Raja's read only memories

Around the world and even across India, public transport systems may not be readily associated with the elite. India’s Silicon Valley, Bangalore, has managed to turn the dictum on its head: one perhaps needs to be a part of the elite -- the other 1 per cent, in American terminology -- if they are to use the city’s public transport on a regular basis. The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) must be India's only public transport system to hike its fares five times in the last two years, the hike amounting to a whopping 15 per cent the last time. To gain a sense of how the hike is intently managing to put easier commutes out of the reach of the common man, here are some figures: ·         1) The minimum fare is Rs6; those for second and third stages of the trip are Rs12 and Rs14 respectively ·         2) A stage may involve two-three stops, spaced not more than a couple of kilometres apart (A t...

The setting: The newsroom of an English daily in Chennai, shortly after two English papers — The Hindu and The Times of India — were served notices for publishing “incendiary” reports on Tamil Nadu CM, quoting various opposition leaders as saying. News Editor: Editor, we have a crisis. Editor ( rolling his eyes ): About time I am told if it is to do with editing a trainee reporter's copy or modifying the page layout to accommodate more advertisements. NE: Neither; it's about a political news report. As it is, we have had a stream of phone calls from our management and circulation departments, warning us on how to edit it and present it on our page. Last told, the publisher wants to know what it is. E: So, everyone in our establishment knows of it before us. I hope we are still the editorial. Or, have we been transported magically to Siberia? NE: Must we worry over such subtleties? E: Did you just smirk? I dare you to retain that expression when we stare at o...

Touching upon competitive spirit, the legendary writer George Orwell, in an essay dated 1945, had described sport as war minus the shooting. He could very well be referring to the ongoing veiled battle between two of India's English dailies. When “India’s national newspaper since 1878” and the “Largest read English daily in the world” decide to slug it out over Chennai’s newspaper readership, rest assured that the battle would spill over to the TV media, as was witnessed recently. Cheeky indeed were the ads that thumbed the nose at one another; though, few were in doubt over who the target was. To the uninitiated, the two newspapers – The Hindu and The Times of India (TOI) , respectively – have modus operandi that are as identical as chalk is to cheese, or uppu (salt) is to upma , a South Indian snack. The "war" in question is the race to get hold of the average Chennaiite, and eventually the Indian, newspaper reader’s attention. And no, this piece of opinion isn...