The Brave Pedestrian

19 th September, 2016, Cuttack: Justice Indrajit Mahanty – the second-seniormost judge of Orissa High Court -- hears cases and gives orders that enrich his brother Biswajit Mohanty, a well-known lobbyist for private educational institutions. Justice I Mahanty's many interim orders are in alignment with the commercial and political interests of his brother. Judges are expected to recuse himself from hearing cases where their kith and kin's interests are involved, but Justice Indrajit Mahanty overrides such niceties without batting an eyelid. Indrajit Mahanty and Biswajit Mohanty are both sons of Barrister Ranjit Mohanty, and are both inheritors of the Barrister Ranjit Mohanty Group of Institutions . While Indrajit Mahanty is not directly hands-on in the education business, Biswajit Mohanty is chairman of the BRM Trust and runs many private educational institutes such as BRM International Institute of Technology (BRM-IIT). Biswajit Mohanty is also a trade unionist an...

 From which organizations can you demand RTI info? A wide variety of offices of government and administration, PSUs, and some privately owned and run bodies also, are covered under the RTI Act 2005. You have the right to demand information from any body that is covered under the definition of “public authority” under RTI Act. Your RTI application has to be addressed to “The Public Information Officer, [Name of Public Authority, Postal Address of Postal Authority.]” For example, if you want some information from Kasturba Marg police station, your RTI application should say, “To the Public Information Officer, Kasturba Cross Road Number 1, Chinchpada, Borivali East, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400066.” The beauty of RTI Act is that you don’t even have to know the name of the Public Information Officer, or the name of the office about which you need information. You only need commonsense and the information that is easily available on the internet. For example, you can file RTI app...

July 26, 2009: Every city can carry only so many cars in terms of its roadspace and parking spaces without becoming increasingly dysfunctional, unlivable and unmotorable. I personally believe that Mumbai’s optimum was reached and crossed back in the early 90s. It is urgent to define the optimal ratio of vehicles to roadspace & parking space available i.e.  No. & Size of vehicles : Sq. metres of road & parking space available In order to the retain the quality of public spaces in any city, and prevent them from being cluttered with vehicles — whether moving or parked — it is important to calculate this ratio and make the people aware of it. In my opinion, it is necessary to take an unpopular measure and cap the number of vehicles, and roll back their numbers by at least 10 years. The road transport authorities must STOP REGISTERING NEW PRIVATE VEHICLES… and must actively phase out the largest vehicles that occupy the most space and consume the most fuel. Failing t...

1) Individual consumers need to consciously consume less of whatever it is that they consume. The government or NGOs should incentivate families to benchmark their current levels of consumption on various fronts, then reduce them. Consuming fewer air-miles each successive year should be high on our list of priorities, considering their huge addition to our individual carbon footprint. (As a cheap and effective alternative to flying, we may consider video-conferencing.) 2) Advertising aimed at making people buy more should be tapered off. Only adverts giving information should be allowed. 3) Roadside advertising hoardings should be reduced by 50%, and they should not be illuminated, as they use up precious energy for a relatively non-productive purpose. 4) Stop adding power generation capacities, whether thermal or otherwise. Freeze them at existing capacities and merely replace thermal capacities with wind-energy and solar generation capacities. 5) Stop registering new privat...