Hariharapura visit

A year ago Sudhir a.k.a Ski had commented to my "Travelogues are boring?" post that .. How about making a audio-video presentation. That's exactly I have done for my recent trip to Hariharapura(my native place). Snaps are composed into a video embedded below.



Some highlights of the trip

• Getting to Hariharapura was equivalent to a mini-adventure. Normally it's just an overnight journey, atmost 10 hrs. But the day I traveled was an exception. By the time I was supposed to be in Harihurapura, I witnessed my Bus moving here and there in Balehonnur finding a way to Sringeri. Due to incessant rains on one of the routes(via Koppa) the bridge was completely submerged in water and the other route(via Jayapura) was blocked by a fallen tree. So we were forced to halt at the bus-stand for 6 hours! Guess what I did for 6 hours ? I just slept in the bus to annul the sleep deficit I had accumulated for last one week !


• When things were getting back to normal (by afternoon), our Nishmita Motors driver was missing and busy taking a nap at his relative's place. So instead of waiting for him, I along with other co-passengers decided to take the first TCS bus to Koppa(via Melpaalu). Well, TCS means Transport Co-operative Society not the software firm based in Mumbai :). And from Koppa I took another bus to reach Hariharapura.


• My on-the-spot companion for this brief journey was Umesh, an employee of Syndicate Bank(Belgaum). He had recently completed training in Bangalore and was getting back to his duty at Belgaum. He taken a day break to meet his parents near Koppa and was too worried about wasting his precious 6 hours at Balehonnur. Enroute to Koppa (via Melpalu) Umesh showed me schools in which he studied and also showed me Tea estates owned by big industrialists and tea factories adjacent to the estates.


• In evening along with Harsha I visited some prominent locations of Hariharapura to witness the havoc created by heavy rains. The water level was so high that Asvata Katte in front of Sri-Matha was completely submerged and the level was just 4-5 feet below Tunga Setuve(hanging bridge).


• Second day I visited Hacharu house, Someshwara temple and Sri-Matha. To be on safer side I left Hariharapura early at 6 pm by taking a bus to Sringeri. There after completing darshana at Sharadambha Temple I boarded a night bus to Bangalore.

Related news items:
- Rain disrupts normal life.

Transportation Sector in India

View more presentations from naanushande.

The presentation made for Transportation Sector India as part of Business Environment course.

Following is the introduction video we used to start off the presentation.



Jist of Presentation Script

1. History:

• British India Era: infrastructure focused on colonial requirements.
• Independent India: India’s infrastructure vision was top down and govt got carried away with trying to prove to the world what India was capable of. The urgency to turn a desperately poor country into a gleaming industrial power had promted the state to emphasize higher education over primary power plants, steel factories and massive dams over rural roads, and building new cities over reforming older urban pestholes.
• For most governments, investment were anyway a lose-lose option. With govt so unstable, it was likely that the next government would take credit for what you did.

2. Comprehending Transport

• Sometimes difficult to fully comprehend the significance of transport to the economy
• When there are problems in the power or water sectors its immediately visible
• Lights go off or taps run dry –the public immediately knows –medical analogy is a heart attack
• Transport sector grinds to a halt slowly –like lung disease –slowly crippling the body
• Public comes to accept poor transport as a way of life –the economy runs slow, quality of life bad, people die in accidents –media must enlighten, focus attention

3. Road

• Network of 66,590 km of National Highways, of which 200 km are classified as expressways.
• Umbrella project: 7-phase NHDP

4. Railways

• 18 million passenger daily.
• Tariff policies: overcharge freight to subsidize passenger travel

5. Intra City

• New initiatives, low floor A/C buses, Bus rapid transit(BRT).
• Delhi Metro. under construction in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai

6. Water and Sea

• 12 major ports and about 180 minor and intermediate ports in India.
• Underutilized water way: 0.1% of the total inland traffic in India, compared to the 21% figure for the United States.

7. Aviation

• System untapped. 90 million passenger annually. Railways do that in 5 days!
• Upgradation of existing airports. Greenfield airports.

8. Investment

• Investment requirements $492 billion in the next five years
• Of this, $147 billion to come from private investment
• Share of private investment in total to rise from 17% to 30% by 2012.Investment to touch $1.48 trillion by 2017
• Role of IIFCL: It's a SPV to provide long term finance to infrastructure projects
• Overriding priority to PPP projects, Finance projects in sectors like roads, airports, ports, power, urban infrastructure etc

9. Challenges.

• India’s roads are congested and of poor quality.
• Rural areas have poor access.
• The railways are facing severe capacity constraints.
• Urban centres are severely congested.
• Ports are congested and inefficient.
• Airport infrastructure is strained.

10. Way forward

• Expanding Construction Capacity
• Improving Contract Management
• Report cards on delivery of services by PWDs
• New programs/projects public consultations
• Performance statistics, e.g. road accidents by public transport buses (DTC example)
• Regular columns responding to citizens queries about transport

11. References

• Imagining India - Nandan Nilekani
• Planning Commision Website.
• World Bank Report
• Asia Development Bank Report.
  

iBizSim Xperience

iBizSim is a business simulation game which reflects many real world situations. A good way of internalizing how exactly a firm does business . One of the best subjects we had in General Management Module, we got a holistic view of tit-bits we had learnt previously. After the sessions, seeing my status in Gtalk, my friend Raveesh asked me to explain about the simulation and share its experience in brief through text chat, here are a few excerpts from it.

-We had iBizSim sessions for 5 days conducted by Prof. Prem Chandrani.
- The class in divided into companies and industries
- It's a nice experience, to get a holistic view how a company works
- Actually, it's tough manage when numbers are in millions
- Gut feelings can't be applied always !

- In the business, you produce and sell goods, before that you should have estimate the demand
- Depending on the estimated demand you plan production.
- For production you should have raw materials, which should be ordered in advance
- After producing you have sell goods in different regions
- You have to check how the economy is performing in that country depending on that you have to book spot xchange rate or hedge it to future.
- A small fraction makes a lot of difference.
- There was an exception i.e. compulsary vacation for workers for 3 weeks in a quarter.
- For that you have plan before 2 quarters in advance and decide whether to do overtime or extra shifts.
- To have sufficient inventory levels in vacation phase to meet demand.
- There's one more option instead of producing you can buy finished good from outside. this can be if your manufacturing costs are very high.
- After all this u have to make profit and capture market share consistently.