Bidding Adieu to a Amaranthine Place

Basavangudi happens to be among Bangalore's earliest layout and here the city's multicultural, nteractive spirit is still largely held intact. Kannadigas, Madrasis, Andhrites, Maharashtrians have made their homes over years in this neighborhood, and recently Marwaris too have joined them. Ladies dressed conservatively in sari walk the same road with jean clad daughters. Gandhi bazaar's footpath vegetable and fruit bazaar is a treat the to eyes, and has been copied in newer areas like Jayanagar,Vijayanagar, Madiwal etc. As months pass by after one has got acquainted with Basavangudi, it starts to look timeless and elegant, where the old never change, yet modernity seeps in without disturbing the old order.

30 to 40 yr old hotels exist peacefully alongside modern day joints. Tiffin rooms are plenty here, many of them with names ringing similar to popular Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR). idli, vade, karabath, kesaribath, and some ricebath of the day along with tasty coffee and tea are standard fare, with dosas, daddur vades etc also being served in a few of them. Quality is top notch and one is hard pressed to say which among them is better. Sri Mahalaxmi Tiffin Room, Modern Tiffin Room(quite old by the way!), BlueDoor Cafe (Sri Laxmi Tiffin Room, sorry) and Brahmin's Coffee Bar are a must visit, in reverse order. There's also Vidyarthi Bhavan, which to me is more hype than taste. Those looking for lunch at a regular vegetarian hotel or darshini have plenty of choice too.

Bang Design, the firm I was freelancing at, shifted close to Banaswadi, the other side of Bangalore. And that means no more frequent walks to Gandhi Bazaar or regular evening coffees at Bluedoor Cafe. It was fun while it lasted :-)

Speaking of progress, found a iconic photo at HAL museum on Airport Road. Spot the bullock cart in the photo.

This notice was pasted at a KSRTC booking franchise near home. BMTC is ahead of me and has already implemented something similar to the idea mentioned in the previous post. No wonder it is the only profit making city bus service in the country.

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......

I came across this very interesting interview of Rajiv Bajaj in a magazine. It is big eye opener to all those who think that u need a year or 2 of experience before u can be given responsibilities. I have pasted some of the very interesting highlights below

What was the first new product out of Chakan plant?
It was the Pulsar.

How's Pulsar doing now?
Pulsar averages about 3 lakh units a year. At an average price of Rs 40,000, it's an over Rs-1,000 crore brand.

Chakan was really the manufacturing turnaround for Bajaj Auto?
The Pulsar was developed by a totally different team, which is now our R&D team.

You overhauled the whole supplier base.
The entire supplier chain. We had, at that time, 855 suppliers. We are less than 200 now. About 150 out of these 200 are new.

The people changes you made were from the level of vice-presidents and above.
Yes. Almost everybody. I couldn't sack my father. But mostly, everybody else. Out of the 800 people at Chakan, 750 or 770 were fresh -- they just had a clean slate, an open mind and were committed to do well -- and about 30 of our experienced people who I put there with these young management trainees.

How long would it have taken to reach the quality levels in your older plants?
The quality levels that Chakan achieved in six months' time were achieved by the Aurangabad plant after about 12 years.

How did you gear up R&D to compete with a Honda or a Yamaha?
The average age there(Kawasaki R&D)is 26 or 27. The engineer does not require experience. You need people with imagination. Our R&D today is 113 people. The average age is under 30.

Where else do you see yourself at an advantage?
Today, our competition is really the Japanese, but Honda is pre-occupied with cars now, Yamaha is looking very unsteady, Suzuki is also caught up with the small cars. The other are the Chinese who are very good at cost but not so good at quality and technology. We have the opportunity to deliver the Japanese quality at the Chinese price. Such an opportunity doesn't come often.

What is Bajaj Auto's global gameplan?
in a global market of 30 million vehicles we should sell 9 million.

Full article is availale here

http://www.businessworldindia.com/aug0904/indepth02.asp

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SARDAR VALLABHAI PATEL , the man who should have been India's first Prime Minister

JRD TATA , ethics and buissness can go togther

Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan ,circumstances are not a excuse for determined men