Delhi Metro

There is joy, and there is concern tinged with fear and uncertainty. “Get ready for the next wave of infection transmission... Reason... Metro opened for all. When there were 200 per day cases, everything was closed. Now when it's 77,000 cases per day, government plans to open Metro. Can somebody explain the rationale??” asked one tweet when DMRC on August 29 went public with #MetroBackOnTrack Finally, after a gap of more than five months and a week, the metro stations and coaches of the National Capital Region will see people who are willing to go through the restrictive, controlled and strictly…

On November 27th, a tweet by Ashok Khemka, principal secretary of the Science and Technology Department, caught the attention of netizens and media, though one cannot call it entirely surprising. A senior IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, Khemka was already known to be Haryana's second-most transferred bureaucrat (52 times in his 27 years of service) and shared news of his 53rd transfer through this tweet. https://twitter.com/AshokKhemka_IAS/status/1199625574173462528 Khemka, born in Kolkata** and an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, shot to limelight through a series of exposés, including the Robert Vadra DLF land grab scam, Sonepat-Kharkhoda IMT land scam case and Garhi…

In March 2009, the Rajasthan government approached the erstwhile union government, seeking central assistance for setting up the Jaipur Metro Project. Nine years later, a performance audit of the first phase of Jaipur Metro by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) reveals how this urban mobility project was pushed through with undue haste. This has raised questions over why certain due diligence protocols in the planning phase were undermined. The CAG performance audit tells us that in April 2009, the Union Government advised the Rajasthan government to prepare a Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) in order to conduct a…

Metro rail projects are fast progressing in many Indian cities, and more are to come. They have been projected as the best solution to cities reeling under traffic jams. Currently eight cities have metro rails, covering a span of about 370 kms. The longest line of 217 kms is in Delhi, and next comes Bangalore at about 42 kms. In these and five other cities, 537 kms of additional metro lines are being constructed. Even more is in the planning stage. This also means huge public spending, as metro projects require investments of thousands of crores. Yet, many studies have…

Given the current scenario of increasing pollution in Indian cities, it’s quite likely that we shall soon have to breathe from canisters of clean air to avoid chronic respiratory issues. What we’ve been noticing in Delhi is clearly a man-made catastrophe. PM 2.5 levels are at an all-time high and almost 10 times those seen in Beijing. Citizens are seriously considering options to escape the toxic and unacceptably high levels of air pollution in Delhi. But as things stand, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to do so, the burden falling disproportionately on the poor. What is most…

If recent news reports are to be believed, the Bangalore Metro is set to have coaches for women soon, according to Minister for Bengaluru Development and Town Planning K J George. The facility is expected to be implemented in 2019, when the total number of coaches will be increased from three to six. The demand for reservation had come from a section of women passengers, once the Purple Line (Mysore Road to Byappanahalli) became operational and ridership multiplied. BMRCL currently estimates that 40% of their nearly three lakh daily passengers are women, and plans to hold a survey to find…