ACT Fibernet / Broadband, fix your tech support first!

Dear ACT Fibernet (née Broadband),

I have a few not very pleasant things to say to you.

But if I did, this blog post would be so full of profanity that your ears would be on fire. That’s why I’m going to take a deep breath, shout it all out in my room, and then continue.

I am sitting at my desk suffering through yet another of your infamous day-long broadband outages, using my backup connection till your engineers get around to once again fixing the supposedly “resolved” issue that actually wasn’t. Yes, I have a backup Internet connection, for which I pay too much money, and it’s because I cannot count on you to provide me stable, reliable Internet connectivity that doesn’t go down once every month or two for days on end.

So it angers me when in the middle of enduring this outage, I get an email from a sales manager in your company, touting the wonders of your “Enterprise” Internet connectivity. No doubt it’s a mass mailing, since I do not own any “enterprise”, but the poor sod’s email caught me in a very bad mood and I dashed off an email to him about why I would never, ever, recommend you to anyone for home broadband, let alone the “Enterprise”. (I did, however, resist the urge to tell him to stick it where the sun don’t shine.)

Here’s the problem, ACT. You’re busy launching high-publicity “60 Mbps plans” when you don’t even have the basic requirements for a decent ISP down. Let me give you an idea.

1) My connection goes down at least once every 45 days. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that it’s almost never an outage for just 30-60 minutes. It usually lasts at least a day and often many days. I’m not alone on this. Numerous broadband forum posts (you can google “ACT Broadband sucks” and find them) and friends on Twitter have the same issue.

2) Your “standard response time” is ridiculous. When I was with Airtel, they would promise to resolve the issue within 8 hours. With ACT, it’s an unacceptable 24 hours. And I thought it was unacceptable before I found out that you say “24 business hours”, which for you is three days! You’re an ISP; you don’t stop working! Are you freaking kidding me? Three days is 10% of a month. I need my connection restored within hours, not days.

3) If that’s not bad enough, you supposedly don’t have technicians working on Sundays (as per your tech support staff), so if my broadband gets hosed on a Saturday night (as it has before), I am royally screwed. The last time this happened, your support staff solemnly promised to have my connection fixed by Wednesday. This would be comical if I weren’t serious. Again, you’re an ISP. You don’t get to take Sundays off. How about I don’t pay for connectivity on Sundays, eh? Have a smaller group of technicians around on Sundays, but they need to be there. Not everyone works Monday to Friday any more, ACT. It’s 2014, not the 1990s.

To add salt to the wound, you send daily @%#$ing reminders by SMS about my pending bill till the day I pay it. And these aren’t even overdue payments. You generate my bill on the 1st and then send me SMSs every damn day till I make the payment, even though my due date is on 15th of every month. It’s bloody annoying, ACT. Stop doing it. I really wish I could call you every hour for my connection that’s down, asking when it’s going to be fixed. Bet you wouldn’t like that, would you?

4) After all this, when I do make a complaint, I don’t know what the hell is going on till I call again the next day and have to listen to the same nonsense from your tech support staff. For instance, I was told yesterday that “I can’t connect to the junction box at your premises, Sir. I’ll have to get a technician to look at it.” Guess what I had to listen to when I called back again today to enquire? Yep, same shit: “I am not able to connect to the junction box. My technician will visit and check it out.” Did this technician visit? What did he see? Did he fix it? Clearly not. How much longer do I have to wait now? There’s just total silence till the problem gets resolved. I don’t mind not hearing from you if you get the problem fixed in a few hours, but when it stretches to days, I feel like coming to your office and throwing people around.

The result of your shortcomings? I have a backup Airtel DSL connection for which I pay Rs. 800 per month just so that I can have guaranteed connectivity. This is what you are costing me. (I would have happily stayed with Airtel as I did for many years before switching to ACT. Unfortunately, the dunderheads over there don’t have 16 Mbps plans in my area despite my being in Frazer Town, a mere 3 Km from MG Road. So, Airtel people, if you’re reading this, do something about it!) Are you going to discount this money on my bill? Shouldn’t there be some reasonable service uptime guarantee when you take money from a customer? My work needs me to be connected constantly and you, ACT Fibernet, are severely lacking in this area.

So how about instead of spending loads of money on hoardings and ads proclaiming the awesomeness of your crippled, low-FUP 60 Mbps plans (that’s a topic for another rant), you spend a part of that money on tech support that’s responsive, eh?

 

 

Indian restaurants and service charge

More and more Indian restaurants charge a “service charge” on their bills these days. It’s usually somewhere in the 5-10% range, unless you’re in Delhi, where 10% is almost standard. Being in the F&B business and having run a restaurant of my own, I thought I’d write this post to clear up some common questions about it. I get asked these often enough that having a post to clarify is worthwhile.

Is service charge mandatory as per any government regulations?
No, not at all. It is completely at the restaurant’s discretion. Not all restaurants charge it.

Do I have to pay the service charge? 
If the service charge is disclosed in the menu, you have agreed to pay it by virtue of placing an order. That’s a legal contract.

Why is there a service charge at all? I don’t understand the point of it.
Because the industry works on a principle of low salaries and extra money through tips. Indians are notoriously lousy tippers (yes, I know, not all of you.) The service charge gives a more reliable income source for wait staff while aligning their incentives to restaurant sales (given that the charge is a percentage of sales).

In an ideal world, wait staff would be paid a more reasonable wage and there would be no need for the service charge. Unfortunately, that has the effect of upsetting the profit equation in the business by increasing the percentage of sales that goes towards salaries. For instance, 15% of turnover is considered about average for salaries. If that became 30%, restaurants would need to increase base prices of dishes, which would have pretty much the same effect as that service charge levy anyway, except that some customers would think the food is more expensive and not visit, which would actually make things worse.

But I got lousy service, man! WTF?
None of this excuses bad service, of course. If you get bad service at a restaurant and get a service charge on the bill, you have options:

1) Talk to the manager, register your complaint, tell him/her you won’t come back because of the crappy service. Possibly bitch about it on a food forum or on social media. Any half-competent manager will realise the bad PR potential and waive it.

2) Do not return to the restaurant. This isn’t too far-fetched; you would probably not go back to a restaurant with crappy service even if they didn’t levy a service charge, right?

OK, tell me the truth. Does this money actually go to the service staff at all?
That depends on the restaurant. Most will pay out a large percentage of the service charge to wait staff, somewhere around 60-80%, usually setting some money aside for breakages etc. Sometimes, the kitchen staff too get a portion of it.

Do I have to leave a tip if there’s a service charge on the bill?
Don’t leave a tip if there’s a service charge on the bill unless you think the service has been that outstanding.

Hope this clarifies things from a restaurateur perspective.

My Ford India road trip to Hyderabad

Greetings, citizens.

This blog post is to tell you about a road trip I’m undertaking from 10-15 August, 2012, sponsored by Ford India. Since I’ll probably be posting more than a few tweets about it, I thought it would be a good idea to write a post to give a few more details and to lay down my ethical disclosures.

So a social media agency that works with Ford India, WATConsult, approached me a month ago and said I was a “top influencer online on food” (if you ignore my numerous wisecracks, of course) and that Ford India had created a campaign to send influencers on many topics on a 5-day road trip in a Ford Classic Titanium car with one tank of fuel to “pursue their passion” along with a film-maker who would shoot this trip and post a video of it after we were done. Of course, being the skeptical kind, my inner voice immediately asked “What’s the catch, yo?” Fortunately, there was no “you have to post tweets about the car” type requirement in the terms and conditions, or I would have refused straight away.

The location I chose to explore was Hyderabad, and Aditya Sawant (the film-maker) and I are team “Highway Belly” who will drive to Hyderabad via Kurnool to explore the food scene during Ramzan time, and try to check out as many interesting places to eat as we can. Along the way, we’ll shoot videos and take pictures and post them. I’ll also try to organise a Hyderabad food tweetup so we can have some fun. I’ll be tweeting about it using the hashtags #1tankfull and #highwaybelly so you can either track or filter those tweets out. 😀 )

If you have any suggestions on what to eat and where to go, please do post them as comments here, or tweet them to me @madmanweb or mail to [email protected]

Right, so now that the information part is done, here come the ethical disclosures:

1) This road trip is sponsored by Ford India, who have paid for our hotel bookings along the way and given us a meagre daily allowance of Rs. 1000 per day for F&B, with Rs. 7500 incidentals and emergency money. That’s all the money I’m getting, so I’m not getting rich on this. There might be a couple of t-shirts thrown in too, but I think that’s it.

2) Ford is also providing me with an iPad to chronicle the trip, which I will get to keep at the end of the trip, so yes, that’s effectively a freebie.

3) I will not be posting any tweets endorsing the Ford Classic car in which we are travelling unless I actually believe what I’m writing. Believe me, I get approached a fair bit by clueless social media agencies to attend events for various brands asking me to tweet about it in return for “lots of exposure” and “meeting celebrities”. I just refuse all of them. My integrity is the most important thing to me and takes years to build, and it’s not up for sale. I have refused to do restaurant reviews for publications where I knew the owner, for instance. If people start doubting whether my writing is paid for, my opinion’s value drops to nothing.

4) I will not spam your Twitter timeline with tweets about the trip. Like you, I too hate it when somebody takes over my timeline, so expect only about 5-6 tweets per day on average. I’ll ask suggestions from people on where to eat and where to go, but you won’t see any “OMG DIS IS OSSUM BRO!” tweets.

And lastly, here is a teaser video that Adi has made for our trip:

Air India to launch new branding and ad campaign – “mother’s love” new positioning

(Special to MadMan’s Web)

India’s national airline, Air India, which has long been criticized for its aging fleet and even older flight attendants, has finally got the message. In a press conference yesterday at New Delhi, Air India Chairman Rohit Nandan announced a completely new branding campaign and a radical new positioning for the airline to set it apart from the competition.

“The new campaign will be centred around the concept of “Maa Ka Pyaar” and will position the elderly flight crew as care-givers who treat passengers with motherly love, unlike the new breed of airlines who have only brash crews of inexperienced youngsters.”, explained Nanda. “When you are thousands of feet in the sky, anxious to get through with your flight, wouldn’t you rather have someone like your mother to look after your needs?”, he continued.

The new campaign aims to turn one of Air India’s perceived weaknesses and turn it into a notable strength. For this, Air India has roped in well-known award-winning advertising agency Olives and Marshmallows (O&M) and laid out a budget of Rs. 100 crore for a nationwide rebranding campaign. O&M’s National Creative Director, Arnab Kushti, also present at the conference, was visibly excited when he explained the long-term branding strategy. “India has long had ‘Maa‘ – the mother – as a caring symbol of the Indian family. Your mother looks after you unconditionally, and takes care of your needs. Air India’s flight attendants too deliver this same level of love and affection, and we are going to make sure the rest of the world knows about it.”, he explained.

To synergise operating procedures with their new ad campaign, Air India will make changes in the roles of their flight crew. Flight attendants will be trained to treat passengers just like their children, tucking them into bed on long flights and putting crying babies to sleep. In First Class and Business Class, they will bring you seconds for dinner just like mum, and will also sing lullabies on request. What if customers object to this level of pampering? Nanda retorted, “Would you dare shout or get angry at your own mother? Then?”

Details of the campaign, which will cover not only print and TV, but also online channels and social media, are still being worked out, but unconfirmed sources have reported that actress Reema Lagoo, Bollywood’s go-to person for motherly roles, is being courted for Air India’s TV campaign while actress Rakhi Sawant is being considered for the role of a rude flight attendant of a rival airline.

 

(Satire, not real news)

Airtel announces new Gold and Platinum support plans for customers

(Special to MadMan’s Web)

Bharti Airtel Ltd., which had already declared its vision as “By 2015 airtel will be the most loved brand, enriching the lives of millions”, today announced an accelerated plan to fulfill that vision in 2013 by launching two new levels of technical support plans for its customers.

Launching the new Gold and Platinum support plans at a press conference today, Sunil Mittal, Chairman, said it was based on extensive analysis of customer feedback over the last year, and aimed at fixing many of the existing complaints.

Customers who opt for the new Gold Plan at an extra Rs. 99 per month (+taxes), can avail of features like:

1) Chances of speaking to a real human within 2 minutes increased from 7% to 50% – Mittal said that Gold customers will face shorter hold times. The previous average time on hold of 10 minutes will be reduced by over 50% and there will now be a 50% chance of speaking to a human in 2 minutes.

2) Exuberant female voice on IVR to be replaced by a normal-sounding person – Mittal discussed the findings of their research showing that customers couldn’t readily identify with a female voice that sounded like a 10 year-old getting a new puppy as a birthday gift when announcing words like “Welcome to Airtel!” The new Gold plan will use a more normal sounding 28 year-old woman instead.

3) Access to special Twitter account and web site status page – A major demand from customers was a status update page on both the Airtel twitter account  that informs customers about problems and outages when they actually happen, instead of the earlier operating procedure where customers would be told things “We experienced an outage two days ago for three hours, and it’s fixed now” on Twitter. The new Twitter account, accessible only to Gold and Platinum customers, will provide real-time status updates to help them plan their work day better around service outages.

The new high-priority Platinum Plan, at an extra Rs. 299 per month (+taxes), has all the features of the Gold Plan, plus even more features for Airtel’s most demanding customers. Some of these are:

1) Chances of speaking to a real human being within 2 minutes increased from 7% to 70% – A 10x fold jump in responsiveness, this plan is designed for those customers who absolutely, positively, need to speak to a tech support representative on the phone and are not content with longer wait times.

2) Airtel jingle on loop replaced – Responding to increased incidents of customer phones being damaged by being flung against the wall, Bharti Airtel commissioned independent research into the matter and found out it was caused by irate customers who were listening to the Airtel jingle on loop while being put on hold. Airtel has swiftly taken action. Mittal said, “We will replace the Airtel jingle with bhajans, prayers from the Quran, or Christian psalms instead, keeping in mind the spiritual side of India.” Mittal was confident this would reduce complaints, “…because you can’t swear at God.”

3) Upgraded Twitter responses – Platinum customers, being the cream of the crop, will no longer get replies from the current Twitter and Facebook bot that responds to all complaints with “Would request you to please mail us at [email protected]” “Instead, a responsive team of real people from Airtel and not an outsourced PR company will now handle their problems and escalate them to the right channels”, said a smiling Mittal, as the crowd burst into spontaneous applause, and geeks attending the conference immediately started tweeting about this.

Mittal concluded by saying that he realized that not everyone would be the right target for these value-added plans that required customers to pay an extra monthly fee. So, in true Steve Jobs style, he saved a final interesting bit.

Mittal announced the launch of the new “Fuck this, I just want to speak to a human being” option for telephone support. At an extra cost of Rs. 29 per incident, all customers can now press 9 to bypass the numerous options and be connected to a live human being who would be able to help them. The reduced time on hold once connected, however, would only be available to Gold and Platinum customers.

“We have something new for all our customers, depending on their needs and priorities”, said Mittal. “This is what makes us the telecom giant that we are, and in the coming years we will continue to pursue this vision, delivering value to both our customers and shareholders.”

 

(For the humour-impaired, this post is satire, not news. If you’re a Bharti Airtel lawyer, and hence humour-impaired by definition, satire is protected against defamation claims in court.)

Of new restaurants and restaurant critics

Vikram Doctor points me to an interesting couple of blogs posts, one from a restaurant chef, and the other from a restaurant reviewer.

The first post is by Alex Sanchez, a young chef from the US who’s now cooking at this new restaurant in Colaba. He complains about how restauarant reviewers in India don’t give the place a chance to settle down before reviewing. Mangal Dalal responds in Mumbai Boss making the point that restaurant culture is different here and you better get ready to hit the ground running.

Having been a restaurateur, I agree with points on both sides.

Sanchez is right; no matter how well-trained the staff, how organised the kitchen, handling a full house of customers in a new restaurant is stressful, and it is impossible to get into the flow of things for at least a month. This is why I generally don’t visit new restaurants until a month has passed since opening.

Let me share a personal experience: when I moved Shiok to a new location, my original plan was to open with not only a new look, but also a new menu. As delays hit the setup process, I also figured that things would be slow enough with a new restaurant, and there was no need to aggravate it by changing the menu as well. Despite this, things took the usual 2-3 weeks to run smoothly, and this is for a restaurant with largely the same service staff and entirely the same kitchen staff.

That said, as a paying customer, I firmly agree that if a restaurant is taking a customer’s money, they are entitled to a proper dining experience, especially in a high-end place. When Gautam and I visited Edo, the expensive Japanese restaurant in ITC Gardenia in B’lore, we had an excellent experience, despite the restaurant having been formally open only for a week or so.

My recommended way around this for restauranteurs is to not start with a big bang on day one. Restrict news about the opening to only a few connected people, and let a couple of weeks go by with low-traffic before embarking on a publicity blitz. It gives the staff time to get used to the workflow and settle down. This may not sit well with investors, but it’s the best way.

As for the other question of restaurant reviewers, I agree whole-heartedly that most don’t know their mouths from their asses. If it’s college kids writing most reviews (as Mumbai Boss points out), then they possibly don’t know enough about either restaurant reviewing or food. Every restaurant, even the best of them, can have a bad day, and it’s not fair to assess a restaurant till you’ve dined there a few times. You say you don’t have the resources to do that? Well, don’t do restaurant reviews then. You say there are too many new restaurants? Well, don’t review every last one of them. And if a critic is knowledgeable enough, he/she can surely make a judgement call on whether a screw-up is due to general incompetence of the staff or just them having a bad day. The incompetent ones need not be visited again.

Let’s face it, the whole “restaurant review” business in this country is fucked up. The “reviews” for most major newspapers are arranged by PR people, and the critic will happily turn up after informing you in advance. You will make small talk with them, make sure your best waiter is at their service, and the head chef himself handles the food for their table. If you’re a Page 3 person who has been added to the restaurant management for your celebrity value, you will schmooze with them too – so, essentially, nothing like a typical guest’s experience. They will then partake of your free food and booze, and hopefully give you a stunning review. They may even write wonderful things about food they never tasted (a newspaper critic wrote about my fragrant Beef Rendang despite not trying it, and only reading its description in my menu.)

Restaurant “awards” from major publications too are usually a matter of who has more publicity clout or is a major advertiser, and I have often gone, “you can’t be fucking serious!” after seeing a particular restaurant win a category award.

Unfortunately, the average Joe is heavily swayed by such reviews and believes them to be authoritative. And that is the real tragedy of it.

(A post about the uselessness of “user/community reviews” web sites will have to wait for another day. That much vitriol in one blog post may be too much to handle.)

How not to design a flyover

The problems with Bangalore’s infrastructure are well-known. Everybody knows
we have pathetic pot-holed roads, more traffic than the roads can handle, and an
administration that talks through the wrong orifice about fixing things. Heck,
we can boast that we are possibly the only city in the country, and perhaps the
world, that has a traffic light on a flyover, thanks to the wonderful
administration’s short-sightedness.

But apart from the "oh my gawd, we didn’t foresee the hordes of people
moving in" excuse, there are certain problems with the way infrastructure,
is  designed, that makes you wonder if we might indeed have better luck
entrusting the planning work to a large group of chimpanzees, banging away at
AutoCAD. For instance, at some places, you will find bus stops right after a
traffic light. At others, you will find them around corners. This doesn’t need
some genius-level IQ to figure out, for cryin’ out loud. Who in their right
minds can’t see that erecting a bus stop right after a damn traffic light
is a sure way to cause a traffic block? Couldn’t they move it, say, 200 metres
ahead?

Another thing that the planners don’t seem to understand is the concept of a
"bottleneck". You simply have to look at Old Madras Road, where the 4
lane road is being widened to 8 lanes. Oh, that’s a good thing, you think.
Except that it’s being widened only up to the point of a busy intersection, so
all that happens is that the bottleneck shifts to another point instead.

Let me illustrate this in some detail with the example of the Airport Road-Koramangala
flyover
that’s being constructed. This fine piece of work (I almost choked while
writing that) was started in
February 2003 and was supposed to be finished the same year, but of course, all
kinds of bureaucratic problems (methinks somebody didn’t get a big enough share
of the "incidental expenses" pie) led to numerous delays and the first
phase is apparently ready for opening in a fortnight – 3 years later.

The purpose of the flyover is to alleviate the congestion on Airport Road
because the intersection of Koramangala Ring Road, Indiranagar 100 ft Road, and
Airport Road is where three major streams of traffic meet. And anything that can
ease traffic jams is good, right? Flyovers are supposed to help the smooth flow
of vehicles without the problems of having a traffic light, aren’t they? (Unless
you’re using the aforementioned Richmond Road flyover, of course.)

Read More

New outsourcing opportunity for India

(Special to MadMan’s Web)

Move over call centres and data processing BPOs. The future of outsourcing belongs to another industry, if Indian Minister for Commerce, Kamal Nath, is to be believed. According to Nath, the next new wave of growth in the Indian economy will come from – believe it or not – the protest industry, now being referred to as SPO – Strong Protest Outsourcing.

Speaking at a news conference in New Delhi, Kamal Nath briefed reporters that he sees major business opportunities in getting Western countries to outsource their protests to India. Nath said, “the outsourcing business is about saving costs and increasing efficiency. Why should people in countries like USA and UK waste their time protesting over various issues? The per-capita income is too high to waste time on being offended. Instead, they can simply outsource this activity to Indian companies.” Asked whether Indian companies were globally competitive in this market, Nath confidently added, “Can you think of any country better suited for this business? India is a diverse country with people of many faiths and beliefs. We have a rich history of being offended at every little thing, from western expressions of love like Valentine’s Day to what someone names their dogs. I am certain that we can be the dominant player in this market in the next five years.”

After the press conference, Kamal Nath granted MadMan’s Web an exclusive freewheeling interview in which he talked at length about this new business opportunity, India’s competence in this area, and the government’s special initiatives to foster growth in the industry.

MadMan’s Web: Mr. Nath, thank you for giving us this chance to interview you.

Kamal Nath: My pleasure. This is the Internet age, and blogs are fast becoming a powerful medium of disseminating information.

MW: Mr. Nath, could you please tell us a little more about this new opportunity for India?

KN: The world is far from a peaceful place. Every day, there are protests in Europe and North America over several issues. Part of being democratic countries is allowing people the right to protest against what they think is wrong. But protests also waste productivity. When  people are protesting, they are not contributing to the economy of their nations. So instead of protesting themselves, they can simply outsource their outrage to Indian companies that will specialise in this area. They can then go about their daily lives, confident that their protests are in safe hands.

MW: Why are you so convinced that Indians are the best suited for this activity?

KN: Of course we are the best! First of all, Indians have been offended at pretty much everything over the years. If you’ve written a book that’s even slightly controversial, there are sections that want it banned. If you make a movie that tackles bold themes, you can expect howls of protest about how it’s corrupting impressionable young minds. If you wear a female tennis outfit just like everyone else in the tennis world, somebody will be quick to point out how you are no longer a good member of your community. So let me assure you, no matter what the subject of the protest is, we Indians are capable of delivering a strong protest. Our service standards are world-class and globally competitive. When it comes to protesting, we are the epitome of “unity in diversity”! With our wide range of religions, beliefs, and castes, we are champions at being offended and having our sentiments hurt.

Read More

Tips on making a radical career shift

Today’s issue of Economic Times has a cover story on people who made drastic career shifts in their “High Flier” supplement. I’m one of the people featured in the story (how I wish I could actually find the darn article on their web site) because I moved from technology and started a far-eastern restaurant. The writer of the story had sent me a long list of questions a few weeks back, and I had written a mini-essay in response. Much of what I wrote didn’t make it to the piece (ah, the size constraints of print media) but when I read it back, I thought that it would be good to post the whole thing here to help others who might be considering a career change like mine. So here goes…

1) What are the main reasons that provoked you to make a career transition
from being a software engineer to a hotelier?

I have been passionate about cooking since I was 13. I chose to go with IT as a
career, but by my mid-twenties, I had decided that in another 10 years, I would
have my own restaurant. So it was more about moving the plans forward by a few
years. I chose to do this because I was 27, single, and thought I could take
more risks now than if I were, say 35. Also, the IT industry was going through
its bust phase a few years ago, and companies were doing crazy things, including
laying off lots of people. I decided that it was the right time to move.

2) What emotions did you go through while making a major career leap?
Weren?t you a little skeptical of abandoning the career you did for so many
years for something very new?

It definitely wasn’t an easy decision to make, and I’m not the impulsive type at
all. But several of my friends said I should give it a shot. Once I started
considering it seriously, I thought about it for a whole month to make sure it
wasn’t just a passing fad. After I made a firm decision, I experienced anxiety
and apprehension about a whole new future, but there was also some exhilaration
about doing something I was so passionate about.

Read More

Bad infrastructure saves lives: Karnataka Chief Minister

(Special to MadMan’s Web)

Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh today lashed out at the media for
harping incessantly about the poor infrastructure in Bangalore. Singh said that
the media should paint a more balanced picture and not stress only the negative
aspects
of the city.

"If you believe only what you read in the papers, you will think that
people are only getting stuck in traffic jams every day. Why does nobody talk
about the reasoning behind the our potholed roads?", asked the furious
Chief Minister at a press conference today. When asked to explain, Singh said
that thanks to the potholed roads and impoverished infrastructure of the capital
city, many human lives had been saved. Referring to the recently
released statistics
that death from road accidents had gone down by 12% from 903 to
791, Singh gave credit to the poor roads and constant traffic jams in city. "You media people should put more value on human lives.
Earlier, people used to get hit by speeding vehicles. Thanks to our roads, we
have eliminated the possibility of reckless driving. Tell me, how can you hit an
innocent pedestrian or another vehicle when you’re driving on potholed roads at
20 Km/hour or if you’re caught in a traffic jam on Airport Road?", said the
CM.

Dharam Singh added that apart from the fewer accidents, inferior roads were
also an important part of stimulating the state economy because they generated
valuable jobs for the poor. He earnestly requested the middle class and
upper-middle class citizens to spare a thought for the numerous labourers and
construction workers who made their living from jobs generated by the road
repair and maintenance contracts that are being issued every year. "It is
easy for the people driving their expensive cars to complain about the state of
the roads. I ask these people to put themselves in the shoes of the poor person
who works on tarring roads. These people live a hand-to-mouth existence. If
there are no roads to repair, how will they feed their families?", asked
Singh.

The CM said he would recommend the Bangalore infrastructure model to other
states as well. He said that like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he too believed
in infrastructure reforms "with a human face". "Like it or not,
bad infrastructure saves lives", he concluded.