The Day that wasn’t: The day café coffee day arrived

Bangalore/Chennai: Upro, one of India’s largest IT service provider has announced the launch of the ‘coffee vending machine’ in all its pantries, starting today. Speaking on this occasion, the Chief administrator oppicer Mr. PRK said, “We are very happy and pleased to announce the coffee vending machines in all our pantries. This shows Upro’s aggressiveness and commitment to pro-employee policies which establishes Upro as market leader and one of the greatest innovators in present times”. When quizzed about the rumors that these machines were delivered to Upro free of cost, Mr. PRK said, “We will not comment on market speculations”. Mr. VRao, country head, Coffee day pantry services, reached the dais holding the plastic cup filled with the coffee & said, “It’s a proud moment for us. We are here for a long term strategic relationship with Upro.” When talking about the non linear growth of Coffee day he said, “We have a great growth potential. Since the employee of Upro slog for more hours in office the growth of our coffee sales is not linear to the employee growth in Upro”. Mr. Madhu, Upro’s Chief employee procurement and maintenance oppicer said, “The presence of coffee vending machine has already started showing the results. The morale levels of our employees has already grown by 50 to 75 basis points when compared to last quarter, thus giving us a 0.25% sequential growth. These results are available in the website of Gartner, the country’s largest paid survey company”.

Bring your own Coffee seeds:
Mr. PRK unveiled the new policy known as ‘Bring your own coffee seeds’. On a medium to long term perspective, the macroeconomic levels in EU is bright and hence the employee will be able to afford to bring their own coffee seeds.

One of the employee of Upro, on condition of anonymity said that these machines were given to Upro on DBOT basis (Design, build, operate & transfer). He further complained that the milk has been procured at throw away prices due to change in the pattern of discretionary spending by the customer in developed markets and hence these gives a distinct stint. The top management of Upro is not reachable for the comments
Source: Reuters/Bloomberg/TOI/ET/The Hindu/Vijay Karnataka/Dinakaran/EEnadu/Unnadu

Old Mahabalipuram Road (IT Corridor) Born 2001; Died 2011;

A letter to the honorable Chief Minister

Dear Madam,
As an IT employee and a responsible citizen I would like to bring the condition of the ‘IT corridor’ (OMR or Rajiv Gandhi Salai) to your kind attention. Your announcement about the phase 2 of IT corridor between Siruseri and Mahabalipuram has brought in lot of cheers but little was the realization that the phase 1 of this road is still far from over. This road though conceived in 2001 was completely only in 2008 post several cost revisions and escalations. But 3 years after the inauguration of the main carriageway the service lane under the phase 1 is still not complete. The problems due to non completion of service lane are as follows:

1. Due to non completion of service lanes, the 3rd lane on either side of this road is occupied by vehicles for parking. This leaves just 2 lanes on either side & this affects the free flow of traffic.



2. There are no pedestrian paths and no there are no bus stops/bays. Commuters have to stand on the road under the sun and when it rains it becomes all the more difficult.



3. Due to non availability of storm water drainage along the service lanes, there are water logging problems. There was heavy flooding in Semmencherry just outside the Tata Consultancy office (TCS) and Thoraipakkam areas due to recent heavy showers.



4. Vehicles wanting to use service lanes use main carriage way and come in opposite direction.


5. The IT companies on this road employ around 1.25 lac employees however these companies depends upon water tanker lorries to meet the daily drinking water requirement. In the year 2010 when tanker lorries stopped supplying water for some time, few companies even shuttered their doors and evoked DRP (Disaster recovery plan). The then Deputy Chief minister Mr. Stalin promised to complete the metro water pipeline along the service lane by December 2010 but there was literally no progress after that.
   
   There seems to be no co-ordination between metro water, CWSSB, TNRDC and the local panchayats for completion of service lanes as they keep blaming each other for the delay in construction. TNRDC cancelled the contractor few times in the past citing design faults but every time the new contractor comes, there is no change in the speed of execution.
   

Apart from the issues concerning service lanes, there are other problems plaguing IT corridor which needs your immediate attention:
1. Cattles day out: Cows, buffaloes, goats and dogs has a free run in the IT corridor. These animals sleep, gaze on this road, sometimes jump over the median. If unchecked, a disaster is sure waiting to happen. The stretch between Sholinganallur and Siruseri is the most vulnerable.
2. IT corridor touches lot of village panchayats. The road is not properly cleaned and there are large amount of garbage lying around, along this road. The heaps of garbage on the one of the most prestigious road not only create a health hazard but also create a third world look among the investor community.
3. The five flyovers/grade separators announced in the assembly never took off. It takes nearly 20 minutes to cross the Sholinganallur junction during peak hours. Similar is the case in Tidel park junction, MGR salai junction etc. It’s all the more surprising to note about the non inclusion of this corridor in the monorail & metro rail plan.
4. The interior roads branching out of OMR/IT corridor is in very bad shape. Formation of IT corridor ensured horizontal growth but these developments were not supported or backed up by proportionate infrastructure development in the suburbs. When Chennai city got expanded the places beyond Semmencherry like Navalur, Siruseri, Padur were not included in the city limit surprisingly.
5. There is no clear lane marking on the carriage way & there is no lane discipline followed. More policing and better traffic monitoring will ensure people follow lane discipline and don’t jump signal.

I have great respect and trust on your government and your administrative style. Since this road is your brain child, I believe some action will be taken on war footing basis. Tamilnadu do not require any more IT policy as it has already established itself in the IT industry. The completion of this corridor and proper maintenance will influence the investor fraternity and this road can act catalyst for all future developments. Our government’s commitment to physical infrastructure will automatically ensure all around development.

My City, My woes

Filter coffee & Unfiltered Marghazi Raagam, Raucous Yellow auto & eco savvy Temple cars, teeming Ranganathan street & Sumptuous express avenue , Lungi clad roadside Romeos & Waist tapping laptop techies, Bharatanatiyam & Duppakuthu Vathiyam, Saravana Bhavan & Kaiendhi bhavan, Marina beach & Larger than life Rajnikanth’s reach, green medians & Kollywood comedians ,wall murals & roadside urinals , River Cooum & its queasiness aroma, white & white dark complexioned politicians, Satyam cinemas, Mount road and last but not the least Captain Dhoni’s super kings. Well, im talking about things that are synonyms of Chennai, my home town. Chennai is India’s fourth largest metro, third best city to live, 9th city in world’s top 10 investment destination and second most competitive city in India. These are facts that a Chief Minister or Mayor or bureaucrat can boast of. As a normal resident of this city, there are the things that I would really look forward for a change:

The Graffiti and poster menace: The cheapest and easiest form of advertising is here to stay despite the official ban. If your house is on a busy street or main road, you don’t need to paint your wall. Even if you do, it will eventually become the ruling party’s manifesto depicting their leaders face like lion, beer, buffalo etc. This craziness can be best appreciated when you see important signage or sign boards in city eaten up by these posters. The Adult movie posters on temples, funeral or death notice on the hospital compound walls are just a tip of the iceberg.
Dual identity: Chennai is a city which can even confuse a navigator or google earth or some of mankind’s best innovation in navigation space. All major roads carry an English name & a Tamil name. Instance, Mount road is also known as Anna salai. Mt Poonamalle road is also known as EVR Periyar Salai. There is more than one MGR road in the city. Similarly there are multiple roads named after Mahatma Gandhi. When Ms. Jayalalitha comes to power, Kalaignar nagar is abbreviated to ‘KK Nagar’. When Mr. Karunanidhi is in power, the original name (ie Kalaignar nagar) is restored.
Even houses have 2 door numbers. Each house has an old number and a new number. It’s easier to find a house using a landmark than finding it using the door number.

A true democracy: In a democratic country like India, everyone has right to live. Mosquitoes, Rats and Olive Ridley Turtles are inhabitants for ages ever since Chennai (then Madras) was formed. The Cooum river which is Asia’s biggest (perhaps World’s biggest) open drainage runs across the city and provides a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes and rats. Whenever the politicians feel the pinch of inflation, they start the Cooum river cleaning project to fill their wallets. As long as the sludge in our political system remains, river Cooum will never be clean and green.
The Olive Ridley Turtle is something unique to Chennai. Recently some of the activists and fishermen halted a beachside elevated road project as they claimed it would endanger Olive Ridley Turtles. Not sure whether their environmental impact report also considered the fuel wastage & pollution caused by the vehicles struck up in traffic. The fishermen, who kill fishes to make their living, acting as if they are fish’s natural predators, also opposed this elevated project which was finally shelved by the government.

The big social divide: While it is exciting to see huge commercial complexes and skyscrapers dotting the city’s landscape it is equally important that the growth is inclusive and takes into account the local community along the growth corridors as well. Else the roads like OMR, GST will see huge slums (like Mumbai’s Dharavi) in the years to come. A drunken man urinating before a IT company, men chasing buffalos under hot sun in the middle of IT corridor, an aged person picking up plastic covers from the garbage bins establishes these well known hard truth.

Chennai lack those lakes: When it rains, the city roads become more viable for water transportation. For a second, you would think you were in Alleppey. This rain water gets polluted and drained to sea. Using the desalination plant the sea water is converted back to drinking water. While the government made rain water harvesting mandatory for all buildings, the planners failed to notice the natural rain water harvesters, which are our lakes, being neglected & converted to housing units. The present day Nungambakkam and T.Nagar areas were once lakes. My office stands on a place which was once part of the Pallikaranai Marshland.

The Auto menace: One of my north Indian friends visited Chennai. Stepping out from the Central railway station he approached an auto and asked him ‘Can you please take me for a ride?’ He realized that the auto guy really took him for a ride when he demanded 200 rs for an 8 km ride. The auto guy’s tradition of fleecing the passengers’ dates back to Stone Age and they never change. If Chennai is called Gateway of South India, this looting starts right at the gate. Does this say ‘Get-away of South India?’

Planners day out: Chennai started growing only after British established the East India company here. The present “Beach to Tambaram” EMU rail line which is Chennai’s lifeline was planned and constructed by British. When it was inaugurated in 1931 it was considered too futuristic. The British determined how the city should grow and the city exactly grew along this corridor. Today, after 76 years when we are implementing the Metro, the city has already grown by leaps and bounds & this is being laid through the most congested localities of Chennai. Planning is always a thing of past in Chennai.

And, Chennaites: There are active and passive citizens of Chennai. The actives are ones who gets their hands dirty and raise themselves against these civic, social & environmental issues. Perhaps the reason they are called as Activists. The passive are ones who don’t bother to care for their city or restrict themselves to blogs. They can be called egotistic. Unfortunately 99% of Chennai’s population falls under the second category!!!

- Hari