Back to the Green Commute (or How to Potentially Save Around $ 200 Million in Import Bill Annually)

Its the time of the year when I help my bicycle work off the rust it has gathered during the summer & monsoon months. I began this exercise last year & have resumed it for this year too.

For most of the rest of the year, the only exercise I claim to do during the day is waking up! But during the months when temperature drops to bearable levels (mid-Oct to mid-Feb), cycling is one physical activity that I can sustain. I have tried the morning/evening walks & jogs, but I am too lazy to carry it beyond a few days. Not cycling, though. It helps that I take it to work (some 12 kms twice a day), so that I am forced to pedal twice a day. And this really works!!

 

Apart from the health benefits (see adjoining figure, also trending on Facebook) associated with cycling, that have been well documented, there are other benefits (tangible & intangible) too that you can consider as the catalysts to take up this clean, green & healthy habit:

• You get a high when you sweat during the coldest Dec/Jan mornings, while all around are you are draped in their woolens.

• Even after putting in full day's worth at the office, you don't feel tired & drained when you get back after the long ride home. You realize this when you not only finish reading the day's newspaper and also get to see some late night television, but are out of bed the next morning feeling totally refreshed!

• When other users do not compete with you to occupy road space & when they (and you too) are not bothered about who gets ahead & stays ahead, it makes the commute very pleasing.

• Bothered by a Traffic Jam? Simply pick up your bike & coolly move ahead leaving behind the envious 2- & 4-wheelers!

• You get enough time to see things around you without worrying about crashing into someone or running over something, thus getting a real-time update about the changes taking place in the cityscape.

• The satisfaction of not increasing the din in the already noisy streets is experienced exclusively by the cyclists.

• You become the role model for your colleagues, friends & neighbours. If this is not exhilarating enough, consider the fact that most of them wish to emulate you but are unable to do so!

• The perverse pleasure you get when you park your vehicle besides a super premium car inside hotel parking. During an offsite programme, I placed my bicycle besides an Audi SUV. End of the day, colleagues from other locations swarmed around my vehicle clearly ignoring the exorbitantly priced, fuel guzzler parked besides it. The owner would have definitely suffered from a severe attack of inferiority complex had he been around to witness it!!

• My daughter picked up this dialogue from Chennai Express - "Don't underestimate the power of the common man". Unlike SRK, I feel this everyday when I am on my bicycle & my fellow occupants of the road give me enough space to move at my pace. Some are even gracious enough to wait for me to overtake a slow rick or a parked vehicle or cross a busy traffic intersection. (Wearing a helmet gives one additional privileges as a cyclist)



Pic: www.facebook.com/pages/Dont-Underestimate-The-Power-Of-A-Common-Man/
 

 As they say, every silver lining has a cloud attached. Here are some of the turn-off's that may prevent you from a healthy act:

• Some portions of the roads are real bad & you have to seek a path through the lanes & by-lanes to have a smooth ride.

• The roads are not cyclist-friendly. There need to be separate bicycle tracks or cyclist only stretches where other vehicles are not allowed. Unfortunately, most of the cyclists on the road do not carry enough political or economic weight for this to happen.

• Some of the drivers are totally lacking in basic traffic courtesy & need to be educated on the do's & don'ts of driving. Perhaps, the RTO may wake up some day & do the needful.

• The noise. Its only when one is out of the closed windows of the car that one realizes the amount sound pollution the vehicles create in addition to the air pollution.

• Its difficult to turn right on a wide road when every driver is trying to reach the max point on his speedometer.

 

Now, if the silver in the lining is sufficiently bright, it will definitely illuminate the cloud so that one is no longer worried about it. So, here are some hard facts to help you take the plunge:

• Save money. GAIL sells us CNG at the lowest price in Gujarat & I shall save at least Rs. 5000 this season. Someone driving a petrol or diesel car would have saved Rs. 9000 or Rs. 5800 respectively. You get back your investment in the bicycle in less than 2-3 months. Isn't this a great deal (especially during a depressed economy)? Mind you, these nos. are based on the current fuel costs, which are rising every fortnight, so the real nos. would be even rosier.

• I would be reducing my carbon footprint & contributing in my own individual, howsoever small, capacity to a cleaner environment. Some back of the envelope calculations show me that I would be reducing around 240 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere this season! For someone driving a petrol or diesel car, this no. would be even higher - 350 tonnes & 300 tonnes.

• Help save foreign exchange requirement of the country. I would be reducing the forex requirement on LNG by USD 70 this season. Corresponding figures for petrol or diesel users are USD 190 & USD 290. The amount looks small, but if multiplied by potential cyclists, Mr. Rajan would be able to sleep a little peacefully.

• This is the clincher - The price we pay for fuels has a huge tax component (both state & central) built in. If we switch to cycling, this would mean reduction in government revenues. This would force them into a real economy drive to balance their budgets. This is our chance to get back at the political class. Why should only you be tight-fisted?

The  nos. above appear small, but when multiplied these can be substantial. Let me illustrate:

Considering that the urban population in India is around 400 million & 5% Indian households own a car, let's assume average urban family size to be 5. This means there are 4 million cars in urban India. Let's assume, these consist of 2.4 million petrol cars, 1.4 million diesel cars & 200,000 CNG cars.

If 20% of these car users (or those below 40 years & driving small cars) switch to cycling for 4 months in a year, we can collectively reduce CO2 emissions by around 260 million tons each year & save forex on crude imports by around 200 million dollars!!
 

Are you game?

 

My Hero No. 1

Note: The benefits quantified above are based on my activity level, i.e. 20 days of cycling in a month.

In the dock for 90 Lakhs

 

 

Don't worry, this is simply a cartoonists imagination and not likely to be a reality any time soon. 

But  disturbing is the fact that the sum being talked about is so small - only Rs. 10 Crores!! What has happened to our leaders? And to the investigative capacity of CBI? These past few years, we have been listening about thousands of crores worth of scams,  even after adjusting for the CAG exaggeration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even Sukhram (remember, PV Narsimha Rao's telecom minister?) was caught with Rs. 3.6 Crores, way back in 1996. After over 15 years, CBI arrests a person for only Rs. 90 Lakhs! 

If you ask me, this is a Congress conspiracy, with the support of political friends & foes. For far too long a time, the figures involved in various scams have been huge, really huge. The magnitude was such that a former bureaucrat, and a common man, started living his political dreams. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) may not win many seats (perhaps, none at all), but it dared to challenge the political establishment. Now which political party would take this kindly? But Arvind Kejriwal, being an ex-babu, knew how to put his point across in a manner that he could not be touched. 

 

By reducing the scam amount to Rs. 10 Crores, Kejriwal would now have to uncover scams upwards of this figure, which is not a difficult task. With this master stroke, Kejriwal has been presented with the prospect of a press conference every hour for each new scam he unearths! Would Kejriwal jump at this opportunity? No, he cannot & should not. Not that there are not enough such scams. On the contrary, this minuscule transaction happens all over, regularly. Kejriwal would not get time to even photocopy documents, if he has to publicly announce each small (by today's standards) scam. 

Now we come to the foes. Wonder why Mamata Banerjee is so depressed? One of the reasons is that the railway portfolio was previously held by her & her nominees. With one arrest, Didi has been silenced (for a few weeks at least) as she would be scared, lest the misdeeds during her & her nominees' tenure emerge. Also, Mahesh Kumar was apparently close to Mamata Banerjee and was working towards becoming the Chairman of the Railway Board. This scam does not actually target PK Bansal's nephew (and PKB indirectly), but one of Didi's accolytes (and Didi indirectly). Hats off to Congress  for silencing Mamata Banerjee. This was one hell of a job & the sacrifice of PK Bansal (if that happens) would be a small price to pay!

  

As if on cue, the principal (though not principled) opposition party, BJP, demanded PK Bansal's resignation. As it demanded the resignation of each minister involved in the past scams. How many of them resigned? This demand is just an eyewash (like most of the previous ones), something the BJP needs to do to keep its political constituency intact. This was BJP's part of the bargain while handing over Karnataka to Congress. Such give-and-take is a matter of daily routine in our political set-up. 

All those who think that this was a brainchild of the Congress, or feel I think so, are mistaken. For one, the current crop of Congress leaders, or its backroom political managers, lack enough brains to even think of such a brilliant tactical maneuver. Moreover, there are clear signs of the brains behind this - the brainiest of the political class in India today. Isn't the nephew connection obvious? This is not the first nephew-gate, though this will definitely be the last. Guess who...

  

More than disturbed, I am worried. Till now it was only the leaders or their offsprings who figured in such scams (barring one where a driver was involved). Not being offsprings of netas, most of us were outside the purview of suspicion & thus could enjoy such scams. By bringing the nephews & nieces too in the ambit, many more of us mango people could be under the scanner. Thus, the CBI could simply pick you up if some distant relative of yours holds a public office. Just like the police encounters, this would enable legal encounters. And just like police encounters, most of these legal encounters would also be fake. While police encounters need a lot of planning, legal encounters do not. In a clannish social structure of India & an oversized government machinery, this means practically every one of us is a potential scamster!!

  

But more worrying is the fact that the nephews have been dragged into the political battleground. Till now, it was just the sons, daughters & a particular son-in-law who were the soft targets. Thus, single politicians had the advantage of claiming to be clean (as some of them do). The signal being sent out is that now even these politicians can be trapped. The message is, "married or not, your prime ministerial ambitions need to be toned down". This is why I believe, BJP protests (at least in Delhi) are an eyewash & there is only one brain which can conceive of such a brilliant move to bring Congress & BJP on one side while also prevent another nephew-gate. 

Kaka ne sabko mamu bana diya!

Picture Credits:

Cartoon: http://www.manjul.com/

Sukh Ram: http://post.jagran.com/

Arvind Kejriwal & Prashant Bhushan: http://www.ndtv.com/)

Mamata Banerjee: http://www.travelindia-guide.com/

What about these victims?

On the day, when another rape victim died, in a blaze of 24-hour media coverage, I cannot help but remember some other victims who have suffered even longer...

Men in Blue - They were the No. 1 ranked team in Tests. Next, they won the limited overs World Cup on home soil. Then they got screwed (to put it mildly) by everyone. 

Parliament - This is the august house that has been witness to towering personalities & great speakers. It now longs not only for meaningful & productive parliamentary debates, but also sane, sensible & civilised members. It draws solace from the fact that its occupants have still not stooped to the level of their brethren in Karnataka legislature (or, have they still not been caught?).

Bengali aspirations - Having lived in the red lane for decades, the denizens of West Bengal gave Didi a chance. Apart from their state being renamed Poschim Bonga, their aspirations dived to play catch up with their conditions. Who cares for her tantrums in Delhi, the poor chaps in Kolkata have been subjected to Didi's shenanigans ever since she occupied Writer's Building. And forced to import their Tata Nano's from Gujarat.

  

Ramlila Maidan - This was the venue where Ram killed Ravan year after year as a symbolic victory of good over evil. But the holiness of the place was trashed the instant one of his footsoldiers, and yoga exponent, fled disguised as a woman! Though Ram will return next Dusshera, so will Ramdev when an opportunity presents.

  

Hunger(strike) - A curse of the have-nots, polished as a political tool by Gandhi. But a gandhian from the hinterland of Maharashtra overexploited it to a extent that his health deteriorated & he had to withdraw to Ralegan Siddhi, abandoned by his comrades.

Bhadralok - They have always occupied the intellectual highground, the font of original thought. Over the passage of years the stature of the debaters also reduced to the extent that the last remaining ones are found in the studios of news channels. Even those voices would now be silenced by the dented & painted opinions of those left behind.

 
Expose - The word no longer titillates. What was once associated with the likes of Mamta Kulkarni, Mallika Sherawat & Poonam Pandey, brings the image of Arvind Kejriwal waving some photocopies at press conferences. Even this image has been so over exposed to really interest anyone. While the bollywood starlets are facing stiff competition from the IPL cheergirls.

Investigative Journalism - Arun Shourie, N. Ram & Chitra Subramaniam have long retired. Today, the investigation is done by Kejriwal & the journalists are victims of sting operations by the likes of Navin Jindal. Who needs Tahelka today?

Youth - They witnessed not the emergency or political assassinations, but the Y2K jackpot, dotcom bubble & BPO/telecom boom. Not for them the 15-year wait for a scooter but instant gratification, where they change their mobiles every 6 months. But the fire of youth rekindled by the unending scams & gory crimes in the capital is being doused by water cannons & suppressed by policemen's lathis.

Society - Its suffering started the day Manu documented his philosophy, whose legacy is today carried forward by the Khap Panchayats & executed by our elders. But for a brief respite when the Dayanand Saraswati's & Vivekanand's pushed for positive change, its always been a small coterie that demarcated the boundaries of social acceptance, from who can one marry (and when) to what should one wear (and how). Sadly, even today.

King of Kings

3 of us, all engineering students, were riding on a scooter. All of a sudden, a cyclist appeared from a side lane & both vehicles braked in time to avert a collision. Now, this cyclist was a very young boy, who was not even in a position to put his leg over the crossbar of the bicycle! One of us instinctively said something like "dekh kar chala", to which the kid replied "jyada bolne ka nahin, Shiv Sena mein hu" (or something to that effect).

This happened in the early nineties, but not in Mumbai (or Bombay, as it was then called). The place was Baroda, location - Kirti Stambh, just outside our college. Our response? We simply rode off. There were 3 of us, with a whole lot of friends just across the boundary, against a young child. But it made no sense to get entangled with a school kid who claimed to be a member of the Shiv Sena! 

You can guess why it has never been a surprise to me when the biggies of corporate India & Bollywood regularly paid their obeisance to the grand patriarch of the Shiv Sena & the uncrowned King of Mumbai (not Bhiku Mhatre of Satya, stupid). 

Around 20 years later, it is heartening to hear my good friend, Suresh Iyer, telling me that "the militant shiv sainik is a thing of the past". But definitely not heartening were the obits to the departed Shiv Sena founder on facebook by my connections. A congress member on one of the english news channels put these obits in proper perspective - in Indian culture, one doesn't speak ill of the departed. Those who agree with his ideology, have every right to express their fondness for the person. But the ones trying to be culturally correct are only legitimatizing his legacy.  What is it that Bal Thackeray leaves behind?

Bal Thackeray (simply called BT over the rest of the post) did not pioneer the linguistic politics in India, though he did personify it. He simply gave it an aggressive & violent dimension. And he ensured his longevity (or should it be relevance?) by consistently identifying a new set of targets, thus extending the shelf life of his political formation. It began with the Gujaratis & South Indians, continued with the Muslims & Pakistani cricketers (for a short duration, the Sikhs too) & is currently in formation against the Biharis & North Indians. All were, inadvertantly, migrants & filled a gap in the economic capital of India.

All these battles were fought on behalf of the marathi manoos, the nation be damned. He ran out Sachin Tendulkar on the marathi pitch for this very reason. BT was upset that Sachin had hurt the feelings of the marathi manoos, for stating that he was an Indian first despite professing to be proud of being a Maharashtrian. The only time the nationalistic streak was in evidence was when they prevented an India-Pakistan match by digging up the pitch at Ferozeshah Kotla, thus helping the Indian team avoid a loss to the arch rivals on home turf!

It is ironical that Shiv Sena's base has been Mumbai, the most (if not the only) cosmopolitan of Indian cities. If politics was one aspect of Sena's activities, there were other dimensions too that have scarred the city's recent history. Like, the moral & cultural policing, the involvement in unlawful activities, the strong arm tactics to bully opponents into falling in line. It goes to Mumbai's (and Mumbaikar's) credit, that the city has not shed much of this character, despite umpteen Sena victories at the hustings.

Of course, he was a man of his own views. Like when he supported Indira Gandhi during the emergency or went against the NDA to get Pratibha Patil elected as the President. While the support for emergency was in line with his known beliefs, the support to Pratibha Patil had a wholly sectarian motive.

BT was also consistent in making & breaking alliances. He has allied with the entire spectrum of the polity - Socialists (PSP), Dalits (RPI), Muslims (Muslim League). This photograph shows BT with his later bitter opponents - Sharad Pawar & George Fernandes. It is only the alliance with BJP that has stood intact for a long period. This may be because this was the only alliance that handed him the keys to Sachivalaya. Of course, he never occupied any official position in the government. But, he always had the Remote Control with him all the time. (The  Government accorded BT a state funeral, which he deserved. I request BT supporters to pls remember this if a congress government at the centre decides to honour Sonia Gandhi too with a state funeral. After all, she also holds only the Remote Control.)

He had the wit (and the vitriol) in his writings, that perhaps came from his days as a cartoonist. Some of today's politicians have tried to emulate him. One of the most prominent acknowledged him as a role model, while paying homage to the departed leader. It is another matter that he has been unable to match BT's wit in his words, though he has surpassed BT in actions.

BT defied the conventional image of a politician. Smoking pipe (later cigars) or drinking beer in public. Robed in saffron (earlier white), laden with rudraksha's, seated on a huge throne, he created a brand for himself. A brand, which was deified by his followers. What also endeared him to the masses was his abhorrence of dynastic politics. This was best exemplified by the appointment of party loyalist, Manohar Joshi, as the Chief Minister of the 1st Sena-BJP government. However, the sentiments got the better of him, when he annointed his son, Uddhav, as his heir, thus forcing the nephew to break-off & form his own political front. 

Suresh, the violent shiv sainiks may have all migrated to the MNS.

Coming back to the legacy of Bal Thackeray, I am reminded of the poem "Ozymandias" by PB Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/)

The Ultimate Khiladi

Guess who is Mukesh Ambani's biggest fan? Surprise, surprise... it is Arvind Kejriwal (I will call him Aykay for the remaining of this post). If I believe him (Aykay, that is & not Mukesh Ambani), he (Mukesh Ambani, this time) is a superhuman being. He (Mukesh Ambani) not only manages behemoth of a business empire, but also manages to find time to manage an obese government of a large, overpopulated country that is India! 

All that was in jest... 

Aykay says, Mukesh Ambani (let's call him M for the remaining of this post) is running the country, not the government.

The whole world may doubt Aykay's judgement, but pls count me out. Isn't it a fact that the government started going down the dump at the same time that the production from RIL's flagship asset (KG-D6 gas fields) began its downward slump? And both have reached their nadir at the same time, which is Now! Wow!! Do you see the connect here, and the hidden hand?

Moses found his tablet at Mt. Sinai. Aykay, where did you find yours? In fact, in these times of multiple tablet models floating around the market, not counting the phablets, the ipads & the ipad minis, your task to collect the correct tablet was even more difficult that Hanuman's quest for the sanjivani. While Hanuman failed in his task & carried back the whole mountain, you did not, the result being the mango people have been able to buy a tablet / phablet / ipad / ipad mini very easily (I mean easy in terms of accessibility & not affordability). 

Aykay, had you been less competent than you are but as ingenious as Hanuman, vast nos. of people would have still been lugging a laptop around. But this is just the culmination of his focused efforts.

First, he sidelined the first family by exposing the first son-in-law. When the principal opposing party stood out by his side, he exposed its murkier side. To be honest, I was disgusted by his attack on Gadkari. This was nothing short of treason, if you ask me. You attack someone who is backing you for something that is a common practice all over the country. The maze behind the Purti group is nothing compared to the ones around most of the large business houses. If nothing else, this only proved that Gadkari was not a good businessman (to be found out & exposed by a former bureaucrat). 

But this was not Aykay's real target. With this shot, he silenced the business class. So that, when he took over the biggest & most powerful of them all, who was left fending for himself all alone. The fellow businessman are in no condition to come out in his support on account of being exposed by Aykay. The political chums are too busy defending themselves & their leaders to even bother about the big M.

What does all indicate? For one, Aykay is the bravest of them all? He has tied all the politicians in knots, while M is cornered with no one by his side. Aykay is the alternative we, the mango people, have been seeking all these years. Of course, there is another M (shall we call him the little M?) who has the same dream but is too busy now a days studying the love life of a central minister.

The original AK (now rechristened Rowdy) was not only a Khiladi, but also sabse bada Khiladi. The 21st century Aykay could very well be the Ultimate Khiladi...

Where am I amidst all this? 

Well, the original M is coming to town tomorrow along with her super-competent agent (hasn't he always been The Khiladi?). Heavens may fall, but its Skyfall for me!!!