The iPhone is wonderful

DESARAJU SURYA
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy is not known to be technology or gadget savvy. But Apple's iPhone has become a rather indispensable tool in his hands these days. The iPhone, of course, is not owned by the Chief Minister. His enterprising and tech-savvy Chief Security Officer Masthipuram Ramesh uses the iPhone and it is coming in handy for RajasekharaReddy to dispose of applications related to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund (CMRF) -- just by using his fingertip. Even if he is touring a remote part of the far-off Srikakulam district or Adilabad or relaxing in his ownbackyard in Idupulapaya, Rajasekhara Reddy never misses the opportunity to clear pending CMRF applications. On an average, about 300 applications are received everyday by the ChiefMinister's Office (CMO) for financial assistance from the CMRF. Not a single application is kept pending as a team in the CMO, led by the Chief Minister's principal secretary P Subrahmanyam and private secretary Kiran Kumar Reddy, processes the applications in quick time and uploads them on the CMRF website. Hitherto, the Chief Minister needed to sit in front of his desktop computer to clear these applications. As he was constantly touring the state as well as other parts of the country, the CMRF applications used to get stuck. "This was creating troubles for the needy people as sometimes they were forced to wait for days to get the Chief Minister's approval for help. In critical cases, this wait could prove costly. So, we decided to integrate the website with the latest mobile handsets so that the applications could be processed in real time," a CMO official said. Initially, the CMO officials tried using the Blackberry device to download the CMRF site and process the applications. "Somehow, it did not work as desired," the CMO official pointed out. Then came Apple's iPhone, which is a virtual palm-top computer. It is fully loaded with a variety of features and browsing the web is amazingly easier. So, a foolproof system has been designed so that only the ChiefMinister, apart from his private secretary, can access the processing and approval part of the CMRF website. The specific page has details about the various applications received, the need for financial assistance and the amount to be sanctioned. A gist of the total number of applications, the sum sanctioned and the amount per person is also listed. During his "reserve" time while on tours, Rajasekhara Reddy opens the iPhone and completes the"formalities." In a flash, the main server in the CMO updates the details as soon as the Chief Minister grants his approval and sends back a message: "Thank you, dear Chief Minister." Rajasekhara Reddy indeed proves that one need not be tech-savvy to make effective use of technology.

Lakes turn cesspools

By Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Before its transformation into the so-called high-tech city, thanks to the information technology boom, Hyderabad was famously known as the city of pearls and also the city of lakes. When someone talks about Hyderabad's lake system, the first one that strikes the mind is the Hussain Sagar lake, though there were over 532 water bodies in and around the state capital. These lakes, apart from serving as drinking water sources, also effectively helped in rain water harvesting in the semi-arid zone for irrigation. Rapid urbanisation over the past few decades has made the lakes redundant for irrigation. Unbridled discharge of domestic and industrial effluents and sewerage has turned the lakes into cesspools of filth. As demand for land increased with the spurt in population growth, lakes got encroached indiscriminately. Areas adjacent to the lakes were also converted into housing layouts resulting in encroachment of parts of water spread area. Dumping of solid wastes, immersion of idols and landfill activity are also threatening the lakes' existence. All this has also caused widespread ecological degeneration. Now, most of the once-famous lakes in and around the city are in a state of eutrophication. The bacteria and pathogens released into the lake water by discharge of sewage are contaminating the ground water causing water-borne diseases besides encouraging mosquito growth. Thus, lakhs of people living around these water bodies are vastly affected by several maladies. The Hyderabad Urban Development Authority has notified 169 lakes spread over 3000 hectares, of which 87 are moderate to highly polluted. Of these 87, 11 are classified under category-1 that reached eutrophication while others are classified under category-2 -- which too may reach the dangerous stage if neglected. Consider the Ramakrishnapuram (Mukkidi) cheruvu in Malkajgiri municipality, which has a water spread area of 13.7 hectares now. The lakebed is encroached and two inlets carry domestic sewage into the lake leading to heavy pollution. Without the encroachments, the lake's waterspread area should have been 18.66 ha. This lake once used to be an irrigation source but urbanisation has led to development of middle-class housing colonies, altering the land use pattern. The Sudulavani Kunta lake in Kukatpally is another example where encroachments have eaten into the water spread area significantly, resulting in excessive pollution of the water body. From the actual waterspread area of 5.9 hectares, the lake area has now shrunk to 4.9 ha with encroachments on all sides except the northern side where a weir stands. "As Hyderabad is expanding on all sides at a brisk pace, lakes in the erstwhile surrounding municipalities, that are now part of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, have been falling prey to unchecked encroachments. New residential layouts are being developed in areas like Kapra, Serlingampally, RajendraNagar and Kukatpally. This is threatening the existence of water bodies," a top Hyderabad UrbanDevelopment Authority official pointed out. All these years, various government agencies have tried to pass on the blame and wash their hands off even as environmentalists raised alarm over the degeneration of lakes and the adverse impact on the city ecological system. After the flash floods in August 2000, the then government spoke of restoring the waterbodies but that promise remained unfulfilled. Even the present government did not show much interest in the lake restoration work as realtors succeeded in thwarting all efforts of the administration to check illegal layouts and encroachment of water bodies. One reason that the authorities concerned repeatedly cited for not taking up the lake restoration projects was "dearth of funds." But now, with the Government of India generously funding infrastructure projects in urban local bodies, particularly the million-plus cities under the Jawaharlal Nehru NationalUrban Renewal Mission, the state government woke up to do at least something to save the system. The Huda has now completed a survey and prepared a detailed project report for "restoration and rejuvenation" of 11 lakes in the first phase at a total cost of Rs 71.45 crore. Once the Central Sanctioning and Monitoring Committee of JNNURM clears the project and pumps in funds, these lakes are expected to regain good shape, at least to some extent.

Courting controversies

By Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: The Y S Rajasekhara Reddy-led Congress government in Andhra Pradesh never tires from overstepping its brief. Looks like the government has scant regard for the rule of law and the statutes.
In yet another controversial move, the state government issued two GOs that clearly undermine the role and authority of the local bodies, both rural and urban, in the state. The GOs, in fact, are a blatant violation of the Constitution (73 and 74 Amendment) Acts as they seek to bypass the established systems in the local bodies. The GOs No. 13 and No. 880 -- issued by the Planning Department and the Municipal Administration and Urban Development Department respectively -- empower the respective district incharge ministers to recommend and sanction development works in the local bodies for which separate sums of Rs 992.70 crore (rural) and Rs 200 crore (urban) have been released. Such orders were unprecedented and ostensibly meant to dole out benefits to Congress workers in the form of nominated work contracts in the crucial "election year." The Rs 200 crore released to the urban local bodies (ULBs) are meant for maintenance of internal roads in towns while the sum of Rs 992.70 crore released to the rural mandals is meant for "integrated development of internal cement concrete roads and drainage facilities" in villages. Each rural mandal will get Rs 90 lakh as grant-in-aid to carry out the works while 109 municipalities and 12 municipal corporations (excluding Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam) will get Rs 1 crore each. Besides, ULBs will also get a share in the balance Rs 79 crore as per the population. Towns where roads works are sanctioned under the components of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission will, however, not get any grants from the state. Normally, the elected Councils of ULBs themselves list out the various works on priority and sanction them even if grants, in any form, are provided by the state or the Centre. But now, the state has entrusted the task of sanctioning the works to the "district incharge minister alone," clearly bypassing the elected Councils. Even the mandal-level works will also be decided and sanctioned by the district in charge minister, leaving no say for the local bodies in the entire process. The respective district Collectors will accord administrative sanction for the works chosen by the district in charge minister. "These GOs are illegal and are a clear violation of the Constitution. We shall launch a state-wide agitation against the orders demanding that the responsibility of sanctioning the works be vested only with the elected bodies," president of AP PanchayatRaj Chamber and member of Legislative Council Y BabuRajendra Prasad told this correspondent. CPM's urban affairs cell leader Ch Babu Rao too strongly opposed the GOs and said they would undermine the local bodies.

Car-pooling: A welcome initiative

By Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: Car-pooling has just begun in Andhra Pradesh state capital Hyderabad. Tinytots who usually commute to school and back home in their own cars are now sharing the means of transport not only to ease the pressure on their parents' pockets but also decongest the city roads. The car-pooling will also help control pollution that is rapidly on the rise with the spurt in number of vehicles. The car-pooling for school kids began on a small note after a high-ranking official in theChief Minister's Office (CMO) took the initiative with his son and his classmates. "I asked my son to collect details of his classmates who commute on the same route to school. We spoke to their parents and started using a single car instead of many to drop the children at school and bring them back," the CMO official, who did not wish to be identified, said. Thus, from Banjara Hills to Geetanjali Public School at Begumpet, some four-five kids have started travelling by the same car. These parents are not into cost-sharing but rather adopting a rotation system whereby each parent uses his\her car on a day of choice as per convenience. Scores of children are usually dropped at school by their parents in private cars daily causing traffic snarls at all important locations during rush hours. The problem could be felt at Secunderabad, Begumpet, Abids, Narayanaguda, Mehdipatnam, JubileeHills, Banjara Hills, Ameerpet, S R Nagar and other prime localities across the state capital. This is not only resulting in waste of time but also waste of precious fuel, which became dearer after the recent round of price hike. The resultant pollution is adding up to the miseries of one and all. A software is now being developed to enable every school management to create a database on place of stay of children and the modes of transport they are using so that route maps could be prepared to make car-pooling effective. A freelance technocrat B Leela Krishna is designing the software which will be supplied to schools in compact discs. Car-pooling is so far confined to major metros like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru while it is relatively new in Chennai and Pune which have a large number of IT professionals. In Hyderabad, the car-pooling initiative was started just a week ago basically for office-goers. "Right now about 40 people have registered on our free website and started using the car-pool. Another 30-40 people have also shown interest and applied for using the facility," Channel9 Eventz head Srinivas Rahul said. If the car-pooling initiative indeed succeeds, it will augur well for the city traffic and help reduce the pollution levels.

All in the పవర్ game?

By Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: A serious power tussle between the self-styled torchbearers is virtually threatening to lead to a stillbirth of the much-hyped political party of film star Chiranjeevi. Probably, no other political party-in-the-making in the country might have witnessed such a conflict, even before it formally came into being, as the one that is currently bogging the Chiranjeevi camp. Chiranjeevi is said to be at sea and "thoroughly disturbed" over the goings-on in the camp while his youngest brother and actor Pavan Kalyan -- the man said to be instrumental in shaping Chiru's political moves -- is strangely keeping himself totally away. Pavan is busy reading various books from his huge collection and also preparing for his next film Puli, for which the music is being done by maestro A R Rahman. There are as many as four major power centres apart from another group that too is rather inevitably getting into this wrangle over the Chiranjeevi party. The main group, supposedly the most prominent, is led by Chiranjeevi's Man Friday and brother-in-law Allu Aravind and friend, guide and philosopher Dr P Mitra Reddy. The second group -- power centre rather -- is headed by the actor's younger brother Nagendra Babu and the third is led by P Vinay Kumar, son of former Union minister P Shiv Shankar. The fourth group comprises ex-CPM functionaries like T V Rao, Vithal and others, who are working under the banner Spark. On top of all, there is the "Core Committee" that includes Nagendra Babu, Allu Aravind, Vinay Kumar, Mitra Reddy, Prasad Reddy, Brahma Reddy and Sridhar Reddy. Of course, Sridhar Reddy has become inactive for sometime now, reportedly disgusted with the power tussle among the groups. Mitra Reddy too stopped going to the Geeta Arts office, which is now being turned into the Chiranjeevi party office, following differences with some other members of the Core Committee, insiders say. Aravind had a tough time in pacifying Mitra and bringing him back to the fold, they add. The first signs of the ongoing tussle came to light the day when Allu Aravind announced that Chiranjeevi would indeed launch his political party in August. Within hours, NagendraBabu retorted saying nothing had been decided yet and his brother himself would make any announcement on the political party. On Sunday, Nagendra Babu took his turn to formally "confirm" Chiru's plans and exhort the fans to "keep going." "Everybody knows the kind of rapport between Chiranjeevi and Aravind. In away Aravind is the Karta, Karma, Kriya on all matters related to Chiru. His brothers, however, would like to break this at a time when Chiru is all set to jump onto the political bandwagon. Friction is, thus, natural," a source close to the 'camp' observed. On the other hand, Vinay Kumar is "too busy" trying to take control over the party affairs. He has directed Chiranjeevi fan clubs in various districts to open party offices and has virtually taken the state headquarters here into his grip. If the camp insiders are to be believed, Vinay Kumar has already "selected" 120 candidates for as many constituencies and submitted the list to Chiranjeevi. All this has not gone down well with Aravind, Mitra and even NagendraBabu. While squabbling among themselves for one-upmanship, they are pulling all stops to keep Vinay at bay. But suddenly, another group, which cannot be ignored at any cost, has also stepped up its act and is seeking its share of glory. Led by All-India Chiranjeevi Yuva Sena general secretary Swami Naidu, who is the bridge between Chiranjeevi and his numerous fans, this group is busy rallying youth and getting them ready for the bigshow.
Tailpiece: Chiranjeevi is so perturbed with the happenings in his camp that he has decided to take a "break" and fly abroad to an undisclosed location. At least for a fortnight!