Will CESC clarify?

For the past several days, persons claiming to be licensees of  Chamundeshwari Electric Supply Company (CESC) are going around from house to house in J.P. Nagar where I live, changing ordinary electric meters to digital electric meters. and collecting Rs. 30 as service fee. They do not carry ID cards nor do they issue receipts for the amount collected. So I have been advising my neighbours not to pay the amount. Are these people authorized by CESC? If so, why is a service charge being collected for something that should be done for free? If a service charge has to be levied, why is it being collected without issuing receipts? Why can't CESC include it in the next monthly bill instead of collecting it like this? Will CESC clarify before the charge is collected from more people?

G.L.Nagaraj Urs, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Mysore needs a Passport office

Mysore is second largest city of Karnataka State. It is  also a very important higher education centre. Thousands of students pass out with professional degrees every year. A large section of these students go to other countries for higher education. Quite a large chunk of these students get absorbed by companies with international operations. In both of these cases thousands of youngsters are seeking passports to pursue their ambitions.

Also thousands of youngsters from Mysore are seeking semi-skilled work in the Middle East countries and they are also seeking passports.

Mysore has a very large number of families and households from where children have either settled abroad or working or studying abroad and their parents and relatives seek passports to join their kith and kin abroad.

Mysore is also a cultural centre of international repute.Hundreds  singers, musicians,dancers and Yoga exponents from this city travel all round the world spreading the fragrance of Karnataka’s culture.

Apart from Mysore people also from neighbouring towns such as Chamrajanagar, Mandya and Mercara need passports for the very reasons mentioned above

At present, all these people have to go to Bengaluru for any and every issue relating to passport. This is not only time-consuming but also expensive.

Despite all the claims made by the concerned Department announcing people-friendly procedures in seeking services relating to passport things are under the control of touts and agents. This makes the seeking passport services more cumbersome, uncertain and expensive particularly for Mysoreans.

It is time that concerned authorities and the our member of Parliament took note of this requirement of Mysoreans and get a passport office at Mysore at the earliest.

R.Chandra Prakash, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Consumer Court orders cannot be challenged in High Courts

In a major decision given recently (IV (2012) CPJ 1 (SC)), the Supreme Court has said that orders given by consumer courts can not be challenged in High Courts.

The Consumer Protection Act provides a hierarchy of appeals. If one is not satisfied with the decision of the District Consumer Forum, one can appeal to the State Consumer Commission. From the State Consumer Commission, one can appeal to the National Consumer Commission and from there to the Supreme Court. But many persons not happy with the decisions of the consumer courts have appealed to High Courts under Article 226 of the Constitution which empowers High Courts to issue certiorari orders quashing orders of lower courts. Such appeals were being accepted by the High Courts, thus short-circuiting the hierarchy of appeals prescribed by the Consumer Protection Act.

In the case before the Supreme Court, Kerala High Court  had decided on a writ appeal filed against a decision of the National Consumer Commission. This was challenged before the Supreme Court. In its judgment, the Supreme Court said, "...we can not help but state in absolute terms that it is not appropriate for the High Courts to entertain writ petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India against the orders passed by the Commission, as a statutory appeal is provided and lies to this Court under the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. Once the legislature has provided for a statutory appeal to a higher court, it can not be proper exercise of jurisdiction to permit the parties to bypass the statutory appeals to such higher court and entertain petitioners in exercise of its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution of India."

Therefore, even though Article 226 of the Constitution gives High Courts the power to overturn decisions given by consumer courts, the Supreme Court has stated that when there is provision for statutory appeals, it is not appropriate for the High Courts to use that power. As a result, from now on, both parties in a consumer dispute will be constrained to follow the hierarchical appeal process prescribed by the Consumer Protection Act.

G.L.Nagaraj Urs, Mysore Grahakara Parishat I

A useful facility of the Railways

Railways have introduced a new facility which is bound to be very useful to the public. If anyone visits this site website , they can see all the trains running at that time all over India on a map. They are shown as arrows moving on lines representing railway tracks between various cities.

You can enlarge any portion of the map and you can focus on one line such as Bangalore-Mysore. The Bangalore-Mysore line at 6.10 PM on Saturday, 22-12-12 is shown in the picture. The various arrows are various trains going in the direction of the arrow. There are 5 arrows between Mysore and Bangalore representing, sequentially, Mysore-Bangalore Rajyarani Express, Mysore-Bangalore Mayiladudurai Express, Mysore-Bangalore Passenger, Bangalore-Mysore Passenger and Mysore-Bangalore Yashwantpur Express You can also see a train approaching Mysore on the Arasikere line and 5 trains near Bangalore on other lines. The blue colour of the arrows indicate that they are on time (meaning, they are not more than 15 minutes later than they should be). If they are more than 15 minutes overdue, they are shown as red arrows. If you click on the arrows, you will get more details on that train. The information on all the trains is updated every 5 minutes and so you can see the arrows (representing the trains) actually move. The website states that all information is a few minutes out of date because of security reasons, but this should not be a problem for most of the public.
Prof. B.S.Shankara, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Excess fees charged by share brokers

In the pursuit of more revenue or profits, consumers are being charged more than what the law (often the letter and more often the spirit) permits. Many banks and financial institutions are charging maintenance charges separately, when they should be covered by the profits earned by investing the depositors' money. City Corporations are levying additional fees and cesses for providing certain services, when the law says that these services should be covered by the property tax levied by the Corporations.

Another such example is before us. We have received complaints that some share brokers are levying postage fees when such postage should be covered by the standard brokerage fee collected by the broker. We see merit in such complaints.

In addition to charging postage fee separately, when it should be covered by the brokerage fees, we noticed that the broker had charged Rs. 10 for postage to the consumer-investor when the actual postage was only Rs. 2.50. The broker had further charged Rs. 1.24 as service tax on the postage. But there is no service tax on ordinary postage! Since there is no legal provision for service tax on ordinary postage, it can not be remitted to the government. Then, where does the money thus wrongly collected from the investors go?

We also noticed that there are some brokers who do not charge separately for postage and service tax. So we have asked the Securities Exchange Board of India and the National Stock Exchange of India the following questions:

1) Is a broker entitled to charge separately over and beyond the standard brokerage feesÿfor posting mandatory contract note and statement of accounts to investors?
2) Is a broker entitled to recover a service tax from the investor on an ordinary postÿfranked at Rs 2.50 which is exempt from service tax? Can a broker charge Rs. 10 for postage when he incurs only Rs. 2.50 towards actual postage? Do SEBI rules and NSE guidelines allow such charges?

If this malpractice is allowed more heads of illegal charges and irregular service tax are likely to be introduced to harass the consumer-investors.

V.Mahesha, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

The Muddle of Voters Lists

Elections, both state and central, are drawing near and the people are gearing themselves to vote once again. But the government is making it as difficult as possible for the people to exercise their right to vote. Here are just a few problems voters are facing:

1. To find out if you are a registered voter is just about impossible. To find out if your name is still on the voters list, the officials tell you to go to the polling booth you went to vote in the last election, but when you go to that booth, you will find that not all booths have the information. You have to check a few booths (which are mostly primary schools) in the neighbourhood before you find the booth with the information. Even if you locate the correct booth, the teacher who has been entrusted with the job is not generally available during working hours. When you finally meet the right person, it is still difficult to find the needed information. The voters list they have is not well-organized and also incomplete and they have difficulty in finding your name in it. Since they have only one copy of the list, they are unwilling to give it to you and so you can not go through it methodically either.

If you decide that instead of all this hard work, you will sit at home and use the internet to find your name in the voters list, your situation is not much better. The Karnataka Election Commission's website does not give the voters list, but offers to search for your name in the list. It fails to do so very often. The website infobytes.in gives you voters lists, but they are outdated and very difficult to locate names, since there is no discernible order to the entries and the names are not indexed.

2. The names of many voters who have a voter's ID and who voted in the last election have found their names missing from the voters list. How can this happen? Who is responsible?

3. If you see the voters list of your street, you will find dozens of strange names, people you have never met and people you are sure do not live in your neighborhood. Once in a while, officials come to check, but these names mysteriously continue to be present in the voters list, while the names of people who actually live in your neighbourhood are deleted for not living in the address shown! More surprisingly, in the same family which stays at the same address, some names continue as valid while others have been deleted.

4. Voters have also been transferred on a large scale to new booths without any logic. Some of the new booths are nearby but some are far from the present booth. For example, I live with my wife, my son and daughter-in-law in J.P.Nagar. We all voted in booth no. 169 in J.P.Nagar in the last election. But now, in the new voters list, my wife and I continue to be at booth no. 169 while the names of my son and daughter-in-law have been moved to booth no. 160 in Srirampura which is 3 km from our house. Shifting of names from booth no. 169 to 160 seems to have happened to more than two hundred people of Main Roads 17-20 of J.P.Nagar. Why has this happened? How can one expect people, especially senior citizens, to go so far to vote?

5. Many names, addresses, ages, names of husband/father and gender listed in the voters list are incorrect. I have thus far given 9 applications for corrections to the voters list information of my family and have obtained acknowledgments for them. But till now, none of the mistakes have been rectified. At least I am better off than some people I know who have submitted such applications. When they point out an error in the name, the error is corrected, but a new error in the address is introduced. When they submit another application for the correction in address, the address gets corrected, but the age which was correct earlier is now changed. The authorities seem determined to keep the number of errors constant. Or maybe they are keeping them as a "beauty spot"!

Also, for every correction, however minor, you have to submit a passport size photo, or they will not accept your application. The application form is so complicated that a person with average education will not be able to complete it correctly.

6. The old voter ID cards of many of us had numbers which started with KT. But the government has announced that these have been changed to numbers beginning with SLC. We are now wondering if the officials are familiar with the change and if their voter IDs will be rejected at the time of voting.

It appears that there is no supervision and no accountability for the officials and staff handling voters lists as well as the private agencies they hire. Officials say that it is the responsibility of the citizens to check if their names are in the voter lists and reregister if the names are missing. But who has the time, effort or money to do this every time? Instead of making it easy for the voters to exercise their civic right, officials are doing everything to make it difficult. Some people whose names are missing from the voters list have already given up the fight and are not reregistering. They will not vote in the next election. If this trend continues, more and more people will stop voting and democracy in our country will be dead.

G.L.Nagaraj Urs, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Mushrooming of Service Apartments

"Service apartments" built on residential sites are mushrooming all over the city. There is no essential difference between service apartments and hotels and so service aprtments must be considered commercial buildings and hence can not be permitted on residential sites.

Secondly, many of these "service apartments" have no parking space. For example, one such building which is about to be completed in Yadavagiri is a 1+4 building in which the bottom floor must be, by law, used exclusively for parking. But it is not being done. The road and the footpath are already clogged by vehicles of patients, staff and visitors of a nearby hospital and if we add the vehicles coming to the service apartments, the road will be a nightmare for both vehicles and pedestrians.

A bank had its office in the ground floor of this building about 15 years ago. Since it was the same parking space referred to above, MCC issued a notice and the bank vacated the premises. It is not clear why the parking space has been encroached again. Does it have the sanction of MCC?

We hope that Mysore City Corporation takes this issue seriously and act quickly. 

B.V.Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Exam Answer Sheets Covered by RTI Act

In a decision given recently, the Supreme Court has said that the exam answer sheets of a student have to be provided to him for inspection if he applies for them under the Right to Information Act.

In this case, a candidate who had written a CBSE exam was dissatisfied with the marks he had obtained and had applied for inspection of his answer sheets under the RTI Act and the CBSE had rejected his application citing rule 8(1)(e) of the Act which exempts information held in a fiduciary relationship from mandatory disclosure. A fiduciary relationship is one in which a person trusts the other person to exercise a reasonable degree of care. CBSE argued that it holds the answer sheets in a fiduciary relationship with the examiner and so it can refuse to divulge that information. The Court did not agree and said that it is bound to allow RTI applicants to inspect or obtain a copy of their answer sheets. But the Court admitted that if a disgruntled examinee comes to know the name of the examiner, he may harm the examiner. So it said that before giving the answer sheets to the RTI applicant, information about the examiners should be deleted under section 8(1)(g) of RTI Act, on the ground that if such information is disclosed, it may endanger their physical safety.

Sec. 8(3) of the RTI Act says that information relating to any event or matter which took place 20 years before the RTI application should be provided. At first sight, it appears that this section makes it compulsory to preserve all information for 20 years. But the Supreme Court interpreted it differently in its order. It said that examination bodies need not keep the answer sheets for 20 years and can make their own rules about how long they will keep them (for example, CBSE rules say that answer sheets will be kept for 3 months after the announcing of results). The RTI applicant has to submit his application for answer sheets within this time or else RTI Act will not apply.

P.M. Bhat, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Photos from the December issue of Grahaka Patrike

 (B.V.Shenoy)
The EXCEL plant established to process the solid waste produced by Mysore city is not working properly. There are hills of unprocessed garbage everywhere

 (B.V.Shenoy)
There are hundreds of bags of compost manure remaining unsold at the EXCEL plant.

(Bhamy V.Shenoy)
The November monthly meeting of MGP discussed the Master Plan-2031 for the Mysore-Nanjangud planning area.

Sub-registrar's offices have been streamlined

The department of stamps and registration is streamlining all its offices  To check its progress, a delegation from Mysore Grahakara Parishat recently visited the Mysore (South) Sub-registrar's office (opposite People's Park) which is presently manned by sub-registrars M.V. Satheesh and H.T. Shashikala. The senior sub-registrar M.V. Satheesh showed the delegation around and explained the various facets of the office streamlining. It was noticed that the documents held by the office such as various types of deeds (wills, gifts, leases, sales, partitions, etc.) dealing with property, general powers of attorney, marriage documents, etc. have been neatly sorted and catalogued so that they can be retrieved quickly. Records from the year 2003 onwards have been digitized and can be retrieved almost instantaneously. We were told that the department is considering a proposal to digitize even records before 2003 and if it happens, the office will be completely digitized. Digitization has speeded up considerably the services provided by the office. For example, "no encumbrance certificates" for the period after 2003 can now be provided within a day.

A.M. Subba Rao, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Photos from the November issue of Grahaka Patrike

(Bhamy V.Shenoy) 

The 23rd Annual General Body Meeting of Mysore Grahakara Parishat was held on 29-9-12 at The Paradise hotel. It began with an invocation by V. Balasubramanyam.

(Bhamy V.Shenoy)

The dais at the 23rd AGBM of MGP. From left, V. Mahesha, Working President, Sreemathi Hariprasad, President and K.R. Seshadri, Treasurer. The Secretary Asha Vombatkere could not be present as she was hospitalized.

(Bhamy V.Shenoy)
The audience at the 23rd AGBM of MGP

(Bhamy V.Shenoy)
Dr. H.A.B. Parpia, the Founder-President of MGP participated actively, at the age of 90, in the 23rd AGBM.

Park Being Encroached

An 8-m wide public (MUDA) park parallel to the Mysore-Bangalore highway opposite Arabic College in Siddiqui Nagar separates the highway from the service road.

Now, an 8-m length of the park fencing has been broken on both sides exactly opposite "Prestige Convention Hall", apparently to provide direct access to that establishment from the highway. Thereby about 60 sq m of park land has been encroached.

Parks are public property and cannot be encroached for private use. MCC needs to immediately reclaim the park land and take appropriate action against the persons responsible for destroying public property.

R. Chandra Prakash, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

LPG - A Maze of Confusion

The government has been taking a slew of mutually contradictory steps on LPG. The public is confused.

Ever since it signed the GATT agreement in 1994, India has been promising the world that it would remove all oil subsidies including the subsidy on domestic LPG. Maybe it is a lack of willpower, but every time it takes a decision on the issue, it seems to be taking one step forward and then two steps backwards. Thus LPG subsidy still continues eighteen years after the GATT agreement.

The government announced some time ago that the number of subsidized cylinders has been limited to six per household per year. This gave rise to a wave of protests and several states have announced higher limits. Now the central government itself is considering increasing the number to nine or even twelve per year.

The government recently made a "one household, one connection" announcement and as a result, thousands of households which had more than one LPG connection, surrendered the additional connections. But the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has just announced new norms according to which, the household can retain additional connections, but the household can enjoy the benefit of only six subsidized cylinders on one connection and the full price has to be paid on additional cylinders on that connection and any cylinder on other connections. If the norms had been announced earlier, it would have saved thousands of families the hassle of surrendering their additional connections.

It was announced some time ago that all LPG consumers should pay the full price on any cylinder that is delivered to their household and that the LPG subsidy for which they are eligible will be directly credited to their bank accounts. To receive this credit, the consumers were supposed to go to the bank with a copy of the Aadhaar card and get their accounts "Aadhaar-enabled". Many people have already done so. But the government seems to be dragging its feet on the scheme and it has not yet been implemented. It is surprising that some banks are not even aware of "Aadhaar- enabling" of customer accounts.

To prevent diversion of cylinders, the government introduced the LPG customer card and the number of the delivered cylinder was supposed to be written on it. The delivery boy was supposed to check the number on the empty cylinder and make sure that it matched the previous entry on the customer card. This procedure would track each cylinder and hence put an end to diversion. But no one monitored these cards and black marketing of cylinders flourished. Now, again to prevent LPG cylinder diversion, the government has introduced mobile and internet booking of cylinders. In Mysore, for HP dealers, one can no longer book a cylinder by calling or visiting the dealer. This system is supposed to make the booking foolproof and diversion of cylinders by the dealers impossible.

But if the gap between two bookings exceeds 6 months, the gas connection is automatically blocked and the consumer has to go through an elaborate ritual to get the connection unblocked. There are many households in which there are only one or two persons (especially elderly people) and if they visit their children for any length of time, the gap between gas bookings will exceed 6 months and they will have to go through the cumbersome process of unblocking their connection. When asked why consumers are being thus harassed, oil company officials reply that it is to prevent unlawful diversion of LPG. This is a contradictory stance. On the one hand, they say that on-line and mobile bookings will prevent LPG diversion and on the other hand they say that it is not enough to prevent diversion and still more procedure is required!

When pressed for a solution to this problem, we were told to book a cylinder once in three months and then refuse to take delivery. This procedure may succeed in keeping the connection unblocked, but it will allow the dealer to sell the cylinder in black market!

The government is spending about Rs. 35,000 crores every year in LPG subsidy. Since the price of a subsidized domestic cylinder is about Rs. 410 and the price of an unsubsidized cylinder is about Rs. 900, the huge difference in the prices is a heavy incentive for black marketing. It is estimated that more than 30% of the domestic cylinders are diverted to the black market. It means that more than Rs. 10,000 crores of government subsidy ends up in undeserving hands.

With such a huge loss to the government, one would expect it to be a little more industrious in putting a stop to LPG diversion. It is clear that any decent scheme would cut the diversion drastically if implemented properly. Instead of doing it, the government is bringing on one scheme after the other without implementing any of them properly. This is not just confusing, but a hassle to the public. On top of it, diversion of cylinders continues. The end to this confusion is nowhere in sight.

Dwarkanath Narayan, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Attention Mahindra "Rodeo" owners

MGP has been receiving some complaints that Mahindra "Rodeo" motorcycles are giving less mileage than advertised. Persons who have faced this problem are requested to send details to MGP, 6/1, Vivekananda Road, Yadavagiri, Mysore 570 020 or send an e-mail to mygrapa [at] gmail [dot] com

Dr.Bhamy V Shenoy, MGP

All field trials of GM foods in India to be stopped

The Technical Expert Committee appointed by the Supreme Court in a writ petition against field tests of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) has submitted its interim report to the Court on 7­/10­/2012. The report of the committee clearly says that all GMO field trials in India should be stopped.

Anti­GMO activists led by Aruna Rodrigues had filed the public interest litigation (WP (Civil) No. 260/2005) before the Supreme Court stating that a grave and hazardous situation, raising bio­safety concerns, is developing in our country due to release of GMOs. They had claimed that GMOs are allowed to be released in the environment without proper scientific examination of bio­-safety concerns and are affecting both the environment and human health. The petitioners had prayed for putting in place a protocol that maintains scientific examination of all relevant aspects of bio­safety before such release, if release were to be at all permissible. On hearing their arguments, the Supreme Court, on 10­/5/20­12, set up a six­ man expert committee to submit a report on the following issues:

Should there be any ban on the conducting of open field tests of GMOs? If open field trials of GMOs are permitted, what protocol should be followed?

The committee’s report says that all GMO field trials should be stopped until:
i) specific sites for conducting field trials have been designated and certified and sufficient mechanisms for monitoring the trials put in place.
ii) a panel of qualified scientists has been engaged for scrutiny and analyses of the safety data.
iii) conflict of interest in the regulatory body has been removed.
iv) the requirement for preliminary biosafety tests prior to field trials has been included.

The committee also recommends a ten year moratorium on field trials of Bt transgenics in all food crops such as Bt brinjal.

K.N. Ramachandra, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Four Crises Threatening Mysore: Does the Master Plan Have Any Answer?

MUDA has planned interactions on October 17 and 18 with experts and the general public about the draft Master Plan for Mysore Nanjangud Local Planning Area ­ 2031 (MPM). Will the
interactions lead to redoing the plan as is needed? Or will they simply result in cosmetic changes only? MUDA appears to be in a big hurry to get MPM approved by the government. There is a feeling that approval of the present MPM will allow vested interests to make a killing on the land they are holding. For their benefit, MPM should not sacrifice the well­being of millions of Mysoreans. The MPM should be addressing the following four major crises which are threatening Mysore City, but I cannot find any answers in the MPM to these problems.

Water Crisis
There is a shortage of rains this year and Mysore city is facing a terrible water problem. If you look at past records, we are sure to face bigger droughts in the future, but the MPM does not consider this possibility at all. With the population of Mysore rising rapidly, this is a scary prospect. Why has the MPM not included the 50 year master plan prepared by Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board?

Traffic Crisis
The traffic situation in the city is getting worse by the day. Vehicle ownership is increasing fast with higher incomes and so also accidents in the city. The day when the traffic in Mysore will come to a grinding halt in a gridlock is not far away. The traffic police still do not have a computer simulation model to find solutions to the traffic problems of either today or the future.

Garbage Crisis
It must be a cruel joke to award Mysore City the second cleanest city in the country award. With the lack of planning in the MPM with reference to garbage handling, we will soon be drowning in garbage. How did MPM underestimate the current generation of garbage as just 350 tons per day? Why has MPM ignored several studies done for the city by other experts on this subject?

Heritage crisis
MMP pays a lot of lip service to the need for preserving the city’s heritage. Forget about preserving heritage, we are destroying it at an alarming rate. How can anyone allow a huge mall in the heart of the city next to the historic palace? How can a parking lot be constructed within the premises
of the Town Hall, another heritage building? Very soon there will be no heritage left to preserve!

Instead of catering to the demands of developers who are holding large tracts of agricultural land around Mysore waiting for the green signal from the MPM for development, MUDA and the
implementing agencies should be planning for the above crises which may toll the deathknell of Mysore. Will MUDA be ready to discuss them during their planned interaction.

Dr. Bhamy V Shenoy, MGP

Comments of Mysore Grahakara Parishat on Mysore Master Plan 2031

MUDA has published a draft Master Plan for Mysore Nanjangud Local Planning Area - 2031 (MPM) and invited comments from the public. The following are the comments of Mysore Grahakara Parishat on the draft plan.

When we asked our members (Dr. Bhamy V. Shenoy, Maj.Gen.(Rtd.) S.G. Vombatkere, Prof. R. Chandra Prakash, Dr. H.A.B. Parpia, H.R. Bapu Satyanarayana, Prof. B.S. Shankara, B.J. Rao, Nitin Ningaiah, Usha Subramanian) to send their comments on MPM so that we can consolidate them to forward to MUDA, we were surprised at the depth and breadth of their criticism of the MPM. We realized that the draft plan has major problems and these problems can not be repaired without undoing it (The fault lies not just with MUDA, but the system and the implementing agencies - MCC, KSRTC, etc.- also). So Mysore Grahakara Parishat recommends that MUDA should get back to the drawing board with the implementing agencies sand start all over again on a new MPM.

We will not list all the objections to the MPM because the list is too lengthy. Instead we present just six of the major drawbacks of the current MPM:

1. It has no clear vision. It tries to be everything to everyone and ends up by being nothing. It has to choose between an old charm-heritage-tourist attraction future for Mysore or a development-like-Bangalore future.

2. It seems to be based on several incorrect facts. Here are just a few examples. While the current production of solid waste is about 450 tons per day, the MPM assumes that it is only 330 tons per day. Again, according to MPM, the air pollution levels in Mysore have fallen in the last 10 years. With the explosive increase in vehicle population, this is quite unlikely. Once again, according to MPM, Mysore's demand for water was 167 million liters per day in 2010 and the supply was 248 MLD. So we must have a huge surplus of water and the water crisis which the citizens of Mysore have been experiencing is just an illusion! If we had such a large surplus of water, where was the need to spend a huge amount of money on the Kabini project for additional drinking water? Such obviously incorrect figures strain the credibility of the MPM.

3 . The MPM is a single scenario plan. It starts with a set of data such as the population, number of vehicles, amount of garbage produced, etc. at the present time, projects their values 20 years from now and plans a city for those projected values. Even with accurate data, predicting the future is unreliable, but with questionable data (which the MPM seems to be working with), it is pure guesswork. It is essential that a master plan should plan for several alternative scenarios. In case the future does not turn out the way anticipated, one is still prepared. The MPM plans for a city of 20 lakh population in 2031. If it is noticed in the next 5-10 years that the population is growing faster than expected, we will be in a fix. We can not continue wasting money on the MPM since we know that it will be inadequate for the larger population, but we can not change course either, because we have no other plan!

4 . During the last few years, the government has commissioned several studies related to planning for the city such as, low carbon city planning by Atkins, a UK consulting firm, GIS mapping to streamline traffic by a French agency, fifty year plan by Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board, a plan for solid waste management, preserving heritage sites, etc. It is surprising that the Master Plan has not made much use of these earlier studies. Why spend enormous amounts of money on studies if these studies find no place in city planning?

5. To obtain massive aid under the JNNURM project, Mysore city has promised to develop the city in a planned manner. It has developed a Comprehensive Development Plan and it has committed to follow this CDP. The JNNURM CDP also plans for the year 2031. There is no reference to to the JNNURM CDP in the MPM. Will the city’s development follow CDP or MPM?

6. The MPM has several proposals which are hostile to the very idea of good planning. Here are just two examples. It seems to to believe that progress is widening the roads. No attention is paid to the plight of pedestrians and cyclists. Irwin road is proposed to be widened by 3 meters between Medical College and the Arch Gate. If that happens, there will be no footpath at all.

The MPM also permits apartment buildings on single house residential sites. When the area is designed for one-family-per-site scenario, building apartments on these sites would replace each family with 10-15-20 families. How can the infrastructure - roads, parking, water, electricity, sewage, etc. bear this tremendous additional burden? Is this what MPM calls planning?

These defects in the MPM can not be repaired with any amount of patchwork. Therefore, we reiterate that MUDA should start all over again and prepare a new meaningful MPM.

Even with an accurate and sensible MPM, its value and usefulness are still highly suspect. There have been previous development plans, but neither MUDA nor MCC has shown any commitment to these plans. These plans have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance. There have been widespread and massive violations of the plans, but the government just regularizes them and moves along to the next plan. Land use changes are granted at the drop of a hat disregarding the plan. If the government is not serious about implementing a development plan, why does it even make one.

Sreemathi Hariprasad, President, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Aadhaar-enabled bank accounts

LPG dealers are handing customers a handbill which states that LPG subsidy will be directly credited to the bank account of the customer. To receive this credit, the consumers should go to the bank with a copy of the Aadhaar card and get their accounts "Aadhaar-enabled". 

We checked with several banks in the city, SBM, SBI, Vijaya Bank, Corporation Bank and Syndicate Bank, but they all pleaded ignorance in the matter. Only Canara Bank is providing this service.

If banks do not Aadhaar-enable accounts, how will the LPG customers get their subsidy?


Dwarkanarh Narayan, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Kudos to Sunanda School

We had recently written about the sorry state of the sump of Sunanda school near Akashavani Circle. The cover of the sump was missing and the roof of the sump had also caved in at the other end. Since scores of school children passed this sump every day and the sump was an open invitation to disaster, we had requested the authorities to take immediate action to prevent a tragedy.

We are happy to report that as soon as the photo was published in the local media, the school authorities have taken action. They have installed a cover and locked it so that it can not be opened accidentally. They have also repaired the damage at the other end of the sump.

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Is the cut in LPG subsidy justified?

The central government has reduced the subsidy on diesel by Rs. 5 per liter and put a ceiling on the number of subsidized LPG cylinders to six per family per year. This has created a wave of protests across the country.

The reduction of subsidies is not a surprise. Ever since it signed the GATT agreement in 1994, India has been assuring the world that it would remove all oil subsidies. In the review report submitted to WTO in 2002, it said "The subsidy on LPG and kerosene is proposed to be phased out in the next three to five years." The group of 20 nations (G20) of which India is a member passed a resolution at Pittsburgh in 2009 to phase out all subsidies to fossil fuels. India again made a commitment at the Seoul G-20 Summit in November, 2010 that it would phase out all oil subsidies in 3-4 years. But afraid of the political consequences of such a move, the government, instead of removing subsidies at once, has been reducing them bit by bit. It is almost certain that the oil subsidies (petrol, diesel, LPG and kerosene) will be removed completely sooner or later. 

It may appear at first sight that putting a ceiling on the number of subsidized LPG cylinders will hurt the poorer sections the most, but studies both by NGOs and the government itself show that the opposite is true. A 2005 study by The Energy and Resources  Institute (TERI), a New Delhi-based non-governmental organisation promoting sustainable development, found that the LPG subsidy does not reach the really poor: "76% of the LPG subsidy goes to urban areas with 25% of [India's] total population, and 52% of this urban subsidy is enjoyed by the top 27% of households." Thus the urban and the rich get a disproportionately larger share of the benefits of the LPG subsidy. The Expert Committee on Integrated Energy Policy appointed by the Planning Commission and headed by Dr. Kirit Parikh has also come to similar conclusions.

There is another factor to consider. The total subsidy on the sale of LPG for the financial year 2011-12 was about Rs. 27,000 crore. If there was no subsidy, this huge amount of money would have been available for welfare measures such as employment, education, health, etc. The poor, especially the rural poor, who really need these measures are being denied their benefits because of the subsidy to the less poor.


Dr. Bhamy V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Hoardings in Mysore violate Supreme Court order

Mysore is now cluttered with roadside hoardings. Some of them have skimpily clad models and flashing lights. They are quite distracting to the drivers of vehicles and may even be causing accidents. The Supreme Court and various High Courts have repeatedly ruled that hoardings which are hazardous and a disturbance to safe traffic movement should be removed. Steps have been taken to remove such hoardings in several states, such as Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh. It is surprising that the authorities in Karnataka in general and, Mysore in particular, are not taking any action on these dangerous hoardings.  

In  M. C. Mehta  Vs. Union of India and Others PIL, the Supreme Court ordered on 20-11-97: 'Civic authorities including the Delhi Development Authority, the railways, the police and transport authorities are directed to identify and remove all hoardings which are on the roadsides and which are hazardous and a disturbance to safe traffic movement...We direct carrying out of these orders notwithstanding any other order/directions by any authority, court, tribunal and no authority shall interfere with the functioning of the police.'

Following the above order of the Supreme Court, public interest litigations against roadside hoardings have been initiated in several states and High Courts have passed similar orders. Appeals against these orders have been dismissed by the Supreme Court. Advertisers have appealed against an order passed by the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court  dismissed their appeal on 16-4-01. Chandigarh administration objected to an order by the Punjab and Haryana High Court saying that it would lead to a huge loss of revenue, but the Supreme Court dismissed its appeal on 27-9-04. 

When Delhi High Court ruled that all hoardings near and facing roads are traffic hazards and ordered their removal, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi went in appeal before the Supreme Court. In the appeal, MCD argued that studies conducted by expert bodies (School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and Centre for Advance Research on Transportation, Calcutta) have revealed that there is no connection or relation between advertisements and accidents and that there is no evidence that all hoardings near and facing roads are traffic hazards. The Supreme Court asked the Environmental Pollution Control Authority of the Central Pollution Control Board to study these objections and prepare a report.

Such a report has been prepared and is available on the internet. EPCA heard various stakeholders such as the Railways, Delhi Metro, major advertising agencies and MCD. Based on a global literature survey, EPCA concluded that the two studies cited by MCD had serious flaws in their research methodology and hence came to wrong conclusions. EPCA also concluded that
a. The effect of hoardings on traffic safety is real. However, it is situation-specific. There is overwhelming evidence that signs and billboards can be a threat to road safety.
b. Almost all studies agree that too much 'visual clutter' at or near intersections and junctions can interfere with drivers' visual search strategies and lead to accidents.

Based on the EPCA report, MCD came out with the Delhi Outdoor Advertising Policy, 2008 (pdf link) finalized according to the directions of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, while approving the outdoor advertising policy, agreed with the contention of EPCA that though the advertisement policy has been drafted by MCD, the same is applicable to the entire city including advertisements placed on Railway, Delhi Metro and private properties. The Delhi Outdoor Advertising Policy, 2008 can be taken as a model policy for all the cities in India.

Under this policy, advertisement promoting drugs, alcohol, cigarette or tobacco items or propagating exploitation of women are prohibited. Illuminated advertisements with lights going on and off are also prohibited. Generators to provide power for outdoor hoardings are also not allowed. Violations of these conditions are common in Mysore.

It is interesting that the policy also prohibits signs which can not be quickly and easily interpreted as they would increase the period of distraction. So letters should not occupy more than 20% of the sign!

The policy does not permit large billboards on footpaths. They are also not allowed in residential areas or within 75 m of any road junction or traffic intersection or within 75 m of another billboard. They are also not allowed on road medians. Violations of these conditions are common in Mysore.

Since the Supreme Court order to remove hazardous hoardings in Delhi, PILs have been filed in many states and the High Courts have given similar orders. The state government and Mysore City Corporation should formulate a hoarding policy similar to that of Delhi before someone files a PIL and forces them to do so. 

Dwarkanath Narayan, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Attention, Authorities!

The above photo shows the sorry state of the sump of a school near Akashavani Circle. The cover of the sump is missing and the roof of the sump has also caved in at the other end (It is now covered with tile pieces). Scores of school children pass this sump every day and the sump appears to be an open invitation to disaster. We request the authorities to take immediate action to prevent a tragedy.

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Do medicines really expire?

All medicines have an expiry date printed on their package. Do these expiry dates have any meaning? Do the drugs lose their potency after the expiry date? Are they dangerous to use after the expiry date?

Numerous experts have addressed these issues and their articles are available on the internet. Some such websites are sciencebasedmedicine.org (the journal "Science Based Medicine"), health.harvard.edu (Harvard Medical School) and rense.com (Dr. Richard Altschuler, Professor, University of Michigan Medical School). All of them seem to agree on the surprising answer "No" to the above questions

The purpose of printing the expiry date on medicines is to make sure that the medicine does not lose its potency before the expiry date and so the consumer does not waste his money on a worthless product. Most medicines do not lose their potency long after the expiry date, but no one seems really interested in determining exactly when a medicine starts losing its potency.

Expired drugs present a serious economic and environmental problem. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration collects expired drugs from the public in the month of April every year. This year, it collected in one month 276 tons of expired medicines. This much medicine costs a huge amount of money and disposing it poses a big environmental problem.

Why Drug Companies Are Not Interested in Determining The Expiry Dates Accurately

There are two basic reasons, lack of time and desire for higher profits. Let us say that a drug has a life of 10 years. To determine the life, the drug company will have to test the drug for at least 10 years. If it does not release the drug till the testing is finished, rival companies will release competing drugs and steal the market. So drugs are put through accelerated testing, but it is not clear how accurate these tests are.

Even if the accelerated tests are accurate and the life of the drug is found to be 10 years, will the company admit it? If it does so, once people buy the drug, they will not buy it again for 10 years. Any profit-driven company can not afford to do it. Declaring the life of the drug is only 2 years is financially quite beneficial to the company. People will throw it away after 2 years and buy a fresh supply. According to Francis Flaherty, former director of the drug testing programme at the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) of USA, "Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific reasons".

Bayer aspirin has a declared life of 2 years, but when Bayer tested 4-year old aspirin, it found that it was 100% effective. But the declared life of Bayer aspirin remains unchanged. And Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond four years! According to Dr. Jens Carstensen who has written the definitive book on drug stability, aspirin lasts a long long time.

The drug companies may underdeclare the life of their drugs, but how do we know that they retain their potency after the declared life? For that information, we have to depend on the only published material till now on the determination of the expiration periods of drugs, namely, the non-accelerated tests conducted by the FDA on more than 300 drugs between 1993 and 2008. In its studies, FDA found that 90% OF THE DRUGS WERE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE EVEN 15 YEARS BEYOND THE EXPIRATION DATES!

According to Joel Davis, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, most drugs are probably as durable as those tested by FDA. Noted exceptions to this include nitroglycerin (used to treat heart conditions), insulin and some liquid antibiotics. 

Are Expired Drugs Still Safe?
There is no published data which shows that expired drugs have caused any harm. A case of kidney failure caused by expired tetracycline was reported in 1963 in the Journal of American Medical Association, but this paper has been seriously disputed by experts.

Expiration Dates for Ayurvedic and Homeopathic Medicines
Determining the expiration date for a drug involves identifying the "Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient" of the drug and measuring how it decays in time. Ayurvedic and homeopathic medicines diluted to typical concentrations, have no identifiable active ingredients and so can not have expiration dates. But the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 makes it mandatory to print expiration dates for Ayurvedic and homeopathic drugs also.

What Should The Consumer Do With Expired Drugs?
Experts feel that if the expiration date passed a few years ago and it's important that your drug is absolutely 100% effective, you might want to consider buying a new bottle. But if your life does not depend on an expired drug (such as head ache, allergy, etc.), take it and see what happens.

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Government prepares ground to raise property tax

The government of Karnataka has amended the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act by a gazette notification dated 28-4-12. It prepares the ground for increasing the property tax in cities including Mysore. It is surprising that this amendment has drawn little attention in general.

Before the amendment, the maximum rate of property tax that could be levied by Mysore City Corporation on commercial properties was 2% of the total capital value of the property. The amendment increases it to 3% (an increase of 50%). Similarly, the amendment increases the maximum rate of property tax on vacant land less than 1000 sq. m in area from 0.2% to 0.5% (an increase of 250%), vacant land between 1000 sq.m. and 4000 sq.m. in area from 0.05% to 0.1% (an increase of 100%) and vacant land larger than 4000 sq.m. in area from 0.02% to 0.1% (an increase of 500%). There is no change in the property tax rates for sites on which residential and industrial buildings exist.

The law prescribes both the minimum rate and the maximum rate at which property tax can be levied and the City Corporations can opt for any rate between these limits, but it is the historical fact that the Corporations always choose the highest rate allowed to maximize their revenue. Since the allowed maximum rates have been increased, it is almost guaranteed that the Corporations including MCC will increase their property tax rates soon to take advantage of the amendment. Therefore, owners of commercial properties and vacant sites can expect to pay a much higher property tax from 2013-14.

The gazette notification also permits City Corporations to exempt 50% of the property tax for ex-servicemen and families of deceased servicemen (but MCC has not yet passed any resolution in this matter). It also mandates rainwater harvesting for all existing buildings built on a site larger than 2400 sq.ft. and on all proposed buildings on sites larger than 1200 sq.ft. This condition can be easily enforced on future buildings through building licences, but it is not clear how it can be enforced on existing buildings. It is also surprising that using non-metric units has been prohibited by law since 1962, but the amendment still speaks of sq.ft.

B.S. Vanishree, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Supreme Court takes up PIL on milk adulteration

The Supreme Court has admitted a PIL (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 159/2012) filed by Swami Achyutanand Tirth on behalf of Swami Bhumanand Dharmarth Chikitsalaya and Research Institute of Haridwar and issued notices to the central government and the state governments of Delhi, Haryana, Rajastan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand about formulating a comprehensive policy on the production, supply and sale of healthy, hygienic and natural milk.   

The PIL follows the shocking revelations of The National Survey on Milk Adulteration 2011 conducted by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to ascertain the quality of milk and identify different type of milk adulteration throughout the country. The survey tested nearly 1800 milk samples from all over the country to see if they conformed to FSSA standards. The survey found that an astonishingly high percentage (68%) of the samples failed the test. The percentages of failed test samples in various states were: Bihar (100%), Chhattisgarh (100%), Daman and Diu (100%), Jharkhand (100%), Orissa (100%), West Bengal (100%), Mizoram (100%), Manipur (96%), Meghalaya (96%), Tripura (92%), Gujarat (89%), Sikkim (89%), Uttrakhand (88%), Uttar Pradesh (88%), Nagaland (86%), Jammu & Kashmir (83%), Punjab (81%), Rajasthan (76%) Delhi (70%), Haryana (70%), Arunachal Pradesh (68%), Maharashtra (65%), Himachal Pradesh (59%), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (58%), Assam (55%), Chandigarh (48%), Madhya Pradesh (48%), Kerala (28%), Karnataka (22%), Tamil Nadu (12%), Andhra Pradesh (6.7%), Goa 0%) and Puducherry (0%).   

It is interesting to note that in seven states, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Daman and Diu, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Mizoram, none of the samples passed the test. In Gujrat, the home of the white revolution, the failure rate is quite high (89%). The level of milk adulteration in the south is much less than in the rest of the country. If you want pure milk, you should go to Goa or Puducherry, where all the samples passed the test. In Karnataka, 22% of the samples (11 out of 51) failed the test.  

One normally assumes that milk sold in packets is safe. But this is not the case. Nearly one third of the failed samples came in packets.  

The FSSA survey proved the common sense guess that adding water to milk was the common form of adulteration. What was shocking was that one in every 12 samples tested contained detergents. It is well-known that unscrupulous elements make cheap synthetic milk by mixing urea, caustic soda, oil and detergent. Such "milk" is obviously quite harmful to human health. 

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Photos from the June 2012 issue of Grahaka Patrike

 (B.V.Shenoy)

MGP had arranged a public meeting at People's Park on 24-6-12 to protest against the construction of a public library in the park. Students from several high schools participated with their banners and placards.

(Dwarkanath Narayan) 

The letters on most concrete name-boards for roads in the city have disappeared rendering the boards useless.

(B.V.Shenoy)

A street play about protecting trees was enacted by the troupe "Ranga Sinchana" at the meeting held by MGP on 24-6-12 at People's Park.

(Dwarkanath Narayan) 

Many concrete name-boards for roads in the city are blank. 

(B.V.Shenoy)

Several artists painted on environmental themes at the meeting held by MGP on 24-6-12 at People's Park.

(Dwarkanath Narayan)

Even though the road names on many concrete name-boards are illegible, the names of sponsors can be clearly read.

(B.V.Shenoy)

Discussions about protecting the environment were held with students of various schools at the meeting held by MGP on 24-6-12 at People's Park.

(Dwarkanath Narayan)

If metal name plates for roads are installed at a height of several feet from the ground, they can be protected from vandalism.

How doctors choose to die

Modern medicine almost refuses to let a patient die. Elaborate operations are performed on him, he  is connected to all kinds of machines which do the job of failed organs, tubes are inserted into him  to feed, to give blood and to remove wastes, and newer and evermore potent medicines are poured into him to keep him alive. Most specialist doctors who deal with terminally ill patients prescribe these interventions and drugs. But do these expert doctors want the same life-prolonging treatment when they themselves are terminally ill?  

A recent article "How Doctors Choose To Die" written by Dr. Ken Murray, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California, published first in and then reprinted in many newspapers worldwide gives the surprising answer "No" to this question. Doctors across the US and UK have responded to his provocative article and most seem to agree with him that the best death is the least medicated. They generally feel that the quality of life is more important than the quantity. But they seem to be uncomfortable with the dichotomy in their thinking.  

Dr. Murray poses the interesting question "How has it come to this, that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn't want for themselves?" and answers it by holding the patients, the doctors and the system responsible, the patients because they expect too much from medical science, the doctors because they fail to present only reasonable options to the patient or his family, and the system because it threatens doctors for doing too little and never for doing too much.  

The stress of facing constantly the dichotomy of administering expensive medical care which is ultimately futile and which makes people suffer and being against such treatment if they themselves were the patients is, according to Dr. Murray, one of the reasons why physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields.

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Rational Method of Determining Water Rates

The recent steep hike in water rates by Mysore City Corporation and the subsequent partial rollback in the face of heavy public opposition raises many questions on the capacity of MCC to come to rational conclusions about important matters concerning the city. MCC's first decision to effect a steep hike seems a shot in the dark and the decision to soften the blow a knee-jerk reaction to public outcry. Neither decision appears to be based on a sound analysis of the actual economics of water supply in Mysore.

Everyone agrees that the rates were fixed in an irrational way on both occasions, but many may not know how rates are fixed in a rational manner. Here we indicate the ingredients of a rational determination of water rates. They are:   
1. Conduct a detailed survey and find out how many illegal connections there are. Disconnect them or regularize them for a fee. This will give the total number of water connections. This will also give the number of domestic, commercial and industrial connections.
2. Based on the consumption pattern of domestic, commercial and industrial connections, estimate the total consumption by each of these categories.
3. Determine the total annual expenditure on water supply. This will include:
i. Salary to personnel connected with water supply 
ii. Electricity charges
iii. Maintenance expenditure
iv. Expenditure on servicing loans (such as ADB loan) taken to improve water supply
v. Depreciation of assets.
4. Analyze and incorporate ways to minimize each of these expenditures. Some ways are as follows.If there are too many staff, reassign them to other departments. Replace old pumps with new energy-efficient pumps so that electric charges are reduced. Monitor the inventory so that needless equipment is not purchased. Use chemicals at the right strength, too little may not do the job and too much is wasteful. Restructure loans to get the benefit  of advantageous interest rates.
5. The expenditure figure after the previous step is completed is the minimum possible expenditure. If water supply is to be run as a self-sustaining venture, one has to generate this much revenue from the consumers. Normally, a reasonable profit needs to be earned for upgrading the system and making it better and this profit should be added to obtain the revenue which needs to be generated. There will always be defaulters and the revenue to be generated should also be increased to compensate for the defaulters.
6. Estimate the fixed charge which has to be levied on a consumer even when he does not use any water. Ideally, this should be be just the cost of the meter reader making a trip to take the reading and administrative costs of maintaining and updating the consumer account and should not be more than 10-20 rupees. Its present value of Rs. 125 is too much.
7. Divide the revenue to be raised among domestic, commercial and industrial users, using the data obtained in step 2. Fix slabs and the corresponding water rates so that according to existing consumption patterns, the requisite revenues will be generated. It has been past practice that domestic consumers are levied the lowest tariff and industrial users levied the highest tariff. So industrial and commercial users are subsidizing domestic consumers. Such cross-subsidization also exists in electricity supply, but a law has been passed to reduce and eliminate it. It has also been past practice that rates in each class are higher, the higher the slab, to discourage excessive consumption of water. Whether the rates should be increased even more steeply for higher slabs needs to be debated.

This is an outline of the scientific and rational method to determine water tariffs. Steps such as publication of all the above data, improving the efficiency of revenue collection, reducing loss by leakage, etc. will go a long way in making the process transparent and increasing public support to the tariffs. Setting up a water regulatory commission on the lines of electricity regulatory commission will take care of all these issues and hence is highly desirable.

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

Attention, railway users

Mysore Grahakara Parishat has been appointed a member on the Divisional Railway Users Consultative Committee. The committee meets once in a quarter. The next meeting is scheduled to be held on the 20th July at Mysore.

A preliminary meeting is being held at MGP office, 6/1, Vivekananda Road, Yadavagiri, Mysore 570 020 (opp. SBI, near Hotel Dasaprakash Paradise), Ph: 2515150, at 4 p.m. on Saturday, 7-7-12 to collect problems faced by railway users for presenting them to the authorities. If you have a problem with the railways, write a brief description of the problem and bring it to the preliminary meeting. If you can not attend the meeting, send it by post to the above address or e-mail it to mygrapa[@]gmail[dot]com or bsshankara[@]yahoo[dot]com.

V.Mahesha, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Poor street signs of Mysore

Recently, I made a Mysore Darshan covering about 30 kilometers of various localities of Mysore to study street signboards. I found that about 70% of the streets in Mysore do not have any signboards for identification. Many important and major roads also do not have signboards.

Among the one third of the streets which do have signboards, the existing signboards are in such bad condition that they are useless. Some of them are so faded that one can not read anything (but the names of the sponsors are still clear and legible!), some are positioned at such an angle that one can not say if the signboard refers to the main road or the cross road and a few signboards are totally blank!

I have lived in Yadavagiri for the last 5 years and even now I do not know many streets in my neighbourhood for want of proper signboards. Many times I am embarrassed to guide people looking for an address because I am not aware of its exact location despite residing close by.

Mysore being a heritage city, hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the city throughout the year and proper signboards are a MUST. MCC must immediately plan and take action for installing new signboards in the entire city. It would be better if there are signboards which directions as well as distances to various important landmarks, monuments and other tourist attractions. 

The present design of the street name boards (cement boards) does not seem to be suitable. Vandals and advertisers deface them within no time. One design that may be considered is a painted metal plate, (say, 1'x3') which can accommodate both Kannada and English signs and which is positioned several feet above the ground.

Dwarkanath Narayan, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Photos from the July 2012 issue of Grahaka Patrike

(Bhamy V.Shenoy)

A public library is coming up on this 340x400 feet site at the southern corner of People's Park. any building in the park is a violation of the Karnataka Parks, Playfields and Open Spaces (Preservation and Regulation) Act, 1985.

  (B.V.Shenoy)

The outline of the foundation for the new library building in People's Park has been marked.

(B.V.Shenoy)

Various NGOs of Mysore held a meeting at People's Park on 27-5-12 to oppose the proposed library building. Some saplings were planted symbolically.

(B.V.Shenoy)

People' Park has already been encroached by a PU College, tennis club, temple, dargah and private taxi stand. The proposed library building is one more encroachment. MCC is also using the park to dump building debris.

Campaign to save the lung spaces of Mysore

Mysore is no more a garden city. Instead, it is becoming a concrete jungle. On paper, we have more than 600 parks in the city. But only 120 of them have been developed and can be recognized as parks. Since the land occupied by the parks is extremely valuable real estate, there is tremendous pressure to encroach. The best example of such encroaching is People's Park where one can find a PU college, a tennis club, a temple, a dargah and a private bus stand It is also being used by the authorities to dump debris. Now another attempt is being made to encroach on People's Park by building a public library there.
 

The Supreme Court has repeatedly given judgements to prevent the encroachment of parks. The law allows only a structure of less than 30 square meters (323 sq.ft.) in a park and that too for watchmen's quarters. Despite these legal restrictions, our parks are being systematically decimated. The time has now come for us the citizens to develop a strategy to prevent the destruction of parks in the city and to preserve our lung spaces.
 

Mysore Grahakara Parishat, Mysore Youth Forum, Parisara Samrakshana Samithi and other NGOs are holding a unique "teach-in" on the need for lung space for Mysore. This is not a protest, but just a Gandhian type activity to reflect on how our parks are disappearing, how losing lung space is harmful, and what people can do about it. It is the hope that the youth of Mysore with their creative and open minds can come up with solutions where the older generation has failed.
 

We are giving a call to the youth of Mysore (high school and college students) to come to People's Park on Sunday, June 24 at 10AM to participate in this program which may shape the future of Mysore. Along with sharing of ideas, there will be painting by young artists, music, planting of saplings, etc. For more information, call MGP at 2515150

Bhamy V.Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Diesel fumes cause lung cancer - World Health Organization

The World Health Organization declared on 12-6-12 that diesel fumes cause lung cancer. According to experts, diesel fumes are more carcinogenic than secondhand cigarette smoke.   

In a decision announced in Lyon, France, after a week long meeting to review scientific data, W.H.O. elevated diesel fumes to "Group 1 Carcinogen" status. Smoking, asbestos, ultraviolet radiation, etc. are also in "Group 1 Carcinogen" list.  

Countries who are members of W.H.O. including India are expected to follow suit and declare diesel fumes a carcinogen.  

Reacting to the dangers posed by secondhand smoking to non-smokers, India banned smoking in public places a few years ago by enacting The Prohibition of Smoking in Public Places Rules, 2008. Since diesel fumes pose a bigger risk to millions of people such as heavy vehicle drivers and persons who live or conduct business near major roads and highways, the government is bound to take some legal action on diesel fumes also.

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

New twist in the People's Park imbroglio

The Chief Minister recently laid the foundation stone for the new public library building to be built in a 400x340 plot in the southern corner of People's Park at a cost of Rs. 4 crores. This has led to protests by many organizations and citizens interested in preserving People's Park as a park.  

It may be recalled that the government had entered into an agreement with a private builder, M/s Revathy Enterprises in 1995 to build a public library cum commercial complex in the same location. The agreement leased the 1.36 lakh sq. ft. plot to the builder for a minimum period of 30 years at an annual rent of Rs. 1,80,000 and called for the builder to provide 15,000 sq.ft. of built area for a public library and utilize the remaining portion of the plot for a commercial complex. There were public protests when the agreement became public knowledge and MGP filed a PIL in the Karnataka High Court against the construction since it violated the Karnataka Parks, Play-fields and Open Spaces (Preservation and Regulation) Act, 1985. Sec.6 of the Act prohibits the use of parks for any other purpose. Probably because of the public outcry, the authorities stopped the work.  

Now the government has revived the project to build a public library in People's Park. But this time, the builder is Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Limited (formerly Karnataka Land Army Corporation), a government of Karnataka undertaking. The building with a floor area of 25,000 sq.ft. is expected to be complete by 2014.  

At least, that was the expectation when the project was revived. Now a spanner has been thrown in the works as M/s Revathy Enterprises has filed a writ petition (No. 10743 of 1012) on 3-4-12 in the Karnataka High Court. It is claimed in the writ petition that the opposition to the project was politically motivated. It is also claimed that government renegotiated the terms of the contract in 2003 and that M/s Revathy Enterprises agreed to the revised terms. It is further claimed that the government issued a show cause notice in 2007 to the petitioners to terminate the contract. The writ petition essentially asks the Court to quash the show cause notice to cancel the contract as well as the decision of the government to build the library on its own.  

The writ petition puts a new twist to the People's Park tangle. Construction material has been dumped at the site, but it is not known if the authorities will begin construction of the public library when the writ petition is still pending before the High Court.

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Update on Four-lane Road and Ropeway on Chamundi Hills

The Minister-in-charge of Mysore District announced recently that a new four-lane road will be built from the foothills to the top of Chamundi Hills. MGP filed an RTI application with the forest department concerning this announcement. According to the reply we have received, the project proposal was submitted under Forest Conservation Act 1980 by the Executive Engineer, Public Works, Port and Inland Transport Department, Mysore Division on 9-3-12. No clearance has been given yet by the forest department.

In reply to a query on the ropeway project, the forest department has answered that 2.22 hectares of land were leased to in favour of M/ s Seeka Inter Plan System, Bangalore for a period 10 years. The lease period expired in 2007. Therefore, the Conservator of Forests, Mysore Circle, has recommended to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Bangalore, to reject the proposal in the interest of public.

R.Chandra Prakash, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Dangerous Road

Half of Vivekananda Road in Yadavagiri was asphalted more than two months ago and the other half is yet to be touched. This is causing problems. Since the non-asphalted half is in bad condition, all the vehicles want to use the asphalted portion only. As a result, two-way traffic is going on half the road. Needless to say, this is a surefire recipe for accidents.

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

We want library desperately but not in People's Park

Most of us environmentalists including MGP members are also strong believers in having a world class library befitting the rich heritage of the city. We completely agree with Sri Chennappa of the Library Department that the current library is a disgrace to our city. If only we had a responsible library leadership, we would have got a far better library constructed in a suitable place since it was conceived in 1984. It could have met the legal as well as the aesthetic requirements to help the senior citizens, women, reading public, youth etc even in a far more central and easily accessible location. There must have been several such sites available since 1984. But our land mafia must have had a master plan to destroy People's Park.

Now after 20 odd years we learn officially that the library authority was planning to hand over land first meant for park and then for library to private parties who were ready to "donate" a free library. Even assuming for the sake of argument that it is legally permitted to construct a library, how can we be sure that in the future this very library authority will not hand over the building for the use of some commercial authorities? ÿAlso how can we be sure that MCC will not hand over land for other purposes, having ÿonce succeeded in handing over the park land to uses other than park by flouting the law?  

Citizens kept quiet earlier when part of land was handed over to tennis courts first in the 1950s. At that time there were no"pseudo-environmentalist" that library authorities were referring to activists like us. Then another - even larger- portion was handed over to construct a college for girls. Then also the citizens kept quiet. Then a temple was erected and no attempt was made to vacate it despite the protests by few citizens including MGP. Soon a dargah structure appeared and the citizens did nothing.  

However times have changed now. In 90s, with greater appreciation for environment and also having seen how once Bangalore city was destroyed,ÿ MGP took up the cause seriously and prevented library cum commercial buildings coming up in People's Park through a PIL. Later MGP also prevented portion of the land being handed over for the use of private bus stand.  

Yes, we do need a library. But why should it be in People's Park and that too in violation of the law? It is a crying shame that neither MCC officials led by its commissioner and the elected representatives like MLAs and city corporators are totally indifferent to the cause of saving lung space or of upholding the law.  

We urge MCC and MUDA to identify a suitable land for the library and take back the People's Park land from the library authority. For example, library could be located in a dilapidated building where Janata Bazar is located. There are large CA sites laying vacant inÿ some of the MUDA layouts and this library building can be built there.  

MGP succeeded in getting the illegal structure built in Cheluvamba park demolished. It was reduced in size to meet the requirement of Karnataka Park Act. If the library in People's Park were to face a similar fate, who will be the ultimate losers? It is we the tax payers.

Bhamy V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat