Why Manholes are placed in the middle of the road?

I can understand if the manholes are found in the middle of the road in old cities. But in new cities and residential places too I find them still in the middle of the road.

Manholes in the middle of the road suffer from many disadvantages.
1: Repairing them is fraught with the danger.
2: They are prone to damage as they need to bear the burnt of vehicular traffic.
3:  Several accidents happen because of them.
4: They need to relaid whenever the roads get a topping.

Why can't they be taken into account while doing a layout of residential place or new development project and assign a space to them other than on roads. Say in between two plots or in the parks, or some other easily accessible places?

MUBs - Multi Utility Buildings

Less can be More. Especially in the case of the Economy of a Country.
Positive GDP growth does not necessarily mean things are going good for the country. Countries can make a real progress by having a negative GDP.

You can consume less of everything - Steel, Wood, Cement, Power, Water, Food, Space and still be happy and actually growing.

For that to happen one way is to utilize our scare resources intelligently. Wherever possible try to use them 24 x 7.

With than in mind, I suggest Multi Utility Buildings.

If planned well, a school building can be an MUB.
The school grounds can serve as playground for the neighbourhood people before 8.00 AM and after 5.00 PM. Same case with other school facilities.
Sports facilities can be used by the people in the neighbourhood.
The classrooms can be rented out to companies which does coaching classes. Before 8.00 AM and after 5.00 PM. As well as on Holidays and Sundays.
Several schools are already utilized by the Government on a polling day. Similarly they can be utilized for carrying out government programs.
Classrooms can be designed in such a way that they can be modified very quickly to hold large meetings. They can be rented out to organizations who want to hold meetings on Weekends.
School library can also serve as a community library for the neighbourhood.
Schools facilities can be rented out for holding festivals and functions.
Several ATMs can be installed in these MUBs. Thereby reducing the extra security required.

For this to happen classrooms, the school furniture, sports facilities, etc need to be designed keeping the multi-use concept in mind.

How does this help?

Coaching institutes can save on costly rentals and interiors. Neighbourhoods save money by not creating redundant facilities. Not just that people get access to sports facilities (which are not there anyway in either schools or neighbourhood).

One way to construct these MUBs is to bring the concept of Malls. Companies can construct these MUBs and rent them out to Schools, Coaching Institutes, Music Schools, Dance Schools, Gymnasiums, etc. Rent out the space for Banquets, Meetings, Festivals, etc. We may fear that sanctity of a school will be lost. The sanctity is in our mind. We just need to get over it.

Similarly other MUBs can also be thought of for Police Stations, Fire Stations, Emergency Ambulance Stations, Post Offices, Courts, etc. A Police Officer can double up as Fireman in case of emergencies with proper training.

With proper pooling of ideas, this concept of MUBs can be properly developed and extended to everything we do.

For example: School Buses can be used for several other purposes as well. Like an Auto Rickshaw or a CAB that is used 24 x 7.

Don't agree? Vist Lamakaan in Hyderabad. It is a MUB for me. Hundreds of people and organizations use it for various purposes vey effectively and seamlessly.

Look beyond GST - Make it less "taxing"

A common Goods and Service tax that Government of India trying to implement is a great step in the right direction. However, I would like authorities to see beyond it.

The entire process of tax imposition, tax collection, tax payment and tax returns, etc is really "taxing" the resources of the country. When I say resources here, I mean human capital. Too much of corporate time goes into maintaining tax related accounts, audits and compliances. Similarly a lot of government machinery is wasted in ensuring compliance.

And this activity is totally non-value adding. Businesses should spend most of the time in value addition and creating wealth. Not wasting countless hours in book keeping and compliance.

I propose a simpler solution, instead.

Just have one single tax. I call it a transaction tax. There will be no separate excise tax, sales tax, income tax, octroi, etc. Keep this transaction tax not more than 1%. Impose this tax on every transaction.

How do you define a transaction and how do you monitor every transaction?

In any business money is exchanged when a sale is made, or service is utilized or salary is paid.

Now the person or a business which receives this money, what do they do with it. They have to deposit the cheque or cash in the bank.

Now when that happens tax it at that point of time. Charge 0.5% for a cheque deposit and 1% for cash deposit. It is like TDS - Tax deduction at source.

For transfer of money within the same company accounts do not apply this transaction tax. Companies have to declare to banks where all they have their bank accounts.

By implementing this transaction tax, you can totally do away with 80% of tax machinery and you can deploy them for more value added activities this country badly needs. You free up around 10% of businesses' time that goes into these.

You may ask what's so big deal about it. This 10% of additional time that is available to businesses can result in 20% increase in country's GDP. A freed up mind can be doubly productive. A good percentage of top management's time in any company goes in tax compliance.

One may argue that the proposed transaction tax is too low. Yes, it is too low. A low tax always results in better compliance.

And other associated benefits too will be there such as no black money, no under reporting of assets like lands, houses, etc. And the freed up black money will come into mainstream and will help in growth of country's GDP.

This may also free up a significant amount of judiciary's time too. A good amount of cases in courts are related to tax disputes or wrong interpretations of our ambiguous tax laws.

One may ask if this is going to be fall in tax collections. It should not as TDS is done at every transaction.

Let us not make it easier for terrorists

I just returned from watching the movie A Wednesday. The movie prompted me to express my ideas on containing the terror.
To carry out terrorist activities logistics are crucial. Cut them and you can minimize the terrorist activity to a great extent.
Two things that are needed for any terrorist activity is a place to stay and movement of men and material.

As far as a place to stay is concerned, pass on this responsibility to house owners who lent their houses.
Make them responsible to know about their tenants. Before letting out, let them verify the bonafides of their tenants.
This is not very cumbersome. When you apply for a loan, telephone connection, bank account, these are asked.

We are already used to it. So I am not suggesting any new thing that is not already in practice.

Let them get the following details:

Where do they work, their business, etc? (They can make calls to them to verify)
To get identity proofs such as permanent address details, bank statements, PAN card, etc
To get references from two people known to them (They actually should make calls to them)
It would take not more than 15 minutes to actually get these done.
And also make owners to keep a tab on tenants. Any suspicious activity should be reported to Police.

Hotel Stay

Let hotels also ask for identity proof and two references checks from every guest of theirs.

Don't brush this off. We are living in extraordinary situations. We need to respond keeping that in view.


Now to movement and material:

For all practical purposes people use Road, Train and Air.
Have identity proofs checked at all entry points and their bags.
We are already doing this in Malls and Cinema Theatres.
Same thing can be applied here too.

Similarly let people produce their bonafides while booking material at Road or Train transport.
Similarly when vehicles are sold either new or used, get bonafides checked.

We can succeed if we make it difficult. Let them not plan and strike at their will.

US succeeded by proactively making it tough. After Sep 11, there is not even one single terrorist incident that happened. Quite an achievement for such a big country. Even except for few stray incidents none of their consulates in other countries got attacked too. Even if they got attacked it is mostly others who died.

An alternate idea to prevent floods, let less water in to the sea and increase the water table.

Suggestion 1

What I am proposing here is not for storing water for agriculture or generating electricity. And certainly my proposal does not involve big dams. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Instead of raising the water level to a great degree and submerging the surrounding areas as it happens with big dams, I propose to go lower.

Have small check type of dams on small streams and rivulets which join a major river.

In the vicinity of this dam (it may range from few a hundred metres to 1-2 kilometres depending on the gradient) and at a suitable place dig a lake. Digging a lake is less costly and very, very feasible. Lakes can be anywhere from 50 - 200 acres.At the time of abundant rains, channel the water through an intake into this lake instead of letting all the water downstream. How to utilize this water is a choice that can be left to people living nearby.
They can use it for drinking, irrigation or just to increase the ground water table.

Digging thousands of such lakes need not be a costly affair. It is certainly cheaper than several other methods adopted so far. By not letting all the rain water run into rivers and then the seas, we are also doing a better job of conserving water. More importantly, the impact of floods in downstream regions is reduced.

The investment in digging lakes can be recovered very quickly through savings that result from prevention of annual loss of property worth crores of rupees alone. Approximately 12000 K litres of water (a tanker is usally 10 KL)can be stored in an area of one acre 10 ft depth and the cost of digging an acre would be Rs. 15 lakhs. Digging of such lakes can be a part of Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Suggestion 2

Increase the capacity of our rivers, streams, canals and lakes.
Because of excessive deforestation and occupation of floodplains over the past 100 years, our rivers, streams, canals and lakes have become heavily silted thereby reducing their water-bearing capacity drastically

As a result one week of rain is enough to cause most of the rivers in India to flood. If a massive desilting operation is undertaken during summer season , it could double the water-bearing capacity of these water bodies. Then it will take that many more days for these water bodies to swell.

The few extra days are enough to limit the damage caused by floods to a great extent. A river of length of 500 KM can be dug deeper by another 10 ft at an approximate cost of Rs.1000 crore. The cost for the same is estimated at Rs.40 for one cubic yard of material dug out.

I agree these two ideas are nothing new. People have been advocating these ideas in one form of or the other. Here, I am suggesting these ideas solely with the aim of preventing floods. Irrigation and increase of ground water table are added benefits of these measures. It is worth spending some money on preventing floods than incurring heavy losses later because of them.

Freeing our City Roads from water Logging

Have you ever wondered why our city roads get filled with water the moment it rains for however short duration it may be?
And why the roads in our villages are never filled with water?
The answer is simple.
In the villages flow of water is not restricted. Rainwater just drains out to the sides.
Moreover, water from surrounding houses or buildings does not flow on to the roads unlike in cities.

If you ask an experienced city planner why roads flood in the cities, he or she will say that each city should have a storm drainage system.
Sure, that is one of the solutions. But this is again an idea that originated from London and some European cities in 17th - 18th century.
They felt this need when they already had existing cities.
But for new cities, we need not go for this solution.
If you analyze each of our cities is growing at 10-15% a year. We can plan better for new areas that are coming up.
But in Hyderabad, where I reside, it is not happening.

I would like to propose a very simple solution which does not require any storm drainage planning.
Plan wide roads and leave enough space on either side of the road. This is quite feasible for all the new areas that are coming up in spite of the huge real estate cost that is associated. Have a trench dug at 20 metres on each side of the road along the length of the road. This trench can be deep enough to accommodate one day's rain water.
Have drain points all along the side of the road and lay a pipe from there to these trenches.
All the water that gets collected on the road will run through these pipes into the trenches. Trenches can be much better looking than the one shown. You can have trees planted in these trenches. The water that is collected in these trenches will be absorbed by the soil very quickly and will not lead to any stagnation of water.

Advantages of no water logging on roads are many:
1) Roads will look clean.
2) Roads will last longer. Water is the main reason why our roads get damaged so quickly.
3) No traffic jams when it rains.
4) No siltage or sand accumulating on roads.
5) No overflowing of drains.
6) No missing man-holes.
7) No embarassement before foreigners as to why we can't get such simple things right.
You may ask what about the water that is collected in the buildings. Every building should compulsorily have water harvesting pits and sumps. This water can be used for watering the plants etc

Standardizing School Curriculum and Delivery

The greatest challenge that India faces is lack of quality teachers .
To aggravate the problem, each State pursues its own curriculum for the students. Even Central Government of India has ICSE and CBSE.
Does this mean that students in AP are different from those of Punjab?
Or is it just that we would like to have more diversity than we already have.

I think standardizing education and its delivery can be thought of in the following ways.
1. Having same curriculum throughout India except for vernacular languages.
2. To pool the best brains in India to devise this curriculum.
3. To make the curriculum interesting to students.
4. To utilize the TV, Internet and CDs to deliver the education. TV is far more effective than any other delivery. It engages the kids the most.

5. Identifying the best teachers in India, pooling them and letting them research on each topic and come up with the best way to explain it. Did you ever wonder why students get a few concepts right and fail to get the others?This is because they were taught those few concepts in a way they could understand easily. Good teachers know this trick. But all students don't get good teachers. Even in the best of schools, all teachers are not good.
6. Recording the delivery of this best method on a Video by the best teachers. Using as many examples and illustrations as possible.I always felt the UGC programmes that I used to watch on TV when I was a student are the right way to teach.
8. Delivering these programs through TV, Internet and Pre-recorded DVDs/CDS
9. The teachers in the schools will just facilitate the process of learning at the time of delivery.
10. Even the tests can be standardized. They can be delivered through emails on the test day to schools.
Imagine the immense advantages that this will bring for a country like India.
1. Lack of quality teachers is no longer a problem.
2. All students get exposed to the same quality education. Be it a rich kid or a poor kid.
3. Students will get their concepts right.
4. India will get a great advantage in the world with their students getting their concepts right.
5. Countless teachers, educators et al are saved from devising separate curriculums and delivery.
6. Standardizing education saves a lot of time.
7. Saved time can be put to a better use to increase productivity and thereby GDP.
8. What more, We can have a standard method of training teachers too on facilitating the students on getting the concepts right.
9. Even if students miss a few classes they can always catch up from DVDs / CDs.
10. Students and parents are freed from the big dilemma they face when they have to change from a school with one curriculum to a different school with a different curriculum.

It is unfortunate that mass education is the only area which did not take advantage of the new technologies that came in the last 80 years. It is high time we use these for everybody's good.