Ab BUS

"Public Transport Sucks"

"Public Transport is Not Efficient"

"Buses are in Bad Shape"

"Buses Occupy too much Space"

"Bad Buses are the Root Cause of Pollution and Traffic Congestion in our City"

"Drivers and Conductors are the Rudest People Alive"

"Bus Services should be Privatized"

All of us are fed up! We are fed up of waiting for buses. We are fed up of driving for hours together in the horrifying traffic that we have to bear with.

Since I stay in Pune, I shall limit my discussion to Pune. But out of common sense, we can understand that the same logic stands true for any city. Here are a few facts --

Close to 800 Private Vehicles (this includes 2-wheelers and 4-wheelers) get registered with Pune RTO every day.

Pune has a shocking 1200 buses to a requirement of 2500 buses.

People are bound to buy their own vehicles in the absence of a robust Public Transport system. And it’s easy to realize now that most of the chaos on roads is created by private vehicles, especially cars.

90% of these cars carry just a single person. Roads are a public property and all the people have an equal right to use it. Does a single person require so much space to commute?
Building flyovers is just a temporary workaround! And by the time a flyover comes up, it’s already too late as traffic increases way beyond the flyover can handle. Classic examples are the University Road & Hadapsar flyovers.

No flyover can sustain traffic for a long time. It simply redirects traffic from one busy square to the next. And, soon we require new flyovers in the vicinity.

A smarter solution is improving public transport. Why don’t we follow Belgium’s model of FREE & EFFICIENT public transport for all? This will reduce traffic many fold as an army of 30-40 private vehicles will be replaced by a single bus. It’s the best way to reduce traffic jams, pollution & accidents on roads. And this way we can fight Global Warming and reduce dependence on imported oil as well.

Uncle Raj, Why is there Unemployment in your Maharashtra?

Mr Raj made a very interesting point recently, saying that North Indians are utter nuisance to the Maharashtrian community as they are giving their Marathi counterparts a run for their money. They are eating up all job opportunities, leaving a huge number of Maharashtrians unemployed.

Are you trying to say that Marathi people are incompetent? I don't think so. North Indians don't think so... By common sense, if North Indians are a mess in Maharashtra, so are Marathis in North India! In that case, lets drive out Marathi people from the North. Is that how you guys want to play politics for your votes?

I want to ask another basic question. Instead of fretting over who gets what jobs in Maharashtra, why don't we talk about the number and kind of jobs available in the state?

Lets say Maharashtra has 100 jobs, out of which North Indians ate up 70, depriving the locals of their livelihood. Let's consider for a while that there were no North Indians in the line up and all 100 jobs went to Marathi people. But still there are 200 jobless Marathis (coz there are 300 Marathis seeking jobs)! Isn't that the actual situation? My question is that if there are no North Indians in the state, why are 200 people still unemployed?

We must try to look through this propaganda and raise more important questions. Questions like, "Why are there so less jobs in Maharashtra? Why are there no jobs in the North? (else, why would North Indians come all the way to Maharashtra, leaving their homes and families?)

I ask Mr Raj, "Why is there such widespread employment in Maharashtra?"

Oh, I get it now! That must be because of the Christians or South Indians! No no, it has to be those Muslims again, right Uncle Raj? Lets bombard Muslims now. But, that's the BJP strategy, lets leave it to them! Well, then we are left only with the South Indians, but even that episode is over, thanks to Bal Ji. I think the best option would be to come up with some more innovative ways to distinguish among people and make them fight. Atleast that would serve the purpose for some while, right?

What we don't realize is the kind of impact and hatred it inculcates in the common man. And not only men, in children as well. I happened to talk to a few children in a slum in Pune, and guess what they had to say about North Indians. "Ye North Indians ko laat mar ke bhaga dena chahiye Maharashtra se! Unke wajah se humein naukari nahi milti!"

These are kids in 6th and 7th standard. So from the age of 11-12 yrs, we are training our next generation youth to fight against each other. Who says, India is not developing?

The myth called 'Globalization'

If I tell you that I have a vacant flat and I want you to move in for free! You would never believe me, right? You have a critical stand here. Then why should you believe without investigation that Globalization is the answer to all problems in India? As a matter of fact, it is not. Confused?

As we know, Capitalism is the science of earning profit. How do you think a business man would increase his profit? Well, he has 2 options, either increase the SP or reduce the CP. The first option is not so smart as he would be beaten by his competitors. So he needs to somehow reduce the Cost of Manufacture, right? How do you think that is possible?

The easiest way is to kick out some people and make the others work harder. That's how you will have to pay less workers. There you go. The cost of manufacture has come down! So Capitalism promotes unemployment inherently.

What do you think Globalization is? Is it not foreign goods, money, technology coming to India and vice-versa? Now, when foreign multinationals come to India, they drive a lot of small Indian companies in their respective sectors out of the market, as they can't compete with the huge multinational monopolies. How many unemployed? The MNCs give employment to a handful of people and claim to have turned around the situation for developing countries.

Moreover, most of the people these MNCs hire are experienced who want to shift from their previous jobs. So fresh employment is not substancial. In reality, the net employment created by the foreign companies under Globalization is awfully negative.

These huge multinational monopolies have plethoric money and hence they advertise insanely, which our domestic companies can never afford. The MNCs first kill them and then instigate a propaganda which makes us really believe that Globalization is the best thing ever happened to India. Where is your critical stand?