Accountability of our emergency helplines

07/02/10 07:39 - deepakar

Here's my experience with the Police emergency phone number, 100, that makes me pray that nobody ever has any emergency.

Last Saturday, I was returning by train from Thanjavur. While the train was waiting for a clearance to enter the railway station, I heard some commotion outside. Two guys, at least one of them very drunk, were fighting. The inebriated one was lying on the tracks (and hardly moving) and the other man was beating him up. This was at 4 AM and it was still pretty dark. Sensing danger to their lives if a train happened to approach on that track the passengers from my coach urged them to move away from the rails. Since they didn't pay heed, I decided to call the police helpline 100.

My first reaction when the lady answered the phone was surprise at the complete lack of urgency in her tone and voice. I explained the situation to her, and she asked me to call the railway police. There was no answer from that number so I dialed 100 again and got to speak to the same lady. This time she asked me to call the general railway helpline 197!

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Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Healthcare

07/02/10 07:29 - charmieharia

Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship at IIM Ahmedabad and Piramal Foundation announce “Piramal Prize 2010” - to enable bold entrepreneurial ideas with potential to reduce the burden of disease across India.  The Prize is an initiative to solve the health crisis by encouraging innovative ideas in the field of health care. This is the second edition of the Prize with its success of the first edition in 2008.

Categories:

The Piramal Prize is to be given in 2 categories

 1 – Emerging Ventures - Disruptive ventures in existence for less than three years.  Entries may be in the start up/ idea/ growth stages, ideally with a prototype/pilot project completed or underway.  

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Feed back for UID draft legislation

07/02/10 05:04 - silkboard

This is to take vmenon's UID post forward. The draft legislation on UIDAI is out, it will provide legitamacy to the whole exercise and provide legal frame work on the main issues concerning security of data and personal privacy concerns.  

http://uidai.gov.in/documents/NIA%20Draft%20Bill.pdf

Idea is to raise our concerns on the bill as a group, consolidate it as report and send it to lawresponse [at] uidai.gov.in before July 13, 2010.

Those with keen eye for details on legislation, take a lead please.  When there is opportunity to beheard, we should out loud our concerns and not rue a missed opportunity.

This is a wiki post (anyone can edit). Or leave comments if you are not comfortable editing this directly.

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Enact India's undiluted anti-corrupt Lok Pal Bill - Petitions

07/01/10 10:21 - indian

India's anti-corrupt ombudsman Lok Pal must have the powers and the jurisdiction to investigate the PM, Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament of the Upper/Lower House independent of government agencies. Legislators' families must declare their personal assets each year.

The following petitions were created in response to the email request made by two sister NGOs Lok Sevak Sangh LSS and Transparency-International India TII. The TII had sent some matter as an email attachment.

More details in brief may please be viewed at the end (conclusion) of the respective petitions.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/enact-undiluted-anti-corrupt-lok-pal-bill

http://www.petitiononline.com/lokpalbl/

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FW: Blr Autos - Have you been taken for a ride lately?

07/01/10 10:05 - srinidhi

Forwarding will help for all of us ... FYI Bangaloreans.

You are in a hurry to catch the train. You pack all your stuff and frantically run out in the hope of catching an auto. You come out and see 5 autos standing at the corner. You thank God and ask them - "Majestic chaloge kya??” The Answer is "Rs 200 hoga!!”. "Kya?? It just cost Rs 100 till Majestic". "Bahut rush hai sir!!". You move on to the next auto, to try your luck and surprisingly, you have the same conversation "Bahut rush hai sir!!". Finally you give up and bargain the price to Rs 170 and hope you don't miss your train.

Sounds more than familiar??

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BMTC - Interactive Maps Project

07/01/10 09:31 - admin123

Book to hold together all other wikis and posts related to the crowdsourcing driven BMTC Maps project. Edit this wiki page as the project grows.

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Railways as freight carriers

07/01/10 08:10 - shekhar_mittal

Hi Folks

I am shifting Delhi from Bangalore and so was looking of ways to move my personal stuff from Bangalore to Delhi. I dont have a lot of stuff so it does not make sense to hire a container myself. I had 3 carton boxes and a bike.

I was wondering whether it is possible to send all this stuff through train. While I know that sending the bike is possible, is it also possible that one sends the carton boxes by train as well?

1. Has anyone tried it before?

2. Is it efficient and dependable? is it cheaper than road transport?

-Shekhar

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Crowdsourcing: BMTC Vajra Route info database - II

07/01/10 07:55 - shekhar_mittal

A few folks at Praja are trying to create some handy, cool and easy to understand maps for buses. In the initial phases their focs is on the volvo routes.

Attached is the completed vajra map. The plan is that there will be one more map/side which will accompany this map, which shows each route individiually in a straight line - showing ALL the stops. Now to create this map, we need to collect data regarding the list of all the stops the bus stops at. This complete info is not mentioned on the BMTC site.

Can we do this true Praja style? Below is the SECOND list of bus routes. The First list can be found here We need to make sure that all the bus stops covered by the route are covered in "via places".

How to fill the table?

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Lokayukta, Praje and fear

06/30/10 20:01 - silkboard

I have heard him in a couple of public meetings, and have met him in a small group once. Note taken from those interactions with Lokayukta Santosh Hegde was that he has two battles to fight. One of them we know well enough, newspapers love covering how the government doesn't cooperate in prosecution or investigations.

The other battle for him - or any such toothless or draconian institution government could create - is to get real support from us, as in the citizens, people, praja. SMS campaigns, petitions etc (one petition from Loksatta party is still live on this website) is one thing, making full use of Lokayukta's office is another.

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Callous Attittude of BMTC Authorities - No ownership of work -highly deplorable.

06/30/10 04:01 - Neeyathi_hemmige

Hi Prajas,

The BMTC bus fares have been hiked... and the monthly pass with the new revised rates have still not reached the pass-counters be it at BMTC major bus-stands (Majestic,Shivajinagar, KR Market) leave alone other bus-depots.

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