The generally trusty service station for my motorized bullock cart, decided to be smug and didn't deliver the "Airavata" by end of day. No disappoints there, the bullock cart is usually in pieces and ready for a big bill by end of every six months, and never has a decent mechanic finished putting it back together in a day. But as if to say that they are getting famous and careless like the many other service stations in Bangalore, the good people from the garage didn't bother to call up with the list of repairs nor inform of their delivery schedule, small things that could have been taken for granted from them in the past. It was their fantastic attention to customer and his car that made them stand out, and made the premium they charge look like tremendous value for money. I once saw another parked car in immaculate condition with Prithvi's sticker and smiled as it was the first time I had crossed the path of another Prithvi loyalist. Is it yet another institution that grows big because of fanatical attention to their job and its details, only to lose direction when size brings some cushion and comfort? I hope not.... for the sake of my motorized bullock cart :-)

So I ended up having to take the public transport in the evening after a long time. As there are supposedly plenty of buses running between Basavangudi and Vijayanagar, I dutifully waited for one. A 20 minute fruitless wait later (not counting one where humans seemed better than space optimization algorithms in filling into confined volume), flagged down a rickshaw. The driver kept up a reasonable pace, but seemed to consider his born duty to rid roads of bad drivers. Almost through half the journey he was shouting at others, and often went too close or too fast at people who were inattentive on the road. I started a conversation to bog him down and asked stuff like age of his rickshaw, running costs etc, To my surprise , the very clean auto that still looked new, was actually 7 years old, and running with its original paint! The guy was proud of his maintenance (he should be) and was also getting some spectacular mileage. I decided to get off early and pick up some magazines, and later realized his meter was not jacked up like most other ricks.

There was a long line of people on my way to the magazine stall. After almost walking off , I beat my reserved attitude to go back and talk to a guy standing at the end of the queue. Found out that they were all waiting to renew their monthly bus pass, and that there were different types of passes at different rates. Walking on, it got me thinking of the time it would take for the last guy to get his pass, and that coming back a day later would get the job done quicker. But then everybody is allowed to be stingy, and its only natural that most people will queue up the first day of the month to save every rupee possible. In this day of IT networking and cheap electronics, it atrocious to see institutions wasting customer's time merely because he has no other choice. Long walks are good to solve problems, and this one of mine was no different :-). Most of the infrastructure and technology required to distribute the passes quickly is already in place. A central server connected to internet and a portal for private agents to log on and register passes serves as backend. Agents can then print out passes with the customer's name, webcam image and other regular details along with a unique bar code for each pass served up by the server. There are hundreds of ticketing agents in the city, i'm sure plenty of them will be ready to plonk down the deposit that may be required from them to start distributing such passes. Bus operator can also find more value by using bar code scanners to track down routes used most by pass holders. Adding RFID can allow tracking of stops pass holders climbed on and got off, but this will be more difficult to distribute. The idea is quite workable, but one shudders at the thought of talking to government servants......