Autorikshaw fares

Think Chennai, Autoriskhaw, and the words that would immediately come to your mind are of the type - exorbitant, fleece, rip-off, etc. On many occasions I have tried to understand the logic behind the fares but haven't got anywhere. I am trying to piece together my experiences with autowalahs in different cities.

This morning too, for my travel from Chennai Central railway station to my residence in K K Nagar which is about 15km away, all the way from the platform to the pre-paid auto counter, autowalahs were aggressively offering me a "very reasonable" fare of Rs 220. Some others pretend to claim that they are 'prepaid auto' in the vicinity of the prepaid counter with 'prepaid rates' of Rs 170-200. The actual prepaid rate is Rs 129. The prepaid driver does not mumble or crib about the fare and behaves well with you, not even once hating you for the potential "loss of extra revenue up to Rs 90".

If we analyze from a per-km perspective, this prepaid rate of Rs 130 for the 15 km works out to less than Rs 9/km which is cheaper than the auto fares in most towns. My best experience with autorikshaws have been in Trivandrum, Trichur, Kozhikode and Kannur (in Kerala) and Kolhapur, Mumbai. In most other places (all district headquarters in Kerala, 4-5 cities in TN, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Kolkata, Delhi, etc) the experience ranges from unpleasant to worse, the worst being in Delhi. Jaipur and Gandhinagar/Ahmedabad have been average.

In Bangalore, most of them do run on meters (which are a showpiece in Chennai autos). But then you run the risk of being taken for a city tour if you are not familiar with the locality, or being told absurd reasons like 'sunday, so more fare' or ' so more fare', 'meter plus <10/20/30>' or 'meter * 2', etc. 

In Trivandrum/Trichur/Kozhikode/Kannur, you get very reasonable and affordable fares, which are at most meter plus 2-3 rupees within the city, well within 6-8 rupees per km. But the moment you step out of the corporation boundary, you are doomed. For example, in Trivandum, from the Central Railway Station to Peroorkada junction (city limit) would be less than 50 rupees for 7km approx, but add another 900 meters to NCC Nagar, they would ask for at least 100 rupees, just because this is technically outside of the corporation limits - taking the per km rate to more than 12.

In cities like Eranakulam, it is nightmarish - the rikshaws themselves have set a rate of Rs 12 per km, and worse, behave arrogantly (which sometimes makes me forgive the average fleecer chennai autowalah, for, though he is fleecing, he would treat you like a king).

One thought I have is that wherever the public transport system is good, the autorikshaws have less demand and more supply, hence try to increase the price. Chennai and Ernakulam have excellent public transport infrastructure and hence have high autorikshaw fares. Trivandrum has a pathetic and irregular public transport and autorikshaws are mostly greater in demand than supply, hence affordable fares.

Another argument I hear as the reason for Chennai fares is that they have to pay a daily rent of 150-200 rupees to the vehicle owner, as well as fend for the fuel expenses themselves, so they have no other option than to charge high. I am not very sure about this part - that most autorikshaws are in fact, owned by policemen in benaami, due to which the policemen also don't take any action to enforce govt approved rates (which are at an unbelievable Rs 6/km, fixed in 2007).

What are your thoughts?

Madras Players' Witness for the Prosecution

Last evening was made wonderful by Madras Players' excellent play - Witness for the Prosecution, adapted from a story by Agatha Christie. 

Courtroom scenes have always captured my interest in movies, but to do such a riveting courtroom scene live on stage must require a lot of talent. And for the Madras Players, talent was in abundance - the protagonist's (played by Vivek) body language and expressions were a perfect fit for the role, and the actor who played the defence lawyer had an amazing screen presence. Other actors too excelled - ones who played the roles of the housekeeper (with very convincing Italian accented English) and that of the protagonist's wife (including a different get up in one scene and German accent).

I must have also benefited from not having read the original story/novel, because of the suspense, one would keep thinking that the protagonist's role was single dimensional till the very end. I had mostly felt that Agatha Christies writing was too detailed and dragging at times. Kudos to the entire team behind the show for converting that into a complete fast paced thriller (and for improvising on some very minor goof-ups).

I'm now a fan of the Madras Players and I have resolved to see their plays whenever possible :-)

How Indian IT growth has affected Indian Science

It all started with a tweet I had retweeted a few days ago - "IT has destroyed Indian science as much as it has contributed to its economy" - Prof. C. N. R. Rao", to which my friend Nithya Babu responded by tweeting "Indian science? do we have such disciplines that have offered people jobs? In a country with no social security?? hmmm". The response to that could not be compressed into 140 characters, and hence this post.

I have nothing against Indian IT, and has been a beneficiary of its success until recently. And I fully agree with Nithya that any degree that does not create jobs other than teaching posts (mostly in the same university, for the same course) is of no use. But we humans have a tendency to look for immediate benefits (short term returns) and tend to move to fields that apparently give better salaries.

It is true that IT and ITES has given jobs to thousands of graduates in India in the last decade who otherwise would have not found any job, and in that way helped the economy a lot. But then it has also led to a large scale migration to the IT sector from sectors which do generate jobs, but are not as well paying as IT currently is. For example, most of engineering graduates, irrespective of their field of specialization in engineering, have joined IT. Even the IT companies were also happy to take up students who had spent the last 4 years learning to design homes into their fold to make them write code in COBOL for financial applications. It is not that studying civil engineering does not get them jobs - even the buildings that the IT companies operate out of need civil engineers and architects to build them.

Such a skewed migration would hit the economy in a big way after some time, and I don't know how easily and soon this would get corrected by market forces. As a society, there is a real need for all types of work, and the society does not need everyone to be in IT. What is worse, the initial easy life of an IT engineer makes one too complacent to be good at anything else. Also, since a lot of business comes from the US, an ITian is more likely to know which coast of US California is, than knowing where Sikkim is on the Indian map (in some extreme cases, not even knowing that Sikkim is a part of India).

Somewhere we need to get out of the obsessive mentality (in boom times, no one gives you a damn if you are not in IT, in recession times no one gives you a damn if you are in IT). India as a nation and society as a whole needs civil engineers, mechanical engineers, nuclear physicists, doctors, astronomers, language teachers, accountants, - the list goes on.

Evam's Urban Turban

Last evening I watched Evam's play Urban Turban at Chennai Museum theatre at Egmore with Suraj. Going by the rush at their last play I attended, Five Point Someone (based on Chetan Bhagat's book) I hadn't really thought I would be able to get tickets on the spot - we were lucky this time, and there were lots of empty seats in the small theatre.

The audience profile was also a lot different from their other plays I have attended - this time we felt like odd people out in an all page 3 celebrity type audience.

I had gone there expecting yet another humourous play, but realized that this is a live stand-up-comedy type event. There were performances by three artists (if I could call them that!) T M Karthik, Shannon, and Karthik Kumar (co-founder). T M Karthik was excellent, with great accent and action mimicking skills, taking pot shots at his Iyengar community and polambifying about his desperately available eligible bachelor status. His performance set high standards and raised our expectations, much to the disadvantage of the later performers. Shannon is an expatriate from Canada who teaches at KFI school, and she shared some interesting anecdotes about the differences between the west and India. I am not sure if the high expectations set by T M Karthik was to blame, because I didn't enjoy this talk much, and I felt that she was simply stating the obvious many times and playing to stereotypes. For example, she mentioned about how extremely conscious about skin colour we Indians are (obvious), and how it is not so in the west (stereotype - the west is not without its own skin prejudices or racism, she probably hasn't analysed her own country as much as she has analyzed India). The last talk was by co-founder Karthik Kumar, who tried a mix of non veg humour with gyaan sessions. While the other Karthik's humour felt natural and free flowing, this Karthik's humour sounded forced and he had to resort to non-veg jokes to get the audience interested.

The play was conducted for benefit of the Blue Cross society. It was also ironical that after having criticized PFA/Blue cross for distributing pamphlets to save animals (and futility of pamphlets in having any impact or usefulness), karthik Kumar himself recommended Blue Cross's pamphlets (available at the stalls at the venue).

In related news, Evam's Five Point Someone is slotted for a nationwide tour in the next 2-3 months. My take on the marketing side of this tout is available on my professional blog.

Dakshina Chitra

This New Year I did something different - went with wife and a close friend to Dakshin Chitra, an art gallery on the East Coast Road, a few kilometres south of Chennai. I am not the usual 'arty' type, and had made the visit of the recommendation of the accompanying friend. Unfortunately we had gone to Mahabs first and dropped in at DC on our way back, reaching at around 4 pm.

There was a North Eastern dance festival going on, and the day featured a dance troupe from Manipur. A spring time dance by the young men with drums in their hands was a very amazing experience, even for me who doesn't have much sense for dance.

There is a lot to see at DC - they have showcased each of the four southern states' cultural heritage through real size exhibits - houses constructed in traditional style, including the interiors, for each region - for example, Chettinad, Trivandrum, Calicut, Ambur, etc.

The sections on Tamil Nadu and Kerala are complete, while the sections on Andhra and K'taka are being renovated.

We just had time to have a quick glance at TN and Kerala section before closing time. I have decided to make another visit, this time a full day trip, to this place, and I would recommend this to all my friends residing in or visiting Chennai.

Official Tours & Getting to Know People

It mostly takes a long trip together to get to know a colleague up close – may be it is because during the long journeys there is nothing much to do other than talk to your companion.

The discussions during these trips that last for a few days would bring up facets of the companion which you otherwise would never have found out. Recently I had a trip with my CTO which gave me a lot of insights – I have never spoken for this long with an IITian before, and found out that there is more to them than what Chetan Bhagat writes to earn money.

Another trip with another colleague was equally interesting, and brought in a much closer understanding that would never have come from our professional interactions otherwise. In these kinds of conversations, (if you connect well, that is) you can find out a lot about different points of view, and more about the factors that influence each person’s value system.

My current job profile gives me this opportunity to get to know many such people, and it feels good. Another trip I made was with an ex-IAS officer, who still does work for the betterment of India for no pay, simply out of passion. In times when you hear of more and more multi crore scams everyday in India, such interactions helps keep your hope alive.

On a public holiday...

... stay at home and sleep! At least that's what I learnt on the birth anniversary of the father of our nation. After having "wasted" the last 2 or 3 public holidays by lazing at home, I & wifey decided to venture outside and watch a movie. Since we had not planned in advance for the movie, most of the cinemas were sold out, and we therefore tried our luck at Mayajaal.

At Mayajaal though we reached at 1:30 pm, we could get tickets for only a 5 o'clock show. We decided to make most of the available time by going to Mahabalipuram. As soon as one enters mahabalipuram panchayat, they collect Rs 20 as entry fees. Driving further towards the beach the traffic was very heavy with frequent jams, as everyone seemed to have come out for the holiday. We had to turn back as there was absolutely no space to even stop the car, let alone park. Thus we came back to Mayajaal having donated Rs 20 to Mahabalipuram panchayat and without seeing anything.

At Mayajaal also the crowd was huge, and the atmosphere was just like any Rs 20 ticket theatre. The only consolation was the goodness of the movie "Unnai Pol Oruvan" though I liked its Hindi original "A Wednesday". But then that's for another post

Kahan Se Kahan Tak

At school amongst my friends I spoke the worst Hindi. Add to that the fear of being teased by friends whenever I made a mistake, and I seldom attempted to speak in Hindi. At Kendriya Vidyalaya we had to learn Hindi Course A till class 10, which is originally designed for native Hindi speakers. As I went into 11th standard, I thought of Hindi and Biology as good riddance.

Later when I made trips to other parts of the country I did realize the language's importance and advantage over English in many parts of the country. In many occasions, out of compulsion I became more and more confident of speaking in Hindi.

The culmination of all this happened recently when I was in Maharashtra which uses a common script with Hindi and uses Devnagari digits instead of the international numerals. Since I had no choice, I re-learnt what I had chosen not to study in my school days. Finally, at a function I made a full fledged presentation speaking in Hindi. My hindi teacher would have been proud!

The Taming of a Wild Elephant

The temple elephant who had recently tasted wilderness has been tamed. It was after I finished an assignment for a client, who was earlier the president of a company I had worked for earlier that he'd asked me whether I would like to join full time.


The role was into marketing of Indian made ATMs for the semi urban and rural markets - giving me a profile I was wanting to do for a long time. The very reason I had done an MBA was that I wanted to get out of IT, and this role would finally take me into a non IT technology marketing. Thus, the ten percent driving factor has also been taken care of :-)


The icing on the cake is that I get to travel to many places in India.

One of my friends told me the analogy: that a regular employee is a Temple Elephant, whereas a freelance consultant is a wild elephant.

The temple elephant gets enough food at regular intervals, but is a slave to the temple authorities; whereas the wild elephant has to find food on his own from the forest, but he is his own master.

I can endorse this analogy 100% as I too became a wild elephant.