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Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

Feb 14

Our elected leaders feature prominently in today's news. Haveri MLA Neharu Olekar convicted of rigging govt contracts. And Mudigere MLA M P Kumaraswamy has distinguished himself in a cheque bouncing case. We're getting to the point where we can have constituency-wise felons.

The special court to try elected reps seem to be working. It is some kind of success to prosecute a case and decide it during the term of elected office itself. The big question, though, is whether this will deter others, or stop the parties giving tickets to dodgy people.

It is an open secret that local goons with money are big contenders for tickets in many places. By a combination of money and muscle they have been winning the con-fidence of the public, and after that they busy themselves in converting power to more money, and repeat the cycle.

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Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

Feb 13

Is it working? This is the most common unasked question in government. All sorts of things are proposed, many are considered, several are selected for funding, and some actually get the money. But that's all on the input side. Almost no one asks, "is this working?"

Often the answer is 'no'. That's why the question is not asked. If one asks it and gets the correct reply then someone, somewhere would have to explain why, and what should be done about it. Plus who is to blame. Rather than get into all that, govts find it best not to ask the Q.

For citizens who are frustrated by all this, there is a hint in this nonetheless. One of the simplest things we can do is look at different things that govt departments are doing, and ask "what is it meant to achieve, and is it working?"

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Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

Feb 13

Shivamogga airport is in the news, mostly about who it should be named after. Once that is settled, I hope the government will pay attention to the use of this and other airports in the state. Of late, in many Tier 2 towns we've been seeing pies in the skies more than planes.

We need to think of airports for regions rather than cities and towns. And we need to understand and plan for the economies of regions and their natural linkages. Building airports like they are necessary everywhere has taught many places bitterly that they are not sufficient.

Kerala has done this well. The latest addition at Kannur has given north Kerala residents heading to Gulf countries an in-state option, which is also much better built and managed. Such regional changes impact other places too.

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Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

Feb 13

In a lot of medical facilities at taluk and district levels, the government has made provision for one person of a certain skill. I.e. one gynaecologist, one paediatrician, one anaesthetist, etc. Whoever is appointed can work 8 hours a day. The other 16 hours?

There is a trade-off between reaching a service to people, and the scale at which services can be efficiently rendered. Moreover this is not a uniform trade-off but varies from place to place for lots of reasons. Flexible, data-driven responses are needed in public services.

Without scale, it is hard to construct workplaces that people are willing to go to. For example, in trying to locate one school in each village, we have run into large difficulties in getting staff to go to those schools reliably.

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Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

Feb 12

Hyderabad Metro construction began a full six years after Bangalore's. The completed and operational network in that city is now 20% more than here. Even Chennai, which began a few years after BLR did, has a comparable length of network already.

Sometime next year or the one after, Mumbai will also pass us. Something is clearly different in the way we're doing this project. And those other cities are places that already had some kind of rail services even before they decided to add Metro.

Design is another area in which there are important and evident differences between Metros in cities. And even in stretches within cities. Some places look like the authorities have somehow tried to fit a Metro in where there isn't space for one.

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Ashwin Mahesh

@ashwinmahesh

Feb 11

BMLTA needs to publish the criteria by which projects submitted to it will be evaluated. It also needs a proper committee to do these things, and this group should not include anyone whose office is also proposing projects. 1/3

The newly empowered Authority needs to be able to enable projects that are needed and get them moving quickly. It also needs to demolish the ad hoc stuff that has become common in BBMP, BDA and other agencies. 2/3

A running list of projects from all departments and agencies having anything to do with mobility should be maintained, and considered on a schedule, say once a month. There should also be public information about all this ahead of time so that the people too can give inputs.

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