Neel Metal Fanalca workers sell recyclables to private handlers

A video on YouTube shows that Neel Metal Fanalca workers are disposing of the recyclable materials found on the street to private handlers, commonly referred to as "Kailankadais" in Chennai.

Watch the 40 second video here.

Some pictures of buses in Chennai

As a transport enthusiast, I keep shooting pictures of buses, trains, trams and metros everywhere. Here's a selection taken with a Nokia 3500c in Chennai.

Chennai traveller infomation: How to buy travel passes for MTC buses
I had recently put together a brief presentation on this subject, and here it is.

Chennai Roads presents roads in Chennai, Bangalore

Here is another visual representation of the urban mess that India is...

Jeeva Nagar, Chennai: Using Youtube to expose

The media battle today is centred round eyeballs. Television, the Internet and print newspapers are all competing for reader and viewer attention, to the point of screaming their messages and using a variety of lures to attract an audience.

So how do you get your message across in all this din?

The residents of a residential layout in Chennai's suburbs next to Mangadu and Poonamallee, called Jeeva Nagar, have hit upon the idea of using Youtube to broadcast their own 41 second film on their problems.

Earlier, they used the Right to Information Act, 2005 to get important information from the Mangadu Town Panchayat about the state of their layout and plans for development.

See the short video. The scene is nothing exceptional for Indians, although land here now costs about five million rupees a ground! The Mangadu Town Panchayat apparently does not care, although it expects its pound of flesh whenever a building permission application is filed by a Jeeva Nagar property owner. What is interesting is that this has become a film, titles, credits and all.

Small stories about people and places

New media can tell many micro stories easily. Anyone with an interest in his surroundings and a small camera phone in hand knows that. Unlike the high power, bloated presence of television, the keen video blogger can achieve a lot more.

Here is the first of a series of videos that tell those small stories about life in India. These stories will be about small and big men. Many of these themes are too familiar to excite Indians. When put in context, they say a lot for a global audience.

This is the scene of Chennaiites returning home under trying circumstances. Pocket-picking gangs proliferate in these packed situations. Hopes are lost, as are fortunes. Governments don't care much.

These people must just pay their taxes and hope that somehow their lot will be transformed one fine day...

Tanker lorry in hit and run in Chennai: Look out for PY 01 Q 2377

A white tanker lorry involved in a car hit-and-run case escaped in traffic on Kamarajar Salai today, November 22, 2007 around 11.15 a.m.

If you want details, you can mail me.

The hit and run vehicle PY 01 Q 2377 did not cause injuries but damaged a car on the road and escaped. It is possibly involved in some criminal activity. Since the tanker did not heed the signal of road users to stop all along Kamarajar Salai from All India Radio to Napier Bridge, it is most probably involved in some illegal activity.

If you own this vehicle, you should report to Police, if not the insurance company for this tanker should respond. This tanker is not fit for insurance and it is driven by people who do not know driving and are probably not properly licensed.

Members of the public should report the sighting of this tanker to police, urging a proper investigation into its activities.

A call was made to Police on the emergency number 100 today at about 11.25 a.m. but there was no response and the control room did not respond to the call which apparently dropped.

Such vehicles must be refused insurance and pulled off the road, and their rash and negligent drivers arrested for prima facie illegality because they cause economic loss to the country in general and law-abiding individuals in particular.

These drivers make motor vehicle insurance meaningless, because they cause avoidable claims and affect those with unavoidable insurance claims. The operation of nationalised motor vehicle insurance through compalies such as the United India Insurance, National Insurance and others is bankrupted by such drivers, although these companies are partly to blame themselves for not insisting on proper enforcement by the Police and the installation of closed circuit television cameras along roads to fix responsibility.

It is also strange that the Chennai City Police control room did not respond to the call on an emergency number. Even if it was cut off due to call drop, the Police should have used the caller ID and returned the call immediately.

Mobile phones, accessories and competition in Chennai

The mobile phone industry is growing so fast in Chennai that consumers are getting ripped off in many ways. One of the areas in which they are being bled is high-priced accessories such as spare chargers and hands-free sets.

But I discovered at the Essar and Virgin co-branded The Mobile Store that you can get travel chargers for Rs.99 and hands free sets for Rs. 99 (single ear piece) and Rs.149 for the stereo sets from iBuddy. The audio quality is not bad, and the price is certainly a pittance compared to the avarice that guides the pricing of "originals" from the big names such as Nokia (they want Rs.800 to Rs.1300 for wired handsfree sets).

It is possible that there will be safety questions raised about these products (which would remind us about Hewlett Packard warning us not to refill our printer cartridges and instead fork out a lot more for their "originals").

What about explosions in off-brand mobile spares, some might counter. Frankly, I don't know. The Mobile Store avers that these are safe. Moreover, a hands-free cannot explode, and chargers seem a remote candidate for an explosion because they don't contain any recharging chemistry. But you decide.

Travelling Wise, in Chennai

Information, they say, is power. It is also money. If you have to travel in Chennai without catastrophic expenditure, you must have the best tips on low cost mobility.

One of those is the "Travel As You Please" passes offered by the Metropolitan Transport Corporation, commonly referred to as the MTC.

I have put together a presentation on Google's new online presentation utility, on this. Actually, this kind of travel information should be publicised by the MTC proactively. Because they will not do it (although the National Urban Transport Policy of the UPA Government expects them to do so), I have done my bit.

With some time and effort, it can be expanded and hopefully will help many passengers travel wise. At present, I am only discussing the passes. I will add other aspects in future...

MTC responds to RTI Act petition

The usually recalcitrant Metropolitan Transport Organisation of Chennai, the monopoly bus operator has responded to a petition under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) seeking information on its Travel As You Please passes.

Chennairoads believes that one of the simplest solutions to improved commuting and tourist movement in Chennai is to popularise travel cards. These cards should be sold the way SIM cards, recharges and and top ups are being done, for mobile telephones.

That might be a tall ask as of now, because of MTC's 'sarkari' bent of mind. The Corporation exists to provide employment to several thousand people, not for the mobility needs of a six million population, it would appear.

Anyway, here is the link to the information provided by MTC.

In Chennai, all cars are bumped

You see those nice car ads on television and ultimately decide to take the plunge. You drive off a spanking new, shiny, smooth piece of metal from the automobile dealership, the celebratory tape on the bonnet telling the world that you have decided to make the traffic jam worse by at least one car.

In Chennai, you then realise that your shiny contraption is destined to soon look battered and bruised. Your relatives don't see the point in avoiding driving into the mad whirl of T.Nagar. So you inch along, with autorickshaws that look like noisy garbage cans threatening to test your nerve. Large garbage trucks crowd you out, semi-literate drivers in three-wheeled carriages rush at you...you feel that you and your new car are in a nasty PC game that could be called "Monster Chennai Traffic" or something.

THUMP! Your rear bumber has finally been put to the test. Behind you is either a crazed motorcyclist who wants to drive through you, or an Indicab taxi, or sadly, a very literate stupid middle class moron driving, mostly, a battered piece of junk.

That's what happened to me in my new Alto today. There was this stupid out-of-towner in his white junk-like Maruti 800 (TN 38 F 4955) who just thumped his car into the back of my stationary Alto in front of Chennai's nuclear traffic generator, Saravana Stores, in Panagal Park.

"Sorry," said the culprit. He was so nervous that he quickly sped away.

Luckily, the Alto has been designed for backside hits from middle class morons driving mobile junk. So it showed only a couple of scratches, although the laws of Physics tell me that some of that energy from our moronic friend's Maruti 800 has indeed been transferred to the bolt holding the Alto bumper. It won't hold very well if it is repeatedly targeted by more morons.

But it is not just me in this sort of position.

The next time you are on the road, or better still in a parking lot, look at all the cars and you will find that they all have that bruised look, particularly in the bumpers and on the fenders.

Which is why I believe that many of us should be abandoning the car and taking to the bus and the train. Those who insist on driving should be made to pay extra, so that the money will go towards buying more Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses and suburban and MRTS trains and operating them at sane fares.

Until that happens, we will have only bruised cars, new and old. Don't be fooled by all those girls who feel a little naughty and want to rub some sun tan in an Indica...or by the leather jacketed girl who is overcome by the sexuality of the widebodied Logan. Neither the girls nor those roads exist in real life. On the road with your new car, it is morons that are behind you, ahead of you...all around you.

Mission Impossible : Chennai minus fly swarms

What tropical country can afford to be without its swarms of insects, which make up the famed biodiversity of these Southern nations?

That question would be applicable to the great natural areas of these countries, such as the deciduous and wet evergreen forests but not the maddening urban agglomeations that are called metros in India.

Today's The Hindu has a story on yet another planned onslaught on a rising fly population in the metropolis, which has about 7 million people living in the Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA).

The reason for the swarms of house flies invading Chennai neighbourhoods can be found in the proliferating mounds of garbage that are left scattered on the road side. Even in places where privatised garbage collection is found, this is the state of affairs. There is lot of organic matter to which the city population adds its unending supply of spit and phlegm at every turn.

To me, the answer to reducing the fly population lies not in bombarding the streets with poisons that will be absorbed by humans, but by putting organic waste neatly into closed containers, where the flies cannot get at them. But there is no history of the middle class in this metro taking responsibility for its waste. So the flies will have the last laugh.

Green perspectives in architecture

Today's Property Plus supplement in The Hindu, Chennai edition, has readable articles on ethical decisions in modern living.

"How frugal are appliances?" That question is posed by Biju Govind, who then follows it up by providing some answers in the form of Bureau of Energy Efficiency tests on electrical appliances.

There is also a delightful article on garden houses in Chennai by Madhavi Desai, exploring the intersection of the bungalow type of building with the European villa style, resulting in a grand structure that nestles in a huge tree-filled garden with tall ceilings and a vivid white exterior.

Is it all too vulgar and elitist? Perhaps, from a historical perspective. In the latter day, can it be varied to provide aesthetic alternatives that include subaltern feelings?



Meanwhile, here is an interesting story on use of solar energy in Seville, Spain narrated by the BBC, and linked to by many architecture websites.

Chennai's suburban splendour

The real estate market in Chennai has been cooling off a little, after soaring to dizzy heights over the last year.

Some of the evidence for the slowdown is in the higher volume of advertising for upmarket properties in The Hindu's Property Plus supplement. Some of the properties on offer have been advertised now for weeks together, indicating that there may be overpriced supply, if not oversupply.

One of the big ticket builders is ETA Star of Dubai, which has been advertising Jasmine Court at the Poonamallee end of the Mount - Poonamallee Road.

Here is a view of the project being advertised by the promoter:



One of the key things to bear in mind is the absence of sewerage and piped water supply in such suburban havens. There are almost no good schools or colleges in a radius of 5 km, although this property refers to the Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute (about 2 km away) as a facility available nearby.

An incompatible mix? Nokia PC Suite, 6101 and Dell's Dimension E520

I recently installed a Dell Dimension E520 desktop running some really muscular hardware - A dual core processor, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, A 256 MB Nvidia DDR2 Graphics Card - all powering the new-fangled Microsoft bundled OS, Windows Vista Home Premium (aero interface).

As many of us Vista owners now know, MS has sold a product that is still work in progress. It does not add anything revolutionary to XP functionality but forces you to fork in a lot of money on additional hardware. What is worse, it has huge gaping holes where it should have had drivers for the most common devices that we use with PCs - mobile phones and MP3 players. (Microsoft acknowledges indirectly that there is a problem in this instructional article on its website). The poor compatibility of Vista with iTunes and iPods is universally known. Disappointingly, Vista does not even have drivers to recognise mass storage devices. I found that out when I tried to connect an APRO MP3 player to the new OS and was rejected. I then installed a driver from the manufacturer's website and it has worked so far.

My Nokia 6101 mobile phone experience is a new low point for Vista. I installed the latest version of Nokia's somewhat tacky PC software, PC Suite (v 6.83), which the phone makers says is compatible with Vista 32 and 64 bit editions. Not so.

The OS simply would not recognise the phone, although I had used the same phone successfully with Win XP, connecting with the same CA 42 cable (bought not from Nokia but from third party manufacturer on Chennai's famed Ritchie Street for a tenth of Nokia's rip-off price).

I then uninstalled this 'latest' compatible version of PC Suite and installed an earlier version that is pre-Vista. Voila! The phone was recognised by Vista, but it would not let me copy files from the camera's storage on to my PC. I had to open each file separately and make a copy. No Ctrl C and Ctrl V option available.

What a crummy piece of software to be touted as the world-leading OS! I think this would be a good subject for the next Get-a-Mac advertisement from Apple. And shame on a profit-hungry Nokia for producing such inferior connectivity software that obviously has not had much of an interaction with Microsoft to make it easier for the user.

Chennai's unapproved plans and multi-crore real estate speculators

These are times when land suddenly appears covered not with the arid dust of the coromandel coast, but the glitter of gold.

Almost every page of The Hindu's Property Plus has giant advertisements promising 'nirvana' to the wealthy, in the form of gated communities and villas that have tranquil pathways that disappear into misty woodland. This idyllic promise further throws in chirping birds that will wake you up, storks and swans magically appearing in azure waterbodies sending you into a dream-like state. (As many are aware, these are all stock photo images of European and other first world countrysides).

What happened to all the slums, the open sewers such as the Cooum, the Buckingham canal, the Adyar, the Mambalam canal, the human excreta on the road, the felled trees, the blistering heat of the concrete cosmos, the autorickshaws without silencers, the careening MTC buses and the insane call taxi drivers, you wonder. Is this a dream or is this a scene from the virtual world of Second Life?

Buyer, beware. This is a paradise on not even high quality paper, but on newsprint. These vistas are like scenes on Microsoft's Windows Vista aero dreamscapes, floating ethereally on your TFT screens, but never tangible.

There are big names in the real estate advertisements - Hiranandani Upscale on Old Mahabalipuram Road (what else can the projects be called but Greenwood and Bridgewood?), Palm, which offers Rs.71 lakh-plus villas in Medavakkam, Puravankara's Purva Swanlake on OMR, and Sai Surya in Pallikaranai, Chennai's chosen spot for chemical and garbage dumping and burning.

It would be wise to see if these big names have a copy of the CMDA-approved plan available at their office, before forking out your saved / borrowed money. There are reports that many builders have their applications waiting in the dark and inscrutable corridors of the "regularisation"-friendly Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority as "negotiations" go on. As we all have seen, the CMDA is an oxymoronic body that has repeatedly dealt devastating blows to Chennai's quality of life through corrupt dealings with property developers and big money interests, example the T.Nagar shopping area.

Why suffer in a property meltdown later? Property buyers are discovering in the US that they were sold houses by unscrupulous builders at inflated rates and they are now unable to repay their loans due to the economic slowdown. They are now suing the developers. But in India, it is the money bags that rule. So why burn your fingers?

Here is an extract from a Wall Street Journal story today on this issue --

As Market Cools, Home Buyers Seek a Way Out
By Michael Corkery and Ruth Simon

In the latest fallout from the housing market's decline, disputes are breaking out between builders and buyers who signed contracts for new homes and condos when the market was hot -- and now want to get out of them.

Even as many of the new buildings are completed, buyers are filing lawsuits claiming they were duped into purchases they couldn't afford, or victimized through fraudulent investment schemes. Some are scrutinizing their contracts looking for loopholes, or searching out tiny flaws in finished homes that might allow them to back out without losing their deposits.

-- So don't fall for claims. Do verify.

Why Dell is not perfect

Buying a full-featured personal computer from Dell, fully loaded with hardware to run the compulsorily bundled monstrous bloatware called Vista is no guarantee that Michael Dell's company really cares about your system.

I found that out when Dell refused to help with the installation of a graphics processor card on their brand new E520 PC that costs middle class Indians at least as much as two months' pay. Dell's problem is that the card is not sold by it, and so it will not help, not even on payment. Incidentally, Dell does not provide technical support directly in my city, Chennai, but through a competing PC vendor, Wipro. Interestingly, Dell is building a computer assembling plant at Sriperumbudur, a suburban town about 40 km Southwest of Chennai.

If you look at the flip side, the PC can have any number of external gadgets hooked up that have not been bought from Dell. If something goes wrong with the PC in that situation, Dell will probably have to look into it, because they have sold a "complete cover" warranty to me.

So why not help me get the new Nvidia GE Force 7300 GT card made by PNY in place, and earn the goodwill of a customer who has forked out a lot of money for a full warranty and next business day service?

Should we pay Dell to hear why they cannot help us with our computing needs?

New autorickshaw rates in Chennai

Two items of great interest to the middle class that are in today's papers are a cut in roaming tariffs for mobile phones, and the impending introduction of newly regulated fares for autorickshaws in Chennai (from January 26).

There is of course a great deal of cynicism among the city residents that this is another attempt at window dressing by authorities who are not serious about regulating the autorickshaw sector.

The Hindu today carries a report giving all the numbers which will take down complaints against illegal demands made by autorickshaw drivers.

The mobile roaming tariffs are more likely to get implemented, although one is never sure how the cellcos are cheating customers on billing.

"Muni" invites Chennai audience to be part of film

Here is a still from the audio release of "Muni" held against the backdrop of a giant statue created for the film in suburban Nandambakkam.




Many look forward to the venture because Rajkiran is in it. It is interesting that the statue, the kind of which is (or rather was) a common sight in the Tamil countryside as Ayyanar, features prominently in this film.

Saran and a host of others were there at the audio release, where the filmmakers also offered lunch to those who came.

New draft of Second Master Plan for Chennai

Srivathsan reports in The Hindu today that the Tamil Nadu Government has asked for a fresh draft of the Second Master Plan for Chennai, which has been stillborn and kept in governmental formaldehyde now many years.

It is of course significant that much of the planning input that went into the earlier Second Master Plan draft was based on the situation before the IT/ITES and retailing boom. These sectors are now expanding with unprecedented speed in Chennai, along with the automotive sector, with serious consequences for real estate prices, traffic, pollution, water availability and quality and overall quality of life (in short, going the Bangalore way).



It is also useful that Srivathsan reminds everyone about the expanding physical area and the population of Chennai -- 306 villages in 10 panchayats, 28 town panchayats, eight municipalities and a cantonment, stretching over 1,177 square kilometres. Phew! For those who are new to the city, Chennai has only rudimentary sewerage and piped water supply and most local governments listed above have next to no sewerage and grossly inadequate water sources. But many are now hosting Spanish villas and English gardens!

Srivathsan's report on the plan for a Chennai Metro rail is also informative.

If you want to see more of a planned gated community, watch this slideshow: