dams that would displace thousands of people and destroy acres of cultivable land were cleared in a matter of weeks. The papers also revealed how project costs were increased manifolds just days after a contractor bagged the project.

    The first set of figures that she managed to get hold were shocking. The cost of Kondhane dam, for which the government had sought to acquire her farm, had jumped from Rs 56 crore to Rs 328 crore barely a month after the contract was awarded. That's a cost escalation of nearly 600 per cent. Of course, this was done because a local elected representative demanded that the dam height be increased from 39 meters to 71 meters.

    Damania's struggle, which has spurred several activists to question cost escalation in irrigation projects across the state, started in May last year when she was told her 30-acre farm in Kondhane, Karjat would be have to acquired for a dam project. When she met local irrigation officials, they confirmed that such a project was being planned, but that the same had still not moved even to the drawing board stage. A complacent Damania went on a month-long holiday with her family.

    It was big mistake. When she returned, she found out that the project had been approved, tendered and a contractor appointed.

    Her immediate reaction was to save her farm that she had grown so attached to. Soon, project coordinators approached her to acquire the land. "They kept increasing the price thinking that I was acting like any other landholder trying to get the best deal. Frankly, I was like any other landholder, ignorant about my rights and how to protect them," she said.

    When pressure increased, Damania decided to sleuth around. She sought documents pertaining to the dam under RTI from the irrigation department. The first lot of basic documents revealed the shocking jump in construction costs. The documents also revealed that the project report was prepared, tender floated, and a contractor appointed in less than a month. This is when she realised something was amiss.

    At this juncture, Damania decided to get to the bottom of the issue and met up with several residents from other areas in Maharashtra where similar dam projects were proposed. "To my utter shock, it was the same story everywhere. Identical clutch of contractors bid for the projects everywhere. Contracts were awarded within days. At times, tender notices were published in newspapers a day or two after the project had already been awarded. Barely a month after the contract was awarded, scope of work was increased and cost went up manifold. None of the contractors were capable or technically sound to handle such huge projects," said Damania.

    This is some of the additional information that Damania was able to unearth. The cost of Kalu dam in Thane district had jumped from Rs 640 crore to Rs 1400 crore soon after the work was allotted. Similarly, the cost of Balganga dam in Pen jumped from Rs 420 crore to Rs 1,320 crore and for Shai dam the cost rose from Rs 410 crore to Rs 1,339 crore.

    As Damania began nosing around more, she started getting threat calls at her residence. Her family of stock-brokers freaked out. Her father-in-law issued an ultimatum - she would not be allowed to put everybody at risk for her work. "Fortunately, a few days later a television channel was featuring a programme on farmers' plight in a region where a big dam hadn't taken off as planned. Suddenly, my father-in-law turned towards me and told me that I should go all out after the scam and expose it to help poor farmers."

    She now began seeking documents pertaining to specific contractors and projects and it became more difficult to break through the bureaucracy. She was given lame excuses by irrigation department for not giving out documents. Her appeals under RTI Act went unheard. And when she eventually confronted Konkan Irrigation Development Corporation babus in their offices, she was told that the documents were nowhere to be found. "I just sat there and told them that I would not budge till I get my papers. I was scared that they will book me on some false pretext so I alerted my friends and India Against Corruption volunteers, who joined me in large numbers. Finally, at 7 pm the officials opened the cupboards and allowed me to take whatever I needed and photocopied them for me," she said.

    Armed with several relevant documents, she met Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan in May this year, who stayed work on Kondhane dam and asked his officers to prepare a white paper on the state's irrigation projects. Work on several other dams, where she had been able to expose the nexus between bureaucrats and contractors, was stalled too. Earlier this year, she filed a Public Interest Litigation at the Bombay High Court.

    Just when Damania thought she was going strong in exposing corruption in irrigation projects, the system hit back. Damania received a notice from the tehsildar in Kondhane stating that she would have to surrender all the parcels of land that she had bought in the last 18 years. The reason cited was that since all these land parcels, barring one bought in 1994, were agriculture plots, only a farmer could buy them.

    Damania tried to prove that her first plot she bought from a cultivation company in Mahagaon, Raigad, was non-cultivated but fertile land. Over the years she and her husband had started cultivating it. "I showed them photographs of my land. I tried asking them as to why they took 18 years to realise that my first acquisition was illegal. I was obviously being targeted to get me off the case," Damania alleged.

    Of course, all her arguments were rejected. On Friday, she received a final order stating that all her land had been acquired by the state.

    Damania's resolve to fight against corruption hasn't diminished. She still continues to dig up documents on various other under-construction dams in the state. 

Anjali Damania, the brave whistle blower

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