Experiences

The HRTC taxi service in Shimla connecting The Mall with various suburbs of Shimla is a real blessing. Without doubt we should complement the people who designed this service and have made it accessible for common man to reach the Mall.  I recently got the taste of the service while travelling from Chakkar. In the past, travelling from areas such as Panthghati, Chakkar, New Shimla to the Mall was always being on a mission.

Imagine you just had your Sunday lunch and now you want to go to the Mall to meet your friends. It certainly is a difficult proposition for lazy bones like mine to getup and catch a bus where in most likely circumstances I will not get a seat.   This service atleast gives me a positive reinforcement to execute the plan.

Moreover Rs 20 from New Shimla to the Mall doesn’t seem to be expensive as one would spend more than this amount if travelling in bus or own vehicle. Another first with service is the introduction of electronic ticket vending machine by the corporation. The driver acts as a conductor and provides an electronically printed ticket instead of the pre-printed one which is then punched by the bus conductors.

The transport corporation is now planning to introduce electronic ticketing machines in all its local buses as well as inter-city buses. This would certainly prevent cheating on part of both the conductor and the commuter. The tickets printed from the machine are specific and provide details of fare as well as the name of the destination unlike the old tickets. So a passenger, who does know the cost of journey, cannot be overcharged by the conductor. Similarly a passenger cannot dupe the conductor.

In spite of the upsides there remains apprehensions such as paper roll getting stuck in the machine or how the conductors will provide tickets in over crowded bus running in the Shimla town. Since the new system is yet to be introduced the downsides will come to be known only with time.

What happens when at 27 your yet to be father in law expects you to own a house? Quite obvious in love you get into searching mode to find home which not only suits your needs but also matches expectations of your would be and her extended family. A similar scenario recently happened with a friend in Shimla who for past six months has been trying to locate a heavenly abode.

As usual his search began with newspaper advertisements which are rare, few and far in between. Thanks to extremely localised newspapers such as Divya Himachal or Amar Ujala, one does lay hands on few advertisements and with bated breath call up the mobile number to find out the prices. The polite but uncomforting voices from the other side give answers like these. 3 bed room flat in New Shimla is for Rs 26 Lakh. A flat scheme claiming to be 10 min drive from Mall road starts at Rs 30 lakh although I must tell that vehicles cannot be taken to the mall by one and all. A godforsaken one room flat at the far end of housing board colony in Kelston starts at Rs 7 lakh. This is the same price at which the owner bought the flat few years back. A quick check with HIMUDA, the government agency surprises you even more. Their flats in Kasumpti region start at Rs 35 lakh. The real charm of living in Shimla is of living right on the Mall road. However the last advertisement which I happened to see on an online property website quoted a price of more than a crore of rupees for a property near the mall.

If finding a land or a flat with few hours of sunshine was not enough a challenge then dealing with property dealers certainly is. The major issue in finding the right property in Shimla is that there is no proper mechanism of price discovery. A property dealer remarked that one will get the best deal if property dealers are not involved. If a property dealer gets to hear of a deal which does not involve them they will ensure that seller will jack up the prices beyond the buyers capacity and the deals would never materialise. There are properties around the town which are waiting to be sold but the prices are too inflated.

By the end of all this, one starts wondering is it worth a place to shell out prices equivalent to housing schemes in Faridabad and Ghaziabad. After all Shimla beyond mall road is just a heap of garbage, most of it is sinking under its own weight and the dust looms large belittling the town which claims to be capital of one of greenest states in the country. Moreover the price escalation will not be as quick as one sees in the NCR region. So one wonders is it the right time to invest in a property in Shimla. Well the answer lies in long queues of people lining up at SBI Shimla to file applications for DDA scheme in Delhi.

Never in my life I have written a complaint. This one is coming after 6 days of doing rounds of AIRTEL shops,talking to retailer,dealer and customer reps.

This Monday (16th April 2007) I had purchased a AIRTEL SIM from a shop in Sector 30, Faridabad. I gave the shop owner documents which he wanted and I was told that the phone will be activated in a 24 hours.

Next day (17th April 2007) when the connection did not get activated I called up the shop owner (Nishant)to inquire. He told me that the SIM which was given to me cannot be activated as it belonged to the old dealer. He than offered me a choice of 5 new numbers to choose from and said these will be activated by next day evening. He requested me to give few more documents which I promptly submitted on the same evening. Here I was given the new SIM which was postpaid connection number 9971366155. Read the rest of this entry »

My only link with village life was that my father was from a rural area. My experience of a village in past 25 years of life can be summed up to be negligible. All the understanding or insights which I had were of my father. Even though my roots are in a small village of district Bilaspur, still I had never had an opportunity of an extended stay in a village. So when i got the opportunity to stay in village Dibh as part of my fieldwork with Indo German Changar Eco Development project, i was excited. This village was situated some 40 Km from our organizations headquarters in Palampur.

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