An Ideas 'Mela' in Mysore

Four-day TED-India conference to be held in Mysore (Nov.4-7) is reportedly sold out. The meet is expected to attract people from 46 countries, according to a media report. With some 40 speakers on the card, drawn from varied fields - scientist, artist, playwright, photographer, marine biologist and sports commentator - the event promises to be a mela for ideas.

As a resident of the host town, my concern, or rather my poser to organisers, is: Shouldn't local residents be allowed to benefit from the proceedings ? In a global event of this nature local enthusiasts tend to get crowded out by those from elsewhere. And, understandably, the organisers face severe space constraints, however big the venue.

Wouldn't it be nice if the they could arrange to have the conference proceedings screened through closed-circuit network in another hall - Kalamandira or some other place - for the benefit of local audience ? Or they could tie-up with the city TV channel for live-telecast of TEDIndia, as they do with Dasara concerts held at the Mysore palace grounds.

Would local residents be interested? How would TED proceedings be of local public interest ? I can't answer this question better than TEDIndia co-host Lakshmi Pratury. She says she would like those attending the Mysore conference to take back three things:
1) No one who sits through a talk or seminar is with it all the time, a hundred percent. Even if they stay focused on what they hear, for a brief moment , they should feel it is a moment when they would rather be here than anywhere else;
2) Her expectation is that on gatherings like this one meets at least one person who becomes a friend for life; and
3) Her hope is that those who sit through the proceedings would pick up an idea or two that is not necessarily related their prime interest.

Bringing Bikes Back on Road

When the Mandeveli duo - Dr R Madhavan and Mr V Subramaniam – used to go round Chennai streets on a tricycle, to plant the saplings on vacant space, they were looked upon as objects of public curiosity, even ridicule. The sight of your family doctor and his banker friend taking to tricycle didn’t fit in with our class perception. Bicycle was(and still is)seen as poor man’s transport. This was over two decades back.

More recently,I suggested to Sapgreen’s Ashwin that they could take to tricycle for transporting saplings. The three-wheeler should be painted in company colour with a green message. Visualising Anil-Ashwin riding a tricycle on Mysore streets with a bunch of saplings for planting,I thought it to be a marketing idea worth a try. Besides being cheaper than power-driven light-cargo vehicles use of the green tricycle would give Sapgreen much needed visibility. Ashwin gave me a polite hearing and a disarming smile.Perhaps, we need to work more to promote the humble bicycle as a ‘cool’, green option. The pedal-powered bike needs to be re-invented to make a social statement. There is, perhaps, case for an ad. campaign, showing M S Dhoni going on a bike to have a haircut in his native Ranchi. Those organizing fund-raising runs for varied causes could encourage participants to do it on bicycles.

Blogger Tanay Bahera in a recent post referred to a tricycle devised to carry-and-purify water as you ride it. The model, in its current form designed by its California-based innovators, may be expensive for adoption in poorer countries that need it most.But the California design for a tricyle looks slick and stylish; and can be modified as ‘pizza’-carrier. Home-delivery pizza joints in Mysore and other smaller towns can replace delivery motor-bikes with fiber-glass finish tricycles. Food-World and other big stores can customize tricycles to suit their home-delivery requirement.

A bus-ride to Chamundi Hills

A KSRTC bus I took from the Mysore city bus-stand to Chamundi Hills had no conductor. Its driver was doubling up as one. A smart staff-cutting move by transport authorities. The snag was that we got held up at an intermediary point, while the driver left his seat to issue tickets to passengers. The vehicle had its engine running, as the driver-conductor took his time collecting ticket money, and returning the change. People usually carried tenners, and expected the conductor to produce the change. He got into a tiff with an odd passenger who produced a 50 or 100-rupee note for the ticket, priced Rs.6.50. More crowded the bus, longer the hold-up for issuing tickets. We were held up a good ten minutes.

Wouldn't it help if they rationaliised the fare? Lower it to Rs.5, which no one would do, with spiralling oil prices; or raise the fare to Rs.10, a round figure. Open a money-changer kiosk at the city bus terminals to help passengers keep proper change before boarding a bus.

To cut down paper consumption KSRTC could replace paper ticketing with plastic boarding cards, to be dropped in a box as passengers get off the bus.

The ‘why’ and ‘how’ of GIAS

Kristina Libby, who is associated with the Global Entrepreneurship Week slated for this November, e-mailed the other day asking if volunteering locally for promoting the GEW would interest me. On my acceptance Kristina realized her brief was to deal with only those based in the US; and she, helpfully, suggested I contact our ‘country host’ for information on how we could participate in GEW activities in India. A web check revealed no one in India has till date offered to host GEW.

This prompted a few of us to do our own thing. We borrowed the idea for this blog from the GEW website.