cheaper commuting

text of the letter sent to Times of India:

I refer to the report in your columns yesterday (9th April) under the caption 'BMTC cheapest mode of transport', supposedly based on study conducted by our city traffic police. That the bus is the cheapest mode of public transport has been established from long, and all relevant information in this regard has also been available from long on the web-site of the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, www.pteroleum.nic.in/ch_15.pdf.

Now, what is even more significant is the strong recommendation made by the Ministry for promotion of competition from private sector in order to keep the fares low and improve services. If the city traffic police is really keen on getting a grip on the traffic scenario, clearly, that is what they need to pursue.

towards more objective policing

text of the letter sent to the Indian Express:

I refer to the front page report in your columns today under the caption 'violence after youth runover'. The report further goes on to state that the youth was riding his two-wheeler on the wrong side of the road.

Now, this is the kind of menace that every law-abiding road user is faced with day-in and day-out, and is quite the biggest nightmare for him. And, one expected that the traffic cops were given those fancy bikes essentially to chase such offenders, and bring them to book sufficiently heavily so that they don't ever dare to repeat them. Instead, what we see is the 'speed cops' literally ambushing two-wheeler riders here and there, and booking them largely for minor offences, apparently with just the 'revenue' targets in mind.

Do we need repeats of such incidents before our cops learn to become more objective in their approaches?