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