Few days back I had to travel to Hyderabad to meet some of my friends, prior to a week before that I tried to book my train tickets online, there was only one available train whose timing was convenient to me, but when I checked for seats availability, the website showd me status "REGRET WAITING/1,2". I clicked on the book ticket button, it threw me an error "Regret waiting/1,2, ticket cannot be booked". I thought may there are only two tickets available so its not letting me to book them online, so decided to book the tickets from railway station itself.
Rail reservation counters in India are quire famous for thick crowd, the reservation room had five counters to book tickets, but wait!! not all were open, only two were issuing tickets. No clue about the rest three. So the queue at those two counters was too huge. I went n stood in the queue which looked shorter among the two. The time for issuing a ticket/person was almost 10 minutes, n tats damn slow. I went to the station in the morning around 9 A.M to avoid any long queue's, but later realised it was a bad guess. It took almost two hours for my turn, and Just when the guy infront of me wast about to clear the counter, one lady came in between n submitted her reservation form at the counter, I said wait Ma'm u need to come in the queue, for that she replied for women there is no need to be in the queue and showed me a notice board besides. It was a small notice board, when I gazed at it carefully it read "This queue is meant for general purpose, but for senior citizens and womens there is no need to stand in the queue".
Meanwhile some of the guys who had lined up behind me in the queue went insane, raising how can she book the ticket without standing in the queue, some ppl even shouted at me for not stopping her. I said boss there is a board here which says a women can book her ticket without being in the queue. The quarrel between the women and those guys kindled, soon some more women who were back in the queue joined her, the quarrel went on for almost 10 minutes and finally halted with a compromise, that all women will form a new queue and the tickets will be booked alternatively by men and women. So It took almost half-hour more for my turn to come. I gave my reservation form at the counter and was waiting to receive my ticket, n guess what??????...the lady issuing tickets said "The train is fully booked on the date requested by you, we cant book a ticket even with 'Waiting' status". Wow!! wat a grt reward for standing in this queue for almost 2 n half hour. I asked her to check for alternatives, she said "No". I pressed her again to check, she checked again n said "I can book tatkal ticket, for which you will have to pay an extra 150 Rs as tatkal fee but the ticket will be in waiting status ", which means till the date of journey if tickets staus gets cleared only then i can travel, otherwise I can cancel the ticket where 25% of the total amount will be fined. I didnt have much time to decide so told her to book tatkal ticket.
Almost 5 days had left for my travel, every day, in the morning, noon, evening i used to check my tickets status in the rail website. Even the day before my travel I checked for status, but status was hell, it showed me "Waiting" all the time. If status remained same even the next day then I had to cancel my trip, which I didnt wanted. So I started lookin for alternatives, all other trains for that day were booked, travel by air is toooo costly, by bus its too enervating as it was almost 14 hours journey. But I had to travel, so I decided to go by bus, n got a ticket for some private bus travel.
On the day of my travel after finishing my packing, I went to railway station to cancel my train ticket to get atleast 75% of its money back. Again there was a long queue and again after loooong time my turn came. I surrendered my ticket at the counter and told the lady officer to cancel it, she took the ticket, cheked its status and said "Sir your ticket is confirmed, and we dont cancel it once confirmed". GOSSSSH!!! dont tell me.....man!!! first time after waiting for 2 hrs in this queue i wanted reserved ticket they gave me a waiting one, next time again after waiting for so long, i wanted to cancel the ticket they give me reserved one..but tats fate. Now I have two tickets..I thought for a while and decided to travel by train coz its more comfortable and cancel the bus ticket. I called the bus agency n told them to cancel my ticket, they said they dont cancel the ticket once it is issued, dude!!! wat do u mean..had a heated argument with them..told them my 1000 Rs at stake so give me atleast 50% amount back, they again denied. I went to their office n told the whole story, but no avail. I asked them to give me their boss telephone no, I called their boss n recounted the whole account, finally after a brief talk the boss agreed but said I will be charged 25% of the amout for cancellation, I said no problem coz even after that I will get back 750 Rs, n tats huge amount. All clear..there was big sigh..I collected my money, came back home, took my luggage n AGAIN headed towards the railway station......
but this time to catch my train.. ;-))
Monday, May 19, 2008
Friday, May 02, 2008
Nuke Deal
In India, many r quite confused with the never ending debate ongoing between the ruling and opposition political parties over "123 Nuclear agreement". What exactly is the confusion?? as a true citizen of India, I always want her to see in the league of developed nations, and for that matter, we need to fulfill her basic needs to fuel growth momentum, like infrastructure, and offcourse, electricity is one among them.
India generates almost 70-75 % of its electricity using thermal power, naturally thats due the high coal deposits found under its soil, and more than 25% of electricity from hydro power, and the rest 1 or 2 % is generated using nuclear power and wind power. As we rely so much on coal, what if a day comes when we realise that the new coal deposits are scarcely found, and the existing coal will get exhausted in few years??, now tats a grave question for an economically surging country like India, on the other side there is global warming, as most of the countries are trying to implement the Kyoto Protocol, which restricts their emission levels below certain barrier. Hence, India, which is one of the fastest developing nations of the world, has a huge task to check on its emission levels without hurting its development spree, which is quite difficult if we continue to rely more on coal energy as we do now. The Govt of India might be harping on this from quite a few years. To protect the interests of its entrapanuers, citizens and more importantly the farmers, our Govt is haplessely running behind every opportunity which will subside the major part of its energy hunger.
U.S. nuclear deal or 123 agreement is seen as relief to all these huffings going on where, India will be helped by U.S. in setting up civilian nulcear plants to generate electriciy along with the required uranium fuel supply from the countries who posses it. For the deal to start functioning India must pass the bill in its parliment after the IAEA(International Automatic Enery Agency)'s go ahead which will inspect all the nuclear plants for safeguards and checks for any non civilian use of nuclear enery like nuclear arms etc. To get the bill passed in the parliment the ruling govt is busy convincing all the opposition parties and also the citizens of India claiming it as the cleanest possible energy, and if given a go ahead now will be a boon to the economy, where as the opposition parites are dragging it down with the apprehensions of US imperialisom, its hostile nature, raising fears if U.S. breaks the deal, as India would have invested billions of dollars for setting up the nuclear plants.
The repurcussions of breaking the deal is, the proposed uranium supply to India will be stopped and more threatening is that India will be asked back all the technology and material provided from the day the deal is kicked off. There is a group of 45 countries called NSG(Nuclear Suppliers Group), The deal says all the NSG countries will help in running the nuke plants by supplying the required fuel and material. However these countries have the veto power in this deal, so if any country backs off that means the deal will be stalled, and as India does not share the soft corner with some of these countries, especially China, so it becomes quite daunting to aboard this deal without any brainstorming from experts.
Nuclear energy is ofcourse one of the cleanest possible energies and would curb India's energy hunger marginally, even Mr.Abdul Kalam, the former President of India and also a renowned scientist appreciates the initiatives taken in this regard, however its very imperative that the Indian govt should setup a detailed discourse about how well we can avoid any worst case situations if at all they occur in the future and must consult the scientists, economists and every other concerned fraternity who can help in taking the most appropriate decision on this nuclear deal.
India generates almost 70-75 % of its electricity using thermal power, naturally thats due the high coal deposits found under its soil, and more than 25% of electricity from hydro power, and the rest 1 or 2 % is generated using nuclear power and wind power. As we rely so much on coal, what if a day comes when we realise that the new coal deposits are scarcely found, and the existing coal will get exhausted in few years??, now tats a grave question for an economically surging country like India, on the other side there is global warming, as most of the countries are trying to implement the Kyoto Protocol, which restricts their emission levels below certain barrier. Hence, India, which is one of the fastest developing nations of the world, has a huge task to check on its emission levels without hurting its development spree, which is quite difficult if we continue to rely more on coal energy as we do now. The Govt of India might be harping on this from quite a few years. To protect the interests of its entrapanuers, citizens and more importantly the farmers, our Govt is haplessely running behind every opportunity which will subside the major part of its energy hunger.
U.S. nuclear deal or 123 agreement is seen as relief to all these huffings going on where, India will be helped by U.S. in setting up civilian nulcear plants to generate electriciy along with the required uranium fuel supply from the countries who posses it. For the deal to start functioning India must pass the bill in its parliment after the IAEA(International Automatic Enery Agency)'s go ahead which will inspect all the nuclear plants for safeguards and checks for any non civilian use of nuclear enery like nuclear arms etc. To get the bill passed in the parliment the ruling govt is busy convincing all the opposition parties and also the citizens of India claiming it as the cleanest possible energy, and if given a go ahead now will be a boon to the economy, where as the opposition parites are dragging it down with the apprehensions of US imperialisom, its hostile nature, raising fears if U.S. breaks the deal, as India would have invested billions of dollars for setting up the nuclear plants.
The repurcussions of breaking the deal is, the proposed uranium supply to India will be stopped and more threatening is that India will be asked back all the technology and material provided from the day the deal is kicked off. There is a group of 45 countries called NSG(Nuclear Suppliers Group), The deal says all the NSG countries will help in running the nuke plants by supplying the required fuel and material. However these countries have the veto power in this deal, so if any country backs off that means the deal will be stalled, and as India does not share the soft corner with some of these countries, especially China, so it becomes quite daunting to aboard this deal without any brainstorming from experts.
Nuclear energy is ofcourse one of the cleanest possible energies and would curb India's energy hunger marginally, even Mr.Abdul Kalam, the former President of India and also a renowned scientist appreciates the initiatives taken in this regard, however its very imperative that the Indian govt should setup a detailed discourse about how well we can avoid any worst case situations if at all they occur in the future and must consult the scientists, economists and every other concerned fraternity who can help in taking the most appropriate decision on this nuclear deal.
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