Large Scale Destruction of Trees in Gokulam

MGP received a frantic phone call on Feb 23rd complaining that several trees were being felled behind ESI hospital on KRS road. When we visited the site, most of the cut trees had been already hauled away and so it was difficult to estimate exactly how many trees had been cut. It could be anywhere between 30 to 100. MGP called the forest department to inform them. Obviously, the department had not given permission to cut the trees. People from the department have visited the site and we were told that cases would be booked against the guilty.

It is surprising that such large scale violation of the law could take place without being stopped in the beginning itself. The incidence of cutting trees without obtaining permission from the Forest Department is increasing in the city. It is most essential that the department takes this violation seriously and does everything in its power to obtain exemplary punishment to the perpetrators of this crime. Otherwise more and more people will start breaking the law and soon Mysore will lose its green cover.

Maj.Gen. (Rtd.) S.G. Vombatkere, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

City Bus Stand: Poor Design For a Princely Sum

There has been a lot of discussion in the media about the arbitrary and ill thought-out decision of the district administration to shift the city bus stand to the inter-city bus stand building. This discussion has mostly limited itself to what a waste of money this move will entail, since the city bus stand was renovated recently at a huge cost of Rs. 14 crores. Keeping aside this angle, let us look at the questions of convenience and utility to the public.

The central business district (CBD) of Mysore city extends roughly from City Corporation building on the south to Medical College in the north, suburban bus stand in the east to Narayana Shastri road in the west. It contains shops of all descriptions as well as Devaraja market and the meat market. Since the present city bus stand is at the centre of this area, it provides the best access to the public to the CBD. Moving it to the inter-city bus stand building (which is on the eastern edge of the CBD) and prohibiting bus traffic on Sayyaji Rao road as has been proposed by the administration will make it very difficult for the public to access the CBD via bus travel. When every other country in the world is discouraging personal vehicles and encouraging public transportation because of economic and environmental considerations, it is surprising that the local administration is doing the exact opposite by proposing to build multi-storied parking lots next to the palace (to help private vehicles) and make bus travel expensive and inconvenient. This policy should be reversed and the CBD made easily accessible to the public travelling by bus. So if moving the present city bus stand becomes inevitable for some reason or the other, buses must be allowed to ply on major roads within the CBD to provide this access.

The city bus stand needs to be located conveniently and also designed properly to provide utility to the public. The present city bus stand renovation, despite its enormous price tag of Rs. 14 crores falls short in this respect. Some obvious problems with it are:

1. The flooring is very slippery. Such a flooring should not be used in any public building. When wet, it could be even more slippery. This makes it dangerous even for able-bodied people and could be life-threatening to the elderly and the physically weak.

2. The floor appears to be level and so water may not drain easily. This is again a no-no for any public building.

3. Subways from platform to platform is impractical for Mysore at the present time. When the next platform is 20 feet away, people are not likely to walk 50 feet to the subway, climb down 15 feet, walk to the next stairs, climb up 15 feet and walk 50 more feet to reach their destination. The aged and the disabled can not do it at all. So most people are just ignoring the subway and walking across the bus paths.

Of course, crossing the bus path is risky. But when pedestrian discipline is not being enforced anywhere in Mysore, it seems unrealistic to expect it at the bus stand. The floors of the subways are also unacceptably slippery. Water drainage can be a problem.

4. Water dispensers which have been installed on each platform are badly designed and as a result unhygienic. They come with a steel tumbler attached to a chain. The chain is so short that the tumbler can not be raised to the mouth of an average-sized human. This is poor design indeed.

The tumbler is very often left on the water drain which makes drinking from it disgusting. It is inexplicable why they do not provide water fountains (found in most foreign countries) which are very hygienic and convenient.

5. The waste bins provided do not have lids and so are repulsive. One could have provided waste bins with foot-operated lids. One should also provide biodegradable plastic liner bags for the bins so that they can be tied up and disposed of without soiling the bins themselves.

6. The concrete finishing for the bus paths is extremely smooth and it appears that many people slip and fall every day walking across the bus paths, especially near the exit to Sayyaji Rao road where the paths have a steep gradient.

It is not clear why the bus paths were made so smooth. If they get wet, they will become even more slippery, especially if some oil leaks from the buses. Then, buses and not just people might start skidding!

7. The drainage for the bus paths is also far from satisfactory. Only a few drains are provided and even they are blocked by garbage.

It is not obvious how these drains can be cleared of the garbage.

So it seems very likely that during the rainy season, the bus stand will be water logged.

8. The roofs over passengers waiting for buses will protect them from rain only if the rain is falling straight down.

If there is any wind at all, they will be drenched. The passengers can not even move leeward because rails prevent such movement. Even if the rain is falling straight down and the passengers are protected when standing in the shelter, they will be drenched when they come out to board a bus. Similarly the roof does not protect the passengers from slanting sun-rays. The design of the bus stand is defective and does not anticipate these situations. One could have designed an overhanging roof which juts well into the bus path to overcome these problems.

9. The bus shelter platforms have a bevelled edge on which many people lose their footing.

This again is a design problem.

10. The route charts are not designed well. The same route is shown for all the buses on one platform.

This is misleading to say the least. One should also have a master map which shows all the bus routes to help people to find which route to take to wherever they are going.

Vishwas Krishna, member, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

A Tughlaqian Decision

The Traffic Coordination Committee met on February 10, 2010, and took some very far-reaching decisions (as reported in newspapers). One of them, namely to turn the newly renovated city bus stand at K.R.Circle into a tonga and cycle stand, appears to be arbitrary and without adequate application of mind. This is a typical example of knee-jerk planning to which our city of Sir M.Visveswaraiah fame is becoming increasingly prone.

Incidentally, the ownership of the area of the city bus stand is in legal dispute, and KSRTC should not have been allowed to spend Rs.14 crore of public funds without government ownership being finally established. Besides this, what kind of overall city planning perspective can there possibly be when KSRTC is permitted to spend Rs.14 crore on renovating the city bus-stand while MCC watches, and not long after it is spent and the renovation is completed, the Traffic Coordination Committee issues an ultimatum to KSRTC to shift the bus stand? Is not KSRTC under the same Government of Karnataka? Which politician and official are responsible for planning in the City of Mysore? Who is responsible for loss of Rs.14 crore?

MCC Commissioner Mr. K.S.Raikar is reported to have said that it is not a question of Rs.14 crores but of conserving the heritage zone by preventing dust and pollution. When KSRTC proposed renovating the city bus stand, did not MCC know that it was right next-door to the Amba Vilas Palace? And speaking of heritage, can MCC explain why the mall building at Makkaji Chowka was permitted despite flouting heritage building height norms of RCDP-2011 as pointed out by the Heritage Expert Committee constituted by Government of Karnataka? Will the thousands of cars visiting the upcoming mall cause less dust and pollution or road congestion than a few hundred buses? Worse, the Makkaji Chowka mall construction is even now proceeding at night (so as to be conveniently ignored by officials) in spite of a High Court stay. Has MCC no interest in upholding the High Court order?

Precisely because of such haphazard planning, non-governance and mis-governance, it has been MGP's repeated plea over many years to the government to form an Apex Committee for Mysore City, headed by the District-in-Charge Minister with the DC as Member Secretary and all heads of various offices in Mysore as its members, to plan and coordinate all civic works. But this has fallen on deaf ears. We have seen a bus stand in the JK Grounds proposed and dropped several times, and likewise other schemes proposed by visiting ministers. All this confusion and unnecessary agitations among the public would have been avoided by forming an empowered Apex Committee, which would also be accountable to the people of Mysore.

The question inevitably arises whether confusion, non-accountability and non-transparency go towards encouraging corruption, for which Karnataka is competing for first place with Bihar. Let it be known that the public is watching, even though the majority may be silent.

Maj Gen S.G. Vombatkere (Retd), President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Photos from January 2010 issue of Grahaka Patrike

(Sushanti Prabhu)

 MGP activist C.V. Nagaraj received "Grahaka Bhooshana" award in Dharwad recently. Others in the photo are, from the left, N.P.Bhat, President, Avani Rasikara Ranga (and former Chairman, Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission of India), Dr.S.B.Hinchiheri, Registrar, Karnataka University, M.Sudarshanaraja, President, M,Sudarshanaraja Foundation (and High Court advocate), Dr. Chdananda Reddy S. Patil, Principal, University College of Law, Karnataka University.

MGP members H.R.Bapu Satyanarayana and Sreemathi Hariprasad led a protest against substandard construction of the railway underbridge near Fire Station, Saraswatipuram.

 

(Vishwas Krishna)

Open trailers used to transport garbage in Mysore dump much of the garbage on the roads.

Enviroment Protection Association intended to plant this seedling on Lalit Mahal Road during the protest against the butchering of 32 trees some time back by an unruly crowd. When the police refused permission for the protest meeting, the seedling was planted on Vivekananda Road instead.

More Than 2000 Children Visit MGP Stall

More than 2000 children visited Mysore Grahakara Parishat stall at the Mysoru Habba-2010 conducted on 6-2-10 by Children's Movement for Civic Awareness (CMCA) and Mysore City Corporation at Dr.B.V. Karanth Ranga Mantapa at the Exhibition Grounds. C.V. Nagaraj (2nd from left), Vasanthkumar Mysoremath (left), V.Mahesh, M.N.Ranganath and K.M.Vishwanath manned the stall. Simple experiments to detect various types of food adulteration were explained. The children were thrilled when they were asked to do these experiments themselves. As a result, there were large crowds till the end of the programme.

Vasanthkumar Mysoremath, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Scrap The New Urban Development Policy

Mysore City Corporation has sent the draft Urban Development Policy of the Karnataka government to various NGOs and has asked for comments. Mysore Grahakara Parishat has carefully gone through the draft and feels that it is such a poor starting point for any meaningful discussion that it should be scrapped and a new draft made.

Problems with the present draft start with its atrocious language.The words and the grammar are so poor that it is not possible to make sense out of many of its sentences.

Much of the present draft consists of cliche-ridden generalities. It talks of "the need to strengthen governance", "maintaining the highest standards in design and execution", "taking a holistic view of urban development", "making sure that people of all classes participate in the development process", "empowering local urban bodies", "new angle for urban planning", "eradicating poverty", "bringing accountability in administration", etc. without being specific on how to do these things. When on rare occasions the policy gets to specifics, it makes illogical, inconsistent and often foolish statements. The motivation for this policy is itself highly suspect. In the opening section, the policy says: "It is advisable to take a positive view of urbanization itself. In the past urbanization has been viewed primarily as a 'problem'. To overcome this, it is first important to accept that urbanisation is a welcome phenomenon, and that it reflects the aspirations of millions of people in the state. What is needed is not to discourage urbanization, but to steer it correctly towards ends that are desirable." This in our opinion is a foolish statement. Studies have shown that only a small percentage of migrants are attracted by the "bright lights" of the cities, but for the vast majority, it is either migration or starvation. When the skewed policies of successive governments deny rural areas basic infrastructure, health care, power and potable water, promote unsustainable agriculture and offer very poor returns on rural products and agricultural produce, it has become very difficult to eke out a living in villages and so rural people are forced to migrate to cities. Such a forced migration can not be "welcomed" as "the aspiration of the state's millions of people". It is like denying the people food grains and when in desperation they start eating leaves and grass to survive, welcoming the change in the eating habits as a reflection of the aspiration of the people.

The majority of sociologists and economists are worried about the dangers of urban migration and are busy devising ways to increase the standard of living in rural areas so that urban migration will slow down and eventually stop. Development plans for cities such as Delhi have explicit provisions to discourage migration. In this light, it is very surprising that Karnataka planners consider urban migration beneficial.

Now some examples of self-contradictory statements in the draft. On p. 3, it is stated that the poverty levels in city slums are worse than in villages (and so drastic steps have to be taken to alleviate city slum poverty). If this is true, why are villagers migrating to city slums?

On the same page, the policy notes that Bangalore is growing faster than other cities and recommends steps to promote other cities as a destination for migrants. But to be consistent with the aims of the policy, should not migration to Bangalore be welcomed as it reflects the "aspiration of the people"?

There are several statements in the present draft whose implications are disturbing. Some examples. On p.8, it says that we should not worry about whether present land use is legal or illegal! On p.10, it says that slum dwellers should be given ownership rights to the land. If this information gets out, there will be an explosive increase in encroachment of public and private land!

The draft policy seeks to give more power to elected representatives in the planning process and to reduce the role of government officials. If the draft policy is implemented as it stands, it will encourage unlimited growth of cities leading to astronomical land values in cities and will vest the control of all public lands with politicians. This is a sure-fire recipe for unlimited corruption and destruction of public property. As it is, thousands of crores of rupees are being spent under JNNURM and other projects to improve the cities. If the statement that urban migration is the will of the people and is welcome is made into a state policy, then even more money will be allotted to urban development. With so much money to be spent, becoming a city politician willl become irresistibly attractive as a career option.

Prof. S.K. Ananda Thirtha, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

MGP activist honoured

MGP activist and a nationally known expert on food adulteration, Mr.C.V. Nagaraj was honoured on 22-1-10 at Dharwad with "Grahaka Bhooshana' award by M. Sudarshanraja Foundation. The venue was the Law College of Karnataka University. The programme was conducted by Avani Rasikara Ranga, Dharwad Consumer Forum and Karnataka University Law College. The persons on the attached photo are, from left, N.P.Bhat, President, Avani Rasikara Ranga (and former Chairman of the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission of India), Dr. Hinchgeri, Registrar, Karnataka University, C.V. Nagaraj (seated), M.Sudarshanaraja, President of M.Sudarshanaraja Foundation (and High Court advocate) and Prof. Reddy Patil, Principal, Karnataka University Law College.

V. Mahesh, Mysore Grahakara Parishat