"Seeme-yenne canu" airport for a fast-becoming "seeme-yenne canu" city

There is certainly humor, but also a certain foreboding sense of an accurate depiction of reality as one watches the following "Jaggesh" clip.



After something like a decade and a half, India's so called "IT City", Bangalore, finally will get a new airport at the end of this week. Ordinarily, this should be an opportunity to be proud and happy, but for Bangaloreans, the incompetent bungling of what should have been a simple and straight-forward job is something to hang our heads in shame. Bangalore truly is a "seeme yenne canu" city and a "seeme yenne canu" airport (the analogy being that we are seemingly about two decades behind the world as far as progress is concerned).

The new airport, although only 34 km (~21 miles) from the city, will take almost 90 minutes to get to. True, you would ordinarily think that anything has got to be better than the current airport, which is currently operating at three times the official capacity of 2.5 million passengers per annum. The crowding at the current airport, hemmed in from all sides of the city, is depicted accurately below:

State of affairs at the current airport: You can see the whole range of aircraft crammed into this tiny location, from the short-range Kingfisher Airlines domestic airplane in the front to the long-range transcontinental British Airways aircraft all the way in the back. The airport has only two gate-bridges, reserved for international flights. - NY Times photo

The government was supposed to provide adequate transportation capacity to the new airport. Talk was fluttering about two six-lane expressways and a high-speed rail connection that would connect the city center to the airport, making the new distance irrelevant. Such plans sadly remain on paper. Even the extension of one six-lane expressway has not yet been completed and the current hellish access to the new airport is depicted in the picture below. Truly, pictures are worth a thousand words.

I certainly do not see a six-lane expressway here, do you? - NY Times photo

To make it worse, the NY Times article reports that the new expressway will swallow up land that is currently owned by an animal shelter and a hospice that provides care for HIV/AIDS patients. Fine, in any democratic country, the government has legitimate rights to acquire land for development work. But there are allegations that influential people's land has been left untouched. In all likelihood, the allegations are probably true.

A major reason for the sorry state of affairs is due to the fact that one H.D. Deve Gowda, a virulent plague of a man who has befallen Karnataka, continues to live and that his cronies led by his son ran the last government. I wonder if any of Deve Gowda's land, which he propitiously acquired around the airport site prior to it skyrocketing in value was affected by this highway development. I'm going to go out on a ledge and say ... no!

While the courts (the last refuge for the ordinary citizen in India) look into this slew of cases before them, things will proceed at a snail's pace. Hopefully, the recent elections will restore some political stability to Karnataka and progress can only come if Deve Gowda and his JD-S party are denied any say in the formation of the new government. There are two reasons for why I believe they will be:

1) The last government in Karnataka was a JD-S / BJP coalition government. The agreement was that the JD-S would have the chief ministership for 22 months and then the BJP would have the chief ministership for the next 22 months. The first 22 months went according to plan, but before the BJP could get a chance to govern, Deve Gowda pulled out a number of unreasonable proposals for the BJP, effectively guaranteeing his party continued power, and when they would not agree, withdrew support for the coalition, putting Karnataka under central government rule and calling fresh elections.

The public widely treats it as a betrayal of the agreement and this sympathy vote is expected to help the BJP tremendously this elections.

2) The JD-S has constantly concentrated on the rural masses while spitting in the direction of Bangalore and other urban areas. Deve Gowda's loathing for the situation of the urban residents of Karnataka is well-known.

Unfortunately for him, this year, the elections are based on the 2001 census, rather than previous elections which were based on the 1971 census, a time when India was a far more agricultural country. The result is that Bangalore's representation in the legislature has dramatically increased from 16 seats in the assembly to 28 seats, an increase from 7% of total assembly to 12.5% of the total assembly. Although voter turnout in Bangalore has been low (about 45% as opposed to 70-80% seen in rural areas - a richer, urban India is seemingly mimicking the turnout of developed countries like the U.S.; also, there tend to be many more errors in the voting lists in urban areas. I personally know many people who tried to go and vote but had to come back because their names were not on the list (the concept of a "provisional ballot" does not exist in India)), the fact that urban areas had this increased importance was an eye opener to the political parties with all of them, even Deve Gowda, promising change to the city.

Anyway, results of the elections will be announced on the May 25th, 2008. I really don't care if it a Congress majority or a BJP majority. As long as Deve Gowda and his cronies and sycophants remain powerless in the new government, I'll be happy. Meanwhile, who wants to drive all the way to the new airport and pick me up when I come to Bangalore? Come on, it'll be fun ... the road is in great condition, it'll hardly take you a half an hour ... come on ...

And Bush blames India for the food crisis ...

This article is a real eye opener. In light of this, it's all the more astounding that George Bush accused people being able to afford food in India as being a major cause of the global food crisis. In addition to the nonsensical policy of pumping food into SUV fuel tanks in the form of ethanol-based fuel, this massive wastage of food in the United States starting from the grocery store to ending up in people's homes is the cause of the global food crisis.

The amount of food people throw away as described in this article is astounding. For example, let me compare the average American family (and assume there are five people in a family) with myself over the past 9 months:

Average - Grains 18.5 lbs / month for the family --> 1.68 kg per person (3.7 lbs)
Me - Grains --> ~ 1 kg over the past nine months --> 0.11 kg (~0.25 lbs) per month -- Consisting of half a loaf of bread that I had to throw away in March and about 500 g of cooked rice I had to throw away this week, which I felt really awful about

Average - Meat and fish - 10.4 lbs / month for the family --> 0.945 g per person (2.08 lbs)
Me - Meat and fish - 0 - I'm a vegetarian, so I don't buy meat or fish, so the question of throwing it away really doesn't arise

Average - Sweeteners - 15 lbs / month for the family --> 1.36 kg per person (3 lbs)
Me - 0 kg over the past nine months

Average - Fats and Oils - 8.6 lbs / month for the family --> 1.78 kg per person (3.91 lbs)
Me - 0 kg over the past nine months

Average - Fresh fruits and vegetables - 24 lbs / month for the family --> 2.18 kg per person (4.8 lbs)
Me - ~4.5 kg over the past nine months --> 0.5 kg per month (1.1 lbs)
-- Partly the reason why I stopped going to the Farmer's Market and buy frozen food now instead. I never used to get the time to cook the vegetables by the time they spoiled.

Average - Processed fruit and vegetables - 10.5 lbs / month for the family --> 0.95 kg per person (2.1 lbs)
Me - 0 kg over the past nine months

Average - Fluid milk - 22 lbs / month for the family --> 2 kg per person (4.4 lbs)
Me - 0 kg over the past nine months

Average - Other food - 12.8 lbs / month for the family --> 1.16 kg per person (2.56 lbs)
Me - 0 kg over the past nine months

The reason for this comparison isn't to be self-righteous or gloat over how little I waste. I, too, wasted way more than I should have, the ideal figure should be 0 in all these categories. Rather, the point of this exercise is to encourage people to compare their wastage with the average American family. If it's anywhere near similar, you should be making major changes to your food consumption habits. Even if it is drastically lower, you may still find ways in which you reduce wastage.

A really hot May week

So I'm looking at my calendar and wondering whether I've somehow time-warped and landed in late-June? Did I miss prelims? Should I already be in India by now? The weather here in Davis in the week ahead is bringing about these weird doubts.

Pander Country

It's open season as far as pandering goes, with Hillary Clinton and John McCain trying to outdo each other, while Obama seemingly forges a lonely path of common sense on this issue. Well, the path is lonely among presidential candidates anyway. Unsurprisingly, those not looking to derive immediately political mileage are pretty much unanimous in their opposition to this inane idea coined by a senile, old man and quickly picked up by a candidate who would embrace Osama bin Laden if it would give her the presidency.

But I wonder if there just may be a middle path. What if instead of a gas tax holiday, there was a diesel tax holiday? That way, the relief would affect those who need it most, truckers who are particularly feeling the pinch of high fuel prices, while ensuring that the drivers of SUVs pay their fair share. The typical large truck in the U.S. contains something like a 250 gallon tank. An elimination of the federal tax on diesel fuel would save those truckers about $50 for every full tank, which when the truck is fully loaded, can take the truck about 1200 miles. On a run from New York City to San Francisco, the savings for a trucker would be about $125.

It makes sense to eliminate the tax on those who are disproportionately affected by high fuel prices, but ludicrous to eliminate it for everyone, since the average car driver would feel no difference while together, the hit on the system would be unimaginable. So if we're going to do this, let's target the right people.