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Once again the Judicial system in India has proved that when it comes to punishing the Rich and the powerful their famed blindfold does come off for a little while.

While the sessions court sentenced the owners of the Cinema hall and some civic officials to a mere two years and even readily set them free on bail they sentenced a mere gatekeeper, the lowest person in the chain and hence not in a position to hire the best lawyers to defend him to seven years rigorous imprisonment and promptly sent him to prison.

Now in what way is a mere Gatekeeper more culpable than the owner of the building who built the hall flouting all norms, bribed civic officials to look the other way, maintained the building in a poor shape and finally hired him, a thoroughly incompetent gatekeeper, and others, the managers and supervisors to run the whole place?

The buck in this case clearly stops at the very top. And the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy are clearly right in expressing their dismay at the verdict and seeking to approach the High court.

The poor quality of the infrastructure and public facilities and the woeful safety record in the country is a direct result of the people in charge the builders, the civic officials etc… not being held to accountable for their actions and unless the justice system starts taking stringent action against the powers that be such tragedies will continue to happen on a regular basis.

The sobriquet that Tata’s pet one lakh Rupee car could soon be earning by the time it hits the roads in a year’s time.

Increasingly a lot of people both in India and abroad are concerned that this car could bring about the realisation of a much feared doomsday scenario.

A car very affordable to the masses in their opinion could mean that more and more people would abandon their bikes and scooters for this car leading to more gridlocks on already overburdened Indian roads,more pollution, greater demand for fossil fuels meaning further escalation of already record high oil prices, more demand for parking spaces and not to speak of the demand for raw materials to make those cars.

Mr Thomas Friedman in an recent column in NYTimes has joined this chorus and appealed to the Indians to figure out more innovative solutions to their transportation problems rather than churning out cheap versions of the west’s greatest mistakes. He gave an example of how innovation on the mobile phone in countries like India making it cheaper has finally benefitted even western consumers and hopes Indians will do something similar on the transportation problem.

All very well but one main piece missed by most is that India has for the past two decades had such a car- Maruti 800. And rising prosperity in the recent years means that the basic version of that car is now within reach of a lot more people. And what’s more even Ratan Tata has gone on record saying that when the Tata car finally comes out it would retail for near about the same price. It is quite difficult to go below that.

But while its already low price and very low maintainance costs was never enough for Maruti to make the two wheelers obsolete why would it be any different for the Tata car? The ground reality is that even at the lower price point of one lakh rupees the car costs nearly 10 months income for an average middle class Indian family while a bike or scooter on the other hand costs only about 3-4 months income. And added to that the fuel and maintainance costs which is very low or negligible for a bike or scooter on the other hand the fuel efficiency of a small car like Maruti 800 or the to be released Tata car though impressive is still only about less than one fourth of a two wheeler which means it costs four times more to commute using a four wheeler. and with soaring fuel prices it makes owning a four wheeler that much less attractive.

This reality is not going to change anytime soon. Whichever way one looks at it this car like any other car comes with a hefty monthly bill.And that could easily kill this car. so the key for the success of this product will be to bring down the monthly costs.So it is inevitable that the innovation will happen in this direction. That could mean that within a few iterations the market is going to figure out the best processes and materials to make the cars at the cheapest possible cost, improve the fuel efficiency, bring down the cost of the spare parts, servicing and maintainance costs. which means that this product line will be most open to experimenting with alternate fuels and power sources. Which is already happening, a lot of people have converted their Marutis and Tata Indicas to run on LPG and CNG.

And the very fear that more of the cheap cars will lead to escalating oil prices is based on the wrong assumption that the Indian consumers will be willing to pay premium prices for their fuel.They won’t and that is going to force most automobile manufacturers wanting to sell more and more cars to Indian consumers to speed up the research on cars that run on alternate fuels.

To return to Friedman’s example of the Mobile phones, the Indian consumers not only made the Phone companies to manufacture and sell them phones at the lowest possible cost but they also demanded that they sell them phones with longer battery backup, greater talktime, usage of a single charger across their entire product line, sturdy build, more intuitive user interface, crystal clear voice clarity even with very weak network signal, more memory, a colour screen, camera, bluetooth and a host of other great features at the lowest possible cost. Those companies that responded to this demand are now the dominant players in the market. Now it is the turn of the Automobile industry and hopefully they will rise to the challenge.Because the one who wins here could go on to become the Ford or GM of the 21st century.

Update: Tata-ISRO team up to build Fuel Cell powered Bus prototype

The pipeline pipedream negotiations have entered a final phase and things are not looking good for India in any way. We are not only stuck with the unacceptable risk of having a vital energy line in Pakistani hands but also are stuck with a monopoly supplier who has now forced India to pay very high “international prices” for the gas, defeating the very purpose of the Pipeline in the first place- cheaper gas.

Plus India also has to pay nearly $200 million worth of protection money called as “transit fees” to the Pakistani state mafia which will dutifully utilise it to subsidise the Jihadis. One wonders whether a UPA obsessed with the so called “social justice” couldn’t have found a better use for that money, for example by strengthening the mid-day meal scheme in government schools across the country or sending more rich OBC kids to the IITs and IIMs.

Pak okays gas sharing pact with India

April 10, 2007- Clearing the decks for the $7-billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project, the Pakistan government on Tuesday approved the gas sharing arrangement with New Delhi.

Giving details about the IPI project, Waqar said Iran would provide 2.1 billion cubic feet of gas per day which India and Pakistan would share equally. In the second phase, Iran would provide 5.3 billion cubic feet out of which Pakistan would get 2.1 and India 3.2 billion cubic feet of gas per day.

Construction of the Pakistani portion of the pipeline, which would be in the range of 750 to 1,050 kilometre, would cost around $3 billion, Waqar said without referring to the Indo-Pak differences over the royalty.

And this Pipeline is not even cost-effective.Both the Pakistani and Irani shylocks seem fully ready with their sharpened knives to carve out their pound of Indian flesh.

Iran wants to sell natural gas to India and Pakistan at $4.93 per million British thermal unit (at $60 per barrel crude oil price). On top of this, Pakistan wants a transit fee of $0.49 per mBtu (10 per cent of the gas price) and a transportation tariff of $1.57 per mBtu, making the delivered price of gas at India-Pakistan border $7 per mBtu.

During the bilateral talks here in February, Pakistan had proposed 57 cents per mBtu as transit fee, whereas India said it cannot be more than 15 cents per mBtu.

According to Indian officials as per Pakistan’s calculations the transit fee worked out to $220 million (around 10 per cent of delivery of gas) whereas India believed that it should be around $70 million. India proposed that transit fee is to be determined based on commodity price and it cannot be the delivered price as it amounted to double accounting, they said.

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar’s columns was one of the few things on ToI that i used to think was worth reading. But nowadays even he seems to have struck the rock bottom of mediocrity and digging furiously.

What should one say after reading this hair brained Column of his where he talks about the “Hidden Social cost” of vehicles?!

One of his gems

Vehicular pollution causes smog that makes it impossible for planes to land in Delhi in winter, forcing them to travel to distant airports to dump their disgruntled passengers. This imposes high costs on the passengers, the airlines, and on tourism. India has barely scratched the surface of world tourism: it gets four million tourists per year, against China’s 124 million. Yet, vehicular pollution strikes right at the peak of the tourist season. The cost to tourism must be huge.

And afterall this

I am not among those who want cars to be abolished and replaced entirely by buses and trams.

I believe in the freedom of people to travel where and when they want.

But this freedom imposes a wide array of hidden costs on a city economy, and car-owners should pay these costs in full. Otherwise we will be subsidising pollution, fuel adulteration, congestion, respiratory disease, and the disappearance of green spaces.

In other words tax the cars out of the roads than an outright ban, that will look so much like a seedy latin americanish banana republic.

One would like to ask him whether they teach Logic in “intellectual” schools? Or is he having a nostalgia attack for the good old socialist days?

His is a sure fire recipe to kill off middle class car ownership and make it the exclusive privilege of the Rich and the Political/Bureaucratic class just like the old days of the socialist raj.

Instead for a change why not prepare some points on the positives of car ownership? How about increased Safety for families who are inside cars rather than dangling in precarious angles along with their monthly rations on a Bajaj scooter? and what does he have to say about many people opting for cars running on LPG, directly cutting both pollution and fuel costs and has he heard about the increasing number of multi-level car parks springing up in cities across India to cater to the market demand for more parking space?

What about the thousands of people from poor families who are getting jobs in auxillary industries like Service stations, car washes, as Mechanics, security guards etc… Why not count that as “hidden benefits” of car ownership? And why does he not ask his favourite government to replace their own outdated smoke spewing vehicle fleets with more fuel efficient Euro-3 compliant vehicles? that will certainly help with the smog that he is so much worried about. And who does most of the fuel adulteration? the Auto and taxi drivers or the “evil”, “bourgoise” Middle class car owners who keep their car engines tuned to wring out every extra mile out of every last drop of petrol?

The real intention of his column seems to be nothing but a trial ballon to propose imposing some new taxes on vehicle owners. Mr Aiyar gives the game away here.

There is little appreciation among politicians or the middle class of the huge social cost of cars. They cannot see that huge subsidies, mostly hidden, are being ladled out to car-owners. These need to be abolished and replaced with user charges or taxes that reflect the full social cost of cars. The Left front, which once supported high taxes on petrol, now acts as though petrol is a Fundamental Right. So does Sonia Gandhi. And so the government hands out Rs 25,000 crore to oil companies to keep the price of cooking and transport fuels low.

Sounds familiar? This Social justice drama of the “intellectuals” is getting more and more ridiculous by the day.

On a related note. One of the Global warming sceptics in the CH4 documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ noted that “If you want a grant to study Squirrels, there is no money around. But if you prepare a project proposal saying that you want to study the effect of Global warming on Squirrels then money materialises instantly”

Similarly today in India, If you can present any of your pet proposals with a “social justice” angle attached to it then there is a big chance of it getting wide currency and even adopted. Just try reading Mr Aiyar’s proposal minus his “social justice” angle and one gets the picture.

This is called ‘The Great Indian Social Justice Swindle’.

Finally something is being done to atone for the idiocy of the partition era politicians who foolishly agreed to give away even non-Muslim majority areas like Chittagong port and surrounding areas (and ofcourse Lahore in the west) to Pakistan so that it could be “economically viable”, leaving India’s own North-east region landlocked, resulting in its isolation, the disruption of its traditional trade routes and subsequent plunge into the vortex of insurgency and terrorism. Now the decades of callous neglect of the North-East region is perhaps on the way to be rectified.

Myanmar port to bypass Bangla transit hurdle(Link via Shadow Warrior Blog)

GUWAHATI, MARCH 11: Come 2009, and India will no longer have to worry about not being allowed river transit between the North-East and the rest of the country through Bangladesh. Sittwe, a port in Myanmar, being developed with India’s support, will provide sea link to the North-East through Kaladan, a river in Mizoram.

While work has already begun in Sittwe, the crucial three-day meeting of the North-Eastern Council, which ended here on Sunday, focused on speedy development of the river so that North-East gets its sea outlet as early as possible. “The North-East cannot wait any longer. Once Sittwe is developed and Kaladan becomes fully navigable, we can forget about looking at Chittagong for a sea route,” Aiyar said.

This is what India should be doing and the Government should be commended for this move. It is not India’s business to decide on what kind of Government other countries should be having. It is also not prudent for us to take our foreign policy cues from some Western country or the leftist NGO/intellectual mafia on what our policy towards any other country should be. Our foreign policy should be based on our own national interests.

And it is worthwhile to observe that we are getting this crucial lifeline from an Myanmarese military junta which was sought to be isolated at one point even by the Indian Government alongside the West because of the internal political turmoil there. thankfully some better sense prevailed before it was too late. it is not that one should not be concerned about restoration of democracy in Myanmar. But we should realise that Myanmar is a sovereign country and we have no choice but to deal with those who are in power especially when there is so much at stake that we do not have the luxury of sitting on judgement on others.

On the other hand an Bangladesh which owes its very existence and survival to India plays dirty by allowing its soil to be used as a sanctuary for anti-India terrorists and at the same time refusing to give India permission to use its territory to transit to the North-East.

Bangladesh has turned down several requests by India to allow river transport transit from the North-East to the sea, compelling India to explore Sittwe in Myanmar— 160 km from Mizoram—situated at the mouth of the Kaladan river.

Union Minister for Development of Northeastern Region Mani Shankar Aiyar said Bangladesh’s refusal to permit transit facilities to India and its turning down repeated requests to use the Chittagong port for North-East will be history. “The focus is now on developing Kaladan and by the time the Sittwe port is ready, Kaladan will also become fully navigable,” Aiyar said.

A little lesson in the need and the usefulness of decentralized local governance, private enterprise and public-private partnership in solving the problems of people from the mother country of UPA’s Chairperson Mrs Sonia Gandhi who currently oversees a government following appallingly short sighted socio-communal policies.

Viganella is a tiny village in the Alps situated on the border between Italy and Switzerland. It had a small problem and this is an incredible story of how the people of that village went about solving it against all odds.

Viganella is situated in a valley, the hill to the southern side of the village rises to a sheer height of 1000m towering over the village. The result is that between Nov 11 to Feb 2 the Sun disappears behind that hill and the village is plunged into pitch darkness for that cold winter period. It has been this way for all these centuries since the town was founded and there was no reason to believe that things would be otherwise.

Read the rest…