No power, no responsibility

It’s about time we get our priorities in place, because Bangalore is quickly embracing the limelight, when in reality the city remains in the dark for most of the time. And literally.

Par example, the last two nights - no power where yours truly lives. Uncle Ben gave us wisdom - ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. And I tell BESCOM this - with no power comes cold dinner, no internet, and a hell load of mosquitoes. This, from an urbanite - so spare a thought for the slums and the rural strongholds.

It’s now nearly official, as Vicky Nanjappa suggests: what apparently tarnished Bangalore’s image was the UK terror plot, silly! Two individuals - suspects, mind you - have actually given the city’s reputation a battering. Er - what about the traffic that crawls every day at a speed that puts the snails to shame? The issues with basic utilities, with power-cuts being as frequent as a commercial on TV? The strays who’ve declared genocide against humans? ((Stray dogs maul girl to death)) Shootouts in broad daylight? ((Murder rattles Indiranagar)) Children falling from a mall or a pit, meeting with fatality? ((6-year old dies after falling from 4th floor of city mall))

A token of gratitude to the authorities then, for confirming that those were just incidents that required ignorance. To recover from the battering reputation, everyone’s looking at Bangalore IT.in. Right.

To this, critics say it’s not a big deal, as every other city faces the same problem. Fine - but does every other city hype itself like heaven’s datacenter on earth?

The core of the problem *is* the lack of service support around the substandard infrastructure (yes, we agree to live with ’substandard’ infrastructure for now). These are the ‘band-aids’ that hold the city together - and they’re missing. All we need, as citizens, is to have someone at the BESCOM hotline answer, and give a time-frame as to when the power will be back. Or just notify us in advance, without arbitrarily depriving us of our basic need.

Before the question is put - yes, I’ve tried this numerous times in vain. Speaking to a BESCOM representative during a power-cut is as easy as speaking to the President.

And giving credit where it’s due - the folks at the Income Tax office are extremely polite, and handle extended calls during prime business hours. I’ve had more than one incident where a CSR spoke very politely handling my issues with the tax-returns, escalating a request when necessary, and even the courtesy to ask if there was anything else he could assist with before hanging up. Very ‘MNC’ish, and for a government department, that says a lot.

Perhaps BESCOM, BSNL and the RTO need to take a leaf out of the Income Tax office’s book, and we all know that they could do with an upgrade or two, of their ’services’. And maybe they should stop funding the process of rechristening the city. And when *that* is done, Bangalore IT.in makes sense.

While on the subject of Bangalore IT.in, J Parthasarathy - Director of the Software Technology Parks - offered these words:

“It is our endeavour to make Bangalore IT.in - 2007 a platform for participants to understand the unique IT ecosystem available in the country.”

For the record, I work in at a firm where the lights go out (but the network stays up). And ‘we’ - the techie breadwinners - are more often the ’software coolies’ - who support more often than develop. A rather unique platform indeed. Let’s hope Bangalore IT.in 2007 changes that, because I love this city for all that it has and all that it can give.