Pipe dream
People in responsible positions in the government continue to be in a campaign mode, making fantastic claims and setting up impossible targets. Elon Musk, one of the pioneers of electric vehicle technology, has set up free charging grids in the US, where neither supply nor distribution is a constraint. With our infrastructure to target 2030 for a complete shift to electric car speaks for itself. In Bengaluru a whiff of wind or a drizzle is sufficient to shut off electricity. We keep wondering if candles are the source of power! In one of the districts of Karnataka, a state that surprisingly doesn’t figure amongst the laggards frontpaged in your paper on Monday (“UDAY fails to power discoms in laggard state”), we spent four continuous days without III phase electricity last week.
Technology for electric vehicles largely depends on lithium battery as of now. Availability and eventual cost driven by quantum jump in demand of lithium doesn't appear to have been factored in. Do we have to live on dreams?
M K Subbiah Bengaluru the BJD. One really wonders whether the BJP truly deserves such a “victory” on pan-India basis? In all fairness, having much needed confidence is one thing but mistakenly suffering from some “over-confidence” could always be selfdefeating. As an old saying goes, selfpraise is no recommendation. And, it should also be kept in mind that all our wishes are seldom granted.
Kumar Gupt Panchkula able to make their trains less accidentprone by ensuring adequate renovation of tracks, signal systems and engines and bogies on an ongoing basis and having adequate manpower in service at any point of time. The suburban local trains in cities such as Mumbai continue to be death traps, mainly due to overcrowding of compartments. This is ironically when comfort is being added to modes of travel incurring heavy costs for transport systems like monorail and metro trains.
The recent train accidents in various parts of the country embarrassed the railways as a service provider, prompting the rail minister offer to resign. Travel safety has to be one of our national priorities and should not be considered merely a “moral responsibility” of a minister, neither should it end with fixing responsibility on some employees when something untoward happens.
Some of us have noticed the recent shift from a “happy journey” to “safe and comfortable journey” in recent years. This is also a sad reminder that people have started worrying about travel safety. From pedestrians on the footpath to the executives sitting in business class seats of international airlines, eveyone needs to be assured of safety in normal circumstances. MGWarrier Mumbai