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Lack of incentives kills a solution to oil saving
- Lack of adequate incentives might be one of the big reasons why carpooling — the practice of sharing one's four-wheel drive with others — is yet to catch up in India, even in the face of spiralling fuel prices.
- It is surely not a question of lack of access. The country now has close to 100 million Internet subscribers
- the second largest subscriber base in actual numbers in Asia after China (447 million). It is also the second largest growing market in the mobile phone space, adding between 10 and 12 million users every month. And according to AdMob, the mobile advertising network, India is the second largest market after the U.S. in mobile traffic.
- A few websites, including www.indimoto.com and www.carpooling.in, offer ride-share networks for users. But the numbers are none too big. At carpooling.in, for example, Delhi and Faridabad lists 2,272 and 1,064 carpools at the time of filing this report. The information-technology corridor-heavy south though, including Bangalore and Chennai, have fewer numbers.
- “Lack of incentives is a big problem hindering the growth of carpooling in the country,” says Udit Bhandari, founder of www.indimoto.com, a website that was among the first to launch carpool communities in April 2006. “We approached the government and the corporate sector to provide incentives for people who carpool. It is not enough to just put out posters asking people to do carpooling.”
- He points out that the incentive to do carpooling is more in the West because of concepts like the Heavy Occupancy Vehicles lane.
- indimoto.com asked corporates to incentivise parking lots by giving preference to cars with more people. “It just got lost because people consider driving alone in their cars a status symbol,”
- The classic way the commuter is responding to the fuel hike is by opting for further fuel-saving four-wheelers — from petrol to diesel vehicles.Only the rare crisis seems to be promoting carpooling.
Railway project land losers given jobs
- Fourteen persons belonging to families whose plots had been acquired for the construction of a new railway line between Furfura Sharif and Dankuni in the State's Hooghly district were handed over appointment letters for a job at the Railways at an event at Furfura Sharif
- Providing a job to one member of each family whose plots had been acquired for the construction of railway projects was in line with the policy
- it was for the first time in the country that jobs were being provided to those whose plots had been acquired for setting up a new railway project.
Bringing India closer to poor children
- In a bid to generate cultural awareness among less-privileged school students, the Culture Ministry will launch the Cultural Heritage Young Leadership Programme .
- The aim is to kindle a love for the country's rich heritage, support visits to monuments and museums and distribute audio-visual material to schools in poorer areas.
Hit back like Brazilians, suggests Karat
- While travelling in that country, he had noticed that U.S. citizens had to queue up separately at airports.
- They were subject to fingerprinting and other security procedures that their fellow travellers did not face, because that was how Brazilian citizens travelling in the U.S. were treated.
- “Any self-respecting country would do it,”
State to promote tourist destinations
- flagging-in six new six Mercedes Benz buses, each costing Rs. 72 lakh, into the fleet of the A.P. Tourism Development Corporation (APTDC), to be used for operations to Shirdi (4) and Tirupati (2)
- The introduction of new buses was part of the corporation's fleet replacement and improvement policy
- Currently, the fleet strength of 117 includes 38 Volvo and 22 air-conditioned Hi-Tech buses, two air-conditioned sleeper coaches and five mini-coaches, with the rest being non air-conditioned Hi-Tech buses.
- passengers could book their tickets either online or through eSeva centres, apart from the Central Reservation Office of the corporation and other reservation counters.
- In all, the corporation has ordered for 16 luxury, multi-axle buses - eight each of Mercedes Benz and Volvo.
- For the Shirdi trip, the tariff is Rs. 1,600 return including accommodation, while for Tirupati it is Rs. 2,100 including accommodation and a special darshan at Tirumala.
