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Rugby gets massy

Nasser Hussain, captain of the Indian Rugby team, tells us that rugby is slowly gaining acceptance among the city’s schools.
by Vrushali Lad | vrushali@themetrognome.in

For most of us, rugby is a game that seems violent, a sport that is played essentially by beefy men. For everyone else, rugby is a game that they’ve only heard of and don’t know much about.

Fortunately for the sport, this state of affairs is slowly changing. Rugby is being played regularly at the school level in Mumbai, and interest is particularly high among the city’s civic-run schools. Of course, like most other sports in the country, it suffers from a lack of awareness and accessibility, apart from a pronounced lack of structure at all levels of the game.

“The sports management for any non-cricket sport in the country today is not structured, except maybe for the IPL (Indian Premier League),” says Nasser Hussain (33, in pic on left) , current captain of the Indian Rugby team. We’re sitting at his office at Marine Lines, where he officiates as General Manager (Rugby India), the Indian Rugby Football Union. He says, “The country is very cricket-driven; there is a lot of focus on the sport, though so much has been done for it already. Everyone’s struggling in other sports. There are many obstacles and challenges, and not enough support and assistance.”

There is not enough sponsorship support for the sport as well, he laments. “We get a sponsor maybe for a year or so, which isn’t beneficial at all. There has to be a long-term partnership. Unfortunately, even the big companies are not willing to back rugby, they’re so focussed on cricket. It’s like they would rather be one in a million (sponsors) in cricket, than be the only one in another sport.”

Star of the sport

Nasser should know what he’s talking about. He started playing rugby at the age of 15, and was the youngest member on the squad that played internationally in 1998. “Hardly anybody played rugby in those days,” he remembers. “The club structure did exist for the sport, but there was absolutely no mass appeal. A little later, I got the opportunity to play for Tynedale RFC and Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England.”

In the years 2007 to 2009, Nasser worked in sports management for other sports, and a bit later, got the chance to come back to rugby. “I decided to try and manage the sport professionally, create more awareness of the sport, get more school children involved,” he says. “Of course, we’ve had to overcome several hurdles, but it’s been a good journey overall.”

Schools show interest and participation

Today, the Union runs several Under-12, Under-14 and Under-17 programmes in Mumbai’s schools, and is seeing increased participation every year. “The training is imparted at no charge; all the child has to do is show up for practice and matches,” Nasser explains. “Initially, a lot of parents were hesitant about sending their children to play rugby, because they feared how violent the game was. But we introduced non-contact rugby for both boys and girls, and everyone’s happy,” he grins.

Nasser goes on to explain that the right time to take up the sport is at the Under-10 level. “In fact, that’s the right age for any sport. It is easy at that age to pick up basic functional training and movement skills. The sport also develops a child’s fitness and leadership abilities.” The Union introduced the rugby programme in Mumbai’s schools six years ago. “We started with about eight schools. Now there are 50 schools in Mumbai regularly playing rugby,” he says, adding that these schools range from international schools to the BMC ones.

Interestingly, he finds that girls are more receptive to the game than boys. “We started with the boys’ programme first, then introduced the girls’ programme. But girls are more involved in the sport. See, there are not too many team sports that cater to girls. Even the Indian National Women’s team is doing very well,” Nasser explains.

Hearteningly for the sport – though it is still in the nascent stages, with India being ranked 83rd of 95 rugby-playing countries in the world – the sport was recognised in July 2012 by the Schools Games Federation of India. A student carrying certificates for rugby can now get enrollments in college or the police cadre through the sports quota. “There will be increased participation, but we also need more sponsors and funding, because the Union does not charge coaching fees. Though the sport used to be restricted to elite circles in the country, we’ve seen a lot of new players coming from Jharkhand, Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir. Rugby’s gone quite mass in the last few years,” Nasser says.

If you wish to be a sponsor for rugby tournaments and training, contact Nasser Hussain at nasser.hussain@rugbyindia.in or 022-2205 3897.

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What senior citizens want…

Ever wonder why a person past the age of 60 wants to marry again? We get experts to tell us.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

Shantanu Banerjee* (71), a Bandra-based businessman, lost his wife to cancer four years ago. “Dealing with her illness was painful, especially the last months, when she was home and there was nothing more I could to help her,” he says. “Then she passed away, and our big house began to torture me by being so empty.”

Last year, Shantanu decided to address his loneliness. “I was living with my sister in Bangalore, and I joined a senior citizens club there. I met a woman who my own age, and like me, she loved watching movies and going for walks,” he remembers. Soon, the walks turned into day-long trips, the movie-watching turned into shopping excursions. “We realised we liked being with each other. She was a widow, had been for 10 years. But her outgoing nature made me come out of my grief. I decided to marry her.”

Shantanu and Gayathri Shetty* were married in a quiet ceremony last year. “We live in Mumbai and she has adjusted well. I love having her around the house,” he beams.

Shantanu and Gayathri are part of a growing tribe of seniors that are opting for a second shot at happiness in their twilight years. Given India’s current demographic – the UN says 32 crore of the country’s population will be over 60 years old in the year 2020, and India will soon be counted amongst the world’s ageing nations (where the geriatric population goes up every year) – we are looking at a situation where there will be several, single senior citizens. And most of them might need to find partners.

“People at that age are not necessarily looking for sex in the marriage. They are looking more for love and companionship. We’ve seen that while men want a companion, women want financial security,” says Sailesh Mishra, founder of the NGO Silver Innings, which works for senior citizens in the country.”And while there are several people whose families do not want them to marry ‘at that age’ because they fear what people will think, and also because they don’t realise that old people also need companions, we are happy to see that some children and relatives are totally supportive of them,” he adds.

A number of marriage bureaux catering to senior citizens have sprung up in recent times. Natubhai Patel (62), who started the first such bureau in Ahmedabad and who has to his credit 75 marriages and 25 live-in relationships among senior citizens across the country, says, “At that age, there is no confusion in the person’s mind about what he or she wants from the partner they seek.

For example, there was a 72-year-old who said that he wanted a wife who could also have sex with him. We found a woman, a widow, for him who was prepared to fulfil this condition. Another woman who came to me said that she got a good pension from her deceased husband’s company, and she didn’t want to give it up by marrying another man, but that she wanted a companion. Today, she lives with a man of her age at his home.”

Natubhai says he has a waiting list of 25,000 people looking for partners, and the numbers are just growing every year. “However, we want more women to come forward and ask for companions. It’s very difficult for women in our country, especially at that age, to even say that they want a man in our lives. However, more women are approaching us, which is a good sign.”

Some common expectations from senior citizens:

– A partner for marriage

– A partner for companionship; may or may not live-in with that person.

– A partner only for friendship; could be same-sex; requires the same for common shared interests.

– A partner for sex

(Picture courtesy daydreamingwordsmith.blogspot.com)

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The city of carcentricity – Part II

Trupti Amritwar Vaitla explains how we all are paying for road infrastructure that caters to a small proportion of people.

Read Part I of the series here.

Yesterday, we featured Part I of Nidhi Qazi‘s interview with Trupti Vaitla (see pic on left), Chief of Operations at Mumbai Environment and Social Network (MESN), and also the head of Rachana Sansad’s Urban Design Cell. In the concluding part of the ‘City of carcentricity’ series today, Trupti explains how the majority pay for a small proportion of users’ car infrastructure by way of taxes and more.

Nidhi: Why this car-centric approach? Whom does this approach benefit and how?

Trupti: The projects in the city are car-centric as cars are a big business for many, like the car manufacturing industry, the road infrastructure industry and many car-related service industries. There is also a belief that car industry provides employment to a large number of people, and so, going against it is as good as going against the employment of working class.

We have a big impact of American lifestyle, where people live in sparse suburbs and are totally dependent on cars for mobility. For us, this model means ‘being developed’ and we are imitating them blindly in our cities which are dense, compact and actually ideal for mass transit. America is now seriously rethinking its car-centric ways which have proved unsustainable.

Our politicians, policy makers, bureaucrats and other authorities, are all car users, and view the entire situation from that lens and believe that owning a car is progressive and getting car infrastructure is the motorist’s right.

Big infrastructure projects like highways, freeways, sea links and flyovers which require huge investments, and are justified seeing the congestion on the road, but what causes that congestion never gets highlighted either by politicians, authorities or even by media.

N: How much does the government spend on the public transport system?

T: While in Mumbai, public transport carries 70 per cent passenger trips (down from 80 per cent about a decade back), the expenditure by users of public transport is less than 6 per cent. On the other hand, users spend more than 70 per cent on private transport which caters to barely 12 to 15 per cent of trips.

All the Western and Central railway suburban stations and tracks were completed by 1925, and since then, there was very little investment in upgradation till 2004 except in Navi Mumbai stations after Mankhurd. During the last 10 years, due to MUTP 1 (Mumbai Urban Transport Project) and MUTP 2 there was an investment of about Rs 2,000 crore for replacing the old tracks, coaches and extension of platform.

Recently some investment up to Rs 4,000 crore is made for the metro and monorails. Also 1,000 new buses more were bought under JNNURM, where half were in lieu of grant and the rest were bought by the Municipal Corporation. Of these, 600 were to replace the old buses and only 400 were added to the existing fleet. There is no investment in any kind of bus system to improve its efficiency. About Rs 8 to Rs 10,000 crore were spent on highways, the Sea Link and flyovers within Mumbai in the past 10 years.

N: Can you give us a comparison between the taxes paid by buses and car-users? Why is there a difference? What are the solutions?

T: Depending on the cost of the vehicle, the private vehicles have to pay a lumpsum one time tax of 7 to 14 per cent  for an individual and 14 per cent to 20 per cent for a company-owned vehicle for a lifetime. A bus has to pay tax annually and on per seat basis, depending on the type of vehicle (like basic, luxury, and AC bus). It is estimated that buses, considering a life of seven to eight years, pay 25 to 30 per cent tax i.e. two to three times higher than the private cars ! Also buses have to pay sales tax of 3 per cent on the sale of the tickets.

We also have a street tax which is based on the property value at 15 per cent  and not on the vehicle value or size. If we have pro-public transport policy, then why, under our tax regime, do buses pay much more than private vehicles? Why don’t we have taxation or road user fees that are designed to restrain private vehicle ownership and tilt in favour of buses? Also why can’t we charge nearer the real and total cost of parking spaces? Such rationalisation is easy and will make a great difference in favour of public transport usage.

It’s a Catch-22 situation, where it is unrealistic to expect migration from private transport to pay heavy charges and expect people to travel in the poor public transport. At the same time, it is not possible to wait for public transport to improve to restrain the growing numbers of private vehicles.

The basic rule is that mass transit can improve mobility, but it cannot solve congestion. Congestion can be solved only by a restraint on private vehicles and provision of good public transport. Both measures need to happen simultaneously to achieve a sustainable mobility. Instead of time consuming options like the metro rail to improve mass transit, this city needs solutions like improving the buses with dedicated lanes or BRTs, which are time and money efficient ways but which need vision, will and discipline.

Organising the existing intermediate public transport fleets like autos and taxies with dial system and shared routes to optimise its use and provide effective last mile connectivity.

Besides, we should focus on improving information and ticketing systems for better utilisation of public transport.

(Featured image courtesy purveshg.blogspot.com. Trupti’s pic courtesy bmwguggenheimlab.org)

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The city of carcentricity – Part I

The first of a two-part series on why public transport, and not cars, is the ideal solution for Mumbai’s roads.

Trupti Amritwar Vaitla (see pic on left), Chief of Operations at Mumbai Environment and Social Network (MESN), and also the head of Rachana Sansad’s Urban Design Cell, throws light on the state of public transport in Mumbai and the loopholes therein – the biggest one being the shift of focus from public transport to a private, car-centric model one that the city has resorted to.

Excerpts from an email interview that Nidhi Qazi conducted with her:

Nidhi: What is the increase in the number of cars seen on the roads in the past decade? How has that impacted the public transport system of Mumbai?

Trupti: As reported by MMRDA in its latest compilation of Basic Transport Statistics in Mumbai, the growth for the last 20 years is 214 per cent of four-wheelers (4W) and 432 per cent of two-wheelers (2W). If we consider also the growth together with Thane city, it is 2875 per cent of 4W and 1500 per cent for 2W.

This drastic growth, particularly in Thane district, is very striking and the reason is that many vehicles whose owners are residents of Mumbai get their vehicles registered in Thane to avoid paying octroi duty.

The huge growth in two wheelers indicates that bus users are shifting to this mode of private vehicles, which is affordable, faster and convenient till the last mile. On the other hand, the BEST bus trips have remained constant for the last 10 years on account of being stuck in traffic congestion (thus reducing its speed and reliability  thus becoming further unpopular and losing usership).

According to a National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) report, “Millions of man hours (and fuel) are lost with people ‘stuck in traffic’. The primary reason for this has been the explosive growth in the number of motor vehicles, coupled with limitations on the road space that can be provided as it is a very expensive infrastructure.”

Today in Mumbai, this congestion has impacted the efficiency of buses, and intermediate public transport like taxies and autos, (and even cars) as they are unable to complete the required number of trips  to carry more passengers with better frequency (although the number of buses has increased by 50 per cent during the last 10 years).

N: The reason for such an increase in the number of cars?

T: On the one hand, the deteriorating quality of public transport and on the other hand private transport is getting more attractive, cheaper and easily available.

Potential car buyers are increasing with increasing income levels between the 25 to 30 age group. Car prices have gone down, and now provide better quality, reliability and fuel efficiency and are available with easy car loans with reduced interest rates, and with no waiting period.

Most importantly, billions of rupees are spent on car advertisements to sell dreams to young potential buyers, increasing their aspirations. And if this is not enough, all our mega road projects are adding further fuel to this fire by providing dreams of more road widening, highways and freeways. And easy loans on attractive terms are available for asking – a thing unheard of until recently!

N: What does ‘equitable road space’ mean? Where does the city stand on that front?

T: I would like to refer to the NUTP report, which says “At present, road space gets allocated to whichever vehicle occupies it first. The focus is, therefore, the vehicle and not people. The result is that a bus carrying 40 people is allocated only two and a half times the road space that is allocated to a car carrying only one or two persons. In this process, the lower income groups have, effectively, ended up paying, in terms of higher travel time and higher travel costs, for the disproportionate space allocated to personal vehicles. If the focus of the principles of road space allocation were to be the people, then much more space would need to be allocated to public transport systems than is allocated at present.”

In Mumbai, road space allocation for buses is less than 10 per cent, taxi, autos is about 20 per cent and private transport is about 60 per cent, while commercial vehicles is about 10 per cent. Exactly reverse is the ratio of  passengers carried by each mode, where buses carry more than 65 per cent passengers, taxi auto about 20 per cent and private vehicles 15 per cent.

A study done by transport policy institute shows comparative per person travel space needs. A bus commuter requires 75 sq ft space travelling in a bus at 50km/hr, whereas a person travelling in the car occupies 250 sq ft while standing and about 1,500 sq ft moving at a speed of 50km/hr. Each car requires at least three car parking spaces in the city, one at home, other at office and third at shopping and other activities. Each parking space demands not less than 400 sq ft which is more than an affordable dwelling unit for four persons. This clearly indicates how space intensive the cars are and the tremendous pressure on the road infrastructure.

In the last 10 years, many highways, flyovers and the Sea Link have got built in the name of solving congestion in our city. When MESN did the traffic count, we realised that on an average 2 per cent buses, 23 per cent taxi/auto and 75 per cent cars ply on flyovers; on the Sea Link, less than 1 per cent buses, less than 10 per cent taxi and above 90 per cent cars.

The buses do not take the flyovers and also the fast links like Sea Link and the new Eastern freeway have very few entry or exit points, which again discourage bus usage, as they need more stops with easy accessibility. This clearly indicates that these big infrastructure projects are not pro-public transport and are in effect, getting subsidised by non-users’ tax money.

Road transport projects require large investment and cannot be self-sustaining through users’ fee alone; they need some viability gap funds. Giving such funding to public transport is acceptable all over the world as it is in the interest of many. However, in the case of Mumbai, unfortunately all the road transport projects are in effect, car-centric.

Part II, tomorrow: How non-car users are paying for the upkeep of cars and infrastructure that supports them.

(Featured image courtesy akshardhool.com. Trupti’s pic courtesy bmwguggenheimlab.org)

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Kharghar is most-searched home destination

Whether buying or renting homes, Mumbaikars are increasingly zoning in on Navi Mumbai’s Kharghar, says a real estate website survey.

Buying a home in Mumbai or even in its surrounding areas is becoming a prize-worthy feat. Impossible real estate prices, home loans that squeeze the life out of one for years, and houses that tick only some of the boxes for buyers looking for ideal homes, all combine to make the home-buying experience a nightmarish one for Mumbaikars.

Naturally, people are seeking newer avenues. As per a survey released three days ago by website 99acres.com, Kharghar (Navi Mumbai) was the most-searched localities in 2012 in both the buying and renting categories. The survey, titled ‘Real Estate Search Trends of 2012, says, “Increased connectivity, new project launches and affordable rentals could be one of reason for the growing popularity of this area.”

The second most-searched locality by users looking for property purchase in Mumbai, as per the survey data, is Mira Road. Panvel, Borivali (west), Malad (west) are other popularly searched localities in the city. “The real estate market of Mumbai has always been an attractive destination for buyers because it provides high return on investments and even if there is slowdown in the market the purchase transactions in the city has actually moved up in the last four to five months,” the report reads.

Traditionally, rental values have been high in Mumbai due to the overall demand and supply imbalance in dwelling units. “Detailed analysis of the search trends for renting property shows that localities of Navi Mumbai and Andheri to Dahisar area have been most searched for by people looking to stay on rent. While Kharghar takes the first rank in the rental space as well,  Andheri (east), Andheri (west) and Powai have also emerged as popular localities for renting purposes,” the survey says.

(Picture courtesy photos.tarunchandel.com)

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Cool weather expected to hold

It’s going to hover at a pleasing 16 Degrees in the night, even as day temperatures rise to 32 Degrees. But beware of seasonal illnesses.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

The weather in Mumbai has been confusing this year, to say the least. We’re now nearing the end of February, and the evenings and nights continue to be cool and nippy.

This, after a horrible four days of soaring temperatures last week, when humidity levels also rose, giving a glimpse of the kind of summer this city can expect this year.

However, minimum temperatures of 16 Degrees or lower have rarely been seen in February in Mumbai. Since the beginning of this week, from Sunday evening, to be precise, minimum temperatures dipped to about four Degrees below normal all over Mumbai. As per the bulletin for Friday and Saturday issued by the Indian Meteorology Department (Mumbai), minimum and maximum temperatures for Mumbai expected to be 17 Degree Celsius and 31 Degree Celsius respectively.

“Another western disturbance is active over Afghanistan. It will take another day or two for the system to reach India. If the wind conditions are right, then Mumbai temperatures may dip once again,” said VK Rajeev, speaking to a city newspaper yesterday.

(Picture courtesy ibnlive.com)

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